Ghost Stories

There's a slightly morbid game my grade school friends and I liked to play, forever ago: imagining who we would like to come back and haunt after we die. Or what we might do as ghosts, either to scare or comfort, depending on who dared set foot in our haunted houses.

Silly childhood play, to be sure, but imagining what we could do without certain limits, even not knowing for certain what's possible at that point, was a reflection, in a way, of what we believe

the world to be.

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Playing as Christmas Carol ghosts, to scare some miserly folk into sharing with their neighbors, was what we kids could do while wishing for a world where justice and equity have a better chance. Or, as kids say, where life was more fair.

But why wish for a world we could make in haunting after death, and not work toward that world in life? Perhaps the idea of having literally nothing left to lose opens our imaginations to some more possibility. If death, as the final threat held over our heads, is no longer a threat to be dealt with, what

risks might we take?

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How might we haunt the world with our embodied spirits, as Jesus did after the resurrection? What could we shake up, disturb, unsettle, of the status quo? Where could we have breakfast by the sea with our friends to offer them encouragement in difficult times? Who needs to hear the word of peace once spoken in that locked room, or see our scars to trust that we are not afraid to talk about the hurt in the world and our desire to heal?

And where do we find Jesus rattling our kitchen cupboard late at night, showing up at work with breakfast, sharing peace generously? Have we found a new way, or a new place, to recognize the risen Christ in our midst today? Can we grasp our power to love as Christ, in our eternity here and now?

To see God in human costume, what my friends now call "human drag," in human form and experience and presentation, is to be surprised and encouraged by the ways God keeps showing up to be with us, and the ways God is, through us, found across the world. We get to love like we've been loved in Christ, knowing that even the end of what we know isn't the end of that love.

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Grace and Peace, Pastor Andrew