The Gospel According to Guacamole with Pastor Ryan

Let's pray together this morning.

God, we give you thanks for this beautiful story of resurrection life, and do pray, god, that you would, yeah, resurrect us, god, in all the ways we need it.

God would you give us new life, this full, abundant, vibrant kind of life, and may we have it not just after we die, but here and now.

So, god, would you awaken us, would you soften our hearts, open our eyes and our minds to you this morning and bless our time together in Jesus' name, amen, amen.

You can be seated.

Welcome.

Holy smokes.

Good to see everybody.

I know the ones in the back.

Can you hear me?

Okay, back there in the cheap seats?

All right, what's up everybody?

Those are my people back there.

I love it, yeah, hey, if anybody wants to, you can come sit on the floor up front here and just kind of gather around.

That'd be kind of fun.

No pressure, though, but if you wanted to, you could Welcome.

My name is Ryan and I'm the pastor here, and this morning I do want to talk with you about the gospel according to guacamole.

That be all right, I love me some guacamole.

You know, years ago I forgot my gloves again.

We're going to just go with it.

Years ago, my son, gavin, who's here today, started making his own guacamole and I love me some guacamole.

Like I said, he was working at Chipotle years ago and kind of got some tips and some tricks from them, but then took that recipe home and began to tinker with it and make his own batch of guac.

I gotta tell you it's legit, really good.

Here's how he makes it.

He takes some avocados they gotta be soft, you know, because these things are only ripe for about 12 minutes in any given lifespan he cuts that bad boy open, like so.

And then, of course, you take out the seed.

I'm gonna put the seed right here for the side, because I may use that seed later on, so keep an eye out for that.

And then, of course, you scoop the is it called meat?

The avocado meat?

Is that what you call it?

I don't even know the avocado meat out of the avocado and you put it in the bowl.

Then, of course, you've got some fresh red onion.

It's gonna be a red onion, it can't be a white one, it's gotta be red.

Are you with me?

All right deal.

Then you chop that bad boy.

I got one up here that's kind of already cut.

Dice that bad boy up.

Yeah, this smells incredible already.

I wish you could taste it, but you can't.

Maybe later.

Then he's got some jalapenos, jalapenos.

I got one up here here.

It is Some fresh jalapenos, not the dried ones, not the ones that have been altered in any way, but just the fresh ones.

Dice up those bad boys, and then you throw those as well, right into the bowl right up here.

And then, oh, we got some fresh cilantro.

How many cilantro fans we got in the house today?

Yes, I love cilantro.

I love it so much I put it in my cereal.

Sometimes it's that good.

You're like no, he doesn't, does he Chop up some cilantro, some fresh cilantro.

If you grow it yourself, even better, toss that in the bowl there.

And then, the finishing touch, a fresh stick.

Here we go.

All right, get some lime that's why we rehearse these things and sprinkle it over the top.

And then, of course, to top it off, you kind of mix it all together.

Yeah, just so you have to imagine it, because I can't share it with everybody.

I'm sorry, mmm, mm-hmm, that was good guacamole.

Now I brought.

Oh, here we go.

I brought something to drink up, because the first service it got stuck in my teeth and it was a mess.

So I got some Coffee, was all I had.

It's not a good combination, but whatever, mmm, it's good guac.

Now here's the deal about this guacamole, what I call Gavin's good time guacamole that's what I named it.

You've got to have a good name for all your stuff.

Everything, all the ingredients in this guac were at one point, and not too long ago, they were living.

So this avocado was living, the cilantro, the lime, the red onion, all the things, the jalapeno, and in order for him to use them, they had to be plucked from their life source.

So the avocado had to be taken out of the avocado tree and the red onion had to be cut down from the, out of the ground.

You thought I didn't know where onions came from for a second there, didn't you?

And then, of course, the cilantro, which came from the cilantro bush what do you call that thing?

Plucked from there and severed and cut off from there.

We got limes.

The lime, of course, had to come down from the lime tree.

All your food that you eat was living at one point.

Did you know this?

It had to be severed or taken from its vine or its tree, or its bush, or from the ground.

It had to be taken there and in order to make it to your plate or your bowl, it had to die.

That's how food works.

It had to die in order to be served to you.

Now, be careful.

If you go to a restaurant and the food is still living, that's a problem.

So you can run as fast as you can from that place.

This is how food works, and I'm not sure if you know this or not about being a human, but humans need food to live.

Did you know this?

That's why you eat all the time.

It's good for you and it brings you life.

And in order for you to get this food, the food had to die.

So this food had to die in order to come and give you life.

That's how it works.

Death is the engine of life.

You ever thought about that?

The worm is food for the bird, and the bird becomes food for the cat.

The cat becomes food later on for the wolf, and the wolf eventually becomes food, probably once again, for the grandchildren of that worm.

Death is the engine of life.

All these things die in order to give us life.

In fact, the more recently these things were living, the more nutritious they are for our bodies, and so the fresher the food, the better it is for your body, which explains the nutritional deficiency of, for example, the Twinkie.

Twinkies can't give you life.

They were never alive.

There is one, of course, exception to the rule.

That's the crumble cookie, which is next to godliness, my gosh, I'm glad we don't have one of those in Elk River.

I would be poor, but they're good.

But food that's alive gives life, but it has to die in order to do so.

It's how it works.

The death of this one thing gives life and we rely on it the death of this thing.

For our survival, for our sustenance, for our very life.

We depend on the life of other things and their death.

That gives us life.

Now, death and life is all around us all the time.

There's cycles of it all around us.

You just have to look around and see, for example, your skin is constantly dying.

Your skin dies, flakes off and becomes dust Jalapeno stuck in my throat all the time.

Then it falls onto the floor and you vacuum it up.

So there are parts of you and your friends that are in your vacuum cleaner at home, probably right now, which is why some of you.

Maybe shouldn't dust, just leave them there.

But your skin regrows itself.

Every 30 days you get a brand new skin and you couldn't grow new skin, except that your old skin dies off and there's death to life.

Also, do you know, the best fertilizer is actually manure.

And what's manure?

But just decomposing and dead waste from an animal that's alive.

And you pour it on the ground, this dead, decomposing waste, and somehow it gives life to the ground and the things that are growing in the ground.

Death to life.

How about the seasons?

I mean, I swear every winter around here especially, I'm like there is no way anything will ever come back to life.

It's dead, like deader than dead, like it's buried although this year wasn't super bad but but every spring the whole scene just explodes with life.

The trees, trees begin to bud, the flowers begin to bloom and blossom and open up, the grass begins to grow again.

I always think, oh, I'll never have to mow that grass again.

It is dead, but it comes back to life.

It's shocking.

The rains come and it brings it back to life.

Then, of course, we have summertime and then fall, and at the end of the fall things begin to go dormant once again, they begin to die off and they no longer live, it seems, and they don't grow.

The trees aren't really blooming or budding, in fact, the leaves are all falling off, which is death, and the flowers sort of go dormant or go away and the insects and the frogs go who knows where somewhere, and then it goes quiet and there's like this season of death in the seasons.

Then, of course, springtime comes around again and explodes with life, death and life, death and life.

Death is life all around us Avocados and red onions and cilantro, and limes and jalapenos, and skin and fertilizer and the seasons.

It's death to life.

It's all around us.

And back to the avocado.

If you take this seed, the avocado seed, you can bury this in the ground, which is often what we do with things that die.

Isn't that interesting?

We bury them in the ground and you bury this in the ground, which is often what we do with things that die.

Isn't that interesting?

We bury them in the ground.

You bury this in the ground as a seed and it will die in the ground and then, when it dies, it bursts open and gives life to a brand new avocado tree.

That's how you get more avocados.

You bury that seed in the ground and it dies and it brings life.

That's how it works.

Death gives life in all the physical universe.

So if the Bible were to tell a story about how God is giving life, new life, to the world, how might that story go?

Well, jesus comes into the world and dies and is buried in the ground and has risen to new life, and in doing so he gives life to the whole thing all around us.

Death, his death in particular, brings new life.

So when God sends his son Jesus to the earth, he has to die.

That's how it works, because the cross is not just true sacramentally, it's true at every level.

Death brings life, death is the engine of life, and the death and life of Jesus gives you and I life.

And, by the way, I've mentioned it a number of times not just life after we die, but life, abundant life right here and right now.

A couple of weeks ago I talked about the different kinds of life mentioned in the Bible, in the New Testament, in the Greek.

There's one way to be alive just to be up and moving around and your heart is beating and you have blood in your veins.

Way to be alive just to be up and moving around and your heart is beating and you have blood in your veins, and that's fine, but that doesn't always mean you're alive.

You know what I'm saying?

There's another kind of life that Jesus came to give us abundant, vibrant life, in color, fully awake kind of life.

And that's the kind of life that Jesus came to give us.

Even in the story of God.

Life is death all around us.

So God gives life to us through the death of his son Jesus, not as some brand new idea in the history of the universe, but as a way of living in tune with the way he already created the universe.

This is how the universe works.

So, of course, if he were going to give us new life, he'd do it in this death to life kind of way.

And so then Jesus, before he dies, says this to his followers.

He says this hey, whoever wants to be a disciple, a follower, a student, an apprentice of mine, they must deny themselves and take up their own cross and follow me.

For whoever wants to save their life will lose it.

Whatever loses their life will find it.

Jesus was always saying these really weird things like that, like, hey, if you want to be the first, be the last.

If you want to save your life, lose it.

You know, if you want to be great, be a servant.

Like what are you talking about Jesus?

Like everything's upside down.

If you want to hit the target, don't aim at the target.

Like what?

If you want to save your life, jesus says give it up, let go.

I give it up, let go.

I mean, jesus keeps saying all these things about what it means to really be alive, to be fully alive, and he's saying at the core of all of them let go, give up, lose your life, and in losing it you just might find it.

Take up your cross, serve others, give yourself away to people and give your life away and die so that you just might live.

See, jesus and guacamole teaches us how to die so we can truly live.

Mostly Jesus, less the guacamole, which raises the question then, what do you need to die to today, right here and right now, so that you can really live?

What things are you holding on to that are robbing you of life?

We've spent the last several weeks talking about this idea of giving up for Lent, and I want to offer it one more time.

What do you need to die to that you might really live.

Maybe it's control your incessant obsession with control and controlling everything that's robbing you from life.

Maybe it's your hatred for your enemies or whoever the other is on the other side of the aisle or the other side of the room, or whatever the case may be, that's robbing you of life.

Maybe it's an incessant drive to be superior, to win, to be on top and number one.

It's exhausting you and draining you.

It's robbing you of life.

Maybe it's popularity, this drive of always going and always being approved and accepted by others.

It's just keeping you awake and robbing you of life and it's just causing you to be full of anxiety and all these other kinds of things.

Maybe it's that that you need to let die.

Maybe it's the part of you that's not really you.

You know what I mean.

Some of us will construct and preserve and protect this false image of who we really are that we present to the world as though it's really who we are.

It's not really who we are.

We call us the false self.

It's the part of us that we made when we were younger to survive, and when you're younger you kind of need it, but as you get older, it's not really who you are and, at our core, we deeply want to be known and loved by others.

But how can they love us if the real us is hiding behind a mask and we spend a lot of energy building this thing, constructing it and preserving it to protect ourselves?

Maybe it's time to let that go, because, after all, it's exhausting to keep this front up day in and day out.

Maybe it's that that's robbing us of life.

See, jesus invites us to let go, to give up, to release it and to die in order that we might truly live.

What else is it, maybe?

What are the things that are robbing you from life?

Maybe it's a lifelong addiction, the pressure you put on your children, your expectations of them, of what they should do and should be as they get older.

Maybe it's not your kids.

Maybe it's your wife or your spouse, your husband, whatever.

You are incessantly trying to put pressure on them and have expectations and you need to let that go.

Maybe it's your old job or your old hometown, that first half of life time to let that go.

Maybe it's your own self-centeredness, your over-inflated ego that's just robbing you of life.

These things are exhausting.

How about this one?

You ever notice how hard it is to say I'm sorry.

Why is this so hard to say I'm sorry?

I think it's because it's kind of a death.

To say I'm sorry is like just I refuse to keep going and trying to win and one-up you or do better, or maintain my pride or my ego and to be one, the winner, the number one, the top, and I'm gonna let all that go.

But saying sorry feels like death, doesn't it?

But ironically, it's a death that brings life.

And maybe this popularity we're always chasing the approval of others Maybe it's because, deep down, we think that we're just not really lovable.

If folks really knew who I was, they wouldn't love me or accept me.

But maybe the message of the cross is that you are already loved, that God has embraced us on the cross.

He loves you as you are, not as you should be.

So the invitation this morning, then, is to give up, to let go, to release it, to remember that it's Jesus who saves us, not your good works or the things you've accomplished or how many times you read your Bible or did the right thing.

Those are all fine, but your salvation isn't anything you did at all.

It's through the death and resurrection of Jesus that brings life.

Are you with me?

This is what gives life Death to life.

And, ironically again, the more you hold on to things and grip them for dear life it costs us life the more you refuse to let go and to hold on tightly to your way, your thing, your deal, all the while our life is draining out of us.

Is this you Holding on so desperately, refusing to let go, to do things your own way, to win, to conquer, to be number one, to maintain your front, your mask, the whole charade?

If this is you, I, I invite you today to let it go.

You got a sheet of paper when you came in.

We'll close with this.

It should be a little white sheet of paper.

I think everyone got.

If you need one, raise your hand.

Everybody get a little sheet of paper.

Oh, we need one up here, if you got.

If I got any, oh, we got a couple.

So kelly lens needs one.

Thanks, tim, thanks Tim.

Sorry, guys, I should have given them one.

Keep your hand up until you get a piece of paper.

Thanks, tim and Heidi.

If you need one, raise your hand.

Here's what we're going to do.

We're going to sing a song and we're going to take up an offering.

We always do an offering, so if you're a a guest here, please don't feel obligated to give.

But we, we give online or even in person or pass a globe.

You can drop your offering.

Our offering goes to helping us run this thing and our mission here in at central and our mission in the elk river area, and it helps us fund that.

But so thanks for your generosity.

Thanks, tim, you can also give online, but as we do, what is it?

What's the thing?

I want to give you one last chance.

What's the one thing in your life you need to let go of?

Let die, let you know, release your grip so that you can live in the life that Jesus came to give us Death to life.

That's how it works.

Write it down as the offering globe goes by.

You can drop it in the offering globe.

I'm not going to read them, but when they're done, tim will bring it up to me and I'm going to drop them up here in front of the cross.

That's where they belong, right, and so I've already got a bunch from the first two gatherings up there.

Everybody got one.

That young lad's got one back there, everybody good, okay, central Lutheran Church.

May you know that this is how the universe works, that death is the engine of life.

So may you let go and lose your life, and in doing so may you find it, and may the love of God release you from any and all fear you have in your life that keeps you gripping and holding on so tightly.

And this morning may you trust that Jesus is risen.

Amen.