Rise First Movement
>> Monday, November 29, 2021
Let me be clear upfront: everything done by the Most High God in Christ form is noteworthy and gives us insight to His Being and the nature of His relationship with us. What I'm talking about here is emphasis. Tradition and interpretation have shaped the structure we see in the Church festivals today for a wide variety of reasons. I'm here to suggest that it's time we take a closer look at how the Church focuses on the love story that is Christ.
From my life's experience, (and this varies somewhat by denomination) the Christmas and Easter seasons vie for top billing, Easter having the subsets of Crucifixion and Resurrection. Christmas is covered by the season of Advent, one month long. Christ's walk to the cross is covered over 40 days of Lent, ending His life on Friday. Saturday we wait... Easter Sunday we party... and it's back to work on Monday. Hmmm.
This is the first week of Advent on nearly every church's calendar. Christmas is an amazing time of year in which we focus an entire month on symbolically welcoming Christ into the world, and if you're involved in church planning there seems no end of rehearsals for musical events and nativity dramas and truck loads of Christmas poinsettias and greenery. It's a great time of celebration. And this is good: What God did choosing to actually become human so that He can prove to us that He truly understands us (among other reasons) is beyond Marvel Comics amazing!
But the bottom line is, a baby was born. Anyone can do that. In fact, everyone has done that. Christ's birth is truly an awe-inspiring story, but aside from a great wollop of Deity, it could have happened to anyone.
The period of Lent is a time when we reflect on sacrifice. We give up something that will impact us and form a deeper understanding of why we are in need of God's grace and redemption. We watch as Christ performs miracles and teaches His disciples, continually expressing that they did not understand He came to die. We spend a week contemplating His growing depression and crying out to God to not make Him do this, at the end of which He gives a heavy sigh and does it anyway. Because it's necessary and His love for us demands no less. And then we have two days of trauma, betrayal, torture, and death. Christ died as a criminal, and that's not a simile: according to the Jewish law, which was the legal system under which He was judged, Christ was a criminal. So He was hung with His fellow criminals. At a point of near-death, Christ's spirit accepted sin and God turned His face away, and then He died, painfully. We call it the Passion of the Christ, and we spend a great deal of time dragging down our own spirits, and sobbing into our pillows so as to better grow in our faith.
But here's the thing: anyone can experience pain, and anyone can die. In fact, everyone does do that. Every single one of us will feel pain and one day die, though hopefully not as criminals of course. The fact that Christ was able to take the spiritual essence of our own darkness with Him was the dollop of Deity in this story, but while that's vital for the ability to complete the plan, it's not actually the Plan.
And here's where our title Rise First comes into play. Have you ever heard a sermon on what happened next? I know I haven't, and I grew up in the church. I'd love to hear a sermon on the descension of Christ. The Apostle's Creed, which millions repeat weekly as a summary expression of what we believe, says He descended into hell. He "defeated death", as seen with all the reported resurrections of the faithful at the time of His death and, of course, His own. He told Mary Magdalene in the Book of John not to touch Him because He hadn't returned to Heaven yet.
In essence logic then says that when His body died, His spirit went to Hell, where He kicked some serious demon butt, broke spiritual imprisonment, and rescued a bunch of people who loved Him but hadn't known Him. When Hell gave up, He had to check back in with Dad before moving back in to His Christ form. But His people needed to know what was up, so He made a quick side trip to chat with Mary on the way. How is that not the most exciting passage of scripture ever?
And here's the most vital and essential instant in Christianity: unlike the birth, unlike the pain and the death, no one else could do this. Ever. If Christ didn't destroy death and return from it, this faith would not exist. His being born would be pointless, and His dying would be pointless.
But unlike Advent and Lent, the Resurrection gets one rejoicing church service and a huge meal with family. One. Day. For the only driving moment that created milleniums of history and billions of people building deeply personal bonds to the biggest power of love in the universe. THIS IS THE MOMENT. This is the moment deserving of a month-long celebration. This is the moment to create traditions that define who we are. This is the moment around which to define ourselves.
