A Shared Life--April 18, 2024

A Shared Life--April 18, 2024

"Jesus said to [Martha], 'Your brother will rise again.' Martha said to him, 'I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.' Jesus said to her, 'I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, in though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?' She said to him, 'Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world'." [John 11:23-27]

I'll be the first to admit it: I don't know a lot about investments, day-trading, or the stock market.  And honestly, I am rather grateful for the bliss of that ignorance--I don't think my life has the bandwidth right now to add a mess of worries about where the Dow Jones closed yesterday or what the next Fed meeting might mean for the S&P 500.

But I do know this much: when you own stock, say in General Motors, Meta, or Boeing, what you really have is a small piece of the company itself.  A share of stock is a share in the company or corporation.  So the value of a share of stock is, basically, a fraction of the company's value.  When the company does well, your stock will be worth more, because in some sense owning stock is participating in the success of the company.  That is what makes it different from, say, a savings bond or a certificate of deposit, which just borrows your money for a certain length of time and then promises you a certain fixed amount when it comes to maturity.  Stock is more like an ongoing connection to the day-to-day business and vitality of the company in which you hold shares: when the company thrives, your shares do better, and when the company struggles, your stock value also shares that struggle.  In a sense, you could say that holding shares of stock is less like a transaction (you-give-me-this-and-I-give-you-that) and more like participation in the existence of the company you have invested in.

Well, I mention this because I think the difference is key for understanding our relationship with the living Jesus.  What Jesus gives us is a share in his life--his own crucified-and-risen life.  When we talk about "believing in Jesus," it's not so much a matter of agreeing to the correct theological facts about Jesus (or God, or heaven, or the sacraments, or some culture-war wedge issue) in exchange for a ticket to heaven when you die. It's more like we are connected to Jesus and we participate in his resurrection life.  We have what is his (and he takes what is ours--which, as Luther would remind us, means that Jesus takes our brokenness, sin, and mortality, and gives us his holiness and life), because we are participants in his life.  It's not like buying a savings bond and just getting a fixed amount of money at the end, but more like investing in shares of stock, which actually participate in the work and functioning of the company itself.

All too often, I think church folks have been sold some version of Christianity that makes it sound like a product to be bought, rather than a life we share in.  Sermons became sales-pitches for how to get a trip to the pearly gates and what you needed to do, believe, or say in order to get that post-mortem travel package, rather than descriptions of Jesus' kind of life and dares to participate in that life more deeply and fully.  We ended up focusing on what actions or rituals new customers had to take in order to complete the transaction (baptism... or the sinner's prayer... or an altar call... or taking communion... or having a 'born-again' experience), rather than how we share in Jesus' life every day.  And so it's no wonder how many people have walked away unsatisfied with that kind of commodified Christianity--it doesn't have any substance to carry us through the challenges and difficulties of real life, because that version of the gospel has lost the connection to the living Jesus.

But Jesus was never trying to sell anything.  Instead, he has been drawing people to share in his kind of life.  That's why he says to Martha, "I am the resurrection and the life."  Jesus isn't selling tickets to heaven in exchange for our belief in correct facts about him--he is allowing us to anchor ourselves in him, so that his resurrection becomes the source of our resurrection, and his kind of life becomes our life even now.  It's not that "eternal life" is some kind of commodity Jesus sends us like an Amazon package once we have clicked the "believe" button.  Those kinds of transactional relationships end the moment I've received my merchandise and my payment has cleared.  What Jesus brings is an ongoing, unending participation in his life.  His resurrection from the dead is the reason we have hope for our resurrection from the dead.  And his way of life--his courageous truth-telling, his extravagant love, his joyful welcome of outsiders, and his overflowing abundance--these become our way of life, too.  It's a shared life, not a product to be bought and sold.

In our life as church, then, the right questions to ask are not, "How many people came to worship last Sunday?" (like they are customers or concert-goers) or "Did you get anyone to convert and accept Jesus last Sunday?" (like we are trying to close a deal), but rather, "How is Jesus forming our lives to be like his, slowly, over time, and more completely?"  It's more like we are shareholders in Jesus' life--such that his work is our work, his triumph over death and evil is our victory, and his self-giving love is our way of life.  The work of the church is simply that--the life of Jesus, unfolding from each of our individual lives, which have all been "invested," so to speak, in him.

Where will you see signs of Jesus' life in your own today?  Where will his risen strength lift you up? Where will his kind of love for others fill your own heart? Where will we see evidence of our shared life unfolding in this day?

Lord Jesus, enable us to share in your risen life more fully today.