Emerging ministers and the Liturgical Calendar

Good morning God,
Don't you think it's ironic that so many ministers are tired out by Easter and that far from being energised and inspired by the discovery of the risen Christ, they tend to be exhausted and drained by the demands of Holy Week..
It's about now that most ministers are beginning to  emerge again... but emerge to what?
The Church places great store on its  two great times of preparation - on Advent and Lent
We invest an astonishing amount of time and effort into waiting and on being ready to receive you when you come to us as the baby Jesus or the risen Christ... with our lent study groups, and advent calendars, lent liturgies and advent rings, Christmas trees and advent crosses..
We even manage to turn Easter into a time of waiting - Christ is alive - now wait for the Spirit...
another 40 days...

But when the Word becomes flesh..?

and when that same flesh is risen?
and when the Spirit is given?
What then...?

There is something comfortable, reassuring and faith affirming about the rhythm of the liturgical year, but there is also something deadening, numbing and faith destroying. We are lulled into a sense of order and conformity by the routine expectations.. Christ will rise on Easter Day,  the Spirit will come on Pentecost - and once that's done we will be once again in  'Ordinary time' - until Advent of course...
And we know what to do, we have the right words to say to take us from Advent to Easter and back again. 'We've always done it this way before'.

Christ is risen..
he is risen indeed, 
so what?

So we can get back to the business of being Church week in and week out..?
So we can wait for Christ to come again?
and again..
and again..

The challenge that we face is the same as the challenge that has faced every generation before us: how to turn the liturgical calendar inside out: how to and use the wonder, amazement and joy of Easter, the fire the passion and the power of Pentecost to ignite the spark of faith so that you can turn a Church full of comfortable 'Ordinary time' Christians into a world changing, life-giving, miracle working, band of disciples?

Christ is risen -
He is risen indeed..
What should our response be?
To wait and see what happens next?
To carry on doing what we have always done?
Or to let the story unfold in our lives..
As the Acts of your modern day apostles...?

I am convinced God that the Church emerges best when it participates in your determination to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary: when it is prepared to risk what has always been in order to participate in what will be by responding in the power of your Spirit to the fact that Christ is risen - he is risen indeed.

Risk-taking God..
as I emerge from the tomb-side of Easter, 
shake me and disturb me,
and form me again as an apostle,
ready and willing to act for the sake of the gospel,
for I know that Christ is alive;
what was has been changed.
I want to be a part of what will be.


Amen.

Alive to God

Good morning God

Christ is Alive! (But of course YOU know THAT!)

Easter never fails to remind me how good it is just to be ALIVE. 

I don’t mean alive in the body, I mean alive to YOU.

Being alive to YOU is all about being open to the joy of what is possible in this world, believing and knowing  that miracles really can happen, that life is everlasting, and that nothing, but nothing, can separate us from YOUR love in Christ.

Some would say that living in resurrection hope today means being unrealistically optimistic. They ridicule the joy and the hope that we have,  especially  in these times of global warming, earthquakes, wars and famines. There is just so much pain and suffering in the world they cry. But there always has been. Throughout human history, there have always been those who have been so distressed by their life that they have believed death to be the only possible answer. The call for changes in the law concerning assisted suicide and euthanasia are evidence that this is still the case for many today. 

It’s not difficult to understand how pain can destroy the desire for life and how grief can rob people of the will to live – but your Easter message changes all that.  

Easter is not your denial of the pain or suffering of death, it is your answer to our fear of it, and to the mistaken belief that in the end, death is all that is left to us.

By his resurrection, Christ proclaimed that LIFE, not death, is the final and lasting answer. It is this that justifies the hope and optimism of those who are alive to you.  

Being live to you means knowing that life really is stronger than death, hope is more powerful than despair and joy is more lasting than grief. There is more.

Christ is alive! 

In spite of pain, in spite of suffering, in spite of the violence hatred and fear that tried to kill the love he wanted to share with us – Christ is alive. The empty tomb stands as silent witness to the failure of death to keep the truth of life buried.

Christ is alive and calls us to live a new life with him. A life of faith and hope that can be lived confidently in the knowledge that death will never be your final answer.  No matter what the world throws at us, we can step boldly into the future that you has planned for us knowing that we cannot be destroyed or denied by something as small as death.  Because Christ lives, we too can live.

Easter is not a call from you to believe in life after death, it is to believe in life instead of death.

Christ is ALIVE – and so are we.