Persistence of remembering

I’ve been haunted by Salvador Dali’s melting clocks, the vision of time passing as fading, dying, dripping slowly away into seeming nothingness. No end, no conclusion, no resolution, but intermindable useless death. Time, or maybe life, seems to be such, without hope or presence or meaning. Just an ethereal wisp, a foggy blanket, an unknown prison.

I wonder this on a week after Easter. There was this one day, this family reunion of a gathering, old unseen friends suddenly reappearing, recommuning, recommitting. Full congregations of well dressed smiling faces and children in bonnets and shined little boy shoes. We are all the church again, hail, we are here, and the meaning and purpose of this place is resurrected with Jesus, the stones of complacency and busyness and distance rolled away and life be praised.

But then a few days past, and the pews again vacated almost as quickly as the tomb. And now time again drips surrealy by, the days long and drawn slowly forward. I wonder, in the empty quiet of the church, if their experience is the same, if the days pass for them in slow motion, in a distant memory of a place they used to know but now only remember like an old faded picture, a worn and broken trinket of a happiness which may or may not have happened, as they return to what they imagine is real life but fear may only be the other.

There tugs at us a memory of a person we used to be, were meant to be, were once a part of if only in the most remote corner of evolution. If only we could reconnect to that memory, only rewrite ourselves into the story, then there might come to us again a realization of the promise of us. But rather we slip silently under and fade into our lives, death coming not in a moment or an end but slowly, surely, unwittingly, bleakly.

But there is a persistence to Grace, too, a quiet not-quite-real tug at consciences and hearts that is more real than us, and cell by cell and bit by bit and memory by memory it drags us ever-complaining forth. Easter comes in passion and high drama, but the rest of the work of resurrection is slow, sure, holy work. We are becoming what we are, as death fades blackly from us there is revealed the truth underneath.

"But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to new life." II Peter 3:8-9

He persists. Alleluia, life persists.

The surprise that wasn't there

It’s almost hard to remember now, as the boys get older, how much they really loved Easter Egg hunts when they were little. You could just see the amazement in their eyes as our backyard - which they had inhabited for countless hours - was suddenly full of these wonderful treasures! Where did they come from? But that question was mostly lost in the joy of finding more and more and more …

And then the real fun – opening the eggs up and finding all the goodies – candy, coins, toys. Each egg seems to hold something even better than the last and the eyes grow rounder as the pile grows bigger and bigger and bigger …

The women traveling to the tomb on the first Easter Sunday had a similar, if completely opposite, experience. They knew perfectly well how things should be and what they would find and how they would feel and what they would do. And then, BANG! A barrier removed, an empty tomb, an Angel’s words, confusion, fear, wonderment, tears, and a world turned upside down. They came looking for death. But it was gone.

The best surprise is the one that’s not there!

We know what to do with things as they are, as they should be. We’ve known that since we were very young. But this Easter is a new experience, this empty-tomb-faith, this confrontation that sends us out back into the world empty-handed, with prior expectations askew and all the things we knew for sure now shattered and all we have to go on, to go with, finally, is the drama and magic of faith itself.

This is not candy or money or toys. It is much better. It is life. It is nothing that was, and everything that could be. Go. The tomb is empty. Death is over. Go.

The church is dead. Long live the church!

Just in time for our annual Good Friday observance, Newsweek writes up the 2009 American Religious Identification Survey and prophesies the death of Christianity in America. To be sure, the numbers are frightening. Self-identified Christians are decreasing as a portion of the population, the number of people who claim no affiliation with religion has nearly doubled in the last two decades.

I say, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:25)

Now, I agree, the problem is real. If anything, it is understated. Even among the vast majority of Americans who claim the Christian name, there is an ever declining population of regular church-goers and committed servants. Secreted beneath the glittering appeal of immense mega-churches is the unspoken family secret of thousands upon thousands of dying churches in small towns and city neighborhoods. And even among the remnant that clings to the church are a quiet many who have given up in spirit but not in name, who still sit in the pews, going through the motions of devotion, hardly moved and barely incarnate in the Spirit.

But I say that the problem in American is not the death of Christianity. It is the death of the church.

And it may be just in time.

I don’t accept that souls have changed, that humans have dramatically evolved into some new form of being in these last generations. Our innate desire to seek the divine, to find the elusive qualities of hope and grace and joy beyond the confines of this world is the same now as it was the first time our earliest ancestors stood on two legs and gazed at the stars above. The human need for faith transcends time and technology and cannot be delineated in National surveys. Those who believe least in the church in America voted the most in the last election for – wait for it – hope. We will always chafe against death and evil and always quest for their end. There will always be a Savior because there will always need to be.

But the church – she is a human and worldly thing, and her frailties and her sins are easily diagnosed and her days are always marked. Though her blessing and mission is to be the instrument by which God’s Word is channeled unto our striving, she is to many a hindrance to faith. The harder the church seeks to matter in the world, to sit among the powerful and share their influence, to use the channels of politics and law to advance her work, the more she becomes of the world. And the more the church becomes a part of this world the less she becomes of God, until finally God’s Word is mute and the church dies. And so she has.

That is what this survey and many others like it are telling us. The church of this age has failed. We have come to a new Babylonian Captivity, to borrow a phrase from Dr. Luther. The church has come to covet the role of the Pharisees and Chief Priests in the Passion drama, far too captivated by the sturm und drang of the blood and death of Good Friday to ever make it to Easter. In her legalisms and grasping for power, the church has closed the doors of the kingdom to those few, fervent believers who associate with her narrow dogma and so has driven away masses of the lost, of those seeking something greater, something more life-giving, you know, grace.

The church is dead. Long live the church!

We are brought to Good Friday to see God’s work in its purest form: the death of what cannot be for the sake of what must be. The cross is not just a horror picture to bring us to our knees in guilt and trepidation for some approaching day of Judgment. This is a saving work, a breaking down of broken and sinful human forms and human institutions so that something right may take their place. This is the great mystery of God, that every seed must fall to the earth and die, so that it might bear much fruit.

And so the promise beckons us. Easter is coming! Somewhere, beneath the facade of the church of this world is the hidden reality of grace. Like an Easter Egg well placed, it evades our first glance and calls us to seek in diligence and faithfulness. Even as the church passes from this form, God is fashioning a new creation, a new being, a new instrument of Grace and salvation and calling the faithful to His work. I do not write these words because I hate the church – no, I love the church. I pray that it may once again rise and become again God’s Word of Redemption in the world, that we may leave our anger and judgment and worldly lust for power in the tomb behind us and come out into the world where we are desperately needed.

Let this be the Easter that the church rises again. Hallelujah!

Giving what is due

Since I deigned to brag that my NCAA bracket was ahead of the President, it only seems right to acknowledge that he did, in fact, correctly pick North Carolina to win it all. I'm also imagining that Coach K may opt to breakfast on a little humble pie himself this morning. "Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but humbled himself ... " (Philippians 2:5-6)

Looking for an opening

Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” John 11:16

In the midst of all the festivities and observances of Holy Week, it’s easy to miss the other major event that comes with the arrival of April: Opening Day! (Perhaps you have the opposite experience.) And not to confuse the two, or even to equate them, but there is a striking similarity.

Finally.

That’s the feeling, after a long cold winter, after desperately following the Hot Stove League and imagining its impact on your favorite team, after long weeks of Spring Training and feverishly examining previously unknown and unheralded rookies, the day comes. Your own home team, in your own home park, bring on the hot dogs and the nachos and the cold beer (not quite so important in chilly April) and let’s PLAY BALL!

I wonder if Jerusalem felt the same way. Three long years of signs and miracles and preaching all around the countryside, in small hamlets and outlying places without names, growing in fame and reputation, but when, WHEN, will Jesus deign to step into the great city herself? That, as much as anything, might be the motivation behind the thronging crowds and the Hosannas and waving palms. Finally, he has come!

Palm Sunday is mostly a day that we observe as an end, or at least as the beginning of the end, the climax of horror and blood and death. But it is for Jesus a day of arrival, an entry, an opening. It is his way into Jerusalem and his way into us, and, as such, a beginning of victory and triumph, of life and life everlasting and abundant. The cross hides the mysteries of Heaven itself, this week is not merely the end of a long Lent but the beginning of a new life, the opening day to what will surely be our best season ever.

Yes, we have finally come, not to our end but to our opening, to the heavens opened up, the gate of eternity visible in death, mercy and divine grace shown in the very human misery of the cross. Prepare to see the stone rolled away, the tomb gaping open, prepare to hear angels bidding us who wait to live, and … let’s PLAY BALL!

Official Proclamation!

I'd like to be among the first to make this April 1st Proclaimation - the community of faith ought to appropriate this secular holiday, known as "April Fool's Day," as an official observance of the church. It was St. Paul, after all, the great planter of the church, who first said, " We are fools for the sake of Christ." (I Corinthians 4:10) Let us wear our Jester's hats with pride!

My eldest, a sophomore in High School, has been encountering the horrible truth about the real world in his studies; experiencing the Holocaust and Darfur in the same week at school. He is in that place where many teenagers who are blessed with the gift of sensitivity find themselves: how can I go forward with my life in a world so broken and desperately evil?

And then last night, he (and a hundred or so of his classmates) put on a wonderful band concert, full of light and joy and surprising genius for a bunch of teenagers. And I was reminded of God's best prescription for dark and ugly days: seek beauty where you can find it, for somewhere, hidden under the gunk and grime of humanity breaks forth the splendor and grace of the kingdom which comes. Easter, death breaking forth from the tomb, life and hope in the cruel misery of the cross.

So let us embrace hope ridiculously, and cling to all things unreasonable: that in the midst of all manner of crisis, economic and political, national and personal, painful and media-driven, we are the fools who still believe in hope, we still trust, and we know the joke. Even here, even now, there is God.

Good one!