I am sitting under a needy dog and a needy cat who have both somehow divined—maybe because I drug out the suitcases?—that I am about to go away. They keep staring at me balefully, and every time I go out of the room, Gloria, the cat settles herself on my carefully arranged pile of clothes to take, rather than the discarded items that will not suit me at all.
Tomorrow we will be creeping away around 4 am to beat our way through traffic to JFK for a direct flight to Nairobi and then, after a few days, to Kigali—if you want to pray. While I’m thinking about it, the official hashtag for GAFCON this year is #gafcon23. Plus I’ll be here, and there will be a live stream, and other nice ways to find out what’s going on.
In the meantime, there are a lot of fun Easter takes out there. Like this old one I found on Twitter:
Happy Easter Guys! Jesus didn’t rise again. Sorry! One of the comments was particularly nice: “Easter, the day Jesus stayed dead.” I went over to look at who Serene Jones is and her bio says, “Proud mother, Fierce theologian.” That’s so great—I would like to self-identify as something “fierce” except that it’s so 2020.
Anyway, poor La Jones is wrong. You can’t “believe in resurrection” without “believing in a bodily resurrection.” A “resurrection” without a body isn’t a “resurrection.” That’s literally the point. Jesus rose in his body.
How funny that believing that Jesus, the innocent and perfect sacrifice, by suffering the pangs and terror of death, would defeat death and come up out of the grave, triumphant and joyous, having defeated the foe that threatens us all—death brought about by sin—would be considered adhering to a “rigid dogma.” Like it’s mean and bad to have to believe that Jesus did something so glorious and amazing that we couldn’t do. If only, to be a Christian, you could just go on in death, instead of having to believe that God destroyed death and made a way for you to live forever.
Seriously, if you don’t want to believe that, you don’t have to. But don’t self-identify as a Christian because that’s the heart of our “faith” which isn’t just an amalgamation of illogical “dogmas” but is the obedient love of a Person…Jesus, our Savior, who triumphed over the grave. If you want to believe in something else, that’s totally fine. There are a lot of other disappointing death options out there for you to choose from.
One of the sweeter joys of this past week—one I haven’t experienced before—was the sheer number of babies and children and teenagers attending and participating in our services. I tried, in between all my other tasks, to keep a count of how many under-18s were there and I finally gave up. Little kids rolling around under the pews, whole lines of tweens packed in together, I couldn’t get the same number every time (plus I’m bad at counting). Where did they all come from?
Or is it because I’ve been “doing the work,” along with a lot of other exhausted mothers, and the thing everyone said would happen finally did? You (I mean me, obviously) labor through Passion Week, through the betrayal and death of Jesus to his glorious resurrection, with a pack of kids in tow, feeling the deep futility of the thing, but nevertheless hanging on for dear life. While other people were accomplishing contemplative crafts or going meatless, I was buying packs of bagel bites, begging everyone to spend at least two hours a day flaked out in front of a movie, and coming away by the end, well, not “filled up.” Tired, happy, relieved that we got through, but needy to be with my own children.
I drug them along, carried them on my back (while I folded bulletins), laid them out on blankets in the front pew for the long Vigil, and then finally dispensed chocolate and hoped they wouldn’t hate me.
This week, though, I discovered that they aren’t little and that they weren’t being “drug” along. They were the ones dragging me. They got themselves to choir practice. They knew how to light up the censor and dig out the remnants of those little candles everyone has to hold to see the way through Tennebrae and the Stations and the Vigil. They sang the Gloria and served in the nursery and handed out bulletins and held babies. It wasn’t me they ever needed—it was Jesus. And he is, and was, always there.
And by the end, what I discovered is that rather than “adherence” to some “rigid dogma” they had so, themselves, worshiped and adored the risen Christ that they were, well, not satiated, but satisfied, happy, delighted to have gotten to have had—as one put it—such a “fun week.”
Kids these days get lots of lectures. They are always being told how to be and who to be. They are always being told they have to discover themselves and be fierce and brave. I think, tragically, that too many children and young people are not given the space and time to sit and worship the Risen Christ. They aren’t brought along into the solemnity of such a glorious and astonishing truth—that God did such a mighty work, that he loved us with such a great love, that he gave us a way to know him for real.
What I’m trying to say is—I am a good mother. It’s who I am it’s who I am it’s who I am. Have a nice day!
PS. I have no idea about my posting capabilities over the next two days but I’ll do my best!
I’m smiling to read your memories as they remind me of my own experiences of my children in church.
Praying safe travels, and a few moments time to let us know how things are going in the state of true Christian dogma. What’s even the point to waste time in a belief of resurrection if Jesus did not rise bodily. The illogical logic of that is stunning, and depressing!