FOUR SIMPLE WORDS

On Easter Sunday we were reminded again that the core of the gospel of Easter, that is, the good news of Easter, is that we no longer need to live in fear. The risen Jesus appears to the women on the road and says, “Do not be afraid.” The risen Jesus appears in the midst of the disciples cowering in fear behind locked doors and windows and says, “Do not be afraid.”

The gospel (good news) of Easter is that the risen and living Christ is present in all of those dark corners of our lives that are clouded with fear and anxiety. Be quiet for a moment and you will hear the internal rumbling of those fears and anxieties. And again in the silence, turn on your spiritual imagination and let the risen and living Christ appear in your midst, in your heart, in the depths of your soul and say to you, “Do not be afraid.” This is the moment the Easter gospel (good news) becomes real for us, when we hear those words in the context of our daily lives.

In the months to come you will hear about running a deficit budget at Hope Church. Those who do a terrific job of crunching numbers (Jim McGrane, Celeste Munson & the Trustees), will toss a lot of numbers around, and work hard to create a realistic budget for the coming fiscal year (beginning July 1, 2008). What the numbers will be telling us is that this past year we have lived under-budget. In fact, it is a miracle of God’s grace that we have not yet had to borrow in order to keep up with general operating expenses.

But we are living under budget, and ever so close to a fiscal line that threatens us to draw on yet another line of credit. We hear this news and we experience anxiety, a rumbling in the pits of our stomachs. We look at our little church on the corner of 12^th and Michigan in the context of the economic downturn that surrounds us and wonder how we can survive. We do a collective gut-check about our commitment to Hope Church and wonder how far we can go, or how deep we can dig, in order to address this financial malaise.

Then we hear a voice, we turn around, and we discover that the living and risen Christ is standing right there uttering those four words, “Do not be afraid.” It is not that he is telling us that everything will be OK in some magical way, like he would somehow fix our deficit all by himself. But what he will do is empower us by the same Spirit that empowers him, and together (only together) we will find that miracles do happen among us.

It is when we walk fearlessly into our future together that we discover the resurrection power, the gospel, the good news of Easter. And we will do just that…together!

                                                                                                       - Pastor Vance Toivonen