What Do We Do Now?

For anyone who has had a loved one die, finding a new “normal” is part of our grief work.  It takes time to learn how to live without that person’s presence.  If s/he was someone that had needed care, one might find having more time than one knows what to do with during the day. If s/he was killed in a tragic way, the sudden loss takes years to adjust to and re-order one’s life.

Jesus’s death was as ignominious as it could have been, a state-sponsored execution that took hours to accomplish. His compatriots scattered but eventually found each other again to being their grief work, only to have Jesus’s resurrection change everything.  The disciples are given a reprieve of their grief by Jesus’s reappearance in their lives, and for 50 days they enjoy his presence once again. But more importantly – and urgently – Jesus is there with a message of love and purpose.  It is not one of recrimination or shame, but of faith, hope and love.  All that Jesus said would happen was indeed accomplished and it was time to use that knowledge to do the work they had been given to do.

There is a certain amount of “spiritual whiplash” that the disciples endure with Jesus’s death and resurrection (and ascension, but we’re not there yet!).  Even though Jesus told them he was going to die and rise again, the reality of it and its ramifications takes a while to sink into their understanding.  In particular, as we heard in our Gospel lesson last Sunday in John 20:22, Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit into them, which empowered them for ministry. It was Jesus’s promised gift to them, yet it was a new way of understanding their faith and how to share it with others. They were given 50 days to adjust to what that meant – and so are we.

During the 50 days of Easter, we - as Jesus’s current disciples - are given the annual opportunity to consider how to celebrate the reality of Jesus’s resurrection by understanding how it changed the course of creation.  Our relationship with God has been repaired.  We are reunited with God.  Now the task is to be at unity with each other, loving our neighbors as ourselves.  This is extremely difficult if we were left to our own devices.  Fortunately, we are not as we have the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives.  And we have the stories of how those first disciples learned how to work with the Spirit’s presence to be in unity with the “other.” 

We all know that first-hand experience is the best way to learn how to work with something, but the Church has not been very good at showing her members how to work with the Spirit and her presence in our lives.  As a follow-up to our Lenten Program, we will be having a program on Wednesday May 10th from 7-8:30 PM to begin the discussion of “What do we do now?”  How do we recognize the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives and work with the Spirit to be at unity with each other? 

This program is for EVERYONE, not just those who attended the Lenten Program.  This is the work we need to be doing, understanding how God is at work in our lives and how we are called to be part of establishing God’s realm on earth.  All that begins by being adept at discerning how God’s Spirit is moving, calling us to love and support our neighbors.  Sometimes that is through prayer, or our work, or our presence, or our conversation.  Opportunities abound, but we may need help seeing that and practicing it. 

Just like those first disciples, this is the most important work we do.  It may not be what we expect, but it will be what God needs from us.  I hope you will save the date and come be part of the conversation.

With Easter Joy,

Rev. Valerie+

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