Half/Time

Unfortunately, the Coronavirus pandemic hasn’t been resolved is such a short time.  In fact, it’s still with us, and I think its effects will stay with us for a while.  Something God’s people can do something about. Hence this new Chalk Talk.

I look forward to a Half/Time Reunion as soon as we get the All-Clear signal.  We’ll probably have the best Table Talk ever, sharing stories!

In the meantime, I pray this finds you well, healthy and sustained by God’s love and the solid hope we have in Jesus. 

In His Love,

Jim

Reversing Climate Change
Half/Time Chalk Talk
Jim Rueb 9/23/20

Climate change.  We’ve all seen it.  We’ve all felt it.  Climate change is for real. But not just that kind!  We’re talking about social climate change.  The kind that avoids proximity, shrinks from touching and looks at the world as though peering over a fence, just enough to see what’s going on and to plot a wide turn around any oncoming human traffic.

The social climate has changed since March 2020.  In a much more dramatic way than anyone would have thought.   We’re assured by the varsity public health team that wearing masks is one of the keys to reducing the spread of the virus.  True.  Masks are also the pandemic’s primary billboard.  Kind of like a facial bumper sticker, proclaiming a message that varies with each person.  But the effect of all those facial billboards is unmistakable: The social climate has changed, and it feels odd and wrong.

People are wondering. “Is this social climate change going to leave us a diminished culture, a diminished people, a diminished nation…and if so, will we be able to reverse it?”  As Miracle Max famously replied to Inigo Montoya and Fezzik in The Princess Bride when they brought Westley to him for healing, “It’ll take a miracle!”  Which is what happened.

After an agonizing, humiliating, unjust, and brutal death on a Roman cross, things had changed, especially for the disciples.  Dramatically!  Only a few days before they’d been on top of the world.  “Wow, guys, that parade into Jerusalem last weekend was…awesome!” Jesus’ disciples now were in shock, seriously frightened and deeply disillusioned.  It was like the giant rolling stone in the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland. Only this boulder didn’t just miss them overhead.  It landed smack dab in middle of their Land Rover!

No wonder they were locked down in an upper room rather than one on the ground floor with its easier entry. They might have wanted masks for when they finally worked up courage to slink down out of that room onto the streets of Jerusalem.  Hoping never to be seen there again.  Making sure they signed on to the witness protection program in someplace like Chorazin, Magdala, or even better yet, Tiberius, a larger city on the west side of the lake Jesus never visited where they could blend in with the crowd.  Avoiding totally the fair Capernaum-on-the Water where people knew them well.  Their climate had changed literally overnight.  A little like ours on March 10.

Ironically, we could also say the climate of the whole world continued for the moment to look sadly unchanged, even unchangeable. Especially in light of the massive political, cultural, economic and religious force of Rome at its very zenith!  “Rome change?  “Are you kidding??”  “It’d take a miracle!”  Which is what happened!

A small group of women, not including any of the official disciples, went out to the cemetery below Golgotha on the first day of the week and saw something they hadn’t expected. The stone in front of Jesus’ tomb had been removed.  Looking warily inside, they heard unlikely words like, “He is not here; He is risen.”  “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” Back outside one of them thought she saw the gardener.  Until he edged close enough for her to hear him say her name.  Mary ran back to those locked down disciples and cried out, “He’s alive!”

The rest is history.  Which you can read about in Tom Holland’s 2019 book, “Dominion, How the Christian Revolution Remade the World.”  And when the masks come off, the vaccine distributed like flu shots and Alaska Airlines is flying full force again there'll be more history to unfold. An incredible, history-making opportunity will come before God’s resurrection people and Christ’s resurrection Church to reverse the climate change which has descended upon us like a new Ice Age.

Actually, we can start reversing climate change right now.  People can hear your smile right through those masks.  People can pick up a vaccine of hope through those N95s. And they can feel in this present uncertainty the love of God, “who has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son,” (Col. 1:13). Let's not wait in reversing this climate change!