Okay, so technically it's the second day after Easter--but maybe it's even more important now, after we've had all of Monday since the clothes were brand new and the ham and eggs freshly cooked, to remember that celebrating the Resurrection was never meant to be a once-a-year event. We joke about "holiday Christians" who appear at church only on Easter morning and Christmas Eve, but it's not really funny that so many professed believers find worship and fellowship worth no more time than that.
No doubt some such people don't really believe at all; there are those who, though they state outright that it's ridiculous to believe anyone could rise from the dead, continue to attend church on Easter because their families always did it that way. Many other people believe in the Resurrection as a fact of history, yet treat it merely as interesting trivia. Probably the latter are more offensive to God than those who laugh at the whole idea; Scripture's most virulent scoldings are reserved for self-satisfied "religious" types. The NIV uses the word "lukewarm" only once--directed in Rev. 3:16 at church members who lived in blissful ignorance of their failings--and Jesus's reaction (paraphrased) is, "You make Me want to throw up!"
Who could call such a statement unreasonable, considering all He did to give us the best that Heaven could offer? And not just in paying the penalty of our sin for us. Certainly that was infinitely more than we had any right to expect, and required courage and compassion beyond our power to imagine; yet, if that were all He had meant to accomplish, He might have gone straight to Heaven from the Cross. His returning bodily from the grave offered final proof He had conquered death; but I believe its purpose went further than that. By showing Himself revived and revitalized, He was saying to His followers, "As I received new life after death, so I mean for you to receive new power to live in Me after your death to sin. You no longer have to be slaves to old habits, lost in apathy and hopelessness." We can experience eternal life now--not just after physical death--if we are willing to live in constant awareness of Christ's Resurrection. But we need to refresh that awareness far more often than annually.
If you're determined not to believe in the Resurrection, it's silly to go to church even on Easter. If you do believe, it's even more ridiculous to stay home the rest of the year.
The day after Easter,
The eggs all found,
The ham eaten up,
The flowers taken down,
The baskets now emptied,
Church services through,
Will you still remember
What Christ did for you?
The day after Easter,
When your new clothes
Have been broken in
Down to your shoes' toes,
And the fresh-cut lilies
Are starting to fade,
Will you still remember
The price our Lord paid?
No more than forgiveness
Or love or tear
Can just sit and wait
To act once a year--
No more than our sinning
Can stall from taint's grime--
Can true belief's worship
Be saved "till it's time."
The day after Easter,
And all our days,
Let us walk with God
In prayer and in praise:
The spirit of Easter,
In lives made brand new,
And our thanks to Jesus,
Must flow the year through!
Showing posts with label Easter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Easter. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Where Will You Go for Him?
Easter weekend begins in two days with Maundy Thursday. First comes the night of solemn remembrance, then the day of agony, and finally the morning of joy.
How many of these emotions will we really feel?
Will we come to church on Easter just to "go through the motions," reserving our real enthusiasm for the big meal afterwards? Will we grumble if it rains this Sunday and the only available parking spaces are four blocks from the church? Will we act as if God owes us a perfect day as a reward for showing up?
Many people do all of the above. Not all that surprising, considering that they act the same way on "ordinary" Sundays--and through the rest of the week. From the attitudes of many Christians, one would think that Jesus had said, "I have come that you might live free of trouble, and have all the possessions you want." (What He really said was, "I have come that [you] may have life, and have it to the full. [But] in this world you will have trouble" [John 10:10; 16:33, NIV]). Although few of us would dare state outright, "I owe God nothing, and He owes me everything," our everyday lives say clearly that we believe as much.
Part of the problem is our difficulty with focusing our attention where it belongs. We pat ourselves on the back for being law-abiding citizens and forget how much evil lurks within us. We wear crucifixes as jewelry and never give a thought to the cruelty and agony of that death. And we recite John 3:16 by rote without once considering how unbelievable, how utterly unreasonable, it is that God should love the likes of us even a little, let alone to the extent of enduring what He did--and that His love should continue even though the majority of us respond with appalling ingratitude. That includes those of us who said "yes" to His offer of salvation but whose favorite daily prayer is, "What have You done for me lately?"
If we truly appreciated what He has in fact done for us, we would be more than ready to do anything for Him.
He stumbled down that fateful road
And up that looming hill,
And bore that heavy wooden beam,
All of His own free will,
Among a jeering, cruel crowd
And to a fate so grim:
He went the road of death for you--
Where will you go for Him?
And though a whip had ripped His back
Until His blood ran red,
Though nails had pierced His hands and feet,
And thorns had pierced His head,
And though His throat burned raw with thirst--
Pain wracked His every limb--
He gave His very life for you--
What will you give for Him?
There was no power in all of hell
To stop Love's perfect plan;
There was no power in death itself
To hold the Sinless Man.
When evil's might had done its worst
And brightest hopes burned dim,
He rose up from the dead for you--
Will you rise up for Him?
How many of these emotions will we really feel?
Will we come to church on Easter just to "go through the motions," reserving our real enthusiasm for the big meal afterwards? Will we grumble if it rains this Sunday and the only available parking spaces are four blocks from the church? Will we act as if God owes us a perfect day as a reward for showing up?
Many people do all of the above. Not all that surprising, considering that they act the same way on "ordinary" Sundays--and through the rest of the week. From the attitudes of many Christians, one would think that Jesus had said, "I have come that you might live free of trouble, and have all the possessions you want." (What He really said was, "I have come that [you] may have life, and have it to the full. [But] in this world you will have trouble" [John 10:10; 16:33, NIV]). Although few of us would dare state outright, "I owe God nothing, and He owes me everything," our everyday lives say clearly that we believe as much.
Part of the problem is our difficulty with focusing our attention where it belongs. We pat ourselves on the back for being law-abiding citizens and forget how much evil lurks within us. We wear crucifixes as jewelry and never give a thought to the cruelty and agony of that death. And we recite John 3:16 by rote without once considering how unbelievable, how utterly unreasonable, it is that God should love the likes of us even a little, let alone to the extent of enduring what He did--and that His love should continue even though the majority of us respond with appalling ingratitude. That includes those of us who said "yes" to His offer of salvation but whose favorite daily prayer is, "What have You done for me lately?"
If we truly appreciated what He has in fact done for us, we would be more than ready to do anything for Him.
He stumbled down that fateful road
And up that looming hill,
And bore that heavy wooden beam,
All of His own free will,
Among a jeering, cruel crowd
And to a fate so grim:
He went the road of death for you--
Where will you go for Him?
And though a whip had ripped His back
Until His blood ran red,
Though nails had pierced His hands and feet,
And thorns had pierced His head,
And though His throat burned raw with thirst--
Pain wracked His every limb--
He gave His very life for you--
What will you give for Him?
There was no power in all of hell
To stop Love's perfect plan;
There was no power in death itself
To hold the Sinless Man.
When evil's might had done its worst
And brightest hopes burned dim,
He rose up from the dead for you--
Will you rise up for Him?
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
O Master! My Master!
Yesterday, the United States celebrated Presidents' Day; and the preceding Thursday--February 12, 2009--marked the 200th anniversary of the birth of one of our greatest presidents, Abraham Lincoln. A "Ripley's Believe It or Not" cartoon published that day noted that "More books have been written" about Lincoln "than any other American."
Lincoln has also been the subject of many poems, one of the most famous being Walt Whitman's "O Captain! My Captain!", which mourns the tragedy of the President's assassination and the pall it cast over the joy of the Civil War's end. Even the Abraham Lincolns among us are only human, only mortal. And the pain for those left behind is all the sharper when death takes, with little or no warning, someone who might reasonably have been expected to live many more years. Lincoln was fifty-six when he was shot; and many reading this will remember the shock of hearing that another President, John F. Kennedy, had fallen to an assassin's bullet, in 1963 at age forty-six.
Other unexpected deaths--whether by murder, accident, or sudden illness--send out few large-scale reverberations, but break dozens of hearts nonetheless. I know firsthand the pain of losing someone to a "here today, gone tomorrow" cause. In August 2006, my father died of blood poisoning: total time from first sign of illness to end of life, less than three days; age, sixty-seven. (Having people repeatedly observe, "He wasn't very old, was he?" didn't lessen the heartache any.) Just last Saturday, another member of the family--nonhuman this time, but hardly less loved for that--suffered a near-identical fate as my mother's cat was stricken with a sudden lung infection; he was gone within thirty-six hours, some six weeks short of finishing his thirteenth year on earth (the average life span for a house cat today is fifteen to eighteen years).
Of course, some "unexpected" deaths are ones we should have seen coming--and refused to. It's common knowledge that the normal "first step" in grieving is denial; often, we practice it in earnest long before and up to the actual death. On some level, most of us want to believe that we are too careful, too exceptional, too favored by God to ever experience real tragedy; many of us clutch this idea to the point where God Himself could tell us face to face that heartbreak is coming and we would directly contradict Him, "No, it's not." Don't believe any Christian could be so foolish? The original apostles were. More than once, Jesus told His disciples flat out that His ministry would end in humiliation and death; they continued to cling to the idea that earthly glory was in the near future for Him and them. Peter even tried to argue with Him: "Never, Lord!... This shall never happen to you" (Mt. 16:22, NIV). When it did, Peter and everyone else were as shocked as if they had never been told it was coming.
Apparently they hadn't been listening, either, to the rest of their Master's prediction. Even after the first part of it--that He would suffer and be killed--came true, they didn't trust that the follow-up prophecy--that He would return alive after three days--would be fulfilled as well. For two nights they mourned, seeing no hope ahead; those who went to the tomb on the third day did it not to meet their risen Lord, but to pay their respects to the dead; when He did, in fact, greet those first visitors alive and they reported back, the others "did not believe... because their words seemed to them like nonsense" (Lk. 24:11); and when Jesus finally showed Himself directly to the majority, most of them "were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost" (Lk. 24:37). At least one disciple was so stubbornly reluctant to believe anyone could come back from the dead that even in the face of a dozen witnesses, he insisted on seeing for himself before he was convinced (John 20:24-29).
People today still refuse to believe in the Resurrection. Many respect Jesus as a person, but consider it a tragedy that He died in His thirties and had so few years to do good. Unwilling to look beyond His moral teachings and compassionate life to the full implications of His claims for Himself, they fail to see that His sacrificial death was the real point of His coming. In a way, we as Christians make the same mistake whenever we dwell on the "senselessness" of a death that catches us off guard, as though we were insisting to God that He was thoughtless or insensitive to allow it, or that His perfect control over everything must have slipped this time.
Lent begins next week. Traditionally, Christians give up something for the season; quite a few of us need to give up--permanently--our insistence that God should always act in ways we consider logical.
O Master! My Master! I thought You all our hope,
The Leader of our glorious cause, to break the tyrant's rope;
A King to sit upon a throne and wear a golden crown--
And now, beneath a darkening sky, I see our dreams cut down.
A cross holds my Master;
It's thorns that crown His head;
One final cry--my Master hangs
Limp and cold and dead.
O Master! My Master! We laid You in the tomb;
My heart is breaking from the grief; my soul is lost in gloom;
All yesterday we sat and wept; we'll see Your face no more;
The dawn is black--what is that knock I hear upon the door?
"The Master is risen!"--
A cry cuts through my dread--
"The stone is gone!" "He spoke to me!"
"He lives! He is not dead!"
O Master! My Master! What joy to see Your face,
To hear Your voice, to feel again the warmth of Your embrace!
I now can see the greater Cause that guided all You've done--
Far grander than an earthly gift, our freedom You have won!
Exult, O hearts! And sing, O souls!
And I, with low-bowed head,
Kneel as here my Master stands,
Risen from the dead.
Lincoln has also been the subject of many poems, one of the most famous being Walt Whitman's "O Captain! My Captain!", which mourns the tragedy of the President's assassination and the pall it cast over the joy of the Civil War's end. Even the Abraham Lincolns among us are only human, only mortal. And the pain for those left behind is all the sharper when death takes, with little or no warning, someone who might reasonably have been expected to live many more years. Lincoln was fifty-six when he was shot; and many reading this will remember the shock of hearing that another President, John F. Kennedy, had fallen to an assassin's bullet, in 1963 at age forty-six.
Other unexpected deaths--whether by murder, accident, or sudden illness--send out few large-scale reverberations, but break dozens of hearts nonetheless. I know firsthand the pain of losing someone to a "here today, gone tomorrow" cause. In August 2006, my father died of blood poisoning: total time from first sign of illness to end of life, less than three days; age, sixty-seven. (Having people repeatedly observe, "He wasn't very old, was he?" didn't lessen the heartache any.) Just last Saturday, another member of the family--nonhuman this time, but hardly less loved for that--suffered a near-identical fate as my mother's cat was stricken with a sudden lung infection; he was gone within thirty-six hours, some six weeks short of finishing his thirteenth year on earth (the average life span for a house cat today is fifteen to eighteen years).
Of course, some "unexpected" deaths are ones we should have seen coming--and refused to. It's common knowledge that the normal "first step" in grieving is denial; often, we practice it in earnest long before and up to the actual death. On some level, most of us want to believe that we are too careful, too exceptional, too favored by God to ever experience real tragedy; many of us clutch this idea to the point where God Himself could tell us face to face that heartbreak is coming and we would directly contradict Him, "No, it's not." Don't believe any Christian could be so foolish? The original apostles were. More than once, Jesus told His disciples flat out that His ministry would end in humiliation and death; they continued to cling to the idea that earthly glory was in the near future for Him and them. Peter even tried to argue with Him: "Never, Lord!... This shall never happen to you" (Mt. 16:22, NIV). When it did, Peter and everyone else were as shocked as if they had never been told it was coming.
Apparently they hadn't been listening, either, to the rest of their Master's prediction. Even after the first part of it--that He would suffer and be killed--came true, they didn't trust that the follow-up prophecy--that He would return alive after three days--would be fulfilled as well. For two nights they mourned, seeing no hope ahead; those who went to the tomb on the third day did it not to meet their risen Lord, but to pay their respects to the dead; when He did, in fact, greet those first visitors alive and they reported back, the others "did not believe... because their words seemed to them like nonsense" (Lk. 24:11); and when Jesus finally showed Himself directly to the majority, most of them "were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost" (Lk. 24:37). At least one disciple was so stubbornly reluctant to believe anyone could come back from the dead that even in the face of a dozen witnesses, he insisted on seeing for himself before he was convinced (John 20:24-29).
People today still refuse to believe in the Resurrection. Many respect Jesus as a person, but consider it a tragedy that He died in His thirties and had so few years to do good. Unwilling to look beyond His moral teachings and compassionate life to the full implications of His claims for Himself, they fail to see that His sacrificial death was the real point of His coming. In a way, we as Christians make the same mistake whenever we dwell on the "senselessness" of a death that catches us off guard, as though we were insisting to God that He was thoughtless or insensitive to allow it, or that His perfect control over everything must have slipped this time.
Lent begins next week. Traditionally, Christians give up something for the season; quite a few of us need to give up--permanently--our insistence that God should always act in ways we consider logical.
O Master! My Master! I thought You all our hope,
The Leader of our glorious cause, to break the tyrant's rope;
A King to sit upon a throne and wear a golden crown--
And now, beneath a darkening sky, I see our dreams cut down.
A cross holds my Master;
It's thorns that crown His head;
One final cry--my Master hangs
Limp and cold and dead.
O Master! My Master! We laid You in the tomb;
My heart is breaking from the grief; my soul is lost in gloom;
All yesterday we sat and wept; we'll see Your face no more;
The dawn is black--what is that knock I hear upon the door?
"The Master is risen!"--
A cry cuts through my dread--
"The stone is gone!" "He spoke to me!"
"He lives! He is not dead!"
O Master! My Master! What joy to see Your face,
To hear Your voice, to feel again the warmth of Your embrace!
I now can see the greater Cause that guided all You've done--
Far grander than an earthly gift, our freedom You have won!
Exult, O hearts! And sing, O souls!
And I, with low-bowed head,
Kneel as here my Master stands,
Risen from the dead.
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