04/12/2020
Happy Easter! We're celebrating with to go meals at 5:30pm at our new location: 900 Dr. MLK S. suite C.
Here's a sneak peak of the text for our video reflection from John tonight. We'll be live some time around 6.
God bless:
Easter reflection, from John Stewart
In the Western church we have just ended Holy Week, which features two crowds. The first crowd, on Palm Sunday, gathered to cheer, cry “Save us!” (“hosanna”), and spread their cloaks and tree branches on the road as Jesus entered Jerusalem for his confrontation with the political and religious forces of this world. Another crowd gathered on Good Friday to cry out for Jesus’ death by torture, and to demand a criminal instead of Jesus, the man they had lauded a few days earlier. In a few days the public can quickly turn from an adoring throng to a lynch mob, both acting in the name of religion. By the end of Friday, Jesus had been tortured to death and sealed in a grave behind a huge stone. Rome went back to business as usual: oppressing, robbing and crucifying the poor; supporting the rich; pushing their dominance outward through ruthless violence; enslaving peoples; crushing rebellions; an empire on a divine mission under a divine god-man, Caesar. Game over. Case closed. Nothing changes.
And yet…
Today, the situation is virtually identical. The world’s lone superpower, the most heavily armed nation in history, has replaced the cross with lethal injection, an allegedly painless method of murdering someone--unless the anesthetics fail. Citizens shoot each other at a rate of 100 each day. Half a million people are homeless in its streets each night. Millions go without basic health care. Three of its families own more wealth than the bottom half of its population. It cannot take care of its first responders, medical personnel, and citizens during a pandemic. It pushes its dominance outward in absurd wars that destroy nations, shatter its soldiers, and drain its treasury. And it does all this in a land full of churches, an empire on a divine mission, one nation under God. Game over. Case closed. Nothing changes.
And yet…
And yet a Spirit was released on that Easter morning, and intensified 48 days later at Pentecost, that changed everything. At first, almost no one noticed. But it moved from person to person through Rome and, eventually, the world, establishing communities and irrevocably altering our view of reality, injecting the hope of the Kingdom of God into the business-as-usual of the world. There is no going back. Follow it, ignore it, assail it, or betray it, that Spirit continues to revolutionize the lives of people, communities, and, sometimes, entire nations.
Right now we are in the grips of the COVID-19 pandemic. Also ignored at first, the virus has also moved from person to person and, eventually, the world. Although we cannot say for sure, the changes are good that it has altered our view of reality, at least for a time.
The similarities are superficial. The virus is not even alive, barely a zombie, whereas the Spirit is the very breath of God that fills and drives the universe. Easter assures us that God is at work, often in an unnoticed corner, inspiring people and building community among the oppression, sin and suffering of the world. Our hope is that this Easter will renew our commitment to Jesus, to each other, and to growing into citizens of the Kingdom of God that Jesus prayed for, and that our lives will more and more reflect the power, love, and hope of Easter. We hope that even in the face of suffering, and oppression, and pandemics, and our own sin and indifference, we can say continue to say, “And yet…”
