EASTER

Recently one of our members asked a question I think has crossed the mind of most Christians at one time or another. The question: Why has God chosen to allow me to discover the joy of knowing and trusting Jesus the Christ as my Lord while others are walking on by, rejecting this Christ? Why has God made me part of the Body of his son while others around me refuse to come close to him? Why is the Easter Gospel of our Lord’s resurrection a real part of my life while it has not made a dent in the living of many?

You can play with that question a long time. It can lead you into all sorts of interesting tangents and down fascinating avenues. You can keep your gray matter stimulated as this question channels you to the whole subject of predestination, to the matter of God’s plan for his world, to the point of God’s plan for you, to the item of man’s freedom of choice.

Very interesting stuff that comes out of this question. But also very frustrating, because the answers are not as clear-cut as we might wish them to be.

Why you? Why me? Why any of us? Why not the other guy? Why have we been gifted with the awareness and faith and freedom that we know in the resurrected Jesus? When we deserve it no more than the person who is rejecting it?

This question reminds me of another question I used to ask in my own confirmation class. Whenever I had the chance, I would bug the pastor with this one, "What about the poor black native in deepest Africa? Why has God shown his Good News to me and not to him?" Frankly, I don’t really think I cared all that much about that poor black native. He was a good example for me to use, because I knew there was little I could personally do for him anyway. But I assume the question was yet an honest one and reflected the same concern over God’s seeming lack of justice in dealing with the human race.

And finally, in the midst of all this mental wrangling, there seems to be one workable solution. It is spelled out in the response of the women who came first to the tomb on that first Easter morning. It is the theme of being the Church: so that I can tell.

So that I can tell. So that I can share my freedom, so that I can influence my neighbor by my care for his needs, so that I can reflect the solid underpinning that the Man from Nazareth has built within me, so that I can tell another person how the Christ has attracted me and smothered me with his love.

This was the solution offered to me back in that confirmation class, that instead of arching my eyebrow with pseudo-concern over that poor guy in deepest Africa, I needed to recognize my role as one whose responsibility it was to share the Gospel with the African as well as with the neighbor close by.

The whole purpose of being rinsed clean in the waters of Baptism, of dining at our Lord’s Table, of having faith in the Christ at all is simply: so that I can tell.

Rather than spending my life trying to decide why me and not the other guy, taking what I have and sharing it with that other person. This is the reason for Christ’s existence: so that we can tell.

The telling, of course, comes in many sizes and shapes. I read recently of a man who has made a bar his place of ministry. He has become a bartender in an effort to relate to the needs and concerns of the many people who use a bar and a bartender as their place to pour out their troubles.

Our church district underwrites the ministry of a young man who works among race track employees as they follow the horses from one track to another, from one part of the country to another throughout the year.

In shopping malls we have groups of Christians renting space to execute a ministry of counseling and witness.

So that we can tell. So that parents can tell children, so that children can tell parents, so that husbands and wives can tell each other. So that Christians can tell one another. So that the Church can tell the community.

So that we can tell - by a word of humor spoken at just the right time to someone who is down, by a look of understanding aimed at someone who needs it desperately, by a hand of help to someone groveling in the darkness of his plight. And to paraphrase Jesus: by a cup of cold water to a dry throat, a visit to a lonely spirit, a coat for a body that is cold, a healing hand to a body that suffers.

That’s why we have the Gospel. That’s why Jesus rose from his tomb and why we know about it. Not to hoard it to ourselves like buried treasure, but to put it to work. Not to use it only when as we say, "we go to church," but to let it use us as we the Church go to work.

It is a good thing on this Day of Resurrection to give loud thanks to our Father for His gift of new life. But it is equally critical to be full of thanks-living, to translate our gratitude into telling and sharing and demonstrating and giving and showing God’s new life to someone else in need.

The Church is God’s Mission; you and I are that Mission. We are sent by our Baptism, by our joining in the body and blood of the risen Christ, by the Word, by the faith - we are sent to tell. You may do it by the spoken word. You may do it by the open deed. What’s important is that we tell. Amen.