Diocesan
Life Columns
Bishop Paul V. Marshall
Bishop Paul's writes a monthly column for the Diocesan Newspaper, Diocesan
Life, edited by Communication
Minister, Bill Lewellis.
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What Should Die So New Life Can Happen?
Bishop Paul V. Marshall
Diocesan Life, April 2001
"Solve the paschal mystery." It's a standard joke among seminarians
nervously anticipating their ordination exams. "Paschal mystery" is
an ancient way to describe Jesus' Passover through death to resurrection.
It's what we celebrate in the liturgies of Maundy Thursday through
Easter Day.
The nervous joke has a serious side. "Solving" the mystery means
explaining the purpose of life, the universe, and everything. That's
why it would be a difficult essay test. It is not just a test question
for people who want to qualify for ordination. Working out what
Christ's saving act means is the life-task each of us faces. "Detective
of the divine" is part of our daily discipleship.
The events the detective has to deal are simple to relate. Jesus
of Nazareth came to seek and save the lost, offering the love of
God to anyone - anyone who would receive it as a gift - offering
it to his own people and to the rest of the world as well.
He was a critic of lovelessness, spiritual arrogance, oppression,
and everything else that destroys life. The debate about who actually
killed him is silly. Nobody wants a person like that in their face
all the time.
Business as usual on the planet got him betrayed by his friend
and killed in a world where "church and state" were not that separate.
In his dying he never betrayed his mission to be the Word of God's
love. God raised him to new life, and everything in creation reverences
his name.
The "mystery" is that the life, dying, and new life of Jesus are
both the pattern and the substance of the life that is given to
us in Holy Baptism. What is past is forgiven; we are reconciled
to God. The mystery is that, as we speak and act for Christ in
the circumstances of our own lives, we will have moments of effectiveness
and moments that are like dying.
The eternal life we have in our Savior filters into our present
experience and changes us.
As our baptism continues each week in the celebration of the eucharist,
this death-and-life pattern continues to shape and direct us.
With those facts, the detective goes to work. How do I see my
life as the arena for working the works of God and changing in
the process? For each of us the answer is different. The burden
of much of my preaching is to help people look in daily life for
opportunities to serve and to be changed.
What is true for individuals is true for organized communities
- what cynics call "institutions" with a bit a sneer.
New Bethany Ministries is for me an example of an organization
that had to die because of changed circumstances, that had to face
major surgery, and that has emerged stronger and more broadly-based
than ever.
This did not happen because people sat in a room hoping for the
best. It happened and continues to happen because people, mostly
lay people, give their time and energy to plan for it and to make
it happen. In one case, an individual leader gave significant personal
money to keep the ministry going - and never asked for a receipt
or recognition.
From that kind of emptying of self, God can and does bring life.
The Holy Spirit is not just a idea in the Creeds, but is God yearning
to work in our lives.
I bring the pattern of dying-rising-transformation to the institutional
level, because it is worth asking in each of our congregations
and agencies: what about this place should die so that new life
can happen?
The only necessities for a gathered Episcopal church are people,
a priest, a Bible, a prayer book, some bread and some wine. Everything
else is a cultural decision. Are there things in the "everything
else" of our personal and communal practices of Christianity that
need to die if Christ is to reign more fully in our lives and in
our communities?
On the stone that blocked Jesus' tomb, as we all know, were inscribed
the words: "We've never done it that way before." We all know that
stone. It often keeps us fearful of what might be the Holy Spirit's
promptings.
God is, throughout the Bible, always up to the new and unexpected.
Thus the Christ who emerged from the tomb has a newness that we
both can and cannot understand. St. Paul simply calls the resurrected
body a "spiritual body," but is clear that it is new and better.
And unexpected.
The resurrection is not radical CPR, or a mere reversal of physical
decay. Jesus is not Lazarus in capital letters. Much more, for
St. Paul, resurrection life is "a new creation." Connected to the
past, but part of a new reality.
The Easter mystery is this: I know that Christ died and rose for
me, you, and everyone. I know that Christ makes his experience
mine and yours in baptism. I know that Christ's cross was his path
to joy. I know that he is with us "even to the end of the ages," and
that "whether we live or die, we are the Lord's."
The mystery is: where is he calling individuals and groups to
walk the mysterious path to joy today? The only way to "solve" such
a mystery is for a person or a community to roll away that heavily-inscribed
stone, and engage Life.
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