Online Archives

By Rod Miller

What an amazing time to be Christian and to be part of Christ's church. With the flux in our institutions and the challenge that the economy offers, long-held habits are being assessed as to their value and usefulness going forward.

What do we really value today and how are we going to support and demonstrate commitment for it? Where have we allowed relationships to take a back seat to a persistent drive to acquire more, believing that we can never have enough?

These questions and others like them are allowing us to ask ourselves what we are really looking for in our faith, our work, our churches and our lives today.

Questions that have been lurking in the background are now smack in front of us. And no one can answer them for us.

I wonder if the time leading up to Jesus' crucifixion and his death on a cross was something like we are experiencing today. Institutions of that time were found to be imperfect and not what people hoped they would be. Fears, doubts, and the desire for safety and protection went hand in hand. Faithful and hope-filled living in response to the living God was continually wrestling with those choosing a fearful retreat from the threat of loss.

How could they sing the Lord's song in the strange land of turmoil and change in which they lived? And how can we?

I believe a clue for them and for us comes in Mark's account of the resurrection. Mark tells us that after Jesus was raised from the dead he went ahead of the disciples to Galilee where they would find him already connecting to the people there with a message of hope, wonder and faith. He was resurrected out into the world rather than into the religious and political structures of the day. He was with the people who needed him and not with the people who thought they had some ownership of him.

What does this mean for disciples in the church in 2009?

I believe it means we will see Jesus to the extent that we let go of the things that hold us back and step out into the larger world. Christ is waiting for us in the places where people hunger and thirst and do not realize their connection with God.

Jesus' resurrection was not about staying and answering all of our questions. It was about ministering with people who did not identify with the religious systems of his day. Jesus went to Galilee. And to be with him, to be near him, to follow him, we need to go to the Galilees of our world too.

Going to Galilee means embracing our faith as more than a set of beliefs, habits or structures. It is a way of life to be lived in the church and out wherever we are and are being led. Jesus is not going to be limited to the church and to our own ways of appropriating him and his message. He is going to roll those stones back so that the world hears and receives what God is intending. Our invitation and our challenge is to go there with him.

Rev. Roderick Miller is a Guide in the Baltimore Region and Director of Connectional Ministries for the Baltimore-Washington Conference.