Engaging with the Risen Jesus-Thoughts for 2020

Happy 2020 Touchstone Friends

“Lift from their eyes the too distant vision of the resurrection at the last day. Alert them to hear the voice of Jesus saying: ‘I AM Resurrection and I AM Life’: that they may believe this.”  (excerpt from A Veil Thin as Gossamer George MacLeod The Whole Earth Shall Cry Glory)

December 31st, I prayed the above prayer from which the excerpt comes. It has become one of my headlights for 2020. ‘I AM Resurrection and I AM Life’ is important in itself but has led me to reflect on “I AM” in its many expressions of the Trinity. I AM light, I AM bread, I AM truth, I AM love, I AM mercy, I AM reconciliation, I AM forgiveness. I AM the one who frees you from your own great I AM.

That last sentence was what I heard in my prayers as I listened to God. This freedom from my own Great I AM does not diminish but liberates me to know my place in the kingdom and to serve our circles of friends as well as I can.

January 2nd was the first anniversary of Holger Larsen’s death. He was a real brother to me and a shaper and founder of this work. So, on one hand I am feeling very connected with the friends who are now worshipping in God’s nearer presence and on the other very connected with the friends who muddle with me in time and space. While sharing the hope of the Last Day’s resurrection, we are beneficiaries of the great I AM, who is resurrection and life for us now.

A few days ago, I had lunch with a long-time friend. In the course of a wide-ranging conversation he asked, “If at the end of life, you discover that this is all untrue, how would you feel?”  My response only confirmed my faith in the resurrection of Jesus as my “Touchstone”. If Jesus has not risen from the dead and all this is untrue then I have wasted my life and energy in believing and promoting a lie. And so has Touchstone. Instead, Paul says, we should have just partied on.

All our relationships are about engaging with the risen Jesus, in the hope of the final resurrection and the awareness of his ongoing work among us. That is my fuel for the journey now and ahead. I’m still energized to be be part of this process of pointing to Jesus, primarily in conversations, groups and retreats.  The widening platform of social media is exciting too but is a by-product of the core activity.

I was in conversation with Jesus on a Fall retreat about the accumulating sorrows I have experienced in the past years. His response was “I am acquainted with sorrow” – obviously a reference to Isaiah’s “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: … Surely he has borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows”.

My response was to say that he not only was acquainted with sorrow, but he had been immersed in it and it was at that point his bearing of our grief became central to my experience. I experience sorrow, accompany the sorrowing, but he bears the sorrows.

I look back on the conversations, funerals, funeral planning, listening to stories, both hopeful and despairing, with gratitude and yet knowing there is more to come. One of my fears/ recognitions at the beginning of Touchstone was that if you build friendships for the long haul, one of the friends will die first. We live with death and hope in some sort of partnership, but the friendships are still worth the risk – and the joy we share along the way.

Thank you for continuing to provide the resources that enable us to respond to the needs of those who continue to come across our path.

Goodness of friendship grow among us,
Norm