I’ve always been fascinated by numbers. With today’s technology we can look back almost 14 billion years into the universe’s history and see the cosmic explosion of God’s creative Big Bang. It’s mind-boggling to think that anyone can even conceive of a number like 14 billion. Cosmic numbers are on my mind this Holy Week. But more mundane numbers are also crowding my brain. 68 teams started in the NCAA basketball tournament. After today there will only be 8.

When I was a teenager we sang along with Three Dog Night: One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do; two can be as bad as one: It’s the loneliest number since the number one. When my father caught me in some transgression as a child, which was quite often (I was not the most obedient of children), he used to say to me: I got your number, buddy! It was his way of saying I wasn’t fooling anybody but myself.

I have another number for you: umpteen. I didn’t know this, but it’s a real word according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. It’s a blend of umpty (such and such) and -teen (as in thirteen). It’s first known use was in 1918, but I first heard it used when my father would say to me: “I told you umpteen times to _______.” Since I didn’t know how much umpteen was, it became a word of grace indicating my father wasn’t really keeping a precise score of what I had “left undone.” If he’d said: “I told you 237 times to _______” then that would’ve meant he was meticulously keeping an exact score of all my sins. As it was, umpteen left room for grace to take root. My father still “had my number,” but it was an inexact, graceful number: umpteen.

The events of Holy Week starkly remind us that God has “our number.” From Judas’s despicable betrayal of Jesus to Peter’s broken-hearted denial that he even knew Jesus; from Pilate’s effort to wash his hands of the whole affair to the religious leader’s blood-thirsty tenacity to see Jesus dead; from the disciples running away like rats from a sinking ship, to the faithful women who steadfastly refused to abandon Jesus as he was taken from the cross and buried: God indeed has our number.

If we numbered every human virtue and vice, my hunch is we’d find each one of them on display in the biblical characters of Holy Week. You see, the Bible not only reveals to us the truth about God, it also reveals to us the truth about ourselves. And that truth about humanity is completely unmasked and laid bare in the story of Holy Week. God has our number, all 7,411,382,569 of us.

But thanks be to God, God isn’t keeping score. In raising Jesus from the dead, God ended score keeping forever. That, however, doesn’t stop some from the seemingly pathological need to keep score, a way for us to be “one up” and pass judgment on others. But when God raised Jesus from the dead, God eliminated the need for scorekeeping or for even settling scores. God reduced the number down to one question for us: God either raised Jesus from the dead or God didn’t. Either God is in the business of bringing new life to humanity or God isn’t. Only one of those can be true.

+Scott

 

Christianity has died many times and risen again, for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave. – G. K. Chesterton

The Anglican Communion News Service reports that West Africa’s new Anglican archbishop, the Most Reverend Solomon Tilewa Johnson, has identified “the threat posed by new churches” as one of the top priorities for the Anglican Church there. He expressed a concern that the Anglican bishops of West Africa share about losing young people to other churches or losing them from church altogether.

Archbishop Johnson stressed: “We need to be relevant in the first place. I would want to work with my fellow bishops to see what strategies we could come up with to make our message understandable enough for people to respond.”

The above should sound at all too familiar to us in the American context. Reports out of Africa for the last generation have informed us of the significant growth of the church on that continent. And that growth continues. Still, as Archbishop Johnson states, the Anglican Church is facing a struggle now for how to respond to the new challenge of the loss of young people from the church.

Parts of Africa are now going through what we in our context have been going through for a generation and what Europe has gone through since the middle part of the 20th Century: the church losing its influence and relevancy in people’s lives. This should concern us, but I do not see this as a problem to be solved as much as I see it as an opportunity God is giving us to, as the Chesterton quote above suggests, to die and rise again.

So, let me provoke here: What in our church needs to die so that we might rise again? Another way of framing that question might be: What do we need to give up, or give over, or let go of in order to receive the new life of resurrection as a church? Going forward, what is essential for us to take with us and what can we declare to be adiaphora (look it up, if that will help)? A classic Anglican answer might be: we take with us the Scriptures, Creeds, Sacraments, and Holy Orders, the so-called four pillars. My hunch is we unconsciously pile a lot of other things on top of those four pillars that don’t need to be included. That is what we need to wrestle with as a church right now.

But let’s bring this to an individual level. What are each of us willing to let go of or give over that we might participate in this resurrection? This is called repentance; the act of turning around, changing our way of thinking and acting, and letting go of our past practices so that we might receive the new gift of resurrection. It is easy to suggest to the church, or even to criticize the church about what changes it should make so it can live into this resurrection. It is a far more difficult task to confront ourselves with a fearless spiritual inventory. So, what are you willing to give up, give over, or let go of in order to participate with your fellow disciples in the resurrection of the Church?

+Scott