Greeting Holy People of God,
for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. Colossians 3:3
I am so grateful that you are a people who contemplate the risen Christ and think about how we die metaphorically to things in our lives, discovering our lives hidden with Christ in God.
Yvonne Page shared that on the drive home and with some of the people Yvonne lives with, she brought up the topic of resurrection. They agreed that the resurrection indicates or denotes the validity of Christ humanity, his death on the cross and our need for an oversized death. The promise of baptism helps us sit with the burden of death with the promise of resurrection and new life with Christ.
Yvonne also shared what she found in Colossians 3:3. It indicates, being "hidden in Christ" means a believer’s true identity, life, and security are securely concealed with God through union with Jesus. It signifies that the old sinful life has died, resulting in spiritual protection, a secure future inheritance, and a life now defined by God.
If you are curious about resurrection and want to explore more deeply, I would suggest studying the letters of the New Testament to see how the early followers of the risen Christ tried to wrap their lives around the risen Christ. Colossians is one place but if you are really looking for a challenge, try 1 Corinthians 15 to whet your appetite and give you more to contemplate Christ’s resurrection and what it means that our lives are hidden in Christ as we follow the risen Lord.
We have been known to use agricultural metaphors to talk about resurrection. We are buried with Christ and we rise to new life much like the seed goes into the ground and comes forth to new life. These 50 days of Easter, of Resurrection Celebration, we cultivate the work we have done in Lent to give blossom to the fruit that will come in the long growing season of Pentecost. For this week we will go back to the lesson we had on the 4th Sunday of Lent to visit the healed blind man from John 9 and surround ourselves with the disciples, the Pharisees, the first audience to hear John and us as Jesus explains himself as the gate or door giving us more to think about the abundant life Jesus desires for us. Jesus will have us wrestle with a cast of characters; shepherd, sheep, thieves, bandits, gatekeepers, strangers and even the gate. We follow the writer’s path of misunderstanding to be invited into a deeper level of engagement as Nicodemus and the Samaritan Woman at the well encountered. We should also include the healed blind man, who had just been kicked out of the religious community to be welcomed by Jesus.
How do shepherd and sheep have anything to do with the healing of the blind man? What does it mean that Jesus chooses this portrait of himself when it comes to interpreting the blind man’s new found sight. Maybe we will see anew the risen Christ and find another dimension of our lives hidden with Christ.
Bold Inquisitive Belief Loving Expansively,
Pastor Connie Spitzack
