Easter 7

Dear Friends,

We have come to the last Sunday of the Easter season.  It is a transition Sunday for us.  We move from the radicalness of the empty tomb and living into the life of resurrection to the ordinariness of life; from Easter to the long ordinary season.  So here's a question for you: What makes you feel alive?

As Karoline Lewis from Luther seminary says, "This seems like just the right question to ask for the Seventh Sunday of Easter, doesn’t it?  What will keep reminding you of the resurrection?  What will help you remember that resurrection is here and now.  What Easter feeling will remain in your memory so that you can draw on it when you need it the most? I think we need these kinds of moments -- the kinds of moments when we feel alive, and fully.  Why? Because Jesus is no longer in the world but we are (John 17:11). And we need reminders, any kind of reminders, many kinds of reminders, that resurrection is not just a one-time event, or only that which secures our future, but is a way of life. I think that’s exactly what Jesus is trying to say in this final prayer to God that the disciples get to overhear. It’s what they need to hear. It’s what we need to hear."    Our Gospel reading for this Sunday is John 17:6-19.  It is part of the prayer that Jesus is praying for his disciples as he prepares to leave them in his death on the cross. Jesus prays that we recognize, that we know, that we feel, that resurrection is a way of life, a way of being in life, and not just his localized appearance in a garden, or in a locked room, or on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Why? Because our life here and now depends on it. Jesus wants us to live a life that is alive with resurrection, abundant with it, in fact. Because that’s what grace upon grace is all about.  

One of my favourite songs is by a group called Dakota Road.  It is titled To be alive.  When you get to site that is linked here press play on To be Alive - turn up the volume and dance!!!    

In Christ, Pastor Jennifer