for he has done marvelous things.
His right hand and his holy arm
have gained him victory.
The LORD has made known his victory;
he has revealed his vindication in the sight of the nations. He has remembered his steadfast love and faithfulness
to the house of Israel.
All the ends of the earth have seen
the victory of our God. Psalm 98:1-3
For pastors and other church professionals, the week following the celebration of the Resurrection may feature more of a collective sigh and collapse than the days right after Christmas. Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday (and for some a vigil on Saturday) is followed by special music and fanfare for Easter Sunday itself, complete with sunrise services and other extras. Liturgically speaking, we go wild for Easter - and not without good reason - and then...?
On Easter I preached about how resurrection was so much more than butterflies and natural processes, so much more than the promise of life after death. I said it was about God intervening in human history to do something wonderfully and frighteningly new. But in the post-Easter letdown, things can seem terribly "back to normal."
Traditional Christian theology has spoken of the cross and resurrection as marking the close of an old age even though the age to come has not yet fully arrived. And so we live in "the time between the times," an interlude in history between how things have always been and how they will be in God's new day, what Jesus called the Kingdom. During this between time, we experience God's new day only provisionally, in the community of faith as it becomes the body of Christ, and within us through the presence of the Holy Spirit. But I must confess that the world/age that is passing away often seems much more real to me than that day that is coming, that Kingdom and newness that I proclaimed on Easter. And the post-Easter letdown only aggravates such feelings.
I sometimes worry about the future of the Church and my own Presbyterian denomination because it seems so institutional, so far from a Spirit filled beacon of God's new day. Over the years many have written about congregations and denominations that depend solely on their own resources, rarely doing anything that would be possible only with God's help. Such writings resonate with me, but if I am honest, I have to say that I'm as caught up in such patterns as anyone. I'll work hard and urge others to do the same, but I doubt anything significant will happen beyond our efforts.
Did anything really change because of the resurrection? It apparently did for those first disciples. The contrast between those who so regularly failed to understand and who scattered and denied when Jesus was arrested compared with the disciples who spread the gospel all over the Mediterranean at great personal risk and even death is remarkable. And they didn't have any of the books and consultants and resources and conferences that are available to me.
Sometimes I think the greatest challenge facing pastors like myself is not the need to figure out all the management, leadership, or programmatic tricks to help churches do well. Rather it is living as though something really happened nearly 2000 years ago that changed everything.
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