Newspaper Columns by Bishop Paul V. Marshall
What Should Die so New Life can Happen?
Bishop Paul V. Marshall
April 2001[This is Bishop Paul Marshall's April column for local newspapers in eastern and northeastern PA. It appears in The Morning Call on the first Saturday of the month and in various other newspapers throughout our 14 counties at other times during the month. It is an edited version of the column in the April edition of Diocesan Life. Thanks. --Bill]
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.
From Maundy Thursday through Easter Day, Christians celebrate the "paschal mystery," an ancient way to describe Jesus' Passover through death to resurrection. We celebrate the life, dying and new life of Jesus Christ as both the pattern and the substance of life.
The celebration suggests a question. Are there things in the "everything else" of our personal and communal practices of Christianity that need to die if Christ is to reign?
It's a question worth asking of ourselves. It's worth asking in our congregations and agencies. What about my life should die so new life can happen? What should die about this place where I worship or work so new life can happen?
On the stone that blocked Jesus' tomb were inscribed the words: "We've never done it that way before." We all know that stone. It keeps us fearful of what might be the Holy Spirit's promptings.
Throughout the Bible, God is up to the new and unexpected. Unexpected gifts at unexpected times. The Christ who emerged from the tomb has a newness that we both can and cannot understand.
A standard joke among seminarians nervously anticipating ordination exams is that they will be asked to "solve the paschal mystery." Explaining the purpose of life would, indeed, be a difficult essay. Nevertheless, working out what Christ's saving act means is the life-task each Christian faces.
"Detective of the divine" is part of our daily discipleship.
The clues? Jesus of Nazareth came to seek and save the lost, offering the love of God to anyone who would receive it as a gift.
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.
The "mystery" is that the life, dying, and new life of Jesus are both the pattern and the substance of life. We are reconciled to God. Eternal life filters into our present experience and changes us.
With those facts, the detective goes to work. What in my life should change so new life can happen?
This is a question also for organized communities that cynics, with a bit of a sneer, call "institutions."
New Bethany Ministries in south Bethlehem, next door to our Diocesan House, has for 16 years served people who are poor, homeless or mentally ill - many persons whose lives have often been just a helping hand away from despair. Two years ago, it had to face major surgery. It had to die because of changed circumstances. It 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 God yearning to work in our lives.
The pattern of dying-rising-transformation is meant to shape and direct persons and institutions.
The resurrection of Jesus is not radical CPR, or a mere reversal of physical decay. Jesus is not Lazarus in capital letters. In Christ, we are "a new creation." Connected to the past, but part of a new reality.
Where is God calling individuals and groups to walk the mysterious path to joy today? That is the Easter mystery. The only way to "solve" it is for a person or a community to roll away that heavily-inscribed stone, and engage Life.
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