DELIBERATELY DIVERSE | Rev. Terry Pierce
“Deliberately Diverse” represents the individual thoughts of Taylor friends who never completely agree about anything but enjoy diverse discussions.
“On Christmas morning, we find the manger full of life; on Easter morning, we find the tomb empty of death.
We know the whole truth now: Death is not the end and life as we know it is only the beginning of life.” — Joan Chittester, The Liturgical Year In-between, of course, we encounter Jesus and the cross and Jesus’ lessons about how to live in eternal life now – not in some future cloudy palace floating among saints and angels. Here and now, surrounded by the saints and angels who inhabit our communities and our lives; who feed the hungry and visit the prisons and risk their lives for the sake of the broken and dispossessed.
In that space between manger and tomb, we encounter the divine irony of Jesus’ closeness with his disciples around the table with what we know happened next — their betrayal of Jesus in the garden.
Jesus, light of the world, is swallowed into the darkness of desertion and denial by those who claim to love Christ most. These are the human acts that we encounter in ourselves, when we remember how we fell asleep in the garden and abandoned our friend. We missed the opportunity to join the prayerful Jesus as he wept with agony at the broken suffering of the world.
Jesus invites us to find life, eternal life, here and now. Jesus invites us to pick up his cross. I struggled to understand what that meant. Was I to glorify my own suffering; to announce to the world all that I had given up to follow Jesus?
Jesus does not invite us to pick up the cross of our own sorrows and longings. Jesus invites us to pick up the cross that he rose from, the cross he carried not to lift himself up, but to lift up the poor and the vulnerable and those treated as disposable.
Jesus did not challenge the Roman empire and the political leaders of Jerusalem for the sake of power. Jesus challenged for the sake of love; for the sake of caring for people.
Today I am challenged to live a life that nourishes life. I am not called to bury myself in the tomb of my own desires and wanting and needing. I am called to walk out of the tomb of self-absorption and self-centeredness into a life of loving and caring and being present in this exact moment.
Hope stands before us with arms wide open to love, forgive and welcome us into relationships. Love demands that our lives and bodies be a shelter for the dispossessed, the disenfranchised, the abused and the forgotten; that hope and love create a world where death is no more.
Pierce is the vicar of St.
James’ Episcopal Church in Taylor and can be reached by email at [email protected].
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