“What now?”
I suspect it was a question the grieving first disciples asked in the aftermath of Jesus’ crucifixion. It’s impossible to imagine their overwhelming sense of loss, their infinite sadness, their utter hopelessness.
Jesus … is … dead or so they thought.
Within days, when news of the empty tomb spread, they could ask the question once again, but this time with joy and anticipation.
“What now?!!!”
Everything
had changed.
When it is deemed safe once again to return to life outside our homes, we, too, will find ourselves asking, “What now?”
We can ask the question with joy and anticipation. We are resurrection people. We know the rest of the story.
That first Easter was not simply an unimaginable ending.
It was also a beginning.
"The proof that God raised Jesus from the dead is not the empty tomb, but the full hearts of his transformed disciples,” wrote Clarence Jordan, founder of Koinonia Farms, which inspired Millard Fuller to begin Habitat for Humanity.
“The crowning evidence that he lives is not a vacant grave, but a spirit-filled fellowship. Not a rolled-away stone, but a carried-away church."
Once again, we have reached a moment in history where
everything
has changed, and the world will desperately need us to be a carried-away church.
The biggest question each of us must ponder, as we continue to distance ourselves from others, is this … Will
we
be changed? Not simply on the surface, but truly and deeply changed.
When it’s safe to do so, will we move closer once again
only
to family and friends or will we move closer to the poor, the hungry, the homeless, the marginalized?
Long before the world shut down in 2020, we were safer at home. We have always been safer at home. We will always be safer at home.
“A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for,” John Shedd wrote in 1928. Insert the word “disciple” in place of “ship” in that sentence and read it again.
We were not called by Christ to stay in safe harbor.
God sent Jesus.
Jesus sends us.
It’s all a part of the story, which didn’t end with the resurrection. The book of Acts tells us of a final earthly encounter between the first disciples and Jesus, 40 days after the empty tomb, just before his ascension to heaven. It is undeniably a sending forth.
“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you,” Jesus told them, “and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
(Acts 1:8)
Witnessing to the love of Christ and serving others always begins at home and where we go about our daily living (Jerusalem), but it does not stay there. We are called to witness and serve in all places – even where we don’t look like everyone else, where we might not be welcomed (Samaria) – to the ends of the earth.
Through the power of the Holy Spirit, our extraordinary God can and will work through the lives of ordinary people like you and me to change the world, often in acts that may seem simple or even insignificant to us in the moment.
How can we find where we are meant to serve, the places to give of our time and our talents and our resources? By stepping out and trusting God to lead us to those places, when that time to go comes back around again.
“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet,” Theologian Frederick Buechner wrote. That meeting isn’t likely to happen at home.
It is where we find ourselves for now, but we can look forward to the day when we leave safe harbor, filled with joy and anticipation, confident in why we were created and in the calling of our Creator.
“What now?” can’t be answered by going back to the way things were before everything changed. It could not on that First Easter. It cannot now.
It is time for us not to simply speak of resurrection, but also, in the words of author Wendell Berry, to “practice resurrection” as well.
***For information on Mission opportunities
,
please contact Forrest White, Director of Mission Ministries (fwhite@firstumc.org).
