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Pastor · Sunday Schedule · FBC
News
2003
From the Pastor
WHAT NEXT?
Easter burst upon our congregation with the blast of trumpets and a full congregation singing, “Christ the Lord is risen today.” At the end of the service more people than I have ever seen came forward to sing with the choir Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus.” The sun shined, the rain held off until 5:00 p.m. and people went forth, I hope, with a greater sense of promise and joy realized during the afternoon in family gatherings and moments of personal reflection.
Now, it is Monday morning, the day after Easter, and I am already asking myself, “what next?” It seems to be a part of my nature. In a wider sense I know I can never answer that question. None of us knows, “what next.” Most life shaping and life changing events come unannounced. We make choices and decisions but there is a wider context in which they are made and that context is bigger than ourselves and our ability to effect. For instance, we might prolong the time of our dying but we cannot avoid dying. Likewise, the family into which we are born or the color of our eyes. They are set, and so too is the ultimate outcome of what will be.
Still, I ask the question, “What next?” I ask it of myself and I ask it of the church. I realize the limitations in my ability to answer, but what Easter does for me is give me a context for thinking about the question. I am to think about it in relationship to the resurrection. Whatever is to be, whatever choices are to be made, in what I can control and not control, what will be and what will not be - everything should be understood in the light of the resurrection.
Christ is risen! God is Lord over history. Death is dethroned. Christ is alive. Christ is a living presence amongst us.
The meaning of this for our lives is the possibilities inherent in our lives. We need not look at situations with doom and gloom but hope and promise. We seek to discern God’s presence in what is and fit it with what we know will be - God’s will on earth as it is in heaven.
We are an Easter people. We look at life, always, in every situation, with God in it. We see the world infused with the Divine. We understand our lives not by the feelings of estrangement that might linger from childhood memories, but by the very real presence and power of God’s Love. When we ask, “what next?”, it is not with a sense of foreboding and doom, but with a rising awareness of anticipation and excitement. The resurrection changes everything, so much so, that when the early disciples asked “what next?” following the resurrection, God answered with the Holy Spirit, and nothing has been the same since.
Dr. David W. Andersen
           
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