CMLC 2024-03-31 Easter Sermon

He has risen. Now I am super glad that I've been doing squats before I tried doing that.

Oh my word, that's shorter than I thought it was. Okay. Did you get a picture of it?

That's okay. There you go. A man walks into a bar and it's empty. And it's just him and the bartender.

And he sits down and orders a drink and he hears somebody whisper, I like your tie.

And the man looks around but doesn't see anyone. That color looks nice on you.

And he asks the bartender, excuse me, but are you speaking to me?

And the bartender rolls his eyes and says, no, sorry about that. It's the peanuts. They're complimentary.

You're welcome. This morning we have the joy of hearing more than peanuts.

Fortunately, it's not the bar that's empty but the tomb.

And the messengers of God are yelling it from the hills that he has risen.

He has risen indeed. Hallelujah.

Now we have been spending the last several weeks preparing for this day.

We celebrated Ash Wednesday as we acknowledged that our bodies are merely dust,

that we're just atoms that are bonded together that can easily separate and become nothing.

Even as we know that someday these bodies will turn to dust and become nothing.

Not because we're trying to undercut anyone's self-esteem, but rather because we know our insecurities.

We know our struggles. We know our weaknesses and we know how often that we feel like we are incapable of handling the things that are in our lives.

But more than that, we know that we're constantly being controlled by and conformed to the world around us.

How often do we make our own decisions, but rather than actually making our own decisions,

we're just doing and thinking exactly the way we've been trained to do and to think by the commercials and the celebrities

and the marketing campaigns we're not even aware of.

And even if we can get past everyone else's poor influences, how do we get past our own sin nature that keeps dragging us down?

How can we discover a new perspective and realize that maybe the way we have looked at the world doesn't have to be the way that we continue to look at it?

So with the season of length that we've been going through, we've been spending time sacrificing certain things to try to break our typical habits,

maybe fasting for one day a week or maybe giving up something that we're obsessed with or trying to replace one habit with another.

But then as we moved through length, we came to Holy Week.

We were beginning with Palm Sunday where many people waved their palms in anticipation of the coming Messiah.

But while Jesus did come to Jerusalem, the people had expectations that did not meet what he had come to do.

So as he celebrated the Passover meal with his disciples, originally instituted to celebrate what God had done

in bringing the people of Israel out of Egypt and foreign conformity and slavery while saving them with the blood of the Lamb,

Jesus instituted his new covenant supper, celebrating what he would do the next day.

And with that, we came to Good Friday where Jesus would allow himself to be arrested and taken to the cross of Calvary.

This was so different from what people expected of the Messiah, being surprised that the Messiah would be killed at all,

since their view of resurrection did not include the Messiah rising in the present time.

But the issue for the Messiah was that fighting the authorities like a military leader, it would have distracted

from the message of hope and forgiveness and transformation of each person because of God's Spirit.

And people, they would have been so focused on military warfare and losing their lives that they would have forgotten about the kingdom of God,

which these thousands of years later we know is exactly what would happen.

So instead, Jesus allowed the leaders to do exactly what they thought they were supposed to do, to kill a false prophet

who was trying to pull them away from worship of the one true God and to claim himself as the Son of God with God's authority and divinity for himself.

And if the leaders had been correct about Jesus, then this would have been the right action to take.

So then, how could Jesus prove them wrong?

And that is where we find ourselves today.

Today is when we celebrate that Jesus took everything and flipped it on its head.

Whereas a false Messiah would have stayed dead, Jesus rose to life.

Whereas a false Messiah would not have been able to predict his resurrection, Jesus was raised to life by his Father in heaven,

who had declared, this is my Son in whom I am well pleased.

Whereas a false Messiah would have been unable to revive after such a terrible torture and execution on a cross

with a spear to the heart and lungs to boot.

He was healed and brought back into his perfected body as the first of all those looking forward to the resurrection to come.

There are so many of you today that are coming from many different backgrounds, many different perspectives.

I don't know all of your backgrounds and all of your perspectives.

Some of you, you may have grown up in the church and you've maintained the claim of saying you are Christian because that's how you see yourself as Christian.

But maybe faith also has been just a thought or an idea.

It's just something that you express because you're supposed to.

But it's not necessarily something that actually changes you.

Or maybe for some of you, maybe you've come here with the perspective of wondering why all these Christians have to make such a big deal out of this narrative

of someone coming back to life, something that in your perspective clearly couldn't have happened.

And there may be some of you that are still recovering from the pancake breakfast.

I feel you.

Well done, by the way.

But whatever place you may find yourself in, this is where you need to be.

Every year we come back to this question about the resurrected Jesus.

If you have never questioned the idea of whether Jesus did or did not rise from the dead,

if you've never questioned that, then it means that you have never placed yourself in the position of the disciples.

Who found themselves doubting and questioning what was being spoken plainly to them.

We see Mary and other women as well, according to the other Gospel accounts,

being told that Jesus is no longer in the tomb, but even so,

she cannot see in front of her that her Messiah is right there in front of her.

The women go to tell the twelve, and they still struggle with the idea of believing without being able to touch and see for themselves.

They're even so focused on other things, they're just worried who actually reaches the tomb first.

And just in case, John made sure he wrote it down twice in his Gospel, I won.

But you see, Jesus didn't leave it at that.

He appeared to the rest of the disciples so that they would be a testimony to what he had done for those of us who are not able to see it for ourselves.

But you see, our own responses to this resurrection, in so many ways it's more revealing about us than about what happened.

In our responses, a perspective on what we think of how God will or will not work in the world today,

we end up seeing more of what we expect.

Just like Mary, why is it that we struggle to recognize Jesus, who he is, what he is doing,

even when we know he is right in front of us?

Why do we struggle to believe that he is present in our world today?

Is it too amazing to believe?

Is it too amazing to comprehend?

You see, the idea of something being unexplainable, inexplicable, that's not something new.

That's not only the resurrection.

This is not different from other things that we cannot explain.

But that can open our eyes to the possibility of God working outside of our understanding.

We have theories about everything.

We have theories about the universe coming into existence with a large bang.

But we can't explain where that bang came from.

We can't explain how it turned into matter and energy.

We can't explain anything, and yet we know that there had to be something because everything exists.

We have discussions and views on how creation could come into being into everything that we see today.

And many people would say that it requires us to view the world from a very naturalistic and evolutionary point of view.

But even if that is true, even understanding how everything could have shifted and developed into what we see today,

it still requires an embrace of so much that is unexplainable.

Things that we still don't get, but we know that something had to happen.

So when you have people who witnessed the brutal, bloody, terrible death of an individual,

and then within a few days see that same individual being healed and alive,

even if you can't explain it all,

instead of discussing the explanation,

some people would rather focus on saying, no, that couldn't possibly be real,

and ignore the thousands of people who saw it for themselves.

And yet just because we can't explain it doesn't change when we see what has happened.

But what has been one of the biggest reasons for believing that Jesus truly did rise again?

Those people who were willing to give up their lives because they saw something amazing.

That was the reason that so many people believed in Jesus rising from the dead.

Would it make sense that all this stuff would have just been made up

when people are willing to give up their lives for it as if there were no reason to do so?

The reality of a risen Messiah stands out in so many ways,

but we oftentimes bulk at the idea.

We struggle with God working in the world around us,

because when we look at the world around us, it's so much easier to treat it as if it's godless, mundane,

just what everybody else sees about it,

as if we are supposed to perform within and live up to all of the worldly expectations around us

that distract us from the gospel.

Our goals of success, they oftentimes mimic what the world sees as success.

And then we wonder why the world doesn't believe in a risen Messiah.

When the world needed to hear that Jesus had risen from the dead,

the way for that testimony to make its way into the world was not about the miracles,

it was about the transformed lives of the Christians themselves.

If the resurrection is real, then doesn't that require us to respond accordingly?

If the resurrection is real, then what does that say about the way we're viewing our life right here and now?

Because maybe that's why we doubt and struggle, because we're afraid of what it means.

Maybe we doubt and struggle because we're afraid of what a risen Messiah means,

because this is the time when that changes everything.

Now, maybe to be honest, I don't know where everybody's coming from.

Have you taken time to pause and to say, God, I'm broken.

I have failed, but you have done everything to forgive my sins, and I am so grateful.

I want to be your disciple and to follow you in gratitude.

Have you?

If you haven't, take the time now.

Talk to Him now.

If you've been baptized in Christ, take a moment to remember that God has called and marked you,

and that Christ's salvation is yours.

And frankly, if you haven't been baptized, what are you waiting for?

The day is now.

And knowing Christ, don't you want things to be different?

We struggle with what it means, but don't we want it to mean things are going to be different?

And we have so many opportunities now, not just to become whom God has called us to be,

but to start seeing what God can and will do through us in this broken and fallen world.

We are meant to be the change that we keep wanting to see in the world.

Man, I wish the world would change.

We're meant to be that change.

It is now time for us to get off of our tails.

It is now time to stop obsessing over the things that aren't important.

It is now time to start discovering what it means to live our lives knowing the resurrection is real.

And not only this up here, but that it changes everything, especially us.

And this also needs to change our life here at Christ's Memorial.

This is now a new season, not just in the church's yearly calendar, but also here.

We have seen a lot of changes and shifts since I got here in 2019.

Has it been that long?

I really need to pray for y'all putting up with me that long.

Yeah, yeah, there you go. Thank you, brother.

But while our mission is the same, the way that we do that mission is growing and changing.

We are growing in our relationship with God in discipleship.

Our relationship with one another is growing as we care for one another.

Our relationship with the world around us must change in our outreach and in our mission.

We have many people already involved in these ministries, but we need to be more deliberate.

We have not always done it the way that we should.

We have not always coordinated and trained one another.

We just sometimes would hope that people would figure it out.

But instead of just hoping that people will figure out the mission of God, we as a church must be a team.

We must support and encourage one another even at the times when, believe it or not, we don't always agree.

We must ask how God's new life for us in Christ is lived out within us individually and within us as a community.

By God's Spirit, we are seeing not just new faces in our community, but also a renewed sense of vision and purpose with compassion and understanding.

That is what resurrection means.

With this, it is time for us to build on these things and move forward as a community.

And if you are wondering about anything going on, not just here at the church, but also if you just want a few minutes to talk and to pray,

and to maybe see how God is moving in your life, how God's moving in our lives together, come find me.

You can email me lcmspaster at gmail.com.

Yes, I got lcmspaster at gmail.com over 20-something years ago.

I was just that much on top of it.

So feel free, write to me, get ahold of me, come by.

I love coffee. I'd love to have some with you.

But more than that, I said that's just who we are, because that's who God has resurrected us to be with his Son.

But I don't know what you see in yourself right now.

I don't know what you wish to see in yourself right now.

Or wondering how and when to be involved in the proclaiming of the Gospel and united in Christ for His purposes,

but I am telling you today, the time is now.

Let's go. Let's do it.

Hallelujah. He has risen.

And because of Jesus Christ, you are now risen in Him. Hallelujah.