Things Grow Brighter Here

I pulled out my phone just before the start of worship this past Sunday to check the time, as they are synced up with towers and satellites.  So it was to my surprise that after worship I noticed a large, ominous black spot on the display where just an hour before I has seen the time and a picture of my two boys.  At some point in worship the display on my phone broke.

  

I'll get it replaced, paying the small deductible, and will soon be communicating with many of you and others from around the world on it.  But the irony is stark: The face got dark during worship.  That is not biblical!

Quite the opposite, in fact.  There is this amazing and even challenging story from the book of Exodus where Moses would go up the mountain to stand in the cloud that covered God's very presence and receive the Law and Commandments.  But when Moses would return from being in the presence of God, all of the people were afraid, for Moses face shone brightly from having been so close to God (read the whole story in Exodus 34).  

I believe the same still happens today.  I also believe it happens in worship in our sanctuary.  When a person stands before the congregation to profess their faith in God, or to share their story of God's power, we are changed.  Our lives are made brighter.  Listen to Paul's interpretation from that story of Moses and how Easter has changed who and how we now access God:

All of us! Nothing between us and God, our faces shining with the brightness of his face. And so we are transfigured much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him.

2 Corinthians 3:18, The Message translation

Bankrupt of Money, What Next?

In the news this week, a local Detroit man has filed for bankruptcy, as his debts exceed his ability to pay.  I imagine you are asking, "What is newsworthy in that?  This headline is all too familiar in this current economic climate, especially in Detroit."

Would it help if I said the person in the news was Derrick Coleman?  Coleman is a retired professional athlete, having played for 15 seasons in the NBA after a very successful stint at Syracuse University.  What makes this more tragic, is that investigation shows Coleman's salary over those seasons exceeded $87 million.  You can read more here...

It seems Coleman meant well.  He bought properties in Detroit with the intent of revitalizing the a downtown area.  He invested in local projects.  But, alas, the money is gone.  And all of us are saying, "That's a lot of money to be gone."

Where do you turn when it is all gone?  When you had something - maybe a lot of something - but nearly all of it is gone?  The disciples were asking themselves that very question in the hours and days following the crucifixion.  Standing along Jesus, prior to that fateful Friday, they were rich.  Not monetarily, but they were rich in vision, rich in potential, rich in what they believed their place would be in His coming Kingdom.  Then everything, it seemed, was lost.

We are fortunate to have the rest of the story.  We know that Jesus returned to show them another way. His return addressed the fact that investments in worldly materials and dreams limited only to this world don't last.  They began to hear, in those amazing days after Easter, what he had been saying all along; being rich in the things of heaven cannot be taken away, even by death.  We read it in Matthew 6, spoken as many as 2 years earlier to a crowd gathered up from the Galilee on a hill.  Jesus was teaching that there is a greater currency that does not wither, does not depreciate, and will not go bankrupt.

What would it mean for us, also in these amazing days after Easter, to invest ourselves in that which is eternal?  Can others see evidence in how we live for what we believe?

Two Critical Easter Messages

While we've spent most of our time this year listening to the story of Jesus as Luke's Gospel tells it, I could not pass up important details from the Gospel of Matthew. It is the message the angels, sent from heaven as messengers from God, deliver that has life-altering effects. Two parts strike me:

"Do not be afraid"

Some of us will remember that this is standard operating procedure for all angel appearances. Throughout the Scriptures when angels appear, they offer this word. Do not be afraid. Why, you ask? Because we are human. We fear change. We fear what is new. We fear what we do not understand; all of this is precisely what the truth of Easter brings. The world works differently now. Death has no hold for those who believe. God is bringing about change in ways you could not imagine before.

"He is Not Here"

The angels go on to point out that Jesus' body is no longer in the tomb. Jesus was not where they were looking, not among the dead. He could not be found in the cemetery. Instead, he is among the living. He is not dead, but instead busy with the stuff of life - redemption, affirmation, and fulfillment.

Easter calls us to something new; to life without fear and to live differently.  We are called to look for God's work - as Jesus made God present in a new way here on Earth - in places we never thought to look before.  This is the power of the Resurrection.  This is Easter.