Go and Tell

It’s quite surprising how low-key the resurrection of Jesus was. First there was only the mystery of the empty tomb, then he appeared to a couple of women, and told them to spread the word to the eleven remaining disciples. He met the disciples, then he disappeared. He cooked breakfast on the beach for a few fishermen. He talked to a couple of people on the road to Emmaus. This was not a very powerful group in numbers, status or education. It all seemed quite amateurish. Yet somehow, within a generation there were small Christian communities scattered throughout the Roman Empire, from Egypt to Britain.

A few people meet up at St. David’s, maybe around 30 any given Sunday. We have links to Christian churches around the world, yet it seems like a small enclave in a vast secular culture. We don’t feel very powerful, and we are in fact just on the edge of survival numerically and financially. Yet the risen Jesus is in our midst – the same Jesus who asked the women to “go and tell,” and who asked Peter to “feed my sheep.” It is amateur hour for us as well, because none of us feels very equipped. All we can do is to show God’s love to the world by word and example, trusting that Jesus is with us. Anything we do may or may not work. There are no easy steps to success or magic answers here. We can only plant seeds and trust that God can make them grow, perhaps in ways that we cannot foresee.

Let us all go forth, in the name of the risen Christ. Thanks be to God that Christ goes with us.

~ The Ven. Kathy Bowman