He Is Risen; but I am tired!

revjmike's blog

I was born two days after Christmas in 1944. Even though I cannot remember it, I am sure I was in my mother's arms in public worship at Easter in 1945. In fact, I was probably in worship at what is now Christ United Methodist Church in Ashland, Kentucky, the church we attended until I reached high school age.

I was born in Florida at an Army Air Corps Hospital near Sebring. At the age of three months my mother and I traveled by train to my parents' hometown of Ashland while he continued to serve in the Air Corps. Since I have no memory of missing Easter worship for the rest of my 60+ years, I feel certain the two of us, perhaps with my grandparents on the Mansfield side and aunts and uncles as well, were there at "Second Methodist" to celebrate this, the greatest of all Christian Holy Days. I have no doubt that, even as an infant, I could tell there was something special about this day when the crowd overflowed into the balcony and the outer hallway.

The reason I am writing about this is that today, March 27, 2005, I was not in a service of Christian worship. Probably for the first time in my life, and definitely for the first time in my memory, I failed to attend corporate worship on Easter Day. In fact, since my retirement from United Methodist ministry, and my current employment as a Medical Technologist on night shift, I have become a virtual church dropout.

The reasons for this are manifold; but my shift work, coupled with the two hour drive to and from work each day leave me exhausted on Sundays and Mondays, my "real" days off. My wife Gay, who is angry with the United Methodist Church anyway, refuses to go anyway. That makes my decision easier to make; and, to my surprise, I didn't feel guilty about missing worship; but I was disappointed that I wasn't with a local congregation in all the joy of the hope of Resurrection we possess because of what we celebrate this day.

I have no idea what Resurrection is like. I know it isn't what happens to a chrysalis when it becomes a butterfly. I don't believe that our decayed bodies will suddenly become living, physical bodies either. Even if they do, will we be recognized by others? There is evidence that Jesus' resurrected body didn't look like the one he had prior to Resurrection. Just look at the stories in the four Gospels, especially Luke 24 if you want to see what I'm talking about. Yet I do believe there is life beyond the grave in some form; and I believe that hope of Resurrection began on that "third day" long ago when by God's own desires Jesus was Resurrected.

So, since I was not in corporate worship, I am reminding myself, and any others who read this, that "He is not here! He is risen, just as he said."

I also want to say that Jesus' Resurrection means we who believe should be sure that Christ and Christ's message are living in us. The scriptures say, "Christ in you, the hope of glory." In this glorious hope I live out each day. In this glorious hope I celebrate each day's rising from the "deathlike sleep" to another day of life and joy in the Holy Spirit.

May God bless us with many more days of life in this world, or in the world to come.

Mike