A Rip Van Winkle Easter Part II

Yes, Easter has came and went this year. I feel like I’ve just awoken from a long winter’s nap (filled with nightmares) to find that life has moved on, fussy children showered in hormones floating through the air, sermons were preached, sick parishoners were visited … all while I “slept.”

Think the above to be a rather abrasive account of a cute, soft, and cuddly holiday? Therein might lie the problem which often plagues our churches, especially here in the Deep South. We take great pride in our nice, new Easter outfits, our Easter egg hunts, and our Easter Bunny visits to our children. We also like to pride ourselves on being the Bible Belt, while we have no idea what is actually in the Bible. Our statements of faith have become abreviated accounts of what our knowledgable elders told us was in there. Hey you could check it out for yourself. Just turn to the Pop-Psychology Gospel According to Joel Osteen, the Acts of the Racial Segregationists, or the Revelation to St. Tim LaHaye.

Liberals would like to check out their statements of faith, but their one sole statement of faith reassures them that they ought not to be bound to the moanings and groanings of antiquated cultures. Theological liberals simply laugh off their moment of weakness and set out with new zeal to prepare their next series of lectures to convince (uh…er…I mean “help”) their male students get in touch their femine sides … just like David and Johnathon. Evangelical liberals (who attempt to convice the world they are really theologically conservative while maintaining secular-progressive views on nearly every other facet of American socio-political life) would have checked their statements of faith, but Brian McLaren told them everything must change. So they excommunicated their statements of faith. They smile, thankful their Emergent “Christianity” has broken them out of their absolute prisons of “Modernism,” and joyfully load up in their Hybrids to go listen to Tony Campolo and Jim Wallis at the Democratic Party’s outreach to “Evangelicals.” Yes, their Postmodern, Emergent, Evangelical “Christianity” allows them to believe that McLaren and Wallis truly want liberals and conservatives to abandon their platforms and form a new and improved agenda together … so long as we all accept and embrace Contemporary Western Liberal Socialism. Oh, just a side note, they had to cancel their tickets to the International Conference on Person-made Global Warming … due to record cold temperatures and snow falls in the area.

This Easter we must move past our emotional comforts and delights as being the sole determiner of the worship that the Jesus of Scripture and orthodox Tradition demands.

(Yes, I know that Easter was last Sunday, but if you had that feeling, you need to reread this posting … for Easter is not simply that lone Sunday in the Spring when Peter Cottontail brings me my next diabetic coma. Easter is a year-round lifestyle of worship of the Jesus of Scripture and orthodox Tradition. Unfortunately, though, most of us don’t celebrate the Easter-Jesus, we celebrate the Easter-Bunny.)

A Rip Van Winkle Easter: Part One

Easter came and went in our home … at about the time it took to read this sentence. No doubt our little bundle of joyful colic (a month old by now) contributed to this Rip Van Winkle Easter. Yet this Easter, ole Rip didn’t sleep much. In fact the only thing lulled to sleep in our home lately is our 2-year old (who could sleep through Nuclear Holocaust) and my patience.

In a word, things have been tough … I mean roasting-and-eating-the-Easter-Bunny-tough.

And yet, I’m supposed to show up at church and preach about the love that conquered Sin, Death, and the Devil. How am I supposed to encourage people that Jesus defeated the Devil, when I feel like a devil?

But therein lies the fallacy that most believers … and would-be believers buy into. It comes in various forms:

• I’ll come to Jesus … when I can clean myself up.
• I would have come to church today, but I had a terrible fight with my husband …. I’d feel like such a hippocrite!
• The church would burn down if I came in.
• God knows what I think and feel when those idiots at work crowd in on me. I don’t think God likes it.

The fallacy we buy into is basically believing that if we cannot be perfect right now then I can have nothing at all to do with the God-stuff (church, worship, Jesus, Salvation, etc.). But in reality that is what Easter is all about.

We read in Mark’s Gospel (15:37, 38) “And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.” Why does Mark think it necessary to include this detail? Mark is not a camcorder, recording infinite details that may or may not have anything to do with the story. Mark chooses details for a significant purpose.

Until Jesus came God’s presence lived in an inner chamber in the Jewish Temple called the Holy of Holies. No one could enter here … well no one except the Jewish High Priest. He could enter only once a year … and for the express purpose of making a sacrifice for the Sin of the people. When Jesus died he paid the penalty for the Sin of not only the Jewish people but also for the entire World. Jesus has paid the penalty for Sin, and now not only Jewish people but also the entire world can have access to the presence of God. (http://www.followtherabbi.com/Brix?pageID=2134)

I am accepted by the blood of Jesus. Yet, that is not the whole Gospel. Not only am I accepted by God because of the blood of Jesus, but his Holy Spirit seeks to transform me into the righteousness of God. It’s not “just as if I were righteous.” I am becoming the righteousness of God … because of the Holy Spirit’s changing me.

When I see ugly stuff pop up in my life, I don’t need to avoid God. I certainly don’t need to celebrate it, but I don’t need to avoid God, either. Rather, I need to run straight to the Father in worship, pleading for Him to cleanse me and transform me. That is part of the Easter message.