The Last Supper Drama (2014) - Lancaster First United Methodist Church

From Left to Right:
Ben Neeley, Garrett Warner, Dan Kemp, Sam Benham, Brad Niceswanger, Ron Dillon, Aaron McKisson, Adam Sprouse, Mitch Acton, Kyle Graf, Harrison Poor, Scott Gottliebson, John Bowland

Easter Poem by John Updike

A big thanks to Ben Witherington for posting John Updike's (1932 - 2009) Easter poem on his web blog. The poem is a powerful reminder of the Christian's affirmation of the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ.

“Seven Stanzas at Easter” by John Updike

Make no mistake: if He rose at all it was as His body; if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules reknit, the amino acids rekindle, the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers, each soft Spring recurrent; it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes of the eleven apostles; it was as His flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes, the same valved heart that–pierced–died, withered, paused, and then regathered out of enduring Might new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded credulity of earlier ages: let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché, not a stone in a story, but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow grinding of time will eclipse for each of us the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb, make it a real angel, weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair, opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous, for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty, lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are embarrassed by the miracle, and crushed by remonstrance.

9/11 & the Cross

Coming back from making a hospital visit in Dayton yesterday, I decided to call my brother who lives in Pennsylvania. He was returning from Pittsburgh, having made a prison visit which includes a four hour drive. My brother has been making these visits several times over the past several years, but that's another story.

Toward the beginning of our conversation, my brother, who was at that moment traveling just north of where United Airlines Flight 93 had crashed on that same day, seven years ago, told me of his location on the highway. We then began to reflect a little on how the 9/11 anniversary has a different feel as each year passes by.

And then my brother made an important point. He shared how Jesus' death on the cross 2,000 years ago is still a significant annual remembrance to this day, even in an increasingly secularized culture. His observation was an important one and leads to this thought: Of all the tragic events in ancient history, Jesus' death on the cross has its own unique and enduring quality to it.

The earliest New Testament books weren't written until approximately two decades after Jesus' death and resurrection, and yet even after some time had passed, the New Testament writers all highlight the cross in their understanding of who Jesus was and what Jesus was able to accomplish through his life, death, and resurrection. In other words, time did not erode the remembrance or the significance of the cross for those early Christians.

By dying on the cross and rising to new life on Easter, Jesus was able to take upon himself the sin, the brokenness, and the heartache of the world, and win the victory (nikos) over the enemies of sin and death. How appropriate that on the 7th anniversary of 9/11 we also remember the meaning of the cross and the hope and promise it gives us in the midst of our present day sufferings.

"But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory (nikos) through our Lord Jesus Christ." - I Corinthians 15:57