Easter affirms that love works! There are no limits to God’s love!
Rather than trying to bring God’s nature down to our level, the Resurrection invites us to follow Jesus up to God’s level. We are invited to learn how to see humanity through God’s eyes. We are invited to learn how to love everyone the way Christ loves everyone.
Holy Week invites us to internalize the love Jesus demonstrated as we prepare to express greater depths of love in all our relationships and encounters. Whatever spiritual exercises and devotional practices we may have intensified during Lent now begin to abate as we return to our normal activities and address the issues and concerns of the coming days and weeks.
There is a certain joy that comes with believing in eternal life. The thought of being reunited in Heaven with each other and with those who have gone on before us and those who will come after us fills our hearts and minds with happiness and hope. We are inspired by the sense of presence among us of those who, as Charles Wesley wrote “sing the Lamb in hymns above and we in hymns below” (“Happy the Souls to Jesus Joined,” Charles Wesley). Many of our favorite hymns lift us in celebration. My favorite hymn is “When We All Get to Heaven” by Eliza Hewitt. We all share countless hymns about Heaven because they paint vivid imagery and rouse feelings of closeness to our loved ones who continue to live just over the proverbial Jordan River “In the Sweet By and By.”
Note this important difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament. Under the Old Testament, the prevailing thought was that we should find out what was not pleasing to the Lord, and try to keep from doing that. People thought they should try to appease God and keep from doing anything that might make God mad because they were afraid God might reign down terrors of wrathful vengeance on them for the least infractions. Under the New Testament, (although some people still have that Old Testament view), we are encouraged to find out what God likes and do that, not from fear but from love as our response to the great love we are realizing God has for us and for all, as Jesus demonstrated.
The love of God transforms everyone and everything it touches! Who is so strong to be able to resist the power of God’s love? We can see the best evidence of this in our own personal lives. Even at times when we have hardened our hearts like the sojourners in the wilderness, still God has eventually overcome our fears and resistance and stubbornness to turn us around and move us forward – if only a tiny bit at a time – over and over throughout life. God hasn’t brought us this far just to give up on us now.
The invitation to Reclaim, Revive, and Renew has been called by The United Methodist Council of Bishops for this Lenten Season. We echo their call, which is itself a reverberation of the calls and invitations to Humanity throughout the ages. Today’s Bible readings, especially the Gospel reading, are major landmarks in the everlasting cycle of regeneration reflected in the blooming flowers and budding trees of Springtime.
Humanity is best served by our “better angels.” People often personify angels in the artistic imagery of winged creatures wearing dazzling white outfits, and that imagery is somewhat validated by Scripture and Tradition. But angels also take other forms in the Bible, especially and perhaps most often the form of human beings, as alluded to in Hebrews, “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares (Hebrews 13:2 KJV).
The idea of spiritual togetherness permeates the Christian faith and is even a hallmark of most other religions as well. We are spiritually connected even when we are physically alone. When we gather to worship, even two or three of us, we affirm that Christ is with us. When we go to be with others, we join with Jesus who is already there with them. Consider that when we pray, we join with Jesus spiritually, and through Jesus, we join with all with whom Jesus is connected spiritually – people on Earth and people in Heaven, people in our community and people around the world, people who share our beliefs and people whose beliefs are vastly different. We are united spiritually with those who are all from different places on every spectrum of life we can imagine. And there in the Spirit with Jesus, we pray.
Today’s readings highlight the disparity between how God speaks to humanity through the Scriptures, and how people twist those same Scriptures for their own oppressive political or economic purposes to make it seem like God is saying something completely different. They justify oppression, discrimination, and exploitation of women, racial minorities, LGBTQ, immigrants, and whoever else they can misuse the Bible against in the name of religion.
Jesus laid out God’s vision for humanity without taking anything away from anyone’s religion – “not one jot or one tittle” (Matthew 5:18 KJV). Jesus does, however, reinterpret how we look at and understand our religions. He does lead us to reimagine how we implement our beliefs. He does challenge us in how people of faith should engage with each other and the world around us
