Two days ago we got some great winds here in Russellville. Several houses on the west side of town lost power and were in dark all night long. When I came into my office early in the morning on Wednesday, I did not have power in my office either. Then I thought, we depend on electricity so much to the extend it takes a while to refocus and reconfigure the work of the day.
When all these wind and storm were happening on the previous night, I read a few facebook comments written by some of my friends. “I can deal with power outage. But if my wireless internet goes down or my Wii stops working, we have a problem. They don’t know who they are dealing with”. “If my facebook is down, I am going into depression and lonliness”.
Our modern life is so dependent on electricity and internet we hardly know how to live without it. To us a few minutes away from the web of the world that is right at our finger tips seem to take a lot out of us. We have all kinds of information available on on our fingertips from sources like Wikipedia and many times even if they are right or wrong, makes sense to us. As you know anyone can edit Wikipedia and the information you get there could be as good as you get from someone on the street who has a great imagination.
Now to draw our faith from these sources powered by electricity and downed by a surge, hacked by the unscrupulous and intercepted by malwares are not therefore the ideal way of growing in divine wisdom. Divine wisdom needs no power, www, or facebook. It is far superior powered by grace that depends on nothing that are fallible.
Faith happens within a community of believers and among a people who are willing to walk the journey with one another. Faith is not a set of statements such as I believe in God, I believe in Jesus and such, but a way of seeing the endless relationship we are in with one another and God. While events of history and statements of Councils might help us to clarify some of the notions of the historical faith as in Christianity, true faith emerges only when we it begins to take shape in the company of one another.
Behind the faceless facebook all emotions such as fear, anxiety, anger, disappointments, hopes, dreams and everything else can live fiercely. But they are still in the clouds until it becomes real in the face of a living being in front of you and then healing, true love, freedom and such sublime experiences become real.
This is what happened on the day of Easter. Jesus could have been risen and gone to the heavens, in the clouds or to the web. It would matter nothing to the disciples. But then He chose to stand in front of Mary and say, “Who are you looking for”? And then He stood in the room with the Apostles asking, “What are you afraid of?”. He walked along with two of them to Emmaus wondering, “Who are you talking about?”. Then he chose to break bread with them, an act that is tangible, relational and at the same time vital. Everyone of them is personal and present. That is Easter.
Resurrection becomes alive only to those who have the courage to come out of their hiding places on the web, from the Second Life cathedrals and make believe blissful land in the clouds. Resurrection is for those who have the courage to die to those that imprison them some way or another from being with someone who cares about them.
Jesus could not stand being in the cave too long. He had to come out to meet those whom he cared about. That is when the Resurrection happened. Not when he went to heaven. It is when he chose to appear to those whom he loved, his friends in the room both men and women, in a form and a fashion that made sense to the scared them, that is being in human form.
On this Easter Sunday, I invite you to do the same. Do not be tangled up in the web of the world in your computer. Do not get infected by the malwares of the clouds that addicts you. Let not the outage of power of the world scare you. Allow the wind of grace to blow on you that you can float into the tangible company of someone. Someone is looking for you, someone is waiting to eat with you, and someone wants to break bread with you. These are what we call resurrection. It is then our eyes open and we recognize Jesus among us. Easter is here, because you break bread with God. Easter is not here when Jesus is here but when you are with Jesus.
Wish you a Happy and Blessed Easter.
