The following is my story and message for Easter Sunday.  I decided to take an approach quite different from my usual Easter messages.

Story  Lydia

Sometimes we face large changes in our life that can be frightening when we can’t see what waits on the other side of that change. 

These changes can include the change from being boys and girls to young men and women, changes in schools, and changes in what is happening with our families.  A big change is  death because we cannot prove there another side.  This coming Friday is called Good Friday, a day we remember the trial and murder of Jesus.  On Easter Sunday, we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, his followers experience of his coming out the other side of death.  We don’t know for sure what happened, but we know it changed his followers.   Here is a story about another coming out the other side.

Lydia started life as an egg on the underside of a leaf.  She hatched out as a tiny, fuzzy, striped caterpillar.  As she ate and grew, she developed a pattern that discouraged birds from eating her.  As she grew, her skin would split to reveal a larger skin underneath that fit her growing body.  Her skin split several times, and she got bigger and bigger.  While she was growing, she only thought about three things: finding food, avoiding predators, and staying out of the hot sun.  One day, she felt the need to find some place to hide.  She climbed down out of the tree and found a hiding place under a thistle.  Then her skin split one more time, revealing a hard, stiff shell called a chrysalis.   While she was in the chrysalis, her body changed.  One day, she woke up, chewed a hole out of the chrysalis, and dragged herself out, and then climbed up the thistle until she was at the top.  Walking was difficult because she was carrying something on her back.  When she got to the top, her body pumped fluid into the things on her back, and they became colourful wings.  Instead of being a caterpillar, Lydia was now a beautiful butterfly.  She had come the other side of a dangerous change.

Prayer:  Loving God, thank you for being with us when we face scary changes in our lives, and for helping us come out the other side of those changes more beautiful than when we went in.  In Jesus’ name we pray.  Amen.

He Has Gone Ahead

Roy Kallestad told a story about his church having growing pains and looking for a site to build a new church on the edge of Phoenix.  One morning Roy went to check out an old orchard and met an elderly man while walking through the orchard.  When he told the man why he was there, the man got very excited and asked Roy to meet his wife at their small trailer in the middle of the orchard.  They went in, and Roy told the wife why he was there, and she got excited.  The man explained he had been walking around the orchard every morning and evening for 10 years praying for God to build a church there.

            This story ties into our reading from the Gospel of Mark.  The women were told to tell the others that Jesus had gone on to Galilee ahead of them and would meet them there.  Roy felt called to look for a site for the church, and discovered Jesus had been there already, paving the way.

  Both stories raise belief issues.  For centuries, most Christians regarded the Easter Sunday stories as the highlight of their faith.  For a growing number of Christians, and ex-Christians,  the stories are hard to believe, too hard for them, and the stories present a problem to them.  Some people will wonder how truthful Roy was in telling this story, and some will think the whole story is about coincidence.

  Does everything that happens or happened need to fit a rational understanding about the world based on the belief that real events must obey the laws of nature as we currently understand them?  A person’s answer to this question influences their response to the Easter stories.

  In an age when astronomers and physicists explore theories about dark matter, dark energy, and even multiple universes, and scientists develop theories of quantum chemistry, quantum physics, and quantum biology,  I resist giving science complete authority in declaring what is not possible.

    Because of differences in the stories, and the gap in time between the event and the recording of the event, I lack certainty about what happened that first Easter Sunday.   However, in descriptions of the effects on the community of followers and thousands of converts, I trust something extraordinary happened, and that is enough for me. 

   Accepting the reality of a resurrection experience, what does that belief require of me?

    An atheist posted a You Tube video describing an encounter with an evangelical Christian.  He reported how this well-dressed individual came up to him after an event, thanked and complimented him on how well he had performed, acknowledged that he knew the man was an atheist, and asked him to accept a small book containing some of the Psalms.  The atheist commented on how much admiration and respect he had for that man, explaining that if a person believes in heaven and hell, and if that person cared about someone, how could they not make the effort to offer a person the chance to consider the merits of the Christian faith.  The atheist believed that people who claim a belief such as ours that do not go out of their way to share that belief are not very good people.

     What do we believe?  Why do we believe?  What stops us from living out of what we believe?

    The abuse of religion by churches and conquerors in the past have given us some history explaining why many people today are offended by evangelism.  The view of evangelism has been further degraded by evangelists exploiting their followers. 

    Another factor is the value given to doing our own thing without interference from others.  Somehow, it seems easy for many to accept our beliefs, and yet it can seem not important enough to bother living them, or to bother other people.

    Finally, being religious is definitely not cool to people who want to live as though they are not accountable to anybody else.  These people use numerous ways to make fun of or shun people foolish enough to be openly religious.

If we decide to seek ways of sharing what we believe, we have the assurance of the story from Mark, and Roy’s story, that Jesus has already gone on ahead of us.  If we share our faith out of genuine love for the other without seeking control or manipulation, then we carry out some of our hardest and potentially most rewarding actions as followers of Jesus.

A regular attender at the Friday Soup and Sandwich of a small United Church mentioned that he had started attending the Mormon Church.

When he was asked why he started attending there, he said because they asked.  He had reached a point in his life where he was interested in exploring faith, and the only ones who asked him to join them were some Mormons.  I had visited him to learn about his specialized farming operation, and he was friends and a neighbour to several members of our pastoral charge, but none of us had thought to ask him to join us at our church.  Like many, we thought is was enough to welcome anyone who visited our worship service, and we did that well, picking up many members along the way.  His story reminded us that is not enough.

   If we believe in the Risen Jesus, or at least believe in the value of following him, and if we believe that learning about him can benefit other people, it seems that an important part of our faith is daring to ask others to join us.  It is also important to provide opportunities for faith development once someone has joined us.  The change this requires of us can be even more frightening than death.  The experience of many though is that, if we dare to make this change, we can come out the other side more beautiful and more fulfilled than when we started.

    On this Easter Sunday, we are challenged to consider what we believe and why we believe it.  If we faithfully follow Jesus because of what we believe, then we are called to share our experience and our belief as best as we can.  And we face the reasons why we don’t.  May the Spirit help each of us find the courage, the understanding, and the love we need to dare to share, and receive the blessings that come with this courage and this love.  And may we go with confidence that, wherever we go, Jesus has gone on ahead of us.