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Jim, over six feet and well-built, looked comical in the cheerleader’s skirt and sweater, but it was Halloween. Jim, my son and their girlfriends were on their way to a party. Being the native New Yorker, Jim stepped to the curb, hailed a cab, and opened the door for the two women to hop in. That’s when it happened. A stranger appeared from nowhere, jumped into the taxi, slammed the door and told the driver to take off. Jim the cheerleader sprinted alongside the cab as it pulled away, screaming to the smug face on the other side of the glass, “You can’t do that! We live in an ordered society! There are rules!”
This image has come to mind recently as I sat reflecting on how disordered our society has become. I find the time we are living through to be unsettling, to say the least.
Early Christians lived in even more unsettling times. Their capitol had been destroyed. All that was left of the most symbolic building in Jerusalem was a wall where people came to wail. Yet these early Christians managed to leave us with stories and practices to help us through times of disorder. They did not sugarcoat the sense of pain, of loss, that we humans feel watching the world as we know it fall apart. But they did testify in word and in their lives that a new order emerges out of disorder. Life evolves, we change, there is a re-ordering. That is what we are called to testify to—in word and in our lives. We profess resurrection. Resurrection does not look to restore an old way—it promises that something new, something not imagined before, can come to life. Our part is to walk in faith, trusting that enough light will be given us to take one step at a time, that a path will emerge.