Rick’s+ Reflection

You may remember hearing some music that was new to you, and recognizing a common style that revealed its composer as Beethoven or Bach or the Beatles. You may recognize a painting as Picasso’s or Pollack’s. Cummings, Seuss, Grisham, Rawlings, Ludlow and Michener all have recognizable writing styles. Western science developed because God’s creative style is both common and recognizable. The same geometric patterns are commonly repeated throughout nature. The discovery of DNA, the periodic table, the electromagnetic spectrum, carbon-based life, the search for a general field theory and many other things all reveal that God’s common creative style is recognizable.

Not surprisingly, the central claim of the Gospel is not some isolated event, but is “vintage God” -- God’s common, creative style. That God raised Jesus from the dead is not simply some wild tale from grief-stricken, hysterical women. It is not a cynical device of the early church to keep its movement going in spite of the unplanned loss of its leader. It is not just a poetic way to describe his impact on us (his message or his memory “living on in our hearts”). It is not just a mythical way to describe the Platonic idea of a disembodied consciousness no longer here but somehow present with God. Rather, the central claim of Christianity, that Jesus rose from the dead bodily, was and is intended to be what it appears to be at face value. It is the claim that despite all expectations, Jesus literally and physically overcame death. It is the claim that Jesus actually lived again in physical, bodily, sensory ways. He could be seen, touched, heard. He bore wounds. He laughed. He ate fish, of all things! And this resurrection, upon reflection, is God’s common, creative style.

Natural fires occur on occasion in the forests of the west making it possible for the Sequoia to grow and flourish. Worms and bacteria break down dead organic matter to provide rich nutrients for new life. Infant mammals feed from their own mothers. Jesus put it like this: Unless grain falls into the earth and dies, it cannot bear fruit. New life comes from old life. Life comes from death. In other words, the resurrection is not an invented tale to comfort us about an unacceptable loss. Rather, it is God’s common, creative style. Throughout God’s creation, death of the old is what leads to and makes possible the new. So often we try to thwart this process, clinging to our old ways, our old things, trying to prevent their natural demise. But unless we let go of the old, the new cannot come. Resurrection is not God’s solution to the problem of death. Rather, death is the means to resurrection – the goal toward which God has been moving all along. Easter is not God’s answer to Good Friday. Rather Good Friday is the doorway to Easter. This is God’s common, creative style -- “vintage God.”

The Lord be with you!

Rick +