Vernon Easterhare Declares:

Happy Easter! To skeptics on this wonderful holiday, I but rejoin with remarks of Rudolph Bultman (a skeptic himself!), who in his History of the Synoptic Tradition determined that the sociological processes of faith and worship determined New Testament beliefs like the resurrection, a sine qua non for which he was not apologetic.

Therefore, Easter makes cause for celebration; critical minds from Northern climes can better appreciate the archetypal significance of the greening, flowering earth beyond vernal equinox. One rationalist may poo-poo the Gospel account of Jesus-and-the-open-tomb, but intuit the psychology of resurrection from the inevitable human sensation of spring fever in geographies where winters are sufficiently bitter.

Faith and worship actually seem to be human factors affecting a number of enterprises, particularly I-Thou relations communities have with what Paul Tillich called our “ultimate concerns.” The practice of the Jesus Movement originally seems to have been something like a commune or new family; see Luke 8:19-21. What Jesus may have had in mind was a cognate of the Aramaic word ummah - “womb, mother clan, community, tribe, nation... in this case, a cohort bound by obedience religiously.”

This New Family becomes the highest priority for the disciple; she/he cannot first say goodbye to he/his family of origin or bury her/his dead (Luke 8:60-61). The needs of the new family further the Realm of God as resurrection becomes the daily practice of our New Age.

This gets good utterance in John 21, when we read that Jesus appeared for the third time to the disciples since being raised from the dead. After asking Peter several times whether Peter loves Him, and getting an affirmative response, Jesus says, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Again getting a “Yes,” Jesus responds, “Tend my sheep.”

The New Family is to be tended as a shepherd tends sheep; in such provision-for-need we keep alive Jesus and beckon the City of God. To me, faith and worship at Jeff Street lives out this resurrecting husbandry quite in a Jesus Way! This we do by outreach to especially those who have not, and those bonked by society, as well as the forgiving followers (who work first on the “logs” in their own eyes!)

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by Vernon, who always has us running to the dictionary