As Christians, we are people of the Resurrection. At its most basic level, Christianity is a claim that our religious founders had proof that for one man, death was not the end. From them we have inherited the hope that if we cling to that one man, he will carry us into that Reality in which he now lives. All else is commentary.
There are three caveats: We have no proof that it works, that he does carry us into the Resurrection; We are not sure what it means to cling to him; We know very little about that greater Reality in which he lives.
And so, as Christians, we look at him, try to understand him, and try to be like him. We see that he was Jewish, and so the Jewish God becomes our God, and the Jewish Scriptures become our Scriptures. The wisdom and stories of his people become our family wisdom and our family stories. And we add to those, the stories told about him, and the attempts of his followers to understand him and his Resurrection.
The two main things we know about Jesus in his Jewish context are that he was totally faithful to God. And that he welcomed everybody who came to him. He welcomed everybody who wanted to be part of what he called the Kingdom of God -- even to the point of going out and finding people who thought they were unacceptable, and bringing them in. You did not have to look like him, think like him, behave like him to be welcome. Unfortunately, as we look around town, how many of our churches offer that kind of radical welcome? But Jesus did!
Clinging to Jesus means being faithful to God, as Jesus was. And that meant the death of Good Friday before the Resurrection of Easter. And clinging to Jesus means being radically welcoming, as Jesus was. Not only is this hard, it is not popular. And it means one more thing -- being open to whatever new thing God is bringing about in us, accepting the new calling that comes from God, and being accepting of those God rings into our lives in each new beginning. Trust God. For we have not yet seen all that God can do.
