Let Us Be People of Easter

A devotion I wrote and gave to MOPS this week:

 

Friends it’s a joy to proclaim to you this morning that He is Risen!  I know it’s easy to think Easter is over--Target quickly put away the plastic eggs, obnoxious Easter grass that gets all over everything and doesn’t vacuum up easily, and marked down all the leftover peeps, but in the life of the Christian church we’re still smack in the middle of the Easter season.  I used to teach a class for children ages 4-6, and it was a program called Godly Play, where we taught children how to worship, how to participate in the life and liturgy of a congregation and we used to help them recognize and celebrate the various seasons of the church year.  We would explain to them when they saw the purple banners and cloths show up in the church it meant we were in the season of Lent, the 6 weeks before Easter, and that purple meant we were waiting for something huge to happen--Easter was so important it took us 6 weeks to get ready for it!  But what many people don’t realize is that the 7 weeks after Easter are called the Easter season--we’d tell the kids that easter was SO huge, was SO important to our faith that one sunday wasn’t nearly enough to celebrate it fully, the church needed 7 sundays where we would proclaim “he is risen! he is risen indeed!” to one another every week.  Many congregations have lost that practice, using those words, “he is risen” only one week a year, but i wish that was something we could reclaim.  Because those words matter.  They’re game changing, life changing words, history changing words.  And many of us only hear them once a year.  But i want to tell you again today that He is Risen.  Or as my 3 year old likes to run around saying “he is risen and fabulous!”  We have absolutely no idea where those words came from, but I love them.  Jesus is risen and fabulous.  

Jesus is risen.  But that doesn’t mean everything is perfect, it doesn’t mean life is without hard times.  We heard three incredible stories two weeks ago from our friends who freely shared about very difficult times in their lives.  Life is messy.  Life is downright painful at times.  There is a constant mixture of the beautiful and the bitter, and Jesus’ resurrection does not promise to take away the bitter as much as we wish it would.  At least not here, not now, not yet.  Shauna Niequist calls this life bittersweet, the idea that in all things there is both something broken and something beautiful--a sliver of lightness on even the darkest night, a shadow of hope in every heartbreak.  That if everything in life was sweetness, it would rot our teeth and our souls.  The bitter is what makes us strong, what forces us to push through, what helps us earn the lines on our faces and the calluses on our hands.  Sweet is nice enough, but bittersweet is beautiful, full of depth and complexity, it’s courageous, gutsy and earthy.  It’s the bitter parts of our stories that allow us to sit with one another, to reach out when we see others suffering a similar pain we’ve endured.  It is after having walked through those bitter moments and seasons in life that we are able to utter what I’ve come to believe are two of the most powerful words in a friendship.  The words “me too.”  Me too.  I’ve been there too.  You’re not the only one who has been so sleep deprived you’ve considered walking away from your kids.  Me too.  You’re not the only one who has been so fed up with a spouse that you’ve found yourself entertaining the question “do I want to do this for the next 50 years?”  Me too.  You’re not the only one who has worried over the health of a loved one, or grieved in the emergency room over the loss of someone dear to you.  Jesus is risen, but life is still messy, and walking through those messy times gives us the privilege of proclaiming to one another “you are not alone in your messy and bitter moments.”  

But friends, here is what the resurrection of Jesus does promise us.  It promises us that our messy, sometimes painful and bittersweet life won’t be that way forever.  The book of Revelation promises us, in what might be one of the most hope-filled passages in all of scripture that one day all suffering will end.  I believe that one day we will stand before the throne of God and never again will we hunger.  Never again will we know the scorching heat of the sun.  Never again will we shed a tear, in fact I believe it with all of my heart that one day God will wipe away every tear we have ever shed from our eyes.  Because Jesus is alive we have this hope.  I believe that the same Jesus who was put to death on a cross 2000 years ago is alive again today, and because he is risen we have hope.  One day there won’t be any more depression, there won’t be any more cancer, there won’t be any more drunk driving accidents, one day there will be a cease-fire forever in war torn parts of this planet.  Life is still messy friends, sometimes life is downright painful but I believe with all my heart that Jesus is alive and because he is alive we can live with hope.  

My favorite song-writer, poet, prophet, is the late Rich Mullins, who died tragically way too young.  But he left behind a treasure-trove of words that over and over again point me to Jesus, and to the hope we have in him.  One of my favorite songs of his is called If I Stand, and the chorus says

 

So if I stand let me stand on the promise

That You will pull me through

And if I can't then let me fall on the grace

That first brought me to You

If I sing let me sing for the joy

That has born in me these songs

But if I weep let it be as a man

Who is longing for his home

Friends because Jesus is risen we have the promise of another home someday. The resurrection does not mean we will never grieve here on earth.  It does not mean everything in our lives will be springtime and sunshine and roses.  But because of the resurrection we can say “i know this isn’t the end.  I know in my head, even if I don’t always feel it in my heart, that someday I won’t cry anymore, someday my loved ones won’t suffer.  As i look at the world around me I HAVE to believe that, I have to believe the pain in this world isn’t how God intended life to be.  Even in the midst of dark times, may we be people of Easter.  People who can help proclaim to one another that Jesus is risen, and because of those 3 words, everything in our lives will be made new someday.  We can grieve, cry, laugh, dance, fight, make up, parent our kids, care for our loved ones, and walk through the ordinary everday moments with great hope.  Jesus is risen friends, he is risen indeed.  

 

Unplugging

I have always celebrated Lent by letting go of something in order to create space for other things--usually practices or activities that help me connect more with Jesus or people, and every year I am always glad I've chosen whatever it was. One year was TV for my roommate and I--we spent the end of winter reading, hosting dinner parties, knitting while listening to great music, and walking around the neighborhoods in the evening. My freshman year of college I was fully addicted to AOL Instant Messaging. I would often have 4 conversations going at once with various people while attempting to study at the same time. I decided that wasn't all that healthy, and signed off for 6 weeks, focusing instead on my schoolwork and on connecting with people in person. It was a fantastic experience.

For quite awhile now, I have been realizing something has grabbed hold of my life in a way that I am not super proud of--sucking a ridiculous amount of my time and attention away from other, more meaningful things. Yup, confession time, I'm afraid I've become a little addicted to facebook. I honestly can't tell you how many times a day I check it. I don't even realize my fingers are moving the mouse towards the Facebook link in my bookmarks list. I've realized how inundated I've become with information about people I literally haven't seen since childhood--not that I don't care about them, but these are people I literally don't have a relationship with. It's actually sucking time away from me doing things that I truly value--caring for my home, my husband, my soul mate friends, being fully present with people, reading amazing books, hand writing letters etc. I'll have a free 1/2 hour and instead of picking up a book from my growing pile on the bedside table, I surf facebook until it's time to fall asleep. I don't dislike Facebook, I dislike the way I've let it consume so much of my energy. So yesterday, I posted that I'd be signing off for Lent. It's been pretty obvious to me for several weeks now that God's been nudging me this direction, and I can't ignore that any longer. In these next 6 weeks I hope to read a few books. I hope to bake more and give away that which I create. My husband and I are in the midst of talking through some big life choices and transitions, and I'm hoping to spend more time journaling and praying about these changes. I hope to write more on here, give myself space to think more deeply about things that matter to me. Most importantly, I hope to learn to immerse myself in scripture. I'll share more about what that is going to look like in a later post, but a conversation with our associate pastor yesterday reminded me how absolutely essential it is to let scripture fill us.

I'm actually surprised at the number of people who pushed back when I mentioned I was signing off Facebook (and a few others I know who are making this commitment experienced the same thing). I'm not saying Facebook is inherently bad. I'm not saying I love denying myself. I'm not making this choice because it sounds like a "good challenge." I'm signing off because it was so clear as I was praying about what had a strong hold in my life that this was it. This was what God was asking of me because He does want me to live more intentionally with my time. The tradition in Lent is to break one's fast on Sundays--even in the midst of the darkness of Lent, Sundays are still set aside as "mini Resurrection days." One is allowed to celebrate life by partaking of whatever one is fasting from. So yes, I'll still be checking up on some folks Sunday afternoon. I'll be "awwing" over any new photos of any of my nieces that have been posted. I'll be checking for friend's wedding photos or baby photos that I know are coming up. Maybe I will share some thoughts about the things I've been doing with my time since backing away from the computer. I will probably post links to things I've written over the past week and comment on a few youth group kid's pages because those are things I love about Facebook. But then, I'll sign off again, because between now and Easter I hope to come to a place where I re-discover the joy of living life away from a screen.

Preparing for the Shadows

Ash Wednesday is in two days. Many of you are part of traditions that don't celebrate this day, and that's okay, but for me it's an important day--a holy day that is essential in the rhythm of my spiritual life. I don't think I have ever missed attending church on Ash Wednesday, so 29 times I've heard someone proclaim the solemn words over me, "Sarah, remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return." It's these words that usher me into a season that always feels different than the rest of the year. These 40 days leading up to Easter have been intentionally set aside by the historical church to allow people the space to examine our lives. What is it in our lives that have taken a strong hold? Is there anything in our lives that we've allowed to become a god or an idol? As the Israelites wandered in the desert for 40 years, and as Jesus wandered in the wilderness for 40 days, so we too wander through the shadowy Lenten season waiting for Easter with hope and expectation. And while we wander and wait, we hopefully slow down a bit. We let go of something that is taking our time and attention away from the One who so rightly commands it. We find joy in the midst of the Lenten shadows too, as we extract ourselves from the things that entangle us and discover the freedom Christ promises as we trust and obey His leading. Last year I had the opportunity to speak at our church's Ash Wednesday service, and I posted my 5 minute reflection here in case you want to read more and want to ponder more the other time in our lives we find ourselves marked with the shape of a cross upon our foreheads.

I've talked a lot lately with individuals about the idea of "giving something up" for Lent, and I just wanted to share a couple thoughts about that, hopefully to encourage us all to think a little broader about this ancient practice. The typical things to give up are chocolate, caffeine, sugar, or meat, and all these things can be really good options for a person to let go of, especially if these things have become intense crutches or cravings for a person. However, I have many friends who have thought really creatively about what to do to celebrate the Lenten season, things that they choose intentionally to draw them closer to the cross instead of simply giving up sugar because that's what everyone else does. These are just a list of a few things that people I know personally have done, but let these ideas jump start a conversation in your family about what we can creatively do during this season as individuals, families, or communities. Remember, it's not just about giving something up, it's also about putting something healthier in it's place--giving God space to fill the place the item we let go of for awhile has left in our lives.

**Give up going out to eat lunch at work or for the daily latte, instead take a sack lunch and calculate what you normally would spend in 6 weeks of eating lunch out. Donate that money to a local organization working to end hunger in your community.
**One friend gave up text messaging, instead she disciplined herself to actually call and have a real conversation with anyone she needed to get in touch with.
**Disconnect from Facebook or social networking for the season, and use the time you would have spent connecting with people on computer screens to read the daily lectionary (scripture readings), or connect with a person on the phone or in person.
**One friend from seminary felt like he loved reading theology too much, it was becoming a source of pride for him, so he actually gave up reading theological books for Lent, instead forcing himself to read stories, poetry and fiction. This was tough for him, but he loved that he did this.
**One friend of mine is practicing the discipline of giving away one brown bag of her possessions each week throughout Lent while at the same time is keeping a gratitude journal to count her blessings that are not material.
**Another friend of mine loves movies, and watches several a week. He gave up movies for the season and attempted to spend more time with people in conversation or reading great books.
**One friend realized he enjoyed spending hours just aimlessly surfing the net, so he disciplined himself to set his cell phone alarm and gave himself 15 minutes a day.
**Another friend decided to give up being critical of herself for Lent. She recognized she spends a lot of time in front of the mirror analyzing and critiquing her appearance. She started practicing the discipline of saying "I am beautifully and wonderfully made" as she smoothed lotion on her skin in the mornings, put her make up on, or styled her hair. It became her mantra and at the end of the 40 days she actually believed it.

The possibilities are endless, and there are so many ways we can experience this season with our families or small groups or communities. I think it's also important to remember though that practicing a spiritual discipline during Lent is not done to earn God's favor or impress God in any way. God loves us immeasurably more than we can ever imagine, we participate in a Lenten practice to free up space in our chaotic, crowded, and sometimes sin-entangled lives to free ourselves up to more fully experience that love and the grace God has already given us.

May you more fully embrace and experience the mysterious joy that can come as we wander through the shadows on the way to Good Friday.