April 2025 - From The Pastor's Desk

“Waiting Again?!”

We are fully into the post Easter slump. We go a hundred miles an hour from the beginning of December until the Easter celebrations, this year on April 20th! Don’t get me wrong, I love the full calendar of activities, special worship services, the Fellowship and contemplation. It seems that we jam the brakes on after Easter until the next celebration, Pentecost.

The word Pentecost means fifty, as in the 50 days between Easter Day and the giving of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. It can get a bit confusing though. Just this past Sunday, from the Gospel of John, we read that Jesus breathed into the disciples and said receive the Holy Spirit. That was behind closed doors, for a select audience. Jesus wanted to empower the disciples to leave the locked room and continue to spread the word about the Resurrection and the giving of new life. If you think about it for a few seconds, we might understand what one of the things Jesus wanted them to spread the word about was an unbelievable story. They might have been a bit apprehensive to talk about that in public until they grasped its full meaning.

So, we wait with them until the day of Pentecost, when I feel that the larger community received the Holy Spirit to empower the proclamation of Resurrected life for all. Until that day, we enter in, again, to a time of waiting, until we once again hear of the rushing wind and the tongues of fire that rest on the heads of believers. Perhaps this time of waiting is for us to better understand what happened early in the morning on that Easter Day. Perhaps we wait to be empowered to speak of the defeat of Death and Empire. Perhaps we take a while to catch our breath before we sprint out of our places of confinement to spread the Good News. Not a bad idea.

However, if we are hunkered down to stay safe and out of trouble, we miss the point of the Resurrection story. When Jesus walked out of the tomb into the fading darkness, he was liberating us from the fear that sometimes grips the church. Fear that someone will disagree with us, or worse, hold us responsible for the sad state of the church universal or that we aren’t “Christian enough”.

I could think of worse things to be accused of. Like remaining quiet when we see injustice and violence. For remaining still when ten people of Filipino descent are run over at a celebration of their culture. For keeping to ourselves when gun violence is a daily event in our country, rather than naming it as the evil it is simply because we don’t want to be seen as wanting to take guns away from bad people. Or burying our heads in the sand as women and children die in Ukraine. You get the point.

Jesus walked out of that tomb to change the narrative that death and Empire have the final say in our lives. Jesus walked out of the tomb and through locked doors to give a message of hope, a hope that changes the world. Jesus walked out of that tomb into our lives to empower us to stand against injustice and tyranny. Jesus gave us Resurrected life the morning he walked toward the dawn of a new day, a new creation, and a new world.

He comes to us to take us by the hand to walk into a better world and a future where violence isn’t routine and where children don’t die because of apathy. Jesus walked out of the tomb to give us new life. What better to do with our time until the whole community is inspired by the giving of Spirit. As we sit and wait for that day, why don’t we let our imaginations run wild with the possibilities Jesus gave us on that first morning nearly 2500 years ago. Let us imagine and dream of the better days to come. Let us see that those days will only come if we are brave enough to walk out of the tomb with Jesus!