What Group Are You In?

Happy Easter/Resurrection Sunday Everyone! Since the term Easter refers to a pagan fertility holiday, personally and for the purposes of this blog, which focus's on Christianity, I will refer to this day as Resurrection Sunday from this point forward. I hope your day thus far has been a joyful celebration of our risen Lord and a remembrance of the resurrecting power of God. My prayer for you (and for myself) is that all of the promises of God that you thought were dead... dreams, relationships, careers, etc... be resurrected this day and that the pain of the Good Fridays in our lives be a distant memory.

I read my horoscope the other day and found it very interesting. I NEVER read horoscopes because I don't believe in astrology, but after reading my cousins I thought, "what the heck". Some of it was accurate, but what I found most interesting was it's emphasis on group dynamic. I don't "do" groups. Never have, never will. I'm much better on my own or with a mate (I've only had one and he died) and a few close friends. This allows people to come in and out of my life at will. That way, everyone has space to grow and no one becomes burdensome.

Now I bet your wondering how this refers to Resurrection Sunday... and I'm just getting to that. Jesus was a member of a group, a large religious group, however he spent most of his time with twelve close friends. Within his small group, he experienced very few problems. He wasn't always understood, but most of the twelve (all but one) loved and respected him. Christ's problems really started with the larger group who was afraid of how his message would effect them`, and their position in it. So in an attempt to “nip it in the bud” (the message that is) they accused him of a crime he didn't commit and had him crucified .

Now when I spoke to my cousin about her horoscope and my views on groups, we had a long discussion about the pros and cons of belonging to them. Her take on group dynamic is that you can move at will in and out of groups and change groups whenever you want, but I don't believe that this is the case and I think the story of Christ's crucifixion supports this. Life requires movement and growth. Nothing living ever remains the same. Groups have a tendency to stop growth and that to me is worse than death. And it doesn't really matter what large group you belong to, the larger the group, the larger the structure, the greater the conflict.

In Christ's case, the leaders of the larger group he belonged to, decided the only way to handle Christ's message and his mission to help others grow spiritually was to demonize him, and bring up on charges of calling himself a king, which would be the equivalent of treason today, and have Him executed... and the funny thing is that it should have worked, but we all know it didn't. In fact, just the opposite happened. Instead of squashing Christ's message and the impact of his small band of followers, Christ's crucifixion and subsequent resurrection catapulted Jesus' message throughout Asia minor and ultimately the entire world. That one act of intolerance literally changed the world.

So my prayer for you (and me) at the beginning of this post, that the pain of the Good Friday's in our lives... of our crucifixions, become a distant memory, is based on the knowledge of the greatest comeback story in human history. He lived again on that first resurrection Sunday two thousand years ago, He lives today and lives in you and me and can cause all that we thought was lost to be resurrected.