Easter foolish continued

 

We continue prayerfully to play with being an Easter people and how this can make us feel foolish or out of step with the world around us.  Afterall, the Easter candy is all gone from the shelves, except for a few bags of green plastic grass on the clearance table that honestly no one really wants.  The world has moved on, why do we continue to talk about Easter?  There is a beautiful balance between the season of Lent and the whole season of Easter.  Lent is the forty days (minus Sundays) leading up to Easter Sunday.  Between Easter and Pentecost (the Birthday of the Church), there are fifty days to open us to the mystery and marvel of this idle tale of new life from the dark womb of the tomb.  One of the reasons we might be skeptical of resurrection is that it doesn’t always happen ~ it isn’t predictable and doesn’t play by our plotting or planning.  Cancer isn’t always cured, prayer isn’t always answered, the pain can throb and rob us of our health ~ physically or emotionally or spiritually.  My inner teenager says, “Everyone else seems to cling to the script that we can hurt and harm and yell our way to peace and new life and God’s realm.  Why can’t I?!?”  I need some foundation or formation or focus in this wayless way of Easter faith.  I invite you to ponder the first two verses of Help Us Accept Each Other:

 

Help us accept each other as Christ accepted us; teach us as sister, brother, each person to embrace.  Be present, God, among us, and bring us to believe we are ourselves accepted and meant to love and live.

 

Teach us, O God, your lessons, as in our daily life we struggle to be human and search for hope and faith.  Teach us to care for people, for all, not just for some, to love them as we find them, or as they may become.

 

Was there a word or phrase that caught your attention?  Was there something in the above that felt like sandpaper to your soul?  For example, maybe you wonder if accepting people really does make any difference?  Or can that just continue to enable behavior?  Of course, most of us featherless bipeds need more affirmation and acceptance, not less.  For most people, even those who say hurtful things, do so from a place of lack and low self-worth ~ we pull others down as we try to prop ourselves up.  I am taken by the line, “Bring us to believe we are ourselves accepted”.  That is a riff on Jesus’ saying, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself”.  There seems to be some intertangled web of relationships between us and others.  To build on what we heard on Easter, that it is not just the spices we bring with us ~ others contribute spices (sweet and bitter) to our lives and often do so without being asked!

 

I love that last bit about loving people as we find them or as the person may become.  The truth is that most people are evolving, but we don’t always share our transformation outwardly.  Maybe we are concerned about rejection or response of people we love.  Maybe we don’t want to look foolish.  Yet, Christ’s acceptance was expansive and elastic.  He could meet the disciples who denied and deserted him in the room without judgement.  He could call Zacchaeus ~ a chief tax collector and invite himself over.  He could tell parables of prodigal love that flowed from a Samaritan and from a Mothering Father that maybe didn’t magically make everything better, but such acceptance does shift something in our souls.  Pause ~ when was the last time you felt fully accepted?

 

I encourage you to read the two verses above a few times today, twist and turn them like a kaleidoscope seeing what new colors or shapes or designs might appear before you.  I pray we will do more than think about these words but find ways to live them in our lives this day and week. Amen.