Resurrection is a Disturbance

Many Christians are continuing in their observance and celebration of Easter.  It's called "the Great Fifty Days."  No season in our liturgical calendar is as long.  It is as long as it is because it takes time and focus to unpack the good news that God raised Jesus from the dead.  

So far we've unpacked the role of Hebrew scripture in describing God's intentions and the necessity of the cross.  That's what happened on the road to Emmaus and beside that river with Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch.  That's what happened with Jesus appearing to his disciples and eating broiled fish.

That's what happened in the upper room with Thomas and the remaining disciples.  We unpacked the value of incarnation, the Word made flesh, glorified and made ready for being with God, in this world and the next.

We've also unpacked how our continuing in his teaching requires more following than worshipping, more growth than stasis.

And now we are unpacking the way that love must be redefined as sacrificial and courageous, as parental and empowering.

This is how resurrection works.  It turns the world on its head. It disturbs the status quo.  

I'm reminded of how I have to caution parents and godparents of infants presented for baptism.  There is no "getting the baby done."  There is only obligating oneself to insuring that a set of promises made for someone else come true.  We're not off the hook, we're on!  

So before this season is done -- our observance of the Feast of the Ascension this coming Thursday will leave us with just ten days until Pentecost -- let's accept our calling as a people of resurrection.  

And let us be disturbed by it, awakened to a new understanding of how God is with us still and how all life matters as a means for God to be present with us.  Let us be stirred and like Thomas reach into His wounds and then out to the world of hurt, hunger, loneliness, despair.  

Jesus said he would tear down the temple of Jerusalem and replace it with his body.  His resurrection changes things.  Now we are his body.

"Disturb us, Adonai, ruffle us from our complacency;

Make us dissatisfied. Dissatisfied with the peace of ignorance,

The quietude which arises from a shunning of the horror, the defeat,

The bitterness and the poverty, physical and spiritual, of humans...

Make us know that the border of the sanctuary is not the border of living,

And the walls of Your temples are not shelters from the winds of truth, justice and reality."

[From Mishkan T'filah prayerbook]