Resurrection Letter no.1

3rd Week of Easter, 2020

Dear Good Shepherd of Adair and friends,                            

I want you to know how much of a blessing you all are, to one another and to me and my family. Being your pastor is not an impersonal religious job -- for me, at least. Church is not religious school or the place where we learn and memorize a set curriculum. It’s life. It’s personal. It’s relationships. It’s struggle. It’s you, your families, and mine trying to turn our faces to God, listening for his voice, paying attention to one another, celebrating, weeping. Together. 

My family and I are wired in such a way that we can’t do this life of faith thing without exposing ourselves. We can’t do it without letting you in, inviting you to be part of our lives and our family. And I suspect that many of you have a faith that doesn’t always need me, or a pastor for that matter. And I don’t want to be that pastor who thinks you can’t survive without him. I’m not that important. The living Spirit of God works in this world and in your lives just fine without me. 

But we’re here. A pastor and his family. And we’re personal. Our faith journey is shared with you, your families, and your kids. This is how God wired faith to be lived. 

And we want it to be personal. So, I’m going to try something. I like trying things, to see if they work, if they shake things up, if they bring change in our lives, if they draw us further into life with God and one another. So here’s what I’m trying: writing letters.

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I know. It seems a bit...unusual? We don’t write letters much anymore in our culture. We used to do it by hand. You’d sit down, get a pen or pencil and paper, gather your thoughts, and start writing. It might take someone 20 minutes. We put time and thought into sharing our lives with someone. We’d reach out and wait for a reply. I think it’s a lost way of connecting and relating to others.  

The Apostle Paul wrote letters to his communities. So did Peter, James, and John. They wrote because they had a fire inside of them and they couldn’t keep quiet about it. They wanted the people they served and loved to jump into the story of Jesus head-first, to be fully immersed in the life of God, the life of grace that was wide open and available for them. 

This is what I want for us, too. For you and your family and mine. I am convinced that our lives are best when they are lived together in the hope of resurrection, and I won’t quit as long as I have breath in me. So, these letters might last years. I might be writing letters to your kids, and maybe to your kids’ kids. 

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As God has made things, every church needs regular reminders, regular encouragement of their identity and life as God’s people. Every church needs the reminder that someone is listening, thinking about them, looking out for them, and, yes, leading and steering them to the edge -- to the edge where comfortable life ends and resurrection life begins. Kind of like Keith Urban’s song, “Where the Blacktop Ends.” 

I know you all are pretty independent people who don’t need someone to look out for you. I understand that. I also understand that we weren’t made for rugged individualism. We’re made for God and one another. I'm not talking about some unhealthy dependence on others. We were made for interdependence. Our lives are dependent on God, yet intersecting with one another as image-bearers of God. We need each other to notice God’s activity among us. So I and my family are here, thinking of you, looking out for you, hoping to help us all navigate this life with the strong sense that God is among us.

One theologian said that the pastor’s job is simple and difficult. It’s simple because the focus is pointing out where God’s grace is alive and on working to draw people into participation in God’s activity in this world. But it’s also difficult because drawing attention to the grace of God alive in the world means that a pastor must do the brave work of being subversive. 

As I understand it, as a pastor I'm not just a nice but insignificant person in the community whose job is to make people happy and solve their problems with religion. A pastor does the challenging work of getting beneath the surface because God’s grace in Jesus overturns the patterns of living in this world: it forgives the unforgivable, it sets our lives on treasures that this world can’t give, it casts aside religious niceties in favor of seeing God in the mess of full blown real life. 

This is not easy. We're often too comfortable with our set ways of thinking and living. Pastors are supposed to mess those up because Jesus messed those up. Frankly, it’s much easier to ignore God.

And, no, as a pastor, I'm not the “religious professional” -- like God’s manager that all the employees have to listen to. I know you don’t all think that, but this has been part of our culture’s view of pastors, and it still comes out sometimes. But that’s not what I’m about. it’s just me. It’s just us. 

And let me be really clear: I don’t think for a second that being a pastor makes me better or more “holy.” And for sure it doesn’t make me or my family perfect. We all live and struggle and do stupid things every day. I and my family need the same injection of God’s Spirit in our life -- every day. Sometimes twice. That’s why this idea Jesus had of creating a community of people whose lives revolve around him is so vital. This is not the religion and God business, and I’m not the scary manager. This is personal; it’s family. We all need each other to overturn the soil together and give God's new life the space to grow.

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Here’s what I want to start with, in this first letter. I want to remind you of this: we are resurrection people. That’s our starting point. Always. I’ll explain this more in coming letters, but for now let’s start here.

Now, when I call us “resurrection people,” I don’t mean happy-clappy people who act like nothing’s wrong in the world. We don’t have to smile everyday because we’re resurrection people. Not every day has to have clear evidence of God’s goodness. 

Here’s what it means: no matter what, everyday is lived in hope. 

Defiant hope. Subversive hope. 

What's this hope all about? I was reminded of this the other day as I was running. At one point I had to stop at an intersection where a lawn-care company truck had stopped. As I looked at the truck, I realized I knew the company. Then I looked at the driver. I knew him, too. He was the owner of the company. He was also a high school classmate of mine. In fact, we went way back to grade school together. 

Before I could gather the lung power to yell at him, he beat me to it. In his nonchalant tone he said, “Hi Kyle,” as he pulled through the intersection. It was Wade. “Heeeyyy Waaade!” I hollered back. 

He said hi to me as if we saw each other regularly. The thing is, we hadn’t seen each other in a year. Before that it was a good ten or so years. And before that, it had been fifteen years (when we graduated back in 1994). 

The encounter made me smile. It didn’t take him long to “see” me. To remember me. And he called my name. It’s a great thing to be called by name, isn’t it? It does us good to be noticed, to be found and recognized as part of someone else’s life. This makes life worth living.

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That’s what the defiant hope of resurrection life is all about. It’s life lived knowing that God sees you. He knows you. He calls your name, as if it’s no big deal: “Hi Connie.” “Hi Mark.” “Hi Derek.” “Hi Casie.” “Hi Leann.” I see you. I know you, God says.

It’s almost too simple. It doesn't seem that defiant or subversive. But this is where maybe we underestimate things. 

You see, this being known is where the meaning of life begins and ends. Jesus, as God with us, means that God calls your name. He calls you out of a life of dead-ends, to remake you into his image, to live in his future. No matter where you’re at, you’re not beyond his reach or his call. Trust me. This is pretty defiant if you really think about it.

God called the slave-woman Hagar’s name in Genesis 21 when she was kicked out of the house, all alone, in the desert, with no hope and no future. God saw her and God announced a future for her beyond her imagination. She was known, she was called up into something, into life. It was hope that was defiant of her hopeless circumstances.

In the gospel of John, Jesus called Mary’s name as she stood crying in the graveyard wondering where Jesus was. This is where “resurrection” starts. This is what it means to be resurrection people -- that Jesus calls your name, even when you’re weeping in the graveyard and you don’t find any evidence of Jesus, any evidence of the presence of God anywhere. It’s just death all around. Yet through Jesus, God speaks your name. I have a future for you, he says. It's defiant because everything around us suggests otherwise. It's subversive because our future and hope are not ours to create.

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So, this is how I am beginning these resurrection letters. This is where it starts for us. God calls our names because the unimaginable is real -- resurrection is real. It’s our hope for the future and it defines our present lives now. 

So, I’ll end this letter with this word for you: You are part of God's resurrection people. Jesus, as God with us, calls your name to be part of a new existence. He calls your name to live, to live beyond happiness. He calls your name to be part of his subversive hope, to life defiantly, to know that at the end of the day your life actually matters and has a future because it shares in God’s identity and in God’s restorative work. 

God calls you to join with Jesus who dances in the graveyards. 

With defiant, subversive hope,

Pastor Kyle