Hey my friends,

Holy Week and Easter have impacted me differently this year as I know it probably has for many of you as well. So, today I just want to invite us to really take to heart how those closest to Jesus felt in their impossible situation as they grappled with Jesus’ death and the fears they had towards the powers that be in their world. I feel this will help us to draw hope from the Jesus' resurrection as we face seemingly impossible situations and similar fears in our world today.

Resources to consider:

Below I wanted to share some resources that have really been encouraging to me over this last year. I hope you find them as inspiring and motivating as I have.

​-Valarie Kaur: Breathe! Push! The Labor of Revolutionary Love I would encourage you to go listen to Kaur's profound speech here if you haven't already. I would also highly recommend her book "See No Stranger" if you haven't read it yet. Her story and her work have been perpetually inspiring to me.

​-Tim Mackie's presentation of the gospel of Jesus. I will go to this presentation often as a source of encouragement. Tim Mackie, the founder of The Bible Project, has such a simple, yet profound way of gently confronting what we've gotten wrong about the central message of Christianity in our culture.

​-The Gospel in Chairs | Pastor Brian Zahnd I have utilized this way of using folding chairs to present the gospel of Jesus in several sermons and I always find it so meaningful. Pastor Brian Zahnd, whom I admire, does a wonderful job presenting "the gospel in chairs" here in this video. He contrasts the way ancient Christians would have understood the gospel of Jesus with the way many modern Christians understand the gospel of Jesus. It is well worth your time.

​-How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life and Faith By Mariann Edgar Budde. Many of you will remember Bishop Budde's decisive stance she took not only with the incident that happened outside her church where a group of nonviolent protestors were cleared for a presidential photo op with a Bible, but also her powerful sermon during the inaugural prayer service where she asked the incoming administration for mercy and compassion on those who were scared. Her book has been a continued source of encouragement and insight. The audiobook is also read by her, so if you'd rather listen, that would be a great route.

Okay, onto today's content.

Unexpected Resurrection

I had to say goodbye to my dog Ripley on Wednesday this Holy Week. She was a Boxer-German Shorthair mix with the heart of an angel. I adopted her from my local Humane Society in 2014 when she was two years old and she was by my side for eleven years. For more than five years of that time, it was just her and I. She was not only my adventure buddy through the Idaho wilderness, but she was there during some of the darkest and loneliest points in my life. On a night when things got especially dark and I was contemplating giving up on everything, she crawled up on my chest, with all 60 pounds of her, and put her head under my chin. It was 2 am and she had never done that before. She could sense my anguish and I just held her and wept. The next day, I called my mom to tell her I needed help, which began the process of getting the mental healthcare I desperately needed. In more ways than one, Ripley saved my life. She would continue to show unconditional love to everyone that came into my life, staying faithfully by my side through every one of life's changes.

As I watched her health rapidly decline these last few months, I noticed myself just shifting into denial. I didn't want to lose her. I didn't want to confront life without her. I didn't want to believe my vet when she explained that Ripley wouldn’t survive the procedures she actually needed and the pain medication was just delaying the inevitable.

Thankfully, Rebecca acknowledged how hard this was for me, but continued to encourage me to put Ripley's needs as the main priority. So I finally pushed myself to schedule a quality of life appointment for Ripley. When the findings were the same, I forced myself to schedule her final appointment, which ended up being this last Wednesday of Holy Week.

I couldn’t bear to have her last moments be in an unfamiliar place, so I scheduled it for my home on her own bed, where I could be there holding her. I wanted to be by her side until the end just like she had been by mine. As she lay there in my arms and took her last breath, it felt like I was losing a piece of my heart.

Needless to say, I have been grieving that day long before it actually came and now that it has come, I am grieving all the more. It seems like such an unjust thing that dogs who love unconditionally like her get such short lives. It seems like such an unjust thing that the world loses love like hers while such animosity seems to run rampant in our world today.

Well, when I brought my three year old son Foster home from school later that same day, I made him a snack and we sat at the kitchen table together. As he ate, I saw him scanning the house and I knew he was looking for Ripley. He asked “Where’s Ripley, da da?” I couldn’t hold back the tears as I answered and said, “she’s gone, sweetheart.” He saw my tears and said, “aww, do you miss her da da?” “Yeah, I really do, buddy.” He said, “I’m sorry, da da. I love you.” Then got down and gave me the biggest bear hug his little three year old body could muster. Then he looked at me right in the eyes, put his little hands on my face, and said, “don’t worry, dad. She will come back Friday.”

You see, Foster has had it in his mind lately that Fridays are the days when all the good things happen. They are the days we have had family get togethers and days we have taken him to to fun places like the zoo or the park. They are days that we have told him, “guess where we are going this Friday?” So now, anytime there is something exciting happening, he will ask, “is it going to happen this Friday?” Friday is a day filled with hope for him. I love the way his eyes light up when he talks about the hope and expectation of “Friday.”

So when he said, “She will come back Friday,” about Ripley, he was using his hope about Fridays to encourage me. He was utterly confident in that moment that even though I was sad now, all I needed to do was wait until Friday, and I wouldn’t be sad anymore. His innocence, his confidence, his encouragement, his hope, all comforted me so much in such a deep moment of grief. I love him so much.

That First Holy Week

As this was all happening during Holy Week, I couldn’t help but think of all that those closest to Jesus went through between his arrest, trial, execution, and resurrection. How their experiences and various reactions to their reality revealed a lot about what they believed about Jesus and their world.

We saw Judas betray Jesus after following him for years only to take his own life in despair after Jesus was condemned to death (Matt 27:3-10). Some have suggested that Judas may have betrayed Jesus because he really did believe that Jesus was the Son of God and betraying him would force Jesus’ hand to call down legions of angels and conquer Rome. So when Judas saw that plan wasn't going to happen but Jesus was going to be condemned to death instead, it was just too much for him to take.

We saw Peter deny any association with Jesus three times as Jesus predicted he would. Peter had rebuked Jesus for saying that he was going to be handed over and crucified (Matthew 16:22). Given the prevailing notion that the messiah would be a military leader who would lead a conquest against Rome, Peter’s response to Jesus predicting his death at the hands of the very religious and political leaders he was supposed to be overthrowing makes sense. This may have also been the reason Peter was just so disillusioned by Jesus’ arrest and execution. He really thought Jesus was the one who would save them, but Jesus’ arrest and execution seemed like strong evidence to the contrary. You can’t overthrow Rome with a dead messiah.

We saw many of the disciples lock themselves away out of fear of the authorities after Jesus’ execution (John 20:19-29). This is a legitimate fear given how their leader was just executed and it would only make sense that as Jesus’ followers, they would probably be next on the authority’s list. This is how the authoritarian union between dogmatic religion and the empire tend to operate after all.

We saw many of the female disciples who followed Jesus not only remain near the cross even after some fled when Jesus was arrested (Matthew 26:56; 27:55-56), but they also bravely went out in public to pay their respects to Jesus and ensure he receive a proper burial according to their sacred Jewish customs (Mark 16:1-3). I say bravely because historical records are clear that Rome had no reservations about crucifying women who were deemed as a threat by the empire. These disciples of Jesus showed great courage by staying near the cross and for showing their faces in public after his crucifixion at his tomb in solidarity with him even when all seemed lost.

Among all these diverse reactions from Jesus’ followers, we do find a common thread. None of them seemed to actually be expecting Jesus to rise from the dead. Jesus’ resurrection surprised them all. The main difference was where the resurrected Jesus found them. Some had fled. Some had locked themselves away. Some had stuck close no matter what.

With all that is happening in our time right now, I have found myself resonating with a lot of these diverse responses from Jesus’ followers. I continue to grieve over how the ways of Jesus have been betrayed, arrested, mocked, and crucified again, mainly by crowds of people who claim to follow him. And some days I feel more like those courageous women disciples who stuck with Jesus no matter what while other days I feel like all I want to do is lock myself away and hunker down from all that concerns me about the “governing authorities.”

So I have to keep reminding myself that the resurrection was unexpected for all those first disciples in their very scary world. When they heard the news and saw him alive again, there was an immediate shift in hope, joy, and motivation to keep going. I have to keep reminding myself that resurrection isn’t just something we celebrate about Jesus, but it is a goal to pursue in our world. It is a way of life to practice here and now. It is a daily practice. It is the proactive insistence in a world of evil and death that love and life will have the last word over us. It is a way of resistance.

We must never forget that the resurrection happens in a garden, where Jesus sends a woman in all four gospel accounts to be the first to carry the good news of the resurrection to the disciples. We must not miss how this is a grand reversal of what happened in the first garden. The Garden of Eden. Where the God forbidden first fruits of sin and death were shared by Eve and Adam, God in the flesh Jesus sends Mary to carry the first fruits of the resurrection to share with others. Where broken relationships sent all of creation into chaos and disarray, Jesus brings about healing, wholeness, and restoration.

Much like those first disciples, we live in a world where there is so much to grieve over and so much to be concerned about. In this world, the unexpected resurrection of Jesus confronts us with a similar question as well: will we allow the things we are grieving and causing us great concern to lock us away in fear or will we continue courageously embodying the ways of Jesus in the midst of our grief and concerns, hoping against all odds that we may soon be surprised by the unexpected, redeeming, and restoring work of God?

My hope is that like my son Foster we can look into the eyes of a grieving world and say with a confident love, after a big bear hug, that death isn’t going to have the last word over us. My hope is that we can live with such a confident love that our grieving world cannot help but hope that things may still yet be redeemed even in the face of the impossible.

Jesus is risen.

Jesus is risen indeed.

May we embody the unexpected resurrection of Jesus our world so desperately needs.