I stumbled across a rather addicting website a while back called Six Word Memoirs, which invites people to tell their story using only six words. The objective is to use language both creatively and concisely. The idea comes from Ernest Hemingway, who was once challenged by a reporter to write a tragic novel using only six words. It’s said that he thought for a moment and then replied, “For sale, baby shoes, never worn.”
Some of the craftiest postings read, “Wrong turns write the best stories,” and “Hearts heal, but the stitches itch.”
My personal favorite is “Internet, where the uninformed become misinformed.”
Sometime when I’m in the car I compose my own little six word memoirs about being a pastor here on the shore, such as “Walleyes are biting, sermon can wait.”
I got to thinking about these six word memoirs during Holy Week because we tend to make our faith sound so complicated, and discipleship seems so difficult, that we forget that Christianity is grounded in its own six word memoir. Jesus is risen from the dead.
These are words that have been passed on from generation to generation ever since the very first encounter with the empty tomb. These are words spoken out loud at the baptism of children and whispered reassuringly to loved ones as death draws near.
Resurrection is a story that centers itself in relationships. Even though almost all of Jesus’ disciples abandoned him in the final days before his death, he invited them all back into relationship with him as partners in his resurrection life.
The proclamation that Jesus is risen from the dead is what centers us in our relationship with God as well. Nothing about Jesus’ birth, ministry or death has relevance to our lives apart from Jesus walking out of that tomb with the marks of our brokenness imprinted in his hands and side.
And so, as his disciples, we live the only way we know how, which is as resurrection people. Our lives bear witness to what happened in that tomb outside of Jerusalem some 2,000 years ago. Resurrection is our story, just as it was the story of the women who found the tomb empty and hurried to tell their friends what they had seen. Resurrection is our story, just as it was the story of the two disciples walking the road to Emmaus who recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread. Resurrection is our story, just as it was Thomas’ story when Jesus invited him to touch his nailscarred hands and side.
It is impossible for us to visualize what resurrection looked like in the darkness before dawn on the first Easter morning. The gospel writers don’t share with us that moment when death became life. And yet, as followers of the risen Christ, we can’t help but see resurrection at work all around us today. All we have to do to witness this resurrection is to ask ourselves, “Where does this risen Christ meet us today?”
Are there moments when we feel as if we are sealed in a tomb with no hope of ever digging our way out by ourselves? Are we grieving the sudden loss of a loved one, or shaken by the results of an MRI, or distraught over the breakup of our family, or feeling rejected, unwanted or alone? Is there a place deep within where grief and sorrow are so entrenched that it seems impossible to even envision a life of joy and peace?
These are the very places where the resurrected Christ enters into relationship with us. These are the places where Jesus meets us, offering forgiveness, hope and healing. These are the places and the situations that God enters to transform death into life.
God loves this world so passionately that he came to live in relationship with us, to share in our joys and to hold us in our sorrows. But because this world is so willing to embrace prejudice and violence instead of peace, we took his life from him.
And it was there, as God hung bruised and beaten that we learned what true love really is. When it was finished and Jesus lay dead in a sealed and guarded tomb, God chose to do what we would never do. God chose to continue living in relationship with us. Instead of death, God chose resurrection, and with it healing, forgiveness and eternal life.
We can’t share our faith with others without starting the conversation by proclaiming those six life-altering words Jesus is risen from the dead.
Christ is risen, and that means that anything can happen, even the unthinkable. Through the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, whom we proclaim The Christ, this world is given new life beyond what we could otherwise even dare to imagine. Each month a member of the Cook County Ministerium will offer Spiritual Reflections. This month’s contributor is Tom Murray of the Lutsen and Zion Lutheran Churches.
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