We are the resurrection community.
The broken, the worn out, the scattered, the unsure.
The homeless, the land-less, the country-less.
The poor and the down-and-out.
We are the resurrection community.
The under-employed, the over-employed.
The single moms, and single dads, grandparents, and guardians doing their best to survive.
The black, the Hispanic, the indigenous and the alien.
We are the resurrection community.
All you doubters, believers, haters, lovers, brothers and sisters.
All you who pray but are not heard, whose prayers go up like smoke, but come down like a hard rain.
All you smokers, fast-food eaters, tattoo artists and outcasts.
We are the resurrection community.
The community of people living in the wake of Jesus’ resurrection. Bound together, not by common interest or human persuasion, but together in our difference by the Spirit of the Living God.
Like our sister Mary in John 20, out of breath after a long Easter morning sprint, running to tell her dear (yet, unconvinced) friends that the impossible has happened. She, as a woman of the first century, used to being unheard even when she spoke up with surprising news, is given the responsibility to handle the first press release of the good news.
Along with Mary, we are the resurrection community.
Like our brother Thomas in John 21, who continues to disbelieve even in the face of his trusted friends who now have all seen and found convincement. Who experiences welcome and grace despite his unbelief. Among his friends in their common room he finds a place where he is welcome, even when his message stands in direct contradiction to the others. Embraced as a brother, a sister, an estranged mother or father, Thomas is one of us. He is the image of radical hospitality inscribed into the earliest moments of the church.
Both finder and seeker, Mary and Thomas, eating together, room for both at the table.
With Thomas, we are the resurrection community.
Like our brother Peter, who seems unsure of what to do next, returns to a familiar place, gets in a fishing boat with the other disciples, and waits (or goes fishing, but really what’s the difference?). Some think the return to the Sea of Galilee (and subsequent “great catch”) is a metaphor for “fishing for men,” others see it as a narrative about Peter’s own lostness, and here he is returning to his former way.
They go, waiting and listening, because they do not know what to do or where to go. They are lost without guidance from their teacher. They go, hoping not to catch men, or actual fish, but God. Just like fishermen on a boat, 30 hours between catch, we wait and we listen.
We don’t always know what to do next. Sometimes we wait, and sometimes the silence is difficult to break.
Like Peter waiting for direction, we are the resurrection community.
Invited by Jesus to participate in the unfolding of his work in the world. Each of us, the broken and battered, the crushed and perplexed, the addict and the overachiever, are invited to contribute what gifts we have. On the beach Jesus invited his disciples to bring some of their caught fish and add it to what he’d already put on the charcoal fire. This “bring some, give some” movement underlies the kind of partnership God has with us. We often think that Jesus has no use for us, we’re not good enough or the things we’ve done somehow cancel out our contributions. Then Jesus says “bring some, give some…”
We participate together as the resurrection community.
And all of us are in great need of restoration and forgiveness. Peter, who offers Jesus the deepest kind of betrayal (that of a friend), awaits restoration and a new sense of self that comes from being forgiven. At the very heart of the gospel and the motivating engine of resurrection is a deep and divine love. Love is the indispensable quality and practice of the resurrection community, shaping it as a people who embody the kind of forgiveness and restoration we see Jesus practice at the end of the Gospel of John.
We need restoration and resurrection.
Lost and found, broken and mended, finder and seeker, waiting, listening, hoping beyond hope, all alone and now participants, betrayer and now restored, dead and now a new creation.
This is who we are, by the grace of the risen God.
Bound by perfection, in our imperfections.
We are the resurrection community.
Article by Wess Daniels. Photo by Joel Bock.
