Easter Sunday, The Resurrection of the Lord, April 17, 2022
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
God is the breath of me
This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad.
Clarence Heller outdid himself yesterday. No doubt my favorite spiritual director and artist was preparing for Easter as he approached free will and God’s grace with the pen of a poet and heart of a philosopher. He found a simple title, one after my own heart and Enneagram 7’s desire to accept and receive every moment, every offering, every gift. Never say no. Always …
I SAY YES
Today I say yes to being the medium
through which God is revealed.
Today I accept that…
I am both the beloved who is other,
somehow separate and distant enough from God
to be in relationship with God,
separate enough to be cherished
for the unique person I am,
separate enough to be free (at least potentially)
to be the delight of God.
and
I exist within God,
the core of my existence is God,
separation is impossible,
anything I may label as mine (even consciousness)
exists in communion with God.
For God not to love me would mean that
God would not love Godself.
God and I have the same DNA.
I breathe in God.
I breathe out God.
I am the breath of God
and God is the breath of me.
I say yes to my limitations
that narrow my consciousness,
that inhibit my cooperation,
that prevent God from being more completely revealed.
I say yes to God’s glory,
evident through my goodness,
love,
beauty,
vulnerability,
compassion,
joy.
I say yes to the mystery,
of constant invitation,
life without beginning or ending,
concurrent suffering and rejoicing,
the completeness of the present moment,
constant expansion,
perfect imperfection.
I say yes to love,
to relationship,
community,
family,
authentic church,
God,
and myself as the revelation of God!
As Christopher Kimball once said on Cook’s Country and now says with equal confidence on Milk Street, “So there you have it!” Jesus is alive! Our Christian minds and hearts either beat heartily to embrace that truth, or fall into funk and uncertainty. John Updike, another famous poet, wrote as if he were in medical school:
Make no mistake: if he rose at all
It was as His Body;
If the cell’s dissolution did not reverse, the molecule reknit,
The amino acids rekindle,
The Church will fall.
Here is the fourth stanza of his seven, also wonderful:
Let us not mock God with metaphor,
Analogy, sidestepping, transcendence,
Making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded
Credulity of earlier ages:
LET US WALK THROUGH THE DOOR.
As a young man yet unknown in 1960, Updike won his local North Boston Lutheran church’s poetry contest. Later, much later after he died in 2008 Ian McEwan pointed out Updike’s “constitutional inability to make the leap of unfaith.” Updike, Clarence Heller, myself, and perhaps you, could not make that backward leap. Living out our era’s pragmatic, scientific worldview, still we are unable to “leave in the dust too much of our humanity.”
You have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
On Easter Sunday, 1985 our son Marc burst out of his Sunday School classroom shouting, “Jesus is alive!” That’s my desire today, to burst myself into whatever world I’m in with smile and shout, and bust my buttons singing, “Jesus is alive!”
When Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory.
(Acts 10, Psalm 118, Colossians 3, 1Cor 5, John 20)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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