If we’re honest, we all want to be appreciated. We do. We thrive on appreciation. While tokens and gifts given on days that celebrate us, appreciation feels different. In our consumer driven, spend and thrift world, appreciation has become a commodity that is sometimes, at best, described by things you can buy.

Right now, at my children’s school, we are in the midst of Teacher Appreciation Week. The email Moms remind us every day that there are empty spaces on the teachers’ desks and we need to do a little more appreciating.

It got me thinking…in an overworked, underpaid job, do flowers, fruits and $10 Trader Joe’s gift cards really communicate appreciation? Does that kind of stuff really say, “More than anything or anyone else in the world right now, you matter to me” ? It’s a good start, and much better than nothing, but there’s more, isn’t there?

In First Corinthians (1 Cor 15:5-8), as Paul begins to remind the community there of his teaching on the Resurrection, he reminds them that Jesus showed up. That’s what he did, he just showed up. This murdered messiah came back to say, “hello.” At a time when all of the cosmos was reordered down to its last proton, Jesus returned to the people who loved him, who were hurting, who were unsure and appreciated them with his presence.

When I was in eighth grade, I got my first role in a musical: Charlie Cowell in The Music Man. I was on stage for no more than two minutes and the show was awful (in that cute middle school kind of way). There was one person I scanned the auditorium for. One person whose presence would make all the difference to the swarm of butterflies that had replaced my internal organs. While I was on stage for the first company number, I looked, but I didn’t see him.

Not only did I feel alone, I felt the opposite of appreciated: forgotten.

As we ambled off the stage, I threw a glance over my shoulder probably on accident and saw him. Well, first I saw the reflective sheen of his bald head, but I knew he was there. My Dad showed up. For him, it was an eighty mile drive.

In showing up, my life was changed.
Literally.

I spent the next eight years with an acute love for and dedication to the theater. In showing up, my Dad affirmed my being, my presence in this world. I put myself out on that stage and his presence confirmed that that was where I was supposed to be. More than that though, he showed me that I was someone worth showing up for!

The rest of that performance was sublime. Awful, but sublime. I remember every moment, like when Steve’s voice cracked and I pictured him singing “Born In The USA” during his audition and cracked him with my smirking while he was busy being the Mayor of River City.

There was no trinket, no gift, no flowers…there was presence.

I wonder if Jesus, practicing the ministry of presence, made the one, the twelve, the rest and the five hundred feel anything like this. I imagine so.

If we’re honest, we all want to be appreciated.
We do.
We thrive on appreciation.

Appreciation is an art. It requires a balance of schedules and priorities to perform it. It demands attention more than it does planning. It is a personal response to the unspoken desire of the other. It’s tough to learn and much simpler to write about. Jesus understood that…and he showed up.

Christ is still Risen!