Easter's over ... now what?

            So, the tomb is empty and Jesus rose from the dead. Now what?

            I’ll tell you what. It is Tuesday morning and the four day weekend holiday for the schools is over. Most businesses were open yesterday and by today the old routine is back in full swing. But, considering the Easter Weekend past, is anything different?

            One of the dangers of being nearly 2,000 years removed from the pivotal miracle of Christianity is that it can be really easy to take it for granted. The Easter pageantry broke forth Easter morning in full splendor. Church attendance had its usual Easter increase. The triumphant story of the Empty Tomb was told. Joyously triumphant proclamations of “He is Risen” filled church worship liturgies. Truly, it was a wonderful Easter Sunday!

            Was anything different on Monday morning? Is today just like any other Tuesday? Will the remainder of the week be just like any other week?

            How many Christians will see the world through transformed and renewed eyes after Easter? How many Christians rise from the penitent customs of Lent to live a transformed life in the Resurrected Christ? How many Christians walk away from the deadly and life-destroying behaviors just as Christ walked away from the empty tomb never to return again?

            Is it harsh to suggest that if Easter is merely a pageant of celebration that does not change lives we have missed the whole point of Christ’s resurrection? 

            Although the four Gospel accounts of Christ’s resurrection share uniquely different details about that miraculous morning so many years ago, they all contain a message of profound action. Witnesses of this incredible miracle are expected to alert a world that has been radically and permanently changed.

            In many ways the worship and pageantry of Easter Sunday in the various traditions and customs of our churches are means by which we too can share in the wonder, surprise, and awe of that first Easter morning. Yet, in so doing, the same expectation placed before those who were the first to know of God’s most incredible miracle extends to all of us who experience the miracle anew in worship tomorrow morning!

            Romans 6:2 further illustrates this profound truth. Essentially, Paul challenges us with the idea that if, in Christ and through the annual remembrance of his triumphant resurrection, we proclaim to be dead to sin, why then would we choose to continue living in sin?

            So the challenge lies before all of us! As this week progresses will the only legacy of Easter be an unusual quantity of hard boiled eggs and baskets filled with candy? Or, will the legacy of Easter’s celebration be lives so radically transformed that the whole world is a new and better place to live?

            Christ has made the potential for transformation a reality. Yet the choice is ours alone. Just as God choose to give life to Jesus, let us also choose that life and all the transformation that comes with it! 

Fukushima and the Future of Nuclear Energy

My Grandfather, the late R.C. Rogers was a very wise and intuitive man. An electrician by trade, he was stationed with the Navy in the South Pacific in August of 1945 when atomic weaponry brought about the end to World War II. For the remainder of his life, Granddad credited the Bomb with saving his life. Yet he also regretted it.

My father recalls that a few years after Granddad retuned from the war, he would say that he regretted the Atomic Bomb because he believed the incredible power and potential of nuclear energy would forever be tainted because it was introduced to the world through the destructive power of atomic weaponry.

Now, some 66 years after Japan bore the destructive power of the atom in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the island nation has new challenges brought on by the catastrophe at Fukushima. Combine the ghastly images of atomic destruction from World War II with the vivid memories of 1979’s Three Mile Island accident and the 1986 Chernobyl Disaster; there is good reason why the world is taking a critical look at the nuclear industry.

It is still too soon to evaluate the long-term effect of the Fukushima crisis but the historical evidence of the past can really help us in the debate.

In 2000 the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) released the comprehensive results of a long-term study following Chernobyl. The only fatalities directly attributed to radiation exposure were limited to employees and first responders who came in nearly direct contact with the burning nuclear reactor during the emergency or participated in immediate cleanup efforts.

As of 2005, only 50 total deaths were directly attributed to these exposures. This exceptionally low death rate stood in stark contrast to estimates of hundreds of thousands of presumed deaths or acute illnesses believed to be brought on by the disaster. The lead researcher, Dr. Fred A. Mettler Jr. determined that the greatest danger resulting from the accident was fear and politically motivated propaganda; not radiation.

Nuclear power plants do possess a significant danger. Yet science and medical research indicate that danger may not be as great as politics and fear may dictate they should be.

A second point to consider in the debate surrounding the safety of nuclear energy is the role modern technology and research play in the industry. The earliest safety feature in nuclear history was nothing more than a rope and an axe. In 1942 Nuclear pioneer Enrico Fermi initiated the world’s first controlled nuclear reaction—the birth of the nuclear power industry. In the event they lost control of the reactor, he had a man stationed with an axe ready to cut the rope that would lower cadmium rods into the reactor to stop the reaction.

Today, with 65 years of incredible research and development behind us, nuclear safety is greater than it has ever been. The Fukushima plant was actually designed with incredible safety features. The fact that it was subjected to one of the worst earthquakes and tsunamis on record is significant. For all the problems it has today, we must remember what it had to endure! We also need to consider that it was originally designed with technology that is now 40 years old. Any plant designed and built today would have significantly advanced safety designs and would have likely survived even the March 11 disaster.

The truth is that Nuclear Energy will always contain danger and the potential of a nuclear accident is a reality that regulators and engineers will always need to consider. Fear, irrational politics, and distorted propaganda are perhaps the greatest dangers when it comes to nuclear. The industry remains virtually untouchable as the best source for clean, efficient, environmentally friendly, and inexpensive power to serve a world thirsting for more and more energy.

Grandfather was wise beyond his years. That electrician rightly predicted that fear would inhibit the reasonable development of a much-needed industry. Three Mile Island proved his fears true as our nation foolishly put a halt to nuclear development—a mistake we are just now on the verge of correcting! As the world debates Fukushima and the future of the nuclear industry in light of this latest disaster, let us all hope that reason, science, and objectivity will prevail where once fear, propaganda, and irrational politics once dominated. 

Worship-full Work

            In my lifetime I have had a number of different jobs. In High School I bagged groceries for Furr’s Supermarket. I made hamburgers and breakfast biscuits for McDonald’s. I helped take care of children at the YMCA’s summer day camp program. I also sold flavored popcorn and had a few gigs as a professional clown.

            In college I operated remote cameras for distance learning through KENW-TV. As an intern at KOB-TV I co-produced television morning news. I also worked as a janitor for the Wesley Foundation.

Since my college days I have sold cars for two different dealerships and radio advertising for KSEL. Later I became a disk jockey for the station (back in the days when local radio station still played vinyl records and had real DJ’s on site).

             I enlisted in the US Coast Guard and spent quite a bit of time as a boat crewman, groundskeeper and janitor, and eventually trained as a cook and finished my military career on board the USCGC Midgett.

            All of that was before I entered seminary and started working in Christian ministry. Aside from my pastoral job, I also raise money for CARC and have worked in hospice chaplaincy and taught college classes. And those are just the jobs that I have been paid to do.

            In my life I have volunteered to serve on boards, cook food, care for the elderly, provide law enforcement and hospital chaplaincy services, and worked with several different clubs, civic organizations, and charitable causes.

            As with any job—volunteer or paid—there are times that I really enjoy the work I am tasked to do. Likewise, there are times when I really do not like it much at all. Yet, regardless of how much I may or may not like a particular task at hand, there is one thought that stays in my mind.

      Colossians 3:17 reads, “And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” This simple command from the apostle Paul comes at the end of a larger section of the letter that speaks to the way we conduct ourselves while living the Christian life.

      I raise the raise the issue of my diverse work history in the context of Colossians for one particularly important point. I have never had a bad job! Don’t get me wrong, I have had to do work that I don’t particularly enjoy at times. There have been times when I have not been happy with my job. But on the whole, I have never had a bad job.

      The key factor is one of attitude. I find that attitude through my Christian faith. Yet the attitude determines the outcome!

      Perhaps the most important factor, for me, is the realization that if I am doing something “in the name of the Lord Jesus,” it is a sacred act! I don’t care if I am preparing to preach a sermon or scrubbing greasy gunk out of a galley pan on the ship. It is sacred work if it is being done in God’s name. Then, suddenly, the value, purpose, direction, and meaning of the labor changes for the better!

      Truthfully, God needs all of the labors that make up our world. There is no job too mundane to be done in God’s name because the one performing the task is created in God’s image, called very good, and called to be a beacon of God’s light in the workplace.

      Think, for a moment, about how this makes profound differences in the workplace. The list is much longer than what I have here, but these are the top 10 reasons why working in God’s name makes a profound, positive, and meaningful difference in the workplace.

1.      God’s priority for equality, justice, fairness, and affirmation becomes a guiding principle of the workplace

2.      God is a part of what we are doing so we have access to God’s wisdom in the process.

3.      Since God truly deserves our very best, it is easier to give our best at all times.

4.      When the stupid stuff starts to get us down, we are less likely to lose sight of the higher purpose

5.      Our work is no longer a separate and secular endeavor that cuts us off from worshipping God. Rather, our work becomes yet another means to worship and glorify God.

So, today as we engage the daily chores of our life’s work—paid or unpaid—let us all honor God in the labors of our lives!