Change has been our topic during the Season of Easter, which
is the 50 days between Easter Sunday and Pentecost Sunday. It is a time to
think about the direction of our lives as individual Christians, and as a
corporate body.
At the very beginning of the Book of Acts, the author
summarizes Jesus’ appearances after the Resurrection. “After his suffering he presented himself alive to them by many
convincing proofs, appearing to them over the course of forty days and speaking
about the kingdom of God. While staying with them, he ordered them not to leave
Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father. ‘This’, he said,
‘is what you have heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be
baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.’” (Acts 1:3-5)
The disciples must have wondered about what being ‘baptized
with the Holy Spirit’ might mean. As usual, they seem to have been confused,
thinking that Jesus is going to do the work. They ask, “Lord, is this the time when you
will restore the kingdom to Israel?” Jesus sets them straight. “It is not for you to know the times or
periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive
power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria,
and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:6-8)
Jesus tells his followers that they are the ones who will tell the story and change the world and even
bring about the kingdom of God. Imagine the change of their definition of mission
those words must have required. Instead of just following along as Jesus did
things, the faithful men and women were now asked to act on behalf of God. Those who had been with Jesus throughout his
ministry in Galilee and Judea were not ‘movers and shakers’ of the 1st
Century world. They were fishermen, shopkeepers, wives, husbands-just regular
folks.
The hymn I Sing a Song of the Saints of God is one I learned in Sunday School. It was written by
Lesbia Scott, a young mother who composed several children’s hymns. She
published them in 1929 as Everyday Hymns
for Little Children. Scott’s hymn says, “And one was a doctor, and one was
a queen,/And one was a shepherdess on the green…And one was a soldier, and one was
a priest,/And one was slain by a fierce wild beast…” She goes on to note, “You
can meet them in school, or in lanes, or at sea,/In church, or in trains, or in
shops, or at tea,/For the saints of God
are folk just like me,/And I mean to be one too.”
Like the first disciples, we are to be “witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of
the earth.” Like the first disciples we are ordinary women and men who are
to live out a life different than the one outlined by the world in general.
In a letter from a Nazi concentration camp, Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, a German pastor and theologian, stated “[it is] through the
resurrection of Christ that a new and purifying wind can blow through our
present world...If a few people really
believed that and acted on it in their daily lives, a great deal would be
changed. To live in the light of the resurrection — that is what Easter
means.”
Scott sings, “They loved their Lord so dear, so dear,/And
his love made them strong;/And they followed the right, for Jesus's sake,/The
whole of their good lives long… They lived not only in ages past,/There are
hundreds of thousands still/The world is bright with the joyous saints/Who love
to do Jesus' will.”
How can we ‘live in the light of the resurrection’?
In what way can we live as if we believe God’s ‘love made
them strong’?
Is there something you can do today or this week to be a
‘joyous saint’ who lives as if the ‘purifying wind’ of the resurrected Christ
is actually blowing through the world?
