Waiting for the Reunion

If you ask people what they miss most during this time of isolation, you can be reasonably sure it’s not their workplace or Rotary meetings or sports practice or shopping or the theater or restaurants or even church. If you ask what the first thing they want to do when restrictions are lifted, most won’t say they’re going to run straight to the pub or go work out at the gym or purchase concert tickets.

Oh, they’ll do those things eventually. But for most of us, what we’re looking forward to the most is a reunion with loved ones. Grandparents ache to hug their grandkids again. Children and teenagers are eager to see their friends. Young couples in love will enjoy that first embrace more than any other. Every “first-time-back” meeting will be a place of joy, smiles, and connection. Church lobbies everywhere will look like mass hug-fests the first Sunday we gather again. The longer we must wait, the more precious that day will be.

 

It’s fun to imagine the rejoicing, the cheers, the smiles, the bursting into song, the bounce in people’s steps when that day comes. We’re social creatures, made for community. For what some call “fellowship.”

And in a way, that’s what Easter is all about.

When sin entered our world—and along with it, sickness and death—it doomed us to a future separated from God and eventually from each other. God is perfect and cannot fellowship with sinfulness. Our sinfulness broke his heart, because he wants community with us.

So he made a way.

He sent his son, Jesus Christ to pay the price for our sin. Because Jesus was perfect, when he died on the cross, it took care of the sin part. But only his resurrection could solve the separation part. Three days after his death, he rose from the dead. Because he did, we can too. This is why death holds no power over those who believe in him. It’s why Christians can feel deep joy at a funeral, even while we’re sad and grieving. We know there’s a great reunion coming, and we look forward to that day more than any other.

1 Corinthians 15:55 asks, “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” The man who wrote those words, Paul, told believers not to grieve “as those who have no hope.” He didn’t tell us not to grieve. Of course we grieve. But we grieve with the knowledge that our separation is temporary. 

The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ changes everything. It teaches us how to grieve. It teaches us how to die. It teaches us how to wait.

Easter 2020 will be one for the history books, won’t it? Whether you’re stuck at home with kids who can’t participate in their usual traditions, or home alone longing for a family gathering, or worried because someone you care about is ill, or grieving the loss of a loved one—may this Easter serve to remind you why it’s the most important holiday on the calendar. There’s a great reunion coming that Easter made possible.

The longer we must wait, the more precious that day will be.

My Favorite Feminist

This is the month we celebrate International Women’s Day, and I felt privileged to attend the special event hosted locally. We heard from two inspiring speakers, both successful women in male-dominated careers: one a Red Seal carpenter, the other a hockey broadcaster. Both women shared stories of being respected and mentored by men, but also about being disrespected and dismissed because of their gender—by men and by other women. Even here, in our “enlightened” Canada.

Born into a time and culture where women had no voice and were considered a man’s property, one man took an astonishingly radical stand. His was a revolutionary mindset. In a religious culture where priests would pray, “Blessed are you, Lord, our God, ruler of the universe, who has not created me a woman,” this man’s treatment of women stood in glaring contrast. His approach was downright scandalous. No wonder those religious leaders hated and feared him enough to crucify him.

There’s a sad myth prevailing in our culture that Christianity keeps women down and we must turn our backs on it if we hope to achieve gender equality. My heart breaks to know the church has profoundly failed in this arena, feeding into this myth and leading many to reject Jesus Christ when in truth, Jesus demonstrated great respect for women. Read through the life of Christ as recorded by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and you’ll see what I mean.

First of all, he included them. He taught them, in a day when women were kept illiterate, not allowed an education. He did not perceive them primarily in terms of their gender, age, or marital status, but in terms of their relationship to God. While other men — especially religious men aspiring to be respected leaders — wouldn’t be caught dead talking to a woman, Jesus frequently engaged women in conversation. In public.

Secondly, he spoke to them with kindness, valuing them and defending them. He accorded them equal spiritual status, referring to them as “Daughters of Abraham.” He asked them questions and gave them time to answer. He valued their service and their opinions. He gave them a voice.

Thirdly, even while defending women, he also held them accountable for their own sinful actions. Opportunity for repentance and forgiveness were freely granted, but it was the woman’s own choice to follow or not.

It was a woman who first experienced Christ’s presence on earth, in her own womb. It was another woman who recognized him as Messiah through the response of the child in her womb. It was a woman who first saw him after his resurrection. Then he instructs the women to tell his disciples about it. In the first century, a woman’s testimony was worthless. Jesus makes these women witnesses to history’s most important event. He entrusts them with the greatest story ever told. No wonder women flocked to him.

If you are a woman who has been hurt by religion, whose church has let you down, if you feel unheard or disrespected—can I encourage you to take a fresh look at Jesus? His followers—men and women alike—get things wrong all the time. They did in his day, too. They will in the future. It’s not a reason to write him off. (Besides, some of them do get it right!)

He loves you. He hears you. He sees you. He values you. He longs to heal your heart and set you free.

Why the Cross does NOT have the Final Word

At my desk at City Hall one day, I scanned Portage la Prairie’s Fees & Charges Schedule for 2018. It’s posted on the City website, should you ever need to know how much it’ll cost you to buy a pet license (free until the end of March), photocopy a tax bill, rent a mosquito fogger, have your water turned on, or buy a grave—among many other things. 

I perused the cemetery fees with great interest. Adult burial plots range from $870 to $970, not counting opening and closing. No matter how hard I studied the schedule, I could not find a fee for a grave that you want to rent temporarily. 

One of the popular songs on Christian radio for the past year has been, The Cross Has the Final Word, written by Cody Carnes and recorded by The Newsboys. Although I understand what the song is trying to say, I think it misses the mark. The intent of the key phrase is that the power of Jesus Christ and what he accomplished by dying on the cross trumps everything—sin, disease, war, religion, and death. 

But it wasn’t his cross that achieved all that. If the cross really had the final word, then Jesus Christ would be just another crucified Jew. We may never have heard of him. If an instrument of death has the final word, then death wins. If the cross has the final word, there is no hope for me. 

As a kid, I learned how Jesus’s followers buried his body in a rich man’s tomb, fulfilling a prophesy made centuries earlier. I always assumed this spoke to Jesus’s poverty, that he lived without enough means to buy a burial plot of his own. While that’s probably true, a more profound thought occurred to me a couple of years ago.

It wasn’t until our church started singing a song called Resurrecting (by Elevation Worship) that it finally dawned on me. It says, “The tomb where soldiers watched in vain was borrowed for three days.” The body of Jesus wasn’t placed in a borrowed tomb because he was poor, but because he would only need it for a little while! I wonder what our local funeral directors would say if I walked in and said I’d like to take care of some pre-arrangements, but I only needed my grave for three days.

The final word is not the cross of Good Friday. It is the resurrection of Sunday. It is Christ’s empty tomb that really has the final word. Which means it isn’t truly empty at all, because it’s filled with hope. A song written by two of the worship leaders at my church says, “The empty grave holds my hope each day.” I love that, because it speaks not only of life after death, but life right now, filled with hope and purpose every day. Who here doesn’t want that?

Titus 3:8 says, “God’s gift has restored our relationship with him and given us back our lives. And there’s more life to come—an eternity of life! You can count on this.” 

No matter how far from God you think you are, the truth is that you’re never more than one step from him. Easter is the perfect time to take that one step. The late Reverend Billy Graham said, “I’ve never met a man who accepted Jesus Christ and regretted it.”