Doing What the Stone Could Not

Easter has come and gone again (at least in the Western tradition - the Orthodox believers still have till April 27th to anticipate this centerpiece of the Christian faith). As Easter drew near this year, it occurred to me that the Church has often managed to do what the stone failed to do - keep Jesus in the tomb.

After all of the terrible & bloody tortures of the Passion, and being buried behind a stone door, Jesus managed to defeat Death & escape the tomb only to be delivered into the hands of a Church which has all too often domesticated him, softened his message, and kept him shut within the walls of Churches, where his resurrection goes largely unnoticed by a world which could really use some Good News.

Near the end of the 19th century, a noted British Baptist minister named C.H. Spurgeon was involved in debates about the truth of Scripture. He suggested that you defend the Bible the same way you would defend a full-grown lion-you turn it loose.

Christians have all too often acted as if Christ is their own special possession who needs protection from a rough & tumble world. 'Blue laws' (forbidding most commerce in many communities on Sundays) were an earlier day's effort to maintain a semblance of holiness, or at least better behavior for the day. [As my mother was fond of pointing out back then, this didn't keep the Christians (including us) from patronizing restaurants 'en masse' after Church].

This is a plea, I guess, for the Church not to settle for keeping Christ always within the walls of the Church building. Sunday morning is not only the most segregated hour of the week (as Senator Obama recently reminded us), it is the most invisible hour of the week for most of the world. For the unchurched (oh...there's a churchy word), the things that happen within churches are mostly unknown or, even more scandalous, uninteresting.

Turning Jesus loose into the world beyond the comforts of Church life will be messy, and it will make most Christians uncomfortable. It will take serious effort on the part of church-folks to move beyond the contentment that has characterized most church life for the last century. If the Church is brave enough to truly engage the world with Christ & not just with church-stuff, however, there may be a delightful surprise waiting.

The One who couldn't be held in by the stone door of the tomb is already there.

BLOG NOTE: If this is your first visit to "Leaving Nadderby", you are strongly urged to go to the February 2008 link for "Looking Back" as an introduction to the site. My blog advisor is urging me to increase production & to understand the nature of "blogs" & not to approach each one as a piece of writing (so that more thoughts get published more often). For this week & April, I'll commit to 3/week, on matters great & small, as a way of trying to learn that. As always, I am thrilled to get your feedback, on the site or in person (even if it is just 'Hey, I'm here!'). Thanks for the generosity I've been shown as this begins. - Steve