Loading...Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!
A friend of mine recently shared a story on Facebook. It was one of those stories that someone else wrote. It might have been written by AI. I don’t really care who wrote it or where it came from. It’s one of those feel-good stories that may or may not be true, but makes the reader feel that it sure would be nice if it were true.
I don’t want to retell the story, but I do want to share the gist of it. It is the story of taking something meaningful, like a piece of clothing and turning it into something else. An item that holds memories that are too dear—too important—to throw away, but may be too tattered, too torn, or too stained beyond repair. Then, taking that thing which once was too meaningful to discard, like old running t-shirts from all those races, and turning them into something else to be used in a new way, like a quilt. In the story, a group of women began to meet to create up-cycled items from beloved castaways.
The story posed a question that could be asked about any of the items in a discard pile: “What else could this be?” In other words, now that this item can no longer be used for what it once was, what could it become?
It’s a good question and it is one we can ask about many things, including emotions, relationships, behaviors, attitudes, actions, and beliefs. Especially when it feels like our world has turned upside down or we feel twisted in the wind. We might feel untethered or lost, grieving or worried. You could wonder in those moments what of the stuff we have inside us could be up-cycled.
How can we take something and re-purpose, redesign, or recreate it? When we think about the question, “What else could this be?” we might consider it a question about transformation.
In lots of ways, this is what these past few days must have felt like in the lives of Jesus Followers—those people who had journeyed with him only to watch the horrors unfold: the arrest, conviction, and execution of their beloved friend. Even though they had been forewarned, nothing could have prepared them enough for what they witnessed.
Most of them hid themselves away, behind shuttered windows and doors to protect themselves from the Roman officials and from the public eye, surrounding themselves with those they trusted to safely hold their grief, anger, and disbelief. Hoping, praying, wondering, what is coming next? What else could this be?
It was the women who ventured out, bearing the weight of their grief, to sit at the tomb. In Matthew’s version of the story, it’s Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, who were there when the stone was rolled to cover the door, who watched as guards took their places to ensure no one could steal Jesus’s body. They returned the morning of the third day to be as near to Jesus as was humanly possible, albeit with a stone door between them, only to feel the earth shake beneath them as an angel, bright as lightening, appeared. The two Mary’s watched as the guards fainted and the stone in front of the door miraculously rolled away to reveal, not a shrouded dead body, but an empty hole in the stone wall. Look! “He is not here; for he has been raised,” he told them.
It is because this hole is empty that we celebrate today. That Jesus is not here but is resurrected. We celebrate the mystery of this miracle, trusting that because this hole is empty, life, your life, my life, has a reason, a purpose, a sense of “what else could this be?” What else can we do with this one, single, God-given life? What else?
Jesus came into this world to change the world. To turn it right-side up, so that we would turn our faces back to God, and he came to teach us what it means to love God through the ways we love and show up for our neighbors near and far.
Jesus came into this world to help us answer the question, “What else could this be?” He taught his followers through his perfect example by showing them, and us, what else this world could be, always working through the people he encountered to transform them, showing them just what else they could be.
Let’s twist the question a bit to ask, as a Jesus Follower, beloved of God, “Who else could I be and what else can I do to be a person living a transformed life, guided by Jesus?”
You see, through Jesus’s act of resurrection, we are given the opportunity to be transformed, to change in ways that show God that we have paid close attention to all the ways Jesus showed us to live. Through loving our neighbors, by giving to those in need, by welcoming those who are often left behind or are found in the margins of society.
Jesus taught us to hope, to believe, to trust, and to love in ways that seem counter-cultural or against what’s popular this season. He showed us that when we care for one another, the world becomes more loving, peaceful, and in harmony with God’s desire for God’s creation.
This is what it means to follow the resurrected Jesus.
This is what it means to be transformed by the resurrected Jesus.
We are called in this moment to express this resurrection through our decision to follow Jesus and to exemplify the ways Jesus lived.
We are called in this moment to be people who confess the sins of our past and who promise to do better in the future.
We are called in this moment to see the depth and breadth of poverty, hunger, the working poor, the sick, the friendless, the lost, and the needy.
We are called in this moment to do our part to change those circumstances either individually or collectively through the giving of funds, activism, and action.
We may not be able to do everything, but we can certainly do something to make life better for others.
Jesus came into this world and taught us so many things, and we sometimes prioritize the efforts he made to make those he met, fed, and healed to feel welcome and included in the community. But those are not the only things Jesus taught us to do.
Jesus taught us the importance of prayer with God. Of listening to the still small voice of God in the wind, in the song, in conversations, and in our relationships. Deepening our relationship with God will lead us to transformation, to seeing the empty tomb and rejoicing that in its emptiness, Jesus lives in us.
Our lives are the direct response to Jesus’s resurrection. We are called to live in his love, in God’s love, sharing that love everywhere. We are called to tell the stories of God, not only the stories we know from scripture, but the stories of who God is to us and of how our relationship with God has impacted our lives.
The resurrection is God’s miracle, God’s gift to humanity to remind us that we are loved, deeply, and that through this love, we can love others.
What else could this be?
I found this prayer written by Bishop Jake Owensby. Let us pray
Loving, life-giving God, you raised Jesus from the dead and are raising us to new life. Open our hearts and minds to your transforming love and draw our desires more deeply into the life you are giving. Help us to trust that your love is stronger than death, and [help us] to follow you, one step at a time; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!
