Wearing our crash helmets to church
It was late in the day on Easter Sunday. After full days and festive celebrations, I was mindlessly watching TV. A movie titled “Deep Impact” was on, the story line being that the earth was being threatened by large asteroids, the impact of which would result in extinction of life as we know it. Actor Robert Duval (a class act) and his space shuttle crew sacrificed themselves to blow up the greater asteroid in space. To my great relief we were saved.
The movie title, “Deep Impact,” seemed familiar. I realized that I had heard it earlier in the day in a powerful Easter sermon preached by Dean Bill Ellis at St. John’s Cathedral. In fact, I had heard about deep impact from other sources, books and fresh articles, that came my way as Easter approached.
This year, more than in the past, brought a recurring focus on the impact, the transformational effect, of Jesus’ Resurrection, the emphasis being not on how it happened, but on what it did, whom it affected, and what happened to them as a result.
A powerful impact it was. Jesus’ intimate followers ended up being transformed by the reality of the Resurrection. And they were transformed, truly changed, not just adjusted or refocused a bit. On the one hand they were the very same people as before, on the other they were not at all the same and never would be again. The Resurrection both compelled and empowered them to live into the promise of new life and to enable others to do the same.
Such is what happens when we get too close to the power of the Resurrection, as the disciples were, or allow the living Presence of God to come into our hearts and minds in a new way.
The power of Jesus’ Resurrection is to be received joyfully, but not to be taken lightly. It takes us places we never thought we would go and makes us people we never thought we would be. I have appreciated the expression of this truth by Archbishop Rowan Williams:
“On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us to where we can never return.” (A Ray of Darkness, p. 98)
May we be drawn increasingly to that place from where we can never return, where we will find new depth, meaning, and joy trusting in the truth and power of Jesus’ Resurrection.
