Life After Easter Jessica read an article in the newspaper that she found alarming. When people are released from prison after having served their time, there is nowhere for them to turn for help or training. As a result, more often than not, the person returns to a life of crime. She shared the distressing statistics with her Sunday school class. She said that it was not acceptable. Someone asked if what she described was true in the county jail just ten miles from their church. The following week there was more discussion on this subject. They realized that they needed to do more than discuss the problem. Several people checked with social agencies in the community to see if there were programs for people released from prison. The statistics shared earlier proved to be true in their community. All you have to do is ask those in our congregation who are involved in prison ministry they will tell you the same thing. Once a person leaves prison, without support from their family, or a community of faith, they struggle, and a large percentage of them, after having paid the price for the crime have a difficulty readjusting to society. I read yesterday about a woman named Debra Brown who is about to be released from a Utah prison. DNA has revealed that she was wrongfully convicted of murdering her employer. She has been in prison since 1993. Eighteen years held captive because of an evil committed by another. The article intrigued me in that Ms. Brown went to prison prior to there being personal computer in every home, let alone, cell phones, smart phones, ipods, the internet, Google, or many of the other things we take for granted these days. Her readjustment will require support and encouragement. i 1
In a similar way, you and I have been set free as well. Though we are guilty of our own sins, we have been ransomed, redeemed, set free from the spiritual captivity to our own selfishness. We are guilty and we have no defense before the ultimate judge of our lives. Yet, that judge provided a way of redemption. Through the cross and the empty tomb, Jesus Christ has ransomed us from ourselves. We are now free. However, our freedom does not mean that we can do whatever we want willy-nilly. Christ set us free from our own self-centeredness, to be Christ-centered. The Apostle Peter says that we have been ransomed from lives of futility to live a life of trust, obedience and love. Through the Easter event, we are able to place our trust in God. Perhaps some of you remember General Alexander Haig, a military leader in the war in Vietnam and political leader in the Reagan administration. Now, General Haig was not exactly what you would call a great theologian. He once said something, which on the surface sounded utterly stupid, and the media for saying it roundly criticized him. He said, "There are worse things than a nuclear war." That sounds like he stuck his foot in his mouth, but that is exactly what we Christians believe. What is far worse than a nuclear war? Not having faith and trust in God. Not to trust God and his promises means that we are headed for a destiny even worse than a nuclear holocaust. But to trust and believe the promises of God means that nothing in this world, not even the mushroom cloud of a nuclear bomb or the ecological disaster of global warming or the insidious attack of terminal cancer or the suffering and humiliation of an economic recession can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ. We can believe that because our Judgment Day has already happened. ii A French prince in the Middle Ages was asked if he were faithful to his wife. He answered, "Yes... frequently." The line is humorous but the point of the story is anything but. Sometimes in life, it is all too 2
difficult to find someone to trust, someone to believe in. Even spouses, parents and dearest of friends can let us down. But, the Christian faith teaches that when all the others have come and gone, God remains constant -- "the same yesterday, today and forever." God is always in our corner, always as close as a prayer, always loving us whether or not we deserve it and always willing to carry the heavy end of each of our crosses if asked. "If God so clothes the grass of the fields and feeds the birds of the air, will God not much more take care of you...?" iii The trust in God produced in us by the Easter event serves as our foundation in the Apostles second point, that of obedience. Through Christ, we are set free from our human propensity of rebellion we inherited from the first human beings who rebelled in the garden, to a new inheritance of God graciousness. Our trust in God as the source of our life and freedom leads us to be obedient to his demands. Elizabeth Leitch tells the following story. High in the mountains of North Wales in a place called Llanymawddwy, lives a shepherd named John Jones with his wife Mari and his black and white dog Mack. I stood one misty summer morning in the window of their farmhouse watching John on horseback herding the sheep with Mack. A few cows were quietly chewing their cud in a nearby corner while perhaps a hundred sheep moved across the dewy meadow toward the pens where they were to be dipped. Mack, a champion Scottish collie, was in his glory. He came from a long line of working dogs, and he had sheep in his blood. This was what he was made for; this was what he had been trained to do. And, it was a marvelous thing to see him circling to the right, circling to the left, barking, crouching, racing along, herding a stray sheep here, nipping at a stubborn one there, his eyes always glued to the sheep, his ears listening for the tiny metal whistle from his master, which I couldn't hear. 3
Mari took me to the pens to watch what John had to do there. When all the animals had been shut inside the gates, Mack tore around the outside of the pens and took up his position at the dipping trough, frantic with expectation, waiting for the chance to leap into action again. One by one, John seized the rams by their curled horns and flung them into the antiseptic. They would struggle to climb out the side, and Mack would snarl and snap at their faces to force them back in. Just as they were about to climb up the ramp at the far end, John caught them by the horns with a wooden implement, spun them around, and held them -- ears, eyes, and nose submerged for a few seconds.... When the rams had been dipped, John rode out again on his horse to herd the ewes, which were in a different pasture. Again, I watched with Mari as John and Mack went to work, the one in charge, the other obedient. Sometimes, tearing at top speed around the flock, Mack would jam on four-wheeled brakes, his eyes blazing but still on the sheep, his body tense and quivering, but obedient to the command to stop. What the shepherd saw the dog could not see -- the weak ewe that lagged behind, the one caught in a bush, the danger that lay ahead for the flock. "Do the sheep have any idea what's happening?" I asked Mari. "Not a clue!" she said. "And how about Mack?" I'll never forget Mari's answer. "The dog doesn't understand the pattern -- only obedience." iv You and I may not know or understand the bigger picture of God s pattern for cleansing and redeeming the world, however we do have a part to play. We are to be obedient. Just as Christ was obedient to the Father when he endured the cross of our sakes, we are to be obedient to his will. The apostle informs us what form our obedience should take. We are to love one another. We are to have genuine mutual love. Not 4
some make believe love, but genuine love--real love. This love takes form when we love with what the apostle refers to as coming deeply from the heart. Luther writes, True love is not a work that turns God to us, but a fruit of our turning to God in trust, in response to God s love in Jesus. v Barbara Brown Taylor tells the story of her nephew Will s first birthday party. Little Will was the center of everyone s attention, and so he happily did a little dance until a jealous 7-year-old named Jason charged over, put both of his hands on Will s chest and shoved. Will fell hard. His rear end hit first, then his head, with a crack. He looked utterly surprised at first. No one had ever hurt him before, and he did not know what to make of it. Then he opened up his mouth and howled, but not for long. His mother hugged him and helped him to his feet, and the first thing Will did was to totter over to Jason. He knew Jason was at the bottom of this thing, but since such meanness was new to him, he didn t know what to do. So he did what he had always done. He put his arms around Jason and laid his head against that mean little boy s body. What Will did to Jason put an end to the meanness in that room, observes Barbara Brown Taylor. That is what love is... not a warm feeling between like-minded friends but plain old imitation of Christ, who took all the meanness of the world and ran it through the filter of his own body, repaying evil with good, blame with pardon, death with life. Call it divine reverse psychology. It worked once, and it can work again, whenever God can find someone else willing to give it a try. vi Living life after Easter is to live in full trust and confidence in the God who raised Jesus from the dead and to live obedient to the law of love. Love Genuinely. Love deeply. Love as you are loved by the triune God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen. 5
i Woman awaits freedom after 17 years behind bars. LYNN DeBruin, Associated Press. 05/07/11 ii Against the Grain, Steven E. Albertin, CSS Publishing Company, Inc. iii Be All That You Can Be, Michael B. Brown, CSS Publishing Company, 0-7880-0381-X iv Adapted by Rev. J. Scott Miller from "The Glory of God's Will" by Elizabeth Elliot Leitch in Declare His Glory Among the Nations, pp. 129-130, ChristianGlobe Networks, Inc. v Stephen Edmondson, Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 2. Pg. 416. vi Christianity Today, January 11,1999, P. 74. Cited by Tony Grant, http://yarpc.tripod.com/parachut.htm. 6