Expanding Our Vision
Listening to the radio Tuesday morning (while in the dentist's chair) I heard a brief discussion on metaphors. It struck me that most of what we can deal with in our life and faith can end up being utilized as metaphors. To do so is to expand our vision of life and who we are and what is going on around us.

The following came Monday from Inward/Outward and is a good example of taking an idea (in this case, the Resurrection of Jesus) and making a broader metaphor from it.

Jesus did not live and die that we might all bow down and worship him. He lived and died so that, by his example, we might learn to live and die for love. The story begins when God puts on flesh and comes to walk among us. It ends, or perhaps it just begins again, when God’s spirit is uncaged by death, when the one who walked among us dies an individual and is born again as a community. It’s not so hard to understand. Easter happens every day. Easter happens each time those who mourn rise up again to honor those they’ve lost by loving life more dearly. Easter happens every time we stand in solidarity with those who’ve lost all hope and say, “Hold on, we’re at your side.” And Easter happens every time, in spite of woe and death, in spite of the multitude of ways we’ve turned away, in spite of our failures and denials, we say yes to life.

Source: By Rob Eller-Isaacs Sermon

I know that some literalists would want to argue with some of what is in that quote, but before you do so, just shift a little to add- not take away- from the basic Resurrection. Jesus was always good at turning things around him into even deeper events and metaphors for something greater.

Not that the Resurrection isn't deep enough to begin with that we haven't even begun to figure it out. In this case the metaphors allow us to begin to grasp the depth and breadth of it. If the church is the Body of Christ, then we, the church, have become the born again (Resurrected!) Body alive and at work today. And so Easter does happen each and every day when we- as part of the greater Church- say yes to life and make it our way.