Dear Friends in Christ,
What if—this is a crazy idea—church buildings are the tomb of Jesus? Could it be that the institutional church has domesticated Christ for its own purposes? Jesus started out as a radical, reformist rabbi, whose God burst the confines of Pharisaic Judaism. It could not hold this God. But I wonder if any church, any system, any theology, or any institution can ever hope to enclose all of Jesus. I am reminded of these words from Carl Jung (a pastor’s son): “It often seemed to me that religious precepts were being put in place of the will of God—which could be so unexpected and so alarming—for the sole purpose of sparing people the necessity of understanding God’s will.”
I personally think this is very good news (i.e., Gospel). Jesus will always elude the leashes we try to put him on, he always turns out to be more than we are ready for, he calls us beyond all our little pieces of truth toward a greater freedom, a newer growth, a better way. Churches can be tombs for Jesus, ideas can, doctrines can, rules and regulations, our prejudices definitely can—but the Easter Lord bursts forth from all the mausoleums we built for him, he rolls away every gigantic stone of human short-sightedness and desire to control God.
Does this mean Church is bad, institutions are evil, ideas are prisons and we should dispense with them? Not at all! We just need the humility and the honesty to see our own limitations. We are all fragile, finite, mixed-up beings, we’re easily confused and we way too easily believe ourselves and absolutize our own ideas, but we need ideas, we need Church, we need institutions. We just need to know that God is bigger and that we can never enclose God, understand God, control God, possess God (and yet God gives himself, herself, God-self to us unstintingly, so we do posses what we can never, ever possess).
So I need a Church, I need my ideas and my beliefs, and I will probably fall for them too much—hook, line and sinker. But Easter Sunday comes to remind me that Christ will burst every tomb, every prison, every idolatry. The Easter Jesus walks through doors, but eats fish. The disciples wonder—”Is it he?” Their hearts burn within them.
I want my heart to burn within me. I want to experience the mysterium tremendum that makes me go all weak in the knees because I’m realizing that life is so much bigger than I had thought. I want the God who beckons me to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown. I can never control or contain this God, but he takes my hand and he leads me, his love supports me, his Truth guides me, even if I can only grasp glimpses. And then a miracle—I too come forth from tombs, I too receive new life, God enfolds me in his love and I rise up to a bigger life. In his death, I die; in his Easter, I rise!
Happy Easter to you all,
—Pastor Bastien
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