Reflections

If you attended worship on Sunday (if not, we missed you!), you may have noticed several very small visitors: tiny plastic Jesuses, scattered about the building by yours truly and my coconspirators, the youth confirmation class.  After the Great Vigil on Saturday night (during which many of the confirmands read, acolyted, and ushered - thanks y’all!), I explained to the confirmands that Easter is a time of great joy and mirth, and the Church gives us permission to be a little silly as we celebrate death’s defeat.  Thus, we deployed about two hundred of the small saviors everywhere from the pews to the powder rooms.  We will undoubtedly find them for years to come and I apologize to Tyronn and the Junior Warden.

 

However, besides expressions of our Easter glee, these Jesuses symbolize a vital consequence of Jesus’ resurrection.  For not only are assured of eternal life, but, through the resurrected Christ, Jesus is out and about in the world, getting into “good trouble,” walking with us in times of trial, and bringing God’s dreams closer to fruition.  Theodore Wardlaw, a professor of homiletics at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, wrote in Christian Century magazine, “if Jesus Christ really rose from the dead, then that means that he is loose in the world with power to raise us up from whatever is dragging us down - power to complete what we can't complete by ourselves.  It means that the story of hopeless finality that that other storyteller is peddling is, in the end, nothing but Friday talk.”  Not only do we no longer fear our death, but we know that death’s darkness need not pollute our world.  Instead the light of Christ can herald a better life.

 

If you see a tiny Jesus around All Saints, feel free to take Him with you, give Him to a friend who is struggling, a neighbor who is grieving, or a child who needs a little joy.  Or simply keep Him in your pocket or bag, or on your dashboard or windowsill, as a reminder that the risen Christ is always with you.

 

On of my favorite prayers in the Prayer Book prays, in part, "let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord,” (p. 291).  May our tiny Jesuses help the world see and know.  AMEN.