Practice Resurrection

  I'm going to own this at the beginning:  I love reading Eugene Peterson's works.  They're written for pastors.  Not for mega-church superstars or for modern day 'communicators', a term I hear more and more and understand less and less.  Eugene Peterson writes for those of us who struggle along, day after day, in an attempt to love and know each and every person entrusted to us in our congregation.  Peterson writes for the imperfect church, the church where we all know each other and know how broken we all are.  He writes for the church where we worry about the light bill and where we wonder, deep inside, if what we do truly matters in the world.

  So it is with great anticipation that I picked up Eugene Peterson's latest work, Practice Resurrection: A Conversation on Growing Up in Christ, the last in the series of 'conversations' about practical theology.

  Practice Resurrection is focused around the book of Ephesians, and Peterson marvels at the fact that Paul wrote Ephesians to tell the church how to be the church.  It's not filled, as the letters to the church in Corinth are, with advice about how to solve problem after problem.  It's filled with guidance on how the church can most faithfully live out her call as the body of Christ in the world.  Peterson talks about who we are and how we are to live together, from our worship to our daily lives.

  What's great about this book is captured in the title--our job is to practice for our resurrection.  Heaven isn't simply a great place that lurks just beyond the horizon, lingering at the edge of our dreams as a reminder of what is to come but too distant and ethereal for us to ever truly grasp.  Heaven is a reality, the kingdom come to earth, that we can grasp between our fingers just as surely as the leaves in the fall can be gathered as they fall, lumped into large piles and dived into.  Heaven is something that we practice for in this life--and the more we let God's will govern our days and our nights, our joys and our sorrows, the more faithfully we practice for our own resurrection.

  And the church is the setting in which we're called to live this out together.    We do this as an imperfect gathering, filled with sinful people, yet we do this joyfully, marveling at the wonder Christ is doing in us.  If we look hard enough, if we pay attention closely, we'll see the work of the Spirit among us.  Peterson is calling us to open our eyes, to slow down, and to watch for God at work.

  So here and now, he says, let us practice for what is to come, and may God's kingdom come.