The messy withdrawal of American troops and civilians from Afghanistan, the fires in California and in our own Minnesota, the hurricanes in Louisiana and Texas, the impending and inevitable problems associated with climate change, the political chaos in Haiti, the political division in our own nation, the racial turmoil unleashed by the killing of George Floyd, the pernicious and persistent thread of Covid-19, the perennial challenges of homelessness and hunger in our communities, the strained relationships and everyday grinding challenges of our personal lives…

That is at least part of the story of our lives these days.

While the characters and the specific events of the story have changed from year to year and generation to generation, the fact that the world is overall messy and, in places, utterly shattered should come as a surprise to no one. As I say often, the world is amazingly beautiful, but it is also spectacularly broken.  Yep, beautiful but broken… that about sums up the situation. And yet…

There is the rest of the story.

The rest of the story is that it was for this beautiful but broken world that Jesus came. Jesus came to reconcile us to both God and to each other. Jesus came to restore the dream that God originally had for the world when God created the world.  Jesus came to heal the infirmities, to bind up the broken hearts and broken lives.  Jesus came to piece together all the broken parts of creation into a harmonious union.  Jesus came to glue it all back together again so that we and the rest of the world might be not just as good as new, but even better than before.  That is our belief.  That is our faith.  We proclaim it in church on Sunday mornings, and we live it with our lives every day of the week.  Or at least we should, because…

God is counting on us to be heroes in the story.   

Howard Thurman, the prominent author, theologian and civil rights leader said, “Don’t ask what the world needs.  Ask what makes you come alive and go do it.  Because what the world needs is people who have come alive!” Jesus came in order to bring us alive, with the expectation that alive folks help to bring about more aliveness in folks!  Resurrection, God’s act of bringing alive the crucified Jesus to life again, is not simply a story from way back when.  Resurrection is The Coming Alive Story that God is writing right here, right now in this beautiful yet broken world.  And each moment God is inviting us to be heroes in that story.

~Father Art