the church that brings me LIFE

Let me tell you about the church that brings me life...

It is the church of Christ’s empty tomb. In fact prior to knowledge of the tombs reality, the church itself was a fearful huddled mass of confusion and anxiety. But something happened. Jesus happened. His life in God conquered his death…and his reign ensued. And when this early church witnessed it, the church went from fearful speculation about a dark future, to open proclamation that the Jesus who had been crucified had been raised from the dead. With Jesus at its head, it threw its locked doors open and embraced a hostile world for the sake of the God who was on the move with his kingdom and reign.

It embraced Jesus’ life in a world of death. In a world of darkness and cynicism it stood tall in hopefulness. In a world of sickness and blindness it healed and gave sight. In a world of seeking people it pointed, not to itself, but to the Risen One. In a world of confusion and death, it offered assurance (not certainty) that the God who raised Jesus from the dead is the same God that gets the last word in all things–a word of life, of restoration, of forgiveness, of transformation.

This is the church that brings me life. It is the church of the Risen Jesus I’m called to serve. It is a church not of duty, but passionate joy, not of gruesome sacrifice, but of priestly surrender. It is a church that gives life because it follows the Jesus that gives life, and lives his story with abandon.

I know many of you have been wounded and hurt by the church as have I. But tonight I remember, and ask you to as well, the Jesus whose body was broken for the world, and for the broken body of his church–which is nothing more than the world with a witness. The Jesus who was broken is the Jesus who is now alive and whole and beckoning.

Let’s follow him and be the church he’s always had in mind.

From these cold white plains…I write for his glory and his Name.

Nathan