Pondering the gift that is “the” Gathering. I hope you’ll allow me to give Easter Sunday a backwards glance (I know it was ten days ago).

Easter is the Holy I Told You So. I love the way the Scripture reads, “He is risen, just as He said.”

If you only attend church on Easter, I want you to know Jesus welcomed you into the assembly, Sunday before last. Oh, for sure. He welcomed you there, with joy.

And He wants to offer you so much more.

He offers you a rhythm of life, where every week, on the first day of the week, you can rush out the door in order to slow your whole life down to the manageable pace of grace. I don’t care how busy you are, I promise you that skipping a Sunday church gathering will not give you space to breathe.

Heading out on that day, carving out that time, is like doing with time what the tithe (or “regular financial giving”) does for your money: give the first fruits of the 10 percent, and that somehow multiplies the effectiveness of the 90 percent that is yours to do with as you please.

Jesus offers you a lifestyle of gathering with certainty around mysteries. And that looks however that looks!

What I mean is this: Some church leaders think they have all the questions figured out, and that’s fine. I challenge you to allow them that. Their certainty does not make them wrong. Other pastors and Bible teachers prefer some mystery, and they can acknowlege not knowing some things. And they’re not wrong.

But all know for sure that Jesus is alive.

In the act of Sunday gathering Christ offers you a liturgy of celebrating wholeness - sometimes we experience instant healing of brokenness, sometimes we lift holy hands (without an agenda…with zero anger or scheming contention) in hopeful certainty of heaven’s perfection laid in store for the time that comes after time.

And I hope you ate some form of ham/pork, ten days ago, even if it was just a bit of bacon for breakfast. Because Easter celebrates the New Covenant. We no longer get to call anything unclean that God has declared clean. This includes food.

This also includes church. This heavenly word refers to much more than bacon (as though the fact that Jesus has sanctified our bacon is a small thing - it most certainly is no small thing!) it also includes the assembly of the made-righteous.

In all its fragile faulty realness, in spite of the fact that sometimes churches miss the mark, you don’t get to call “toxic faith” what God has saved by grace alone.

And I hope you bought some cute Easter shoes. Because you also get to have beautiful feet, as you embody the good news that Christ died and rose again.

He came for the Pharisee in you and me.

And the one in “them”.