Life, Death, and Resurrection

Life, Death, and Resurrection is a good summation of what Christianity is about. There are other things that you could say it is about too — Good News, Service, Jesus, Accompaniment, Shalom, etc. But are those things really all that different from the message of Life, Death, and Resurrection? I don’t think so. Within Life, Death, and Resurrection is Good News, Accompaniment, service, Jesus, and Shalom.

I think the challenge we face is that so often we think that Life, Death, and Resurrection are only about literal life, death, and resurrection. I think we miss so much when that is the case. We miss the blessing of life, death, and resurrection in our lives, our congregations, and our communities. Life, death, and resurrection is so much more than just the life life cycle of the physical body.

Each day we have the opportunity to examine our lives, to ask what needs to die so that resurrection can take place. A scary part of this is that while we would prefer to control what resurrection looks like, we don’t control it. A colleague of mine recently said resurrection is God’s work, we can only get in the way of it. So true. If we refuse to let things die in us, then resurrection cannot take place. In order for resurrection to take place, death has to happen first.

But this is true beyond our individual experiences too. Every congregation should experience life, death, and resurrection. It can be scary for people. Churches have traditions, expectations, beliefs, and habits in their corporate culture and history…