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“The God of our fathers raised Jesus from the dead! God exalted him to his own right hand as Prince and Savior that he might give repentance and forgiveness of sins to Israel. We are witnesses of these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him!”
~Acts 5:30-32
Christ Jesus our Lord is risen and reigning today, right now, at the right hand of God. May he bless us and his Church with the same boldness and courage of the apostles who witnessed it.
Peace,
Allan
“Clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.” ~Romans 13:14
Ash Wednesday marks the first day of Lent, the 40-day period of fasting and prayer that precedes Good Friday and Easter Sunday on the Church calendar. Going back to the early years of church history, Lent has traditionally been a time for personal abstinence and self-discipline. In the middle ages, it became particularly associated with a fast from eating meat. It developed into a teaching tool for the church and a reminder for all Christians: in your hunger, be reminded of all that Jesus suffered and sacrificed to win your salvation.
As you enter this season of Lent on your own or together with your family or community of faith, allow me to suggest that it’s not just about giving something up. It’s not only about sacrificing a certain type or amount of food or some other regular pleasure in order to participate in the sufferings of Christ or to remember his selfless preparation for the cross. At least as important is the idea and practice of taking something on, adding something new to your life in Christ.
Not only the surrender of material things, but the taking on of spiritual things, eternal things that draw us closer to Christ and, by the power of the Spirit, transform us more into his image is the best way to prepare for Easter. A new ministry. A new discipline. A new work for the benefit of others. A new prayer. A new friend. A new passage of Scripture. While you’re cleaning out your house over the next six weeks, pay attention to what you’re moving in to the empty spaces. Add something important. Commit to something Spirit-filled.
Peace,
Allan
“Just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life!” ~Romans 6:4
If we understand that resurrection and eternal life with the Father is what awaits us when we die and that, until then, Christ’s resurrection Spirit is what gives us power, that will radically impact the way we live. We have no problem risking our reputations, our popularity, our well being, even our very lives. A resurrection community is bold. Risky. No fear. We know that the salvation of the world and the salvation of our community is in the loving and powerful hands of the same God who brought our Lord out of the grave. So we can do crazy things, outrageous things, in practicing and living the resurrection every day.
Resurrection boldness is what compels us to give $353,000 in one day to help spread the good news around the globe. Resurrection boldness is what pushes us to work and worship with the Baptists and Methodists and Presbyterians for the sake of our city. Resurrection boldness is what prompts us to buy an apartment complex across the street that we don’t know what to do with yet except that the truth and the experience of the Resurrection assures us that God is not going to let it go to waste.
Resurrection boldness causes us to cancel Bible classes so we can bake cookies and build birdhouses for the children of our neighborhood, to bring Franklin Graham to Amarillo, and to build a beautiful chapel during the Depression.
Resurrection boldness motivates us to build when others might tear down, to stand up when others might sit, and to go when everybody else may want to stay. It’s why Elaine goes to Kenya, why Tim goes to Martha’s Home, why Brett goes to India, why Patrick is leading Bible class, why Daniel and Alisha keep fighting and why Cadence and Erin and Doug got baptized today!
Don’t tell me we can’t or we shouldn’t, because they killed Jesus, they killed him dead, and they put his dead body in a grave, and on the third day our God brought him back to life to reign with all power and authority at his right hand forever. Don’t tell me we can’t; the Resurrection says we have to! And our resurrection community at Central will not stop being bold, we will not stop taking risks, because our Savior lives and his resurrection spirit is in us!
Peace,
Allan
“With great power the apostles continued to testify to the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus!” ~Acts 4:33
In Matthew 28, Jesus meets the women outside the empty tomb and says, “Go and tell my brothers!” Scripture says the women “ran to tell the disciples.” In Mark 16, the angel inside the tomb says, “Go and tell!” The risen Lord eats with his disciples that night and says, “Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation!” Verse 20 says, “The disciples went out and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them.” Same thing in Luke 24. “When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others.” When the two disciples met Jesus on the road to Emmaus, “they told what had happened.” While Jesus shares a meal with his followers that night he says, “The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations.”
Sure enough, the resurrection community can’t keep their mouths shut. In the earliest days of the Church, according to Acts, everybody was talking. Peter and John get thrown in jail for talking about the resurrection and protest to the authorities, “We cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard!”
When we are truly raised with Christ to walk in newness of eternal life, when we are formed and shaped by the Resurrection of Jesus, how are we not going to talk about it? The Resurrection community proclaims the good news of the resurrection and reign and return of our Lord. We can’t help it.
I would add that followers of Jesus are all about life, not death; we’re a people of hope, not despair; we’re a community of light, not darkness. And when we speak, our words should give resurrection life to others. Our speech should breathe new life into others.
In Colossians, Paul is talking about formation by resurrection when he says, “Let your conversation be always full of grace.” We’re told in Ephesians 4 to speak the truth in love. In Acts 20, we’re told that everywhere Paul went he spoke words of encouragement.
All the words that come out of our mouths should be words that restore and renew, never words that tear down or destroy. When we speak, our words should point others to the resurrection life that’s forming us.
Peace,
Allan
“God made us alive together with Christ!” ~Ephesians 2:5
I realize the phrase “Together Community” comes from the Department of Redundancy Department. The word “community” means “tgogether,” right? Good. Because we are all raised with Christ Jesus to be together.
When considering the resurrection stories in the Gospels, please notice that not one person experienced the power, the hope, and the mystery of the empty tomb alone. Nobody encountered the risen Lord by themselves. The people who saw the empty grave and the angels, the ones who ate dinner with Jesus that night, they were all with their friends. Most of them, we know their names. We know their stories. We know their relationships with one another. And what a mixed bag of people. What a weird collection of folks.
Jesus’ mother and a radical anti-government conspirator. The wealthy Jewess Mary Magdalene and the turncoat tax collector. Cursing fishermen and gentle women. Big city boys and sons of country farmers. Resurrection is experienced in a complex network of personal relationships. Men and women just like us: puzzled, bewildered, confused, questioning, doubting. And, yes, singing and believing and praying and obeying. Together.
The Resurrection of Jesus creates togetherness. It creates relationships. It forms us together today as one people just like it did then. Just glance at Acts 2 and look at the Resurrection community. People from all walks of life — rich and poor, Jew and Gentile, men and women, educated and ignorant, powerful and marginal — all brought together by the Holy Spirit of the risen Savior to live together and act like family. They didn’t have a whole lot in common other than the resurrection. But they acted like a family. Every day. In each other’s homes. Loving each other. Ministering to one another. Taking care of each other. Eating and praying together. Singing and serving together. They devoted themselves to the community and had all things in common.
The resurrection community is like a neighborhood, but it’s more personal. It’s like a family, only more diverse. It can be like a football team or a civic club, but it’s much stronger. I like to think of our resurrection community at Central like an army platoon. We’re brought together by something much bigger than ourselves, united by a shared purpose, and made stronger under pressure and difficulty. Together. We are a group of brothers and sisters who live in sacred covenant with one another in order to serve the Kingdom for which our Lord died and was raised to eternal life. It’s about something that really, really matters.
We need each other. None of us can do this by ourselves. It’s impossible. We’re not intended to. We were raised with Christ to be together.
I need you. And whether you admit it or not — whether you like it or not — you need me, too. You need me to love you and I need you to encourage me. You need me to challenge you and I need you to correct me. I need your strength when I’m tired and you need my support when you’re down. I need your patience when you have none and you need my joy when you have none. We all need to remind each other about the Resurrection and our parts in it. We all need to be able to regularly look around and see clearly that we are not in this thing by ourselves.
Peace,
Allan
The Gospel accounts of the resurrection of Jesus tell us that those who experienced the empty tomb up close and personal responded with wonder and amazement. Matthew says the women at the dug-out tomb were afraid. Mark says they were alarmed or astonished. The women are also described as bewildered and trembling. Other translations say they were stunned. The women in Luke’s version were “wondering” about the empty tomb. After Peter looks inside the empty grave, he, too, is said to be in wonder. With each of the Easter stories, the sense of resurrection wonder or mystery is building. It accumulates. So far, not one person who witnessed the empty tomb has been able to make sense of it. Not even those who encountered the risen Lord have it figured out.
And these are good reminders for us today.
The Resurrection confused everybody. At the time it happened, nobody could explain it. It’s obvious that those closest to the event had no idea what had happened or why. And that’s a good reminder for us. That we don’t always have God’s plan figured out. We don’t always know what God is doing. Or when he’s doing it. Or why. And that disorients us. But it’s OK.
Nobody had prepared for the Resurrection. Those women were going to the tomb that morning with burial spices to anoint a dead body. They weren’t bringing Jesus a fresh set of clothes and a toothbrush. When he shows up for dinner with the disciples that evening, they have to scramble to find a chair and an extra place setting. Peter’s wife pulls her husband aside and says, “You didn’t tell me your boss was coming!” Of course not; he didn’t know! None of them had prepared. And that’s a good reminder for us. We’re all beginners in this resurrection business. There aren’t any experts. We don’t control what God is doing. And that unsettles us. But it’s OK.
In the Resurrection stories, the marginal people are the main players. It’s the women. In this patriarchal society, these women had no rights, no status, no standing in the community. Especially Mary Magdalene. She had been possessed by seven demons before she met Jesus which might mean she had been living a reprehensibly horrible moral life or perhaps she was mentally ill. Either way, this lady lived on the edges of her community. She didn’t fit in. But she’s the only name we read in all four Gospel accounts of the Resurrection. And that’s a good reminder for us. That we don’t ever judge or rule out anybody we think might be beyond the reach of Resurrection. More than likely, it’ll be the ones we least expect who wind up at the very front of what God’s doing. And that surprises us. But it’s OK.
Some of the most exciting words in all of Scripture are when God says, “Behold! I am doing a new thing!” God is always doing new things. And it’s exciting. Right now, today, our God is doing new things in your church, new things in your city, new things — maybe unforeseen things — between people in different Christian denominations. God is speaking in new ways. He’s moving in new ways. He’s drawing men and women to himself in brand new and surprising ways. Things are changing.
And that can be disorienting. Unsettling. Scary. Because we don’t do well with change. We’re not always real good with new. But we have the Spirit of our risen Lord within us. Christ Jesus inside us gives us the power and the peace to embrace the mystery and the wonder of what God is doing; to not just accept it with our heads, but to jump into it with our hearts; to let God in Christ have his way with us; to fully submit to what we may not fully understand. Not just to be OK with it, but to rejoice in it.
Peace,
Allan
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