John Fischer The Catch

I have set before you an open door which no one can shut. Revelation 3:8

Today I’m going to talk about the resurrection. Today … eleven days after Easter, we’re going to think about the resurrection of Jesus. I can’t think of a better time. To free the resurrection from Easter is to make it real. No more metaphor. No new life, no chirping birds, no rising sun, no new beginnings, no Easter songs, no pastel colors, no bunnies, no eggs, no “The Lord is risen! The Lord is risen indeed!” chants. It’s eleven days after Easter, for God’s sake. Either the resurrection affects my life today or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t then pack it up until next year. If it does, then walk through the door.

Or as John Updike has expressed so well in his poem, “Seven Stanzas at Easter”

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages;
let us walk through the door.

The impact on the lives of the disciples as well as on us is whether we walk through this door. What affect does the resurrection have on my life eleven days after Easter? What door now stands open that wasn’t there before?

The resurrection means we see Christ in a different way.
Mary Magdalene, who had loved and admired Him before, now finds herself utterly transformed by Him. She becomes different, because everything falls into place. All that He had said and had done were no longer the words and actions of a good man — it had all been given an eternal reality for her which could not be contradicted or ever destroyed. The resurrection is the playing of the trump card which tells us that if we do not treat Him with the utmost seriousness and with total reverence, it is we who are the fools.

The resurrection means we look at others differently.
It means also that we cannot look at others in the same way. Resurrection is about meeting together, participating in our faith, where He joins us. No longer is worship considered doing God a big favor by showing up. Rather, worship is an immense privilege, where we are treated with the greatest humility and reverence by the God who made us, who has smashed through the dreadfulness of death ahead of us, and who is ready always to join us. If I’m privileged, so is everyone else.

The resurrection means we can face ourselves in a new way.
Without the resurrection, we are creatures with minds that get ideas far above our station, but who nevertheless cease to exist after a few brief spins around the planet. It is the resurrection that makes what is insignificant into someone with dignity and purpose.

So this is the question for all of us today, eleven days after Easter: What door now stands open that wasn’t there before? You have to answer t because walking through that door is everything.

I have set before you an open door which no one can shut. Revelation 3:8

Writing about Chandler’s and my experiences on our recent road trip has brought up many memories — some from my past, some from yours. (Carol wrote me about a buffalo stampede that left fur marks in the dust on their car, a back country discovery of Carhenge in Alliance, Nebraska [named “No. 2 Wackiest Attraction”], stopping at all “Hysterical” Markers and reenacting what had taken place there, and the indelible memory of a sunrise over Crater Lake, Oregon.)

My memory, reignited by being in Flagstaff, Arizona with Chandler, was of a particular motel that I believe we successfully found still operating there. It has changed its name to the Wonderland Motel, the pool has been filled in, and there are weeds coming up through the cracks in the asphalt, but I have no doubt it is the place my family stayed on summer trips to Texas from southern California. It sits along a strip of motels on the eastern side of town and still boasts a picturesque view of the surrounding mountains. It is firmly implanted in my mind because it was always the first stop of our annual Texas trip to visit relatives and friends where my parents used to live, and it followed about sixteen hours of a family of five in our car — my father driving all night on Route 66 to avoid the extreme heat of the Mojave Desert in August. We would hit the Starlight Motel in Flagstaff around noon, and my father would crash in the room while I and my brother and sister would get to swim in the pool that had a slide.

The man at the desk of the Wonderland Motel was too young to know anything personally about the history of the place, but he did say he thought there had been a name change back when. He also said it was old enough to have been named a historical building (this one undoubtedly “hysterical” due to its poor repair). I had hoped there had been someone old enough to remember, but I have no doubt it was the place. I had an eerie feeling stepping out of my car and sensing the vibe. It was a definite déjà vu.

I am hoping Chandler will remember some of the memories we created on this trip as I do mine. We need vacations (I’m preaching to myself here), not just for the emotional and physical rest, but for the break in the routine of living that helps us remember why we are alive.

It’s ironic that one of Carol’s memories was in Crater Lake, Oregon. It was on our family’s visit to Crater Lake — my dad pulling a house trailer with our 1950 Ford – that my brother cracked a joke in that has become firmly entrenched in the Fischer family lore.

We had a grandfather we called “Daddy Tom.” He was my grandmother’s second husband and we never really got to know him very well, mostly because he rarely talked. He just sat in his chair, leaned over to you whenever you tried to address him, cupping his hearing-aid ear with his hand, and saying, “Yeah, yeah,” only it came out in a strung-out, hoarse diphthong that my brother had learned to master, much to our amusement, earlier that day. So the stage was set when my tired and exasperated father tried to get us kids to quiet down (the five of us in very close quarters in this trailer) with one of those spineless parental threats like, “The next one who says anything is going to have bla, bla, bla to pay,” that my brother seized the moment with a perfectly timed, well executed, “Yeah, yeah.”

We laughed so hard the trailer shook — a truly hysterical marker.

I mentioned in Monday’s Catch how the Grand Canyon reveals its secrets over time. It is like a palette upon which God paints His presence every day as the Master Artist. The rocks and cliffs may be static, but the light that plays on them is ever changing — ever creating with new mixtures of cloud, snow, rain and the arcing sun. I also imagined what it would be like to spend a whole day in one spot doing nothing but watching the sun rise and set and everything in-between.

Then Marti questioned me as to why we need to go to the Grand Canyon to do this. Why not do this where we are, today? It’s a legitimate question, and an inspiring one at that. Not that we can sit down all day and do nothing but watch for the hand of God, but imagine your spirit doing that. Imagine your spirit watching for the hand of God all day long while you’re doing everything else, and imagine tuning into your spirit throughout the day and in that way entering into God’s activity where you are — not on the rim of the Grand Canyon, but in the office, on the phone, at the laundromat, in your car, in the classroom. What picture is He painting today around you and through you from sun up to sun down? It’s a consciousness that is going on while we are doing everything else we are doing — a God-consciousness if you will. “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” is a kind of earthly God-consciousness that I believe can be cultivated as we become sensitive to His Spirit. His Spirit talking to our spirit. Spirits bearing witness. This is the way God gets His will done on earth — through us praying for it, seeking it and doing it.

Imagine the constant communion the earthly Jesus would have had with the Father for Him to be able to say He was doing nothing on His own initiative, but only as the Father directs Him. He was always listening for His Father. He and the Father were (are) one. In this He is our model. Perhaps imagining yourself on the rim of the Grand Canyon all day might be a way of gaining access into God’s activity in the world. What is being illuminated? What is in the shadows? Where is He going? What is He doing? And most importantly: What does He want me to do?