Happy Easter! Let's Tidy Up This Old House!
1 Corinthians 5:6b-8 (NRSV)
5:6b Do you not know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough?
5:7 Clean out the old yeast so that you may be a new batch, as you really are unleavened. For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed.
5:8 Therefore, let us celebrate the festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
I love lifestyle and home improvement tv shows, have since I was a little girl. I wanted to the black Martha Stewart when I grew up, because I wanted to help make things beautiful and aligned in such a way that they just naturally tell you where and how they go--so everyone who comes in feels peaceful, and welcome, and that they're beautiful, too, just for having been there. I think I imagine that that's how God fashioned creation--that just being in and a part of it makes every aspect feel honored and beautiful for having been so thoughtfully considered in relationship with one another.
As a grown person who now knows that my vocation is as a calling and vocation coach, and as a Millennial with multiple video streaming accounts with countless home improvement shows among them, I've come to realize that what I love--and the shows I love the most--are the shows where the hosts clearly see what they are doing not as throwing pretty parties, helping restaurants make more money, or building lavish dream homes because we clearly had too much money to blow and so we will.
My favorite shows are the shows where the dynamic is such that the hosts see themselves as helping the person or participants fulfill their dreams or their life. To celebrate, honor, and help the person, family, or owners become more of who they are, and desire to be.
I love the new take on Queer Eye. Props to the OG Fab Five. They walked so the new Fab Five could run. And I love that the new Fab Five literally talk about, "How can we help you to show and celebrate who you are?" Because they know that, in various ways, folks are hiding, or just didn't have the understanding or support to figure out how to become this bolder version of themselves that the Fab Five helps to uncover. Some shows I cringe because it feels like the hosts are just projecting their image onto the folks. But after a few episodes I was like--"No--each of these folks--the Fab Five--has an actual spiritual gift that they can see who people are, and are desiring to become, and they truly understand how to bring that out in a way that celebrates that person." They are gifted, and they go forth and use it that way.
What else? I love Flip or Flop Fort Worth! I generally have an issue with flipping houses because it often contributes to gentrification. I have been noticing a trend with shows where they're focusing on rundown houses in upper middle income neighborhoods. And, these shows waaaay contributed to gentrification, and so I tend to side eye. The couple on this show, though. I loved them the first episode I watched, and more with each progressive episode, because the first thing they talked about when they walked into a potential reno was not how much money they might make--it was if the bones of the home and their capability to renew it would honor the lives of the family who might purchase and move it. If it was outside of their capability--not just the cost to reno it, although that becomes the same thing--they weren't gonna do it. They were going to stay within their gifts and their lane to place a family in a well-built home.
Why are we talking about lifestyle and home improvement shows on Easter Sunday, you ask?
Very simply, because Christ is risen. Yay. Yes, Christ is risen today. And we, fellow human beings, every human being a beloved child of God, still have journey.
So Christ was risen 2,000 years ago. 2,000. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6…Okay, we're not going to count them all out, right? But Christ was risen 2,000 years ago. So it's highly unlikely that God's intention for a ritual church celebration--is that we keep celebrating just the thing…that happened…2,000 years ago. 2,000 years ago.
So what may we want to observe on Easter?
Well, first Easter is not a standalone holiday, but part of our lectionary year, our ritual church year. So it's a holiday in the traditional sense of the word "holiday," and "holy day"--it's a ritual day. And the purpose of all rituals are some process of renewal and transformation. They help us to see and call forth renewal and transformation in our lives. For God, this was never about us being broken. This is about knowing that, while God created us complete, we are not all-knowing, and so we are ever discovering who we are--as individuals, as families, as congregations, as communities. There's always something old that news to go out, and something new that needs to be allowed to come forth and come in. This is how we keep discovering ourselves. And that's why it's a journey.
One of my new favorite shows is Dream Home Makeover. A little excessive, but I do love the idea that we don't wait for things to get stale and old. We can say, "Hey, we appreciate that this served our previous life or the folks who lived here before us, but this doesn't suit how we're called to live now. So we're asking you (the host) to transform the space."
And that's so much of what the lectionary year is, is this ritual journey of receiving a vision for our still- emerging, blessed beings; appreciating and sending out what longer serves, and making room for and welcoming the new that we need, and need to become.
Easter is this last, the welcoming the new that we need and are called to be. Advent and Epiphany are the visioning of the new; Lent is the clearing out, the honoring and releasing; and Easter is throwing open the doors to air out, and also so that the new things have plenty of space to be received, and to land.
Christ's risenness is a midpoint in our lectionary year. It's both a celebration and appreciation of his sacrifice--of his living and dying sacrificially to demonstrate to us in is resurrection that we are greater than our circumstances, and also the depth of Love that we are to be and to become.
We are greater than the condition of our present moment--what may be happening, what others may be doing to us--and what we may be doing to others.
We are not the sum our circumstances, nor our present behaviors nor actions. We are never stuck where we are. God created us and God created us beloved. In the Holy Spirit's comfort and God's grace, there is always a journey of renewal in which God leads us into continually greater life and fulfillment of our wholeness and our belovedness with one another.
This moment, this ritual day, this holy day, is our reminder of renewed life in and through this journey--that the other side renewal, further up and further into our whole and beloved Selves, our renewed lives, is what this journey is for.
1 Corinthians 5:6b-8 (NRSV)
5:6b Do you not know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough?
5:7 Clean out the old yeast so that you may be a new batch, as you really are unleavened. For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed.
5:8 Therefore, let us celebrate the festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
Today is not a one-time, standalone event. Today, Easter, is two things.
Today is the celebration and closing out of Lent--which is the time where we clear our the old yeast, "this old house," what no longer supports us in becoming who we are created to be--and that which may never have supported who we are created to be.
It is also the opening to Easter Season, in which we are receiving and setting our new yeast. We’re framing up new spaces, places, relationships, and ways of being--which all direct us towards greater life in and with God and one another.
What in this season is helping us to better love our neighbor as our selves? To help us consider and better face injustice with the heart and Spirit of God where we or one another are struggling to do so?
Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. We--yet and still have journey. And we can do it because Christ has lived, Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ will come again.
We have released and will continue releasing that which doesn't serve our belovedness or our ability to love and love with one another. We are rising to receive that which honors all creations' belovedness in God--our own included.
May it be so. May we be and live as these faithful sojourners. Amen.