April 20th (Easter Sunday), 2025 - "Mitigated Disaster!" - Rev. Dr. Michelle Morris

Matt Nelson: Welcome to the Sermon podcast from First United Methodist

Church in downtown Bentonville.

If you have questions related to what you hear today or just want to find out

more about the ministries at First United Methodist Church, please visit us online

at FU mc bentonville.org or check us out at Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok.

Rev. Dr. Michelle Morris: Amen!

Amen.

Amen.

We will continue this proclamation with words from the Gospel of Luke.

While they were saying these things, Jesus himself stood among

them and said, peace be with you.

They were terrified and afraid.

They thought they were seeing a ghost.

He said to them, why are you startled?

Why are doubts arising in your hearts?

Look at my hands and my feet.

It's really me.

Touch me and see for a ghost doesn't have flesh and bones like you see.

I have, as he said this, he showed them his hands and feet because

they were wondering and questioning in the midst of their happiness.

He said to them, do you have anything to eat?

They gave him a piece of baked fish taking it.

He ate it in front of them.

Jesus said to them, these are my words that I spoke to you

while I was still with you.

That everything written about me and the law from Moses, the prophets

and the Psalms must be fulfilled.

Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures.

He said to them, this is what is written.

The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and a change

of heart and life for the forgiveness of sins must be preached in his name to

all nations beginning from Jerusalem.

You are witnesses of these things.

Look, I'm sending to you what my father promised, but you are to

stay in the city until you have been furnished with heavenly power.

He led them out as far as Bethany, where he lifted his hands and blessed them.

As he blessed them.

He left them and was taken up to heaven.

They worshiped him and returned your Jerusalem, overwhelmed with

joy, and they were continuously in the temple praising God.

This is the word of God for the people of God.

Thanks be to God.

Let us pray.

Lord, open our hearts, our minds, and our eyes that we might see and know the

word you have for us on this Easter Day.

In your holy name we pray, amen.

Have you ever seen the risen Christ?

We have spent the last few weeks looking at the storms of life and apparently.

God thought we needed one more illustration this morning,

but we did reflect on the time that we went through with the tornadoes,

but we've also looked at not just those natural disasters, but disasters

like loss and divorce and disease.

When I hear this passage, I can't help but think about my own disease of

hemochromatosis, and some of you already are familiar with this story, but it

is so intrinsically tied with this passage that I have to call it to mind.

Again, for those of you that don't know, hemochromatosis is a condition which I

over absorb iron into my bloodstream.

And this was a devastating diagnosis for me, and it was

devastating for two reasons.

First, if it is not managed, it is fatal, but second, because the treatment for

hemochromatosis is to bleed me, and I had a deathly fear of needles, so my

very first phlebotomy did not go well.

I panicked, started sweating and all the nurses had to

run over and take care of me.

They had to recline me, and I felt like such a weenie because all I was really

doing was giving blood and I was sitting in a room with people that were getting

treatment for cancer and I thought, I can't be strong enough when all of these

people around me are being injected with poison and I'm just giving blood.

But I was so distraught, and I remember crying out to Jesus

and saying, Jesus, come to me.

And right as I said those words, as they were reclining me back in the chair, I

looked over and Jesus walked in the room and he sat down next to me and took a

drink of my orange juice and said, really?

Hm.

He said, look at, look at my wounds.

Now look at your wounds.

'cause they'd had to take blood from both arms.

You'll lose that blood, but you will rise up closer to life and look at

the people around you who are getting poison injected into their veins.

They're getting death shot into their veins, and they're

gonna rise up closer to life.

You are in the midst of the resurrection.

It is real and right in front of me.

I don't know what you think of that story, but I have some guesses.

Some of you are probably going, yeah, something like that happened to me.

Some of you are just accepting it on faith and saying, praise

the Lord Jesus is with us.

Some of you are probably going, well, yeah, of course it happened to you.

You're a pastor.

Some of you are probably thinking that's a load of BS and some of

you are probably reasoning out that it was probably a hallucination

due to my anxiety and blood loss.

And I'll be honest, it could have been a hallucination or it could have

been an encounter with Risen Christ.

Either one.

I know this.

It is true to who Jesus is.

It is true to Jesus showing up when I'm in the midst of struggle and

it is true to Jesus to show up and say, this is really no big deal.

We, we'll get past this,

but I do get that.

It's hard to believe.

It defies our usual.

Experience.

It's why the reaction of the disciples is so understandable.

They have heard rumor that Jesus has risen, but it's in this moment in the

gospel of Luke when Jesus actually appears before them and he appears before them.

So no doubt they thought that this was a ghost, because that makes more sense to

their experience than Jesus being bodily risen right there in the room with them.

Because the truth of the matter is this is something that they have never seen,

but Jesus is calling us to an unusual vision.

First, it is a vision of change of heart and life.

The theological term for that is repentance.

Repentance means to turn around, to change your point of view.

It means to turn from being overwhelmed by your own experience or caught up in your

own self-focus and to look in the eyes of Jesus Christ to turn things over to Jesus.

And it is a turning away from the violence and exclusion of the world to

see peace and a community with all people.

It is a turn from being overwhelmed by death to being set free in life,

from seeing death in those places, to seeing life in those places to

see death as no big deal because it's really just a continuation of life.

That's what it means to be the people of faith.

That's what it means to be the people who turn our eyes upon Jesus.

I promised I would tell you more about Donovan's baptism.

You can see the rows.

I didn't tell you all this, but that rose in that box are for y'all.

The box is made by someone in our congregation and it's got

some things in it for you guys to honor his special day today.

But for me, what is striking about Donovan being baptized today is that

he was originally scheduled to be baptized the Sunday of the tornadoes.

And as we rescheduled it, and we looked at Easter, by the way, pro tip, if

you have someone in your family who needs to be baptized, if you do it

on Easter, you get a reserved row.

I'm expecting a lot of baptisms next year, but I thought how appropriate when that

storm seemed to disrupt the path of faith.

We turn around and answer it with a baptism on Easter

Sunday, full resurrection.

Nothing, nothing.

We'll disrupt our faith.

It's a vision of God's people When storms hit, it doesn't mean that we never suffer

or that we never grieve or have pain.

We do.

We do.

It's just that those things don't have the last word hope does.

Resurrection does.

You're gonna hear.

A short clip of some of the stories from our video series, and you will

hear loss and hope mingled together.

Well, I would say, well, in a disaster situation like that,

you, you realize the immensity of.

God and the power of nature and that there are a lot of forces in

the world that you can't control.

Uh, and it makes you realize how small you really are.

And so turning to faith gives you something to hold onto, um,

throughout that and to know that this too shall pass and there'll be

a brighter day, uh, in the future.

And with the support of.

Your church family and others, you can get through it together.

I think you said it really beautifully.

Like there is a fragility to our lives and what this experience is,

and there's a deep beauty in being there and experiencing the moment.

There's also a really deep well of, uh, sadness that can be there.

And I think what I've learned is.

All of those emotions are valid, those experiences are real.

And what that means for a faith perspective is that in each of those

emotions, in each of those experiences.

God is also there in that moment, and it takes a lot to look for God in moments

of challenge and heartache, but I think those are the moments when it's most

important to continue to seek him out.

Well, I would say in a disaster situation, we all have struggles in

life and those struggles are real and they are hard, but they are not

forever For the people of faith.

And as we live into that reality, as we live into that faith, Jesus is also

calling us to embody resurrection, not one day now to become the body of Christ.

We say it every week as we gather to do communion together.

We call upon the Holy Spirit to bless these elements of bread and wine that

they might be for us, the body and blood of Christ, that we then might be the

body of Christ sent out into the world.

We lay claim to that promise every week, but I saw you do

it when the tornadoes hit.

I saw you go out.

I saw that you did not give up.

That you showed up and you showed love to the people around you, and you didn't

ask them if they had the right faith.

You saw they were in trouble and you helped them.

You showed them love, and you restored people to life.

I saw you do it.

I saw you be the body of Christ.

And that's the real Easter miracle that death and hopelessness

have no hold on us now.

That life and love rain over all the storms of life and that disasters

are fully mitigated because the ultimate damage can no longer be done.

Death can be no longer done.

And you know what that does.

You know what that does for us?

In the midst of all the storms, it gives us peace.

That's why Jesus can show up to the disciples and say, peace be with you.

Peace be with you, because the threat of death is no more.

That's how I feel about hemochromatosis now.

It's really no threat to me.

I also feel that way about needles.

Praise the Lord.

And we see signs of that love of that presence of that power all the time.

The day of the tornadoes, I had sat and watched the press conference with

Barry Moring and when it was over the newscast that I was watching panned

to show downtown, and guess what?

I saw the steeple.

Steeples are built because they are supposed to point to God.

But I'll tell you what,

I've not really ever experienced God as this being up in the clouds.

I have experienced God on this earth, and I have most experienced it with the

people who gather beneath that steeple.

Who live as the body of Christ in this world, who live as

the people who are unpled.

Even as we recognize the reality of suffering, we know it doesn't have us.

I wanna return to that question.

Have I seen the risen Christ?

In that moment from my first phlebotomy, whether it was real or a hallucination,

doesn't really matter to me because I have seen the risen Christ.

I have seen you all.

I have seen you all at work to love your neighbor.

I have seen you all to be the people of peace in a disrupted world.

I have seen you all say that this good news is for all people without

restriction, that all are welcome in this space, and all are welcome

in God's heart, that it is for all nations to know God's love.

I have seen you be the body of Christ, and the reality of that

is then no storm can take us down.

Now, let's be honest, Jesus could sleep through a storm.

I will tell you from my experience last night, I cannot,

but I can wake up the next morning and I'm not gonna have

fish first thing in the morning.

But I did have a churro.

This morning and it was really good.

Right.

And that is, I've been through the storm, but I've got a churro on

the other side, so it's all good.

Because we are the people of the Easter Miracle.

We are the body of Christ wounded, healed, and resurrected.

Now, thanks be to God.

Amen.

Matt Nelson: Thanks for listening to the Sermon podcast from First United

Methodist Church in downtown Bentonville.

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We hope to see you there.