Stand still for Easter
You can’t outrun love. That’s true. There is nowhere that God is not, and God is love, so it’s pretty simple math - you can’t outrun love. The best theological treatment of that fact can be found in the children’s book, The Runaway Bunny. If you don’t know that book, go buy it right now. It’s worth it. I promise.
On the other hand, I have been playing around with the notion that one can outrun love. I am, of course, introducing a paradox. Don’t rush to resolve the tension. Just consider this….
There is an intriguing wisdom teaching that says, the essentials never impose themselves, while the non-essentials are constantly imposing themselves.
The essentials are things like love, mercy, grace, and hope. They don’t chase you around seeking to catch you, pin you down, and force themselves on you. They are always available in infinite supply, but they are only offered never imposed.
The non-essentials are things like fear, greed, shame, guilt, and anger. They are constantly chasing most of us around seeking to force themselves upon us so that they can have their say in our lives and eventually sneak themselves into the driver’s seat. The non-essentials impose themselves intrusively every chance they get.
If fear is chasing me and I run, that is, I don’t stand still and face it, then I am likely to end up in the territory of denial and avoidance. But if I don’t run, fear can’t chase me. If I face fear or whatever is chasing me then love shows up right alongside me and wells up from inside me to show me that the fear doesn’t have the power to name me or claim me.
If I am running from any of the non-essentials then I stand a pretty good chance of outrunning love. I tend to make bad decisions when I am emotionally on-the-run, decisions that are not love-based. But if I stop running and stand still in my tracks, then love catches up with me and swallows both me and that from which I am running.
As Good Friday approaches I am struck by the fact that Jesus didn’t run from those who sought to kill him. He stood still, and the betrayal, his suffering, and death itself was all absorbed in the infinite love that raised him from the dead.
What are you running from? If you stop running, whatever you’re running from can’t chase you anymore. If you stop running you’re not chaseable. Easter finds God in Jesus Christ standing still in the middle of the chaos and violence of our lives in full solidarity with the entirety of the human experience. Stand still and let love catch up with you, let Easter happen to you, and you too will be raised to new life.