Easter People...

This past Lent/Easter season has been a deepening journey for me. I have been trying to find the best way to describe what I have experienced these past 8 weeks and "deepening" is the closest I can come to the right word.

For the first time in my life, I spent Lent in an authentic seeking posture - diligently seeking Him through a personal revival study, experiencing the "pulling off and putting on" of Lent observance and even submitting to my first complete Fast in an effort to relate on a personal level to the suffering of Christ as well as my dependence on The Word and The Spirit. All of this effort is pushing me to a new and deeper level of faith - I am diving deeper into the depths of faith, no longer treading water on the surface.

So - now that Easter has passed, and we have joyously celebrated the GOOD NEWS! - I am meditating on what that really means for me as I move past the resurrection to the purpose and mission I am called to. What exactly is the GOOD NEWS? What is the "after Easter" story? Where do I go from here????

Well, another little aspect of my Lent experience came from a book by N.T. Wright called "Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church". On one hand I believe this has been most appropriate reading during the Lenten season, but on the other hand, the message of the book has really forced me to rethink all I have been taught culturally as an American Christian - and urged me in these new depths of water that I am swimming in to view the surroundings through a new lens, to re-read the Gospel with new perspective, to question and glory in these new surroundings and to come to an understanding of true purpose. This quote from the end of Chapter 14 in this book sums up my current state of being so well I must share it as the conclusion of this post:

What we all need from time to time is for someone...to say, "It's time to wake up! You've been asleep long enough! The sun is shining and there's a wonderful day out there! Wake up and get a life!"
The message of Easter, then, is neither that God once did a spectacular miracle but then decided not to do many others nor that there is a blissful life after death to look forward to. The message of Easter is that God's new world has been unveiled in Jesus Christ and that you're now invited to belong to it. And precisely because the resurrection was and is bodily, albeit with a transformed body, the power of Easter to transform and heal the present world must be put into effect both at the macrolevel, in applying the gospel to the major problems of the world...and to the intimate details of our daily lives. Christian holiness consists not of trying as hard as we can to be good but of learning to live in the new world created by Easter, the new world we publicly entered in our baptism. There are many parts of the world we can't do anything about except pray. But there is one part of the world, one part of physical reality, that we can do something about, and that is the creature each of us calls "myself." Personal holiness and global holiness belong together. Those who wake up to the one may well find themselves called to wake up to the other as well.

First Fast

Yesterday, in observance of the time between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, I committed to a Fast.

I have never done a Fast before - food is one of my favorite things! But this past Lent has been the first time I truly observed many of the spiritual disciplines, and so I thought I should also explore what this Fasting was all about.

In my reading and talking to other Christians who are much more spiritually developed than me, I would hear them say they would fast and pray over a decision - and quite frankly, I just didn't get how fasting would bring me closer to an understanding of anything besides how hungry I was....

So, with mixed emotions on Friday evening, I officially limited myself to water (plus 2 cups of morning coffee on Saturday).

Beginning the day with my normal quiet time, I came across a wonderful quote in the book "A Guide to Prayer for All God's People". This particular reading came from "From Radiance of the Inner Splendor" by Lloyd John Ogilvie (emphasis mine)

Let me risk a description of what has been the experience of some of us at Lent. When we say that Christ pervades all aspects of our human nature, it does not mean that he effects a takeover of our will. He did not do that before we became his children' he does not do it now. It does mean that we set our hearts in the direction of what we know to be God's heart in the matter - and begin to model our behaviour in that direction - the Spirit within immediately reinforces our finite strength with infinite strength. The synthesis is so smooth. It is sometimes impossible to tell where our strength ends and his begins.

That quote was perfect to assist me for this Fast. To think of the Spirit, melding its infinite strength with my finite strength to get me through this fast...I drew on that many times through the day.

But the true spiritual aspect of my Fast didn't really occur until about 1:00 am - when I woke up from sleep so TERRIBLY HUNGRY. I was laying there debating with myself whether I could continue all the way till morning. Even justifying how I could break fast since it was technically Easter since it was after midnight! When you are drowsy, and food deprived, it is easy to lose that finite strength and time to dip into that infinite strength of the Spirit.

So there I was having argument with myself (and about to lose the battle), when for some reason a song we sing in church just entered my head. "Our strength will rise as we wait upon the Lord". I kept hearing this verse over and over and was then reminded about the words that morning of the Spirit and its strength. And suddenly I became like a little child covering their ears singing "la la la" when they don't want to listen. With the aid of this song verse I could block out the tempting calls from my kitchen. I was going to win this battle over my hunger! I made it through that temptation with the help of the Spirit - of that I am certain. Perhaps one day when I am more spiritually developed, I can battle back temptation with scripture instead of a song :)

After that mini skirmish with my will, I was able to return to slumber and didn't wake up until 6:00 am - where I very appreciatively broke fast.

Now on the backside of this Fast - I have a much deeper understanding of how it can draw you into a deeper relationship and can give special meaning in discernment and prayer, but I think it is a discipline to be reserved for special circumstances.

One Of The Crowd

I was delivered an unexpected one-two punch today during Palm Sunday worship. Obviously not the normal reaction one might expect to be the result of worship - especially on a special holy day like Palm Sunday, but none the less, there I was pushed into a area of revelation that made me extremely uncomfortable. So much so, that it has been consuming my thoughts ever since I left church today.

As far as the service itself - well it was phenomenal (not an unusual happening at a church that literally swells with creative talent). And perhaps it was that very creative, unique combination of artistic and scriptural reflection that sent me to a new place in my heart.

Of course LFC in it's quirky, non-traditional norm, celebrated Palm Sunday with a Christmas carol - and maybe that is what set me up for my revelation. We sang "Joy To The World", one of my most favorite Christmas carols. Singing that Christmas carol really set me in the happy, joyous frame of mind. I could relate to the Jews who centuries ago laid their garment down on the ground welcoming their King into the city of Jerusalem. Joy to the world, the Lord is come!!! He is here! He is the Messiah!! I could really relate to those people and their excitement. I absolutely LOVED that we were singing a Christmas song at Easter time. It sort of brought the whole story together....

So there I sat in worship, at a peak of excitement, feeling the joy in my heart that a saviour had come, my saviour, our saviour....

Then we heard The Word. The story of Jesus last day. From his time in the garden and through his trials until he was condemned to be crucified. And that is exactly when I was struck with a blow so hard to my psyche that it was difficult to concentrate for a little while after.

The Word was presented to us through artistic narration. A series of readers presented the Word to us in a way that we could feel a part of the action. As the voice changed in the story, so did the narrator - which had the effect of drawing us, the audience, into the story as though we were living within it ourselves. I was caught up in the action as Jesus was taken from the garden and brought before Pontius Pilate. I could understand Pilate's political prowess as he presented two "Jesus" to the crowd - Jesus Barabbas and Jesus Christ. He would let the crowd make that decision, so there would not be any repercussions on him later.

It is at this very moment that I reached a pinnacle of understanding. As part of the presentation of the Word, the "crowd" voices actually cried out from all over our congregation "Crucify Him" over and over again "CRUCIFY HIM". It stunned me - to realize that I was part of that crowd. That same crowd that welcomed Jesus with joy and royal welcome was now demanding he be crucified. I had never in my life related myself to being part of that crowd...

In all my years of celebrating Easter, I have always sort of thought of the crowd in the Easter story as "those people" - they didn't know better, they didn't believe, they didn't realize who he was, they, they, they. But that crowd shouted out from within us..... that crowd is us..... I am part of that crowd.

Whoa - step back - that is not a thought for Palm Sunday....that is a deep, dark, lurking sort of thought. This is not "happy, slappy, clappy" church thinking. This is not love God, love Jesus, love everyone sort of "Christian" thinking. This isn't the type of thoughts you want to work through when you are planning to color Easter eggs and set out the baskets of candy. But it is what it is - and this is where I am.

I am one of the crowd.

And now that I have entered this passage of darkness, darker than any thought I have ever had or expressed before, I realize that this darkness is necessary for true understanding of The Cross and The Resurrection.

In my previous post I shared the revelation that I finally grasped that Jesus literally had lived the Jewish history and that his body literally served as a sacrifice for all they had experienced as a nation. But as a non-Jew, how does that relate to me?

It is through this crowd that I understand that Jesus died for me too. "Forgive them, for they know not what they do" - that covers me too.

I am one of the crowd.

As Christians, we are charged to be the light of the world. We can't be a light unless we understand the darkness.

I came to know a part of the darkness today - for which I am grateful, and because of which my understanding of Easter has much greater depth and meaning. This last week of Lent will be a time to work through this new understanding, to travel through the darkness without fear, but with faith - that at the end of this week I will see The Light, The Promise and The Hope of Easter.