I teach Sunday School. Try to resist imagining me in a habit wielding a yellow ruler, will you.
What is fun about teaching is that I get the occasion to tie spiritual life lessons into tight fortune cookie statements that I then try to force feed into 14 and 15 year old teenagers. Like that isn’t tough. Where is my Olympic medal?
One of the drawbacks is the fact that sometime, every now and then, I have a moment, a flash of sunlight in my mind, where I just want to read a passage of scripture as though it were poetry and make my class just sit there and let it sink in. I have these mental images of me standing behind a mic in a coffee shop, dressed in all black, hair dyed and plastered across my forehead reciting a passage and closing to nothing but snapping. As I sit down the barrista with bleached blond hair, tattooed arms and sporting more bracelets than any free man should leans over to me and says “Deep, man…” The greatest compliment for a poetry jam.
But the poetry I read, the depth attributed isn’t my own. It comes from a fundamentally spiritual place. A place reserved for that which is sacred, pure, honest. It comes from the same habitat as hope, as love, as that simple, calm feeling of peace you get weekend mornings in summer.
The other day I was asked to prepare my favorite passage of scripture regarding Easter for a Palm Sunday celebration. I didn’t have the opportunity to recite it or expose it to the unfashioned minds of my class. But then, that is one of the reasons I have this blog – I get to spew any unqualified drivel here I want. :)
Quoting from Paul:
Behold, I shew you a mystery;
We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.
In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. When this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written,
Death is swallowed up in victory.
O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”
More than anything my belief is one of hope. Hope in the future, hope in mankind, hope in progression, improvement. Hope that things will get better, that good will triumph. Hope that I can become better. Hope that all that is good in this world will stay and all that isn’t will be replaced.
That that which is corruptible will become incorruptible.
Easter is when I remember and celebrate the opening of the greatest hope that I can have. Easter is when we are reminded that death is a doorway, not a wall. That the grave is a waypoint, not a destination. Easter marks the good news which the Gospel should scream from the rooftops.
Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here.
He is risen.
