Living Resurrection Life

Hi, friends, and welcome to the Weekly Dulin Podcast, a brief weekly reflection from Dulin United Methodist Church in Falls Church. Here, we take time to think together about faith, community, and what it means to live as disciples of Jesus in today's world.

Hello, Dulin Church. It is so good to be with you today for this midweek moment, this midweek podcast that we share together on a weekly basis. I hope that it's meaningful to you. It's meaningful to me to produce it for you. And I hope that you find in yourself something that might challenge you, encourage you, help you to think about your spiritual life in new ways.

Because after all, isn't that what this whole business of being Dulin Church is? It's helping us to learn together to be better disciples. Discipleship isn't a solo lone wolf kind of approach. As much as in the West, we seem to make it to be so, about what you believe, what you think. It's great what you believe and what you think.

But in the end, it's also what are we doing to make this faith of ours more real in our lives. We are in that wonderful season. And the season is Easter. Easter is a season. It's not just a Sunday.

I've said it before. I could say it again. We're in what is called the great fifty days. We're in the midst of it. This coming Sunday is like Easter six.

And there's essentially two more Sundays in Easter. The final Sunday in Easter is Pentecost, the day we celebrate the arrival of the spirit. But let's not fast forward there. Let's instead come back to the season we're in because the season of Easter is the season of resurrection. It's new life.

Now, we have often thought and limited ourselves in thinking about resurrection to something that happens after we die. The resurrection life is after the physical body dies. The eternal body that arises, the immortal, when mortality puts on immortality to borrow the words of Paul. But what if resurrection life is not just about what happens after we physically die, but after we allow ourselves to die to some of the old habits, the comfort we felt with hating or judging or criticizing others, when we let that part of ourselves die away. And the new person that emerges is a person that's always looking for the way to live out love and kindness in new and exciting and unexpected ways, and sometimes subtle and unrecognized ways.

What if it was that resurrection life is truly about learning to live a new quality of life? It's not a quantity, an immeasurable quantity, although I suspect that it is. It is about the quality of life we live. What have we given ourselves to? You know part of what Paul says you know that we have died with Christ and risen in baptism and then risen again in Christ.

And that new life we've put behind us the ways of the world of measuring each other in comparison financially or economically, socially, nationally, religiously, sexually, any of those other kinds of ways that we compare and measure. We've put that way of measuring which seems to be the way of the world. It's not about putting ourselves and our own ego so much to death is to recognize that it's not the ego isn't the center of the whole thing. We are not all about me. It's not everything is not about me.

I have to convince myself that regularly. It's not all about me. It's about us. It's about what god's doing And yes, the ego has kept you alive till now. The way you see the world, the way you engage the world matters.

But the ego is a part of who you are. It is not all of who you are. Because if you're driven, if you let the ego drive the ship, is always going to go for the glory, for looking good, for seeming good, for getting the best for you. Because that is what ego needs to do. It wants the best for you.

But if we allow ourselves to let ego fall from center stage to just part of who we are, then we can engage the world with this newly resurrected life, This life that engages every moment with a sense of wonder and awe. Okay. Now, I'm starting to sound like some kind of hopeless optimist. I know you're listening and you're thinking, can't always be in awe, James. I can't always engage life from that perspective and that's okay.

It really is. It's not about you doing that as much all the time even if I said so. What it is about is recognizing that we're part of something so much bigger than we are. Resurrection Life is realizing that I can do my part. Whatever the gift is I bring to the table, I can do what is given me to make a difference in the world.

I can do what is given to me to do to make a difference in the world. And what I'm given to do is not the same as any one of you who are listening to to listen to this moment, this podcast. Each one of you will bring something different to this. This is why we talk about spiritual gifts in the church because we're all playing a part in the whole body and it's our work together as Dulin Church that can transform False Church in the way that Dulin Church is meant to. That's not to say False Church Press doesn't make a difference in the way that they're meant to make and the same for the False Church Episcopal or Christ Crossman or any of the other churches from Galloway to all of the rest of our sibling congregations.

They make a difference in their own way But we have to be the body of Christ that we're called to be. I know that you are caring. I know that you're engaged in the world and that's part of living resurrection life. Question to ask ourselves as we enter into this time is how can we live the resurrection life in the best way? How do we get that new sense of quality of life and engage the world with that sense that god has claimed us God has raised us.

The things that we were sure mattered for parts of our lives. It's not that they don't matter. They're just not the whole purpose for which we're alive. The whole purpose for which we're alive is to love our neighbor, to love God, to love ourselves, to recognize that God is using us as tools in the world. We are a part of the work God is doing with our hands, our feet, our eyes, our words, the way that we share from our resources financially and otherwise.

I've been not so much surprised as delighted by the response we have received regarding the families that are in food insecurity and false church, the five families we sponsor, the kind of extra financial support some of you have given. I really appreciate that. The stories we tell make a difference. And you are making a difference in the lives of those five families by what you do. But you're also making a difference every single day in other ways.

And that's what Resurrection Life is. It's a life that's not all about me. It's a life that's about being a part of what the divine is doing all around us all the time in every moment and is calling us to join in so doing ourselves. That's Resurrection Life. That's empowering.

It's engaging in the world in which we live. Can you live from a place of resurrection? Can you let your ego take a back seat and humility be on the rise in you? Can I? Can I?

Can it not be about me but about us? About how we are touching the lives of others. In and through one another. My answer is I hope so. So how are you living resurrection life?

How are you making in this Easter season the resurrection real? Where are you celebrating life, not only in yourself but in others? Where are you seeing it happening? How can you engage in what God's already doing around you all the time in ways that will continue to bring life? Easter is about the power of life over death, love over hate, good over evil.

Let us celebrate those by living them. Live a resurrection life, my friends. Until the next time I see you. I wish you all the very best.