Week 3: The Logic

Lots of medical issues, deaths, emotional trauma that goes along with it.
Doesn’t include things like transitions, new diagnoses, on and on and on.
And these are just the things I know. There’s others buried in our hearts that we struggle with.
All too familiar feelings of the decay of the world, of ourselves, of Creation

Here’s a place where very often folks start heading towards the theological exits towards another door. The impossible life really does seem impossible.

So maybe we just decide it’s not worth it. Maybe we give up on church. Maybe we show up because we like the potlucks but the rest of it is mentally optional.
Or, maybe we just look away from the pain and decay of the world, or when we’re in the midst of it and can’t look away, we retreat back into what we know and the all too familiar, and hope for the best. We got our serviceable nets, we’re not looking for more.
But is there something more than that? More than “thoughts and prayers?” More than “well, God’s got a plan?” Or “one more angel in heaven” or any other platitude we share when we might not really want to get too close to the decay of the world? Is there something more in the world than just heading out of it?
I think there is, but it’s in discovering it makes the most outrageous claim of all.

Paul is inviting us to consider that beyond anything else, the most fundamental belief we need to hold is that Jesus Christ was resurrected. That’s our lynchpin.

Which is, truly, a terribly difficult thing to rationalize and believe in, right?

Notice that it isn’t a lot of the other things we gripe about with faith and whether we should believe it or not.
Paul argues that without that, we ought to be pitied.

That the faith has been in vain - and I think we feel that way a lot when we head out the exits of faith… why has this been worth it?

The “dumb dust” story
I remember hearing that as a youth, and I believed it for a long time.
But as I got older, I began to appreciate that there may be something else. That though we may go to dust, life will always spring forth. That we weren’t dumb, but while we were broken, God was redeeming us here on earth.
So instead, I’d like to think now we are rich soil.
Believing in resurrection means that life springs forth from places that would have never seemed likely - the impossible corners of life.

In Luke, Jesus gives us the image of that exact resurrection, but he complicates it, too.
The scene

A great multitude of people who were all over the place, clamoring to be near Jesus.
They wanted healing just by being near him.
And the way the story reads, we witness this first scene, and then Jesus moves his gaze “up at his disciples"

In Luke’s telling then, this is a comment for the folks who already have bought in.
“Up” - I wonder about whether they’re “down with the people or not”
So instead of some declarative statement, or some observation, this reads more like an explanation.

We are our best vision of the resurrection, but if we hide from it, we only witness the decay.

We need to not think that our blessings are rewards of something we’ve done well
We need to not think that our woes are punishment or challenge for something we’ve done poorly. (Read Job for more on this)
That maybe the blessings and woes of this world are part of the life we live simply by being part of this world that don’t carry any kind of indictment on your life. That God isn’t a bank account nor a switch ready to induce pain.
Instead, it could be the recognition that we need to get down from wherever we are, and live out the belief of resurrection.
Many of you with the difficulties in your life right now might need to be reminded again of resurrection.

We don’t need to wistfully pray for something to change or give up on it all together. We can be living expressions of life after death in the here and now.
And at times, we will be living in woes, and we need the lifting up of others - the blessings of the resurrection. Sometimes, when we are feeling our best, we need to extend ourselves to those who have little, and we all likely can extend to those who have even less than all of us here because we all are likely still in safe, comfortable places.

Are you still praying for the people who you don’t think deserve the resurrection message? Are you still looking for where God’s nudge may be? This week it may be trying to find where that intersection is and actually find ways to start being there for those people. What would it look like for you to start coming down and being the resurrection precisely for those you don’t want to be near?

It probably goes beyond a card or a mission trip in the long run. It’s probably a complete and total lifestyle change.