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God's Resurrection Project

John 13: 31-35

Do you ever think about what might have been happening up in Heaven in the time before Jesus came to earth—before all eternity? Do you think God could have lovingly put his arm around Jesus’ shoulder and said, “Son, you are going to leave Heaven. You will go to a manger and to a small carpenter shop. You will flee Egypt as a fugitive. You’ll go to banquets with tax collectors and prostitutes. You’ll go to houses where they will make a hole in the roof just to get in because they are excited you are there. You’ll go where lepers go. You’ll go to the blind and the crippled. You are going to the impoverished, the sin-soaked, and the hopeless. Then one day you are going to a cross where you will die to forgive the sins of the world. You will go to a tomb, but it is there, my son, where death will find out it cannot hold you or stop you.

And on the third day the stone will be rolled away and you will bring joy to the world as far as the curse is found.”

God still calls. He still sends. He still makes plans to complete His resurrection project.

We have witnessed the resurrection and we know Jesus came to his disciples with his peace and the Holy Spirit. But our account from John looks back to Maundy Thursday when Jesus had washed the feet of his disciples and foretold His betrayal. Instead of a resurrection account we have our focus on what Christ’s resurrection will mean to the world.

Jesus tells His disciples a new commandment: Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.

The age to come has already been inaugurated and yet the present age still continues. We are people who live between resurrection and resurrection, between victory over death at Easter and the final victory when Christ will come again. Right now is the fruitful moment between the awe of standing at Christ’s empty tomb and the joy of leaving behind the empty tombs of our own mortality.

So how do we live in this time? An online magazine invited people to summarize their lives using only 6 words. I thought this was fun, so I picked out some to share that could probably summarize our lives at different periods of time:

One tooth, one cavity. Life’s cruel

The psychic said I’d be rich

Thought I would have more impact

Not quite what I was planning

Not a good Christian, but trying

Fortunately we are not pawns of our life stories. We are partners with God, we are part of His resurrection project.

God’s resurrection of Jesus changes things, even Godly things. It breaks down barriers and gives us deeper insight into God’s purpose. In John’s gospel the Jesus who commands love is both the Jesus who will soon leave His disciples for His road to the cross and also the Christ whose spirit is guiding us into all truth. The new command to love one another is in some sense as old as the Torah where we hear the words to love your neighbor as yourself. However, when we hear the words to love one another as I have loved you, it brings to mind the cross and grounds us in this time between Jesus’ death and resurrection and our own.

How do we live out this command? To embody God’s resurrection project, we need to ponder the things this world glorifies and what God glorifies. In the Bible when God calls someone to be a part of His resurrection project not many respond quickly by saying I AM READY. Usually they have a quick excuse: too old, too young, too weak, too sinful, too rich, too poor, too much baggage. But Jesus does not say Go DO this…He says I’ll go with you.

We keep this command to love others as I have loved you when we love in ways that are sacrificial or in ways that give new life.

We keep this command when we feel free to act in the present because we have firm confidence in the future and truly understand the possibility of being useful to God.

God’s project objective for our lives is that we become magnificent people in His image, people with the character of Jesus who love as we have been loved.

This means a new way of looking at our lives. To see every moment as an opportunity to look for a door that opens into God and His presence.

God’s mission, His project, is to bless. To bless out of His great abundance. And that needs to be our mission too.

Where should we do it? Wherever we are

When should we do it? Today is our day

Let God use us in spite of our imperfections

Over the week ponder where you see this command being played out in your own life, in our community and in our churches. Think how we can grow beyond where we are today.

We can be open to tomorrow because God is already there.

 

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