Easter 36 The Resurrection: Why in the World Are You Here?

[HKHaugan]

Born. In the secular world the use of that word is widely distributed. There are born winners and losers. There are those who are considered born to be musicians, painters, athletes and professionals of all kinds. Then, of course, born again. Even there, it's secular use is to talk about the revival or change of a career. Someone who has found a hobby or a job they can't wait to get to will say, “I was born for this.” Think about yourself in this world. What were you born to be?

However, there's a deeper question here, “Why were we born at all?” As soon as you ask 'why' about anything you are in the spiritual dimension. Everything physical is contemplated in terms of 'why' and how it has a place in existence which has its own why---why does anything exist? It goes beyond philosophy which delves into the meaning of existence but ultimately cannot answer the 'why' question because it depends on the limited human brain. The very fact that we have to ask anything, search for answers, experiment, delve into meaning and purpose, exposes how limited we really are in our intellect and its obvious impotency when it comes to facing invisible reality.

The whole field of education is itself established to wander the reality of human limitation both of the learner and the teacher. But in its harbors are the faith stirrers who learn in order to exercise the only key to the unseen, faith. Faith in the hope (also a spiritual quality) that something new will emerge. That searching process is endless and will always be there as long as a human mind looks into itself. But faith takes another need, an outside context, believing (another spiritual fact) there is always more to be be discovered and experienced. Mankind is not driven by what he can see but what lies behind what can be seen and the potential in what makes everything work and how to use it to better the environment in which we live both here and in the physical space that is a kind of 'final frontier' that actually points to the invisible spiritual frontier that lies behind it. It's a moral frontier.

Historically it has always been those who dared explore “where no man has gone before” that have produced the advances in every field that tickles human curiosity. They took what is called a 'leap of faith.' And for many of the greatest advances in Western civilization it was a basic faith in God that established the educational communities that forged the kind of research resulting in modern medicine, technology and the caregiving fields. Out of that God-faith has arisen the concern for the welfare of individuals, their personal value, dignity and significance. Even the researchers and pioneers who were not believers were accepted and gained their patronage from the cover of faith communities who trusted their skills as God-given regardless of their personal beliefs. Why? Again, because it's a moral frontier governed by a moral God who leads us to think above the drifting values of secular morality.

Morality is not foreign to any human being. We are all moral by nature. Morality is spiritual to the core of our being. But morality can be thrown out of its intended orbit. Observe those who sought to use their talents to exploit physical resources and the needs of others at the most base level of human instinct have tried to do it in a way that misuses belief and curiosity with some self-justifiable reasoning (reason and justification are also spiritual abilities). These are the subject of another inescapable spiritual truth, morality. Isn't it interesting that the most evil among us want to be the best they can at being evil? Unbelievers want to be good at being anti-believers. Thieves want to be good at stealing. Gordon Gecko, the ultimate lust manipulator in the movie “Wall Street” made a speech extolling the fact that 'greed is good.' Any leader of a crime gang wants his or her reputation to be the 'best' at what they do. All of this too really begs the same question, “Why?” Why have faith, reason, belief, trust, morality and all our born in qualities been so grievously misused? Weren't we born for something deeper, more productive and more gratifying than self-elevation?

While faith is the great motivator there are three other spiritual realities that fight faith, sin and its cohorts fear and pride. These three consistent obstacles to leaping faith are the dark nagging spirits that populate those whose minds are caught in their toxic grip holding on to what they consider power over self and influence over others. It is these very factors that sentence every human being to death, the sentence Jesus came to bear in our place on the Cross. What sin, fear and pride had done to mankind's leadership, families, cultures was to enslave their hearts. No one was free from their clutches until He came and bore all the hatred they had planted in the hearts of everyone born into the physical world. You can't escape the fact of spirituality in its awesome magnitude. But being the Creator God in the flesh, like a magnet His lifestyle of grace and love drew the venom of sin toward Him from every social, political, religious power that the source of evil, the devil, could muster and used the Cross to kill Him.

He died alone, was buried alone, left alone. But then –- the Resurrection. He rose above it all and showed He was in fact true to His Word. Nothing could hold Him back.

So it is those who stand up giving their faith to God through the risen Jesus, those who are willing to place that faith above their own sin, fear and pride and the sin, fear and pride in others. They are the ones who live to give, to love and contribute. Faith placed in Him is the only antidote. He who created us knows us inside and out. Who would you rather have leading you in the land of the unseen? The One who created it all or the 'hit-and-miss' strategy whose historic echo endlessly cries 'why?' in an eternity of aloneness.

You see what all this is pointing to? Behind every human exercise is some spiritual motivation and it is only the Lord God who can put it all into focus. Whatever hinders spiritual understanding is what hinders the whole of humanity. So when we ask why we were born it is to see that we are first spiritual beings, personal beings and relational beings. We were born to believe in God with our minds, trust Him with our hearts and let His Spirit use our spirits to act in faith.

Reasons, processing your experience, give a structure for hanging your questions on. Once we accept God as our personal point of reference for our mind, trust Him as He has revealed Himself in Jesus and have faith in His presence in us, this is when real eternal life begins. Jesus knew this was the issue for every human heart. A key point in His Sermon on the Mount was intended to deal with this when He said, “Seek and you will find, ask and it will be given, knock and the door will be opened (Mt.7:7).” Without hesitation He was pointing to Himself as the pivotal point of reference for the mind to seek, the heart to trust and the spirit to have faith. Seek, ask and knock. What we will find is that everything begins and ends with Him. “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light (Mt.11:28-30).”

So let's get back to this 'born' issue. Why not start where we all start, being born? The Bible is that foundational data base into the spiritual cloud. Genesis does just this. It begins by answering the 'why-we-were-born' question with three purposes. First, to be an image and likeness of God (1:26). Second, to manage Creation (1:26) and third, to be fruitful and multiply (1:28). To be an image and likeness of God is to be a person, a conscious individual whose design is to operates spiritually. Think like God, evaluate experience like God and then behave like God. That's what Jesus did. It's what He meant when He said, “When you have seen me you have seen the Father (Jn.14:9).”

Johns' Gospel elaborates on this in a very personal way. When we accept Jesus each of us becomes a direct child of God. Jesus, the Son of God came to offer every one who believed in Him, received Him and accepted Him, to be God's personal children (John 1:12). Here is where our true purpose begins. Each of us is a biography, a spiritual biography, a personal biography and a relational biography in the making. We are history, 'His Story,' unfolding in every next moment.