Bringing Resurrection, Easter 2012

Today in the place in which I live, good Christian people gathered all over the city in beautiful buildings to celebrate a risen Savior.  Songs of resurrection were sung and prayers of thanksgiving were prayed.  Sermons were preached extolling the significant, world-altering event that took place 1985 (or so) years ago and the importance that it still has today.  Thousands of dollars were spent on new dresses and ties and suits.  Twitter and Facebook feeds blew up with pictures and Scriptures and praises and celebrations.  My cousin participated in one of the 35 Easter services that his church put together.  (He doesn't live in Lubbock, by the way, in case you were racking your brain to think of a Lubbock church big enough to pull THAT off.)

Also today in the place in which I live, good people gathered at major intersections to sell Sunday papers to try to earn some meager money for their massive needs.  Others sat at hospital beds weeping over parents who were slipping away.  Good families hunkered down in rooms waiting to hear news about the health implications of complications from a child's surgery.  Brokenhearted people sat in desperate need of having their hearts bound up.  Poor people waited desperately for someone to come and preach them some good news.  Captives wondered who would come to them and proclaim freedom.  Prisoners sat again in darkness, wondering where all the light had gone.  Mourners looked around for someone to bring them comfort.

Maybe it is because today was the first Easter in my life that I didn't darken the door of a church building.  Maybe it's because the things that God has been stirring in me are moving me toward action of a different kind.  Maybe it's because I have surrounded myself with people who have challenged me to see the world as broken and in need of redemption.  Whatever the reason, the dichotomy of the first two paragraphs that I wrote above hit me hard this Sunday.  Today, churches across our country gathered for their high holy day -- Resurrection Sunday.  Churches beefed up their greeter force and rocked out their worship.  Churches spruced up their signage and weedeated (weed-ate???) their parking lots.  Churches spent dollars on egg hunts and advertising.  They gathered in their places of worship, counted their people and offerings.  Compared this Easter's attendance with the year-to-date (and with the ghost of Easters past).  Felt really good about what they did today.

And redemption happened.  I have read tweets and posts about all of the good things that happened this morning.  My friends at Ecclesia Houston had an overwhelmingly blessed Easter gathering in the heart of that city.  My friends in Lexington, KY, brought hope and redemption to the lives of hundreds.  My friends at Experience Life here in Lubbock lived up to their name and helped a packed house at their downtown campus experience that life.  And while I haven't heard much from my family at Raintree, I know that it was a weekend of blessing and being blessed.  There is no doubt that redemption took place in the midst of these gatherings that took place.

But just in the relatively modest city that we live in, there were so many missed opportunities to live out the Isaiah 61 reference alluded to above.  God-followers would have had their pick of places to bring redemption to Lubbock today.  Almost all the social organizations had opportunities to serve today -- Christians were busy gathering in their houses of worship and forgetting just what the Savior that they were celebrating spent most of his time doing.  I am not saying this to minimize the amount of redemption that took place in those gatherings.  I am saying that to try to get us to think about where God is already working and to get in line behind him.

One of my favorite authors, Leonard Sweet, made the contention SEVERAL years ago that God might just be more active in the world these days than he is in the church.  When I first read that, I almost went ahead and dismissed him as a heretic.  Seemed like an appropriate thing to do.  But the more that I reflected on it, the more truth it seemed to hold.  If God is a God of the oppressed and broken-hearted, then wouldn't it make more sense that He was doing His thing right in the midst of an oppressed and broken world?

I hesitate to tell you our story from today, because the last thing that I would want to convey is that I have it all figured out.  That this is the only way.  That I'm right and others are wrong.  I merely tell you our story to try to get you to see that there just might be another way -- a more redemptive way.  Today we loaded up our family at 6:40 am and headed to the Ronald McDonald House in Lubbock.  For those of you unfamiliar with RMH, it partners with local children's hospitals to provide a place to stay for out-of-town families who find their children sick and in the hospital.  A group of us went to cook breakfast burritos for the families that were staying there.  And to bring them Easter baskets with games and activities designed to restore some sense of normalcy in their lives.  And to generally let them know that, despite mounting evidence to the contrary, Jesus loves them.  Dearly.  And their sick children.  Especially their sick children.

The lady in charge said that we would probably see parts of two or three of the ten families staying there.  Most would prefer to stay in their rooms, hunkered down for the fight that they were in.  I think we ended up meeting 7 or 8 of the families.  Their stories were absolutely heart-breaking.  A one-year-old experiencing complications from a second heart surgery.  A 17-year-old on life support.  A 17-week-premature baby fighting in NICU.  A 7-week-premature baby that mom and dad are hoping to take home this week.  And a kitchen-full of breakfast burritos gave us the opportunity to hear these stories.  To encourage these families.  To pray for these children.  To bring life and hope and resurrection and redemption into a culture of hurt and brokenness and pain.

I feel like it was the first time I have ever really celebrated Easter.