When I was growing up, my dad and I were regular attenders at University of Florida football games. We were so devoted that we would go up during the spring training games and generally at other off season times just to get our Gator fix. We’d walk around the stadium and relive memories, toss the ball in the parking area reliving great catches or plays we’d seen. We also would walk the shops – who had the best prices for the new hats, shirts, and stickers that week? We also loved the posters!
In the midst of all this, I finally got my own room. No more sharing with my sloppy little sister. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m kind of a control freak. I like things in their appropriate place and I like things clean (not to the point where the whole house is sterile, but definitely not cluttered up and junky). Getting my own room was my opportunity to have everything right where I wanted it. I moved in and dad and I went to work. We made a crown molding border out of old score cards and we hung framed posters and amazing pictures for the walls – everything hung exactly where it should. It was brilliant. Dad and I’d catch up some days and just look at all the Gator stuff we had up on the wall. We loved it!
I started thinking about all those posters this week in light of Easter. I’ve been in many Christian Bookstores in my life and I’ve always been amazed by the posters “we” so often sell. Some are just downright strange. It seems odd that we can boil down this deep and historic faith of ours into something like two lawn chairs with cartoon ducks one on his back smiling and the other facing up on fire, with the caption “Turn or Burn”. It’s always seemed silly to me that we would have these available for homes and our children’s and youth areas in our churches (oh, and don’t get me started on the bumper stickers!).
So, this week it took me by surprised when I heard my Senior Pastor’s Easter sermon and was amazed at how many phrases jumped out at me as being “poster” worthy. Now, I’m sure none of these posters will end up in my local store, but they will end up on a 4×6 card in my office. As my pastor was sharing about Jesus’ resurrection he was telling us that the idea of a resurrection couldn’t just happen in a Jewish mindset, but that if one was raised all would be raised. It got me thinking, the Hebrew people were one of the few in the Ancient Near East who believed in a post life that was more than just some void nothingness that we eventually disappear into. They believed there would be a great Day yet to come and that Day would bring resurrection to all. So for Jesus to be resurrected was to scream that that Day had come – if one would be raised, all would be raised.
Imagine their surprise then, when the disciples ask Jesus if it was now time for Kingdom to be restored and the Romans kicked out. After all, the resurrection was occurring – it meant the Day of judgment and Zion’s rule and Peace for all! Instead Jesus, says something like, Nope, now it’s your turn. He releases His followers to live resurrected lives now. For Jesus then (and here’s the poster line) Resurrection isn’t just about afterlife, but about restored and perfected life here and now.
Think about that for a minute. Restored/Perfected/Resurrected Life means there is no fear of Rome, or persecution, or death, or any other entity out there. It means that living the Life of Jesus isn’t just something we could wish for, but something we could be free to do – after all we’re all resurrected! If we’re all resurrected then nothing gets in the way of being a part of an ever advancing Kingdom of Justice, Mercy, LOVE, Grace, Peace and JESUS. I think that’s way cooler than “turn or burn” or the ever popular “get right or get left”. And if we’re all resurrected that means, the hope that so many of us have about being the change in the world around us is actually a possibility. We don’t have to settle for systems that offer only one or two options, we can have life and we can live it. We don’t have to throw up our hands in frustration over the inequalities our world is captured by, but we can do something about it.
What about you? Do you feel that resurrected power now? If not, how do we take Jesus at his word and be a part of the Kingdom that always is advancing and is much bigger than any poster we could hang on our walls? What if instead of posters, we were the living posters, the living representations of this Kingdom? Imagine and Live.