130331 Easter: Blessed

It’s interesting how there are some people you listen to more than others on certain subjects.

If you want to know about how to have a great beginning in the MLB, you might listen to Buster Posey more than most other players.

If you want to learn how to win multiple Tour de France races illegally without getting caught, you might want to consult Lance Armstrong.

If you want to learn about investing in the stock market, Warren Buffett will probably be at or near the top of your list.

The Williams sisters will be who you want to talk to about dominating tennis. 

If you want to know how to move a football team from good to champion-level in two years, you might want to talk to Jim Harbaugh.

Want to know how to overstay your welcome in late night television?  Give Jay Leno a buzz.

Want to know how to make it in the recording world?  Talk to Simon – you don’t even need to know his last name.

Movie industry?  Steven Spielberg.

Famous for no particular reason?  Kim Kardashian.

And when it comes to wanting to know about what God is like, my hunch is the majority of us would want to hear what Jesus had to say about it.

Roughly 2,000 years have passed since the very first Easter morning came and changed the way people thought about God and life and life after this life.  Empires have risen and fallen.  Christianity has moved from an obscure Jewish sect to the religion of international domination to the biggest religion in the world to a struggling religion trying to hold on to its aging members.  But despite people having issues with Christianity, Jesus as a key person in history with knowledge and experience of God has stood the test of time.  Jewish people respect him.  Muslims respect him.  Buddhists respect him.  Even some Christians respect him!

This Easter, rather than spend time looking specifically at the resurrection itself, I’d rather talk about how it has impacted Jesus’ stock value.  If you want to get your brain around what happened to Jesus after he died, you will find a great resource in The Meaning of Jesus by Marcus Borg and N.T. Wright.  In the chapter on the resurrection, you will find that while they have different views on what happened, they both passionately agree that Jesus was experienced after he had died, and that experience made an enormous impact on Jesus’ followers.  The went from frightened, shaken followers to passionate, bold world changers in ten seconds flat.  All because of Easter.

It’s not that anything Jesus taught or did changed in that moment.  It’s simply that when they experienced Jesus on Easter morning in resurrected mode, all that Jesus taught took on greater power.

One teaching he gave I think probably stuck with all them.  It was probably his greatest sermon he ever delivered, and one of the most profound and powerful and hopeful sermons ever given by anybody.  He likely gave it many times, but is remembered as giving it in a natural amphitheater, where hundreds and maybe thousands gathered to hear him speak.

This is what he said in the first movement of his talk (Matthew 5:1-12, The Message):

When Jesus saw his ministry drawing huge crowds, he climbed a hillside. Those who were apprenticed to him, the committed, climbed with him. Arriving at a quiet place, he sat down and taught his climbing companions. This is what he said:

     “You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.

     “You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.

     “You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are—no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.

     “You’re blessed when you’ve worked up a good appetite for God. He’s food and drink in the best meal you’ll ever eat.

     “You’re blessed when you care. At the moment of being ‘care-full,’ you find yourselves cared for.

     “You’re blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.

     “You’re blessed when you can show people how to cooperate instead of compete or fight. That’s when you discover who you really are, and your place in God’s family.

     “You’re blessed when your commitment to God provokes persecution. The persecution drives you even deeper into God’s kingdom.

     “Not only that—count yourselves blessed every time people put you down or throw you out or speak lies about you to discredit me. What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort and they are uncomfortable. You can be glad when that happens—give a cheer, even!—for though they don’t like it, I do! And all heaven applauds. And know that you are in good company. My prophets and witnesses have always gotten into this kind of trouble.

Another way to think about the word blessed is to read “God is with you.”  Try reading it using that phrase instead of blessed.

The reason this was so profound is because it challenged common beliefs of Jesus’ day.  And our day.  We generally think of feeling like God is on our side – with us – when things are going great.  When we are successful in our culture’s eyes, it feels like God is smiling on us.

But Jesus turns that on its head.  He says that when we are feeling desperate, when we’ve lost that which is precious to us, when we’re content and not feeling the need to climb another rung up the ladder, when we’re passionately searching for God, when we are compassionate, when we pursue all that is good and beautiful, when we pursue peace, when we are committed enough to God to take a stand, and when we get pushed around for living in the footsteps of Jesus, God is especially with us.

Why?  Because in all of those situations, we know we need God, we seek God, and our openness to God makes it much more possible to actually experience God.

When we are in those modes of life, we experience God because God is with us.

There are other times, by the way, when it is very hard to experience God.  Mainly because God is not always with us especially.

I know, I know – God is omnipresent, so God is always with us, right?  Theologically, yes.  Practically, no.  I believe God loves us unconditionally and forgives us long before we know our need.  But that doesn’t mean God is necessarily with us.  God is not a party to our behavior at certain times.

A wife may love her husband, but she is not with him in his addiction to pornography.

A husband may lover his wife, but he is not with her in her addiction to narcotics.

God may love the corporate CEO, but is not with him in his leadership that overly inflates his already ridiculous salary at the expense of his struggling employees.

God may love the consumer, but God is not with the consumer when in their passion to get a bargain support an industry that forces children to work in sweat shops half way around the world.

Maybe the reason some people experience God more than others is because God is with them more than others because they are with God.

Maybe the reason some people question God’s existence is because God isn’t with them because they are not with God.

Many millions of people who find themselves in the blessed modes of Jesus famous teaching are experiencing Easter as a living reality.  They experience the presence of God in powerful ways in spite of their poverty, despair, abuse, grief, and defamation.  They experience God because they are seeking God as if God is really the most important voice worth hearing.  They are with God.  God is with them.

Many millions of people will celebrate Easter today as part of a dead tradition.  They wonder why they bother.  Their lives represent the painful reality that they not really seeking God because they have proven with their choices that other voices are more important to them.  They do not experience God because they are not with God, and God is not with them.

God loves us all.  God dreams great life for us all.  God speaks to us all.  God desires us all to experience the reality that Christ is risen – he is risen indeed!

Whether or not we will is not up to God.  It’s up to us.  Will we be anymore renewed this Easter than we were the last?  Will we become any more like Christ from now until Easter 2014 because we have chosen to seek the voice of the One who lives on?