Easter Accountability

Jodie Kirk, from Discordia Seminary in Capitol City, the new young student pastor at Forsythia Lutheran, is delighted. He has Butler U. in the basketball championship pool, and Butler actually beat Michigan State and will play in the final game on Monday night. So now he can go ahead with his plans to preach "Butler Rolls the Stone Away" as his Easter serrmon, talking about how the excitement of Jesus' disciples on that first Easter must have been like that of Butler fans now.

Jodie is also experimenting with changing his name from Jodie to Joe D. He's not sure that Jodie is a serious enough name for a pastor, but he doesn't want to disappoint his mother, who wanted him to be a country singer, and so named him after the great Jodie Williams IV, who has had a show on public radio WKCS every Saturday night for forty years. He assumes that when his parishoners call him Pastor Joe D, it will sound to his mother like Jodie.

When he ran into Pastor Randall Nathan, (Retard), at The Mills of the Gods Coffee House yesterday, Randall said he thought the name change would work but advised against "Butler Rolls the Stone Away" as a sermon title. He suggested "The Butler Did It" as an alternative. Randall Nathan knows that "when old men become irrelevant, young men become irresponsible," and he is trying to be a relevant old man, one who holds his younger colleagues accountable.

Randall Nathan watched an interview with Tom Izzo, the head coach for men's basketball at Michigan State U. A reporter asked him how the job had changed over the last 10 years. Izzo said: "I spend more time with the players off the court, holding them accountable, because other people haven't done that as much as they used to. We look at young people and blame them for their failures, when those are really our failures for not holding them accountable. You can't be successful if you're not accountable for your actions." Izzo is famous for suspending players for even minor infractions, like missing a single class. Pastor Randall Nathan, (Retard), is glad he never had to play basketball for Tom Izzo.

Now he is sitting in Easter morning worship at The Methodist, wondering if Joe D is actually going to preach that sermon, and watching his friend, 8-year-old Jimmy MacClure, sitting with his parents and sisters across the aisle. Jimmy does not look like he is having a resurrection moment.

Pastor Nathan is the child psychologist of choice in Periwinkle County. He does not claim to be a child psychologist, but parents know he likes children, and they don't want to pay or be humiliated by their children, so they take kids of all ages to Pastor Nathan, since he's free, and there's no stigma attached to having your kid talk to a minister, the way there would be if anyone saw them taking the kid to a real psychologist.

Pastor Nathan suspects he knows why Jimmy's family looks tense this morning. Jimmy likes to sing, so in their Wednesday after-school sessions, Randall and Jimmy sing together. The old pastor encourages his young friend to make up words as they go along, to say how he feels about things. They were doing Easter hymns this week, and Jimmy came out with "Up from the grave he arose, with a booger hanging from his nose..." Pastor Nathan was not surprised. Eight-year-olds are much into booger jokes. He also figured this was a significant psychological breakthrough, but he hadn't decided where to go with it when Jimmy suggested he would surprise his family on Easter morning with his new hymn, at which point Pastor Nathan advised against it.

Now Pastor Nathan is pretty sure that Jimmy did not take his advice, and also sure that Tom Izzo would be proud of Jimmy's parents. When Jimmy gets to Michigan State, he won't have to put much time into Jimmy off the court, because it definitely looks like Jimmy's parents are holding him accountable.

But are punishment and accountability the same thing? Tom Izzo punishes his players to make them better. That's accountability. A lot of punishment is not designed to make a person better, but just because the punishers enjoy seeing others in misery, or enjoy the feeling of power it gives them. Who holds the punishers accountable for those sorts of sins?

And what about this easy grace of Easter? We do the sinning, but God punishes Jesus. "Jesus died for our sins." That doesn't hold US accountable.

That is only part of what Randall Nathan worries about this Easter morning. He knows there is a difference between resuscitation and resurrection, but he knows most people won't note that difference this morning, so there will be more confusion about Easter than necessary. The point of Jesus' resurrection, after all, is not just that a body got out of the grave, or that there is life after death, but that the Holy Spirt, the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Love, that dwelt in Jesus is now available at all times and in all places, not just in the body of Jesus or in his thirty or so years of physical life.

Randall Nathan preached 40 Easter mornings, but he still has no answers for the Easter questions. He's not expecting any from Pastor Patty this morning, either. She told him this week, "It's impossible to preach on Easter. It's all been said before, and nobody understands it anyway."

He looks now at Jimmy MacClure across the aisle as the congregation sings "Up from the grave he arose..." Jimmy's parents are bending down close to him, listening for the words he sings. But each has an arm around his shoulder. It looks to Randall Nathan like the best way to hold someone accountable, with an arm of love around each shoulder. Pastor Nathan thinks that maybe God wasn't holding Jesus accountable for our sins in the crucifixion, but maybe Jesus was holding God accountable, for that prodigal, limitless love.