From the Pastor's Pen, November, 2005:

April 2007 From the Pastor's Pen

“Yes!”

It becomes so much more than a simple word when it’s spoken with that emphasis, doesn’t it?

The apostle Paul even used that term (OK, maybe without the fist-pumping gesture) in his second letter to the Christians at Corinth:

“As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not

been ‘Yes and No.’ For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom

we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I,

was not ‘Yes and No’; but in him it is always ‘Yes.’ For in

him every one of God’s promises is a ‘Yes’.”

(II Corinthians 1:18-20)

It seems to me that Paul, who has been accused of making the message of the gospel more complicated, or of waffling about what he believed and taught, is making a very clear affirmation of who Jesus is: “God’s Yes.” Professor Walter Brueggemann, in his book of prayers entitled Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth, calls Jesus God’s “enfleshed yes to us . . . our yes into God’s future.”

That’s an image that works for me. In Jesus, God said yes to the world, yes to human life---in all that it is, all its sorrow as well as its joy. Jesus came into the world, to live a human life, to affirm that life is good, and to say that it can even be better when lived in God’s love, to which Jesus points. But Jesus didn’t just land on earth for a short series of guest lectures. He lived that human life in all its fullness, and died a human death---God’s participation in all that is human, even the worst of what humans can do to one another. Jesus was able to say “yes” even to that death.

But the story doesn’t end there.

The truth of Easter that we celebrate is that Jesus rose from the dead, through the power of God’s grace. The resurrection is indeed God’s “YES!” to the world, to say that the power of death is not the last word. In the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, God says “yes” once again, and forever, to human life; transforms human life, redeems human life.

More than “just” a story, the resurrection (however it happened---it is beyond human understanding) is THE story that gives us life and hope. The truth of the resurrection is that God’s love wins, even over death.

Richard Lischer, a professor of preaching at Duke Divinity School, told a story of a friend who had undergone two grueling courses of chemotherapy, yet somehow managed to complete her doctorate degree. She had planned a huge party for her graduation, yet learned from her doctors two days before the party that her cancer had returned. Friends all assumed that the party would be cancelled. Lischer says:

"But she had the party. And I tell you I have never heard the gospel of God's Yes preached more powerfully than I saw it danced on the floor of the VFW. An outsider would have seen only the vintage 1960s, arthritic gyrations that we were all doing, but this was a woman of faith and she danced her Yes in the grip of the No. And that's the way we do it.”

That is the way we do it—celebrating God’s “YES!” at Easter, even in the face of the world’s “no.” We celebrate with music and laughter and beauty and the power of the gospel story. We will celebrate this year at First UMC with baptism and the reception of members into our fellowship. We will proclaim once again that ancient response: “Christ is risen!” “He is risen indeed!”

Or maybe, more simply put:

“YES!”

May we live God’s “YES” to us, and share it with others!

On the Journey with you,

e-mail Pastor Baker-Streevy