[Living the Easter Life in] A World Turned Upside Down (New Beginnings UMC Easter)

Happy Easter. What a what a wonderful day to

celebrate the resurrection of our brother, our Lord, our

Savior. So good to do that together.

I'm, I'm just, you know, been, I've been, I've been celebrating

Easter all morning. I hope you have too.

And, and I'm, I'm really excited to celebrate here today as we

talk about living the Easter life.

We've been talking for weeks now about being faithful in a world

stacked against us or in a system stacked against us.

Easter, Easter is what makes that possible.

And, and starting today and for the next several weeks, we're

going to talk about what it means to live the Easter life.

But one of the things it means to live the Easter life is that

we recognize that we are living because of Easter.

We are living in a world turned upside down.

Now to talk about that and to illustrate that, I I need to

tell you a story. It's one of my favorite stories.

Does anyone here know the story of the world's greatest

cornflake? Nobody.

Good. Good.

Now I will shorten the story because it's way too long to

tell the story if I tell the whole thing.

Way too long to tell as part of a sermon.

In fact, it can be quite long. I once told this story was with

very polite friends on a car trip.

I believe it lasted 3 1/2 hours. So so I'm not going to be that

long with it today. But I do want to tell you the

story of the world's greatest cornflake.

He was, in fact, the world's first cornflake.

And as he came down to chute into the world's first cornflake

box, he landed at the bottom of that box.

And then all the other cornflakes got piled on top of

him. So he pushed and he shoved and

he shoved and he pushed and he pushed.

He shoved and he pushed till he got to the top of the box, being

the great little cornflake that he was, went down that box and

on down the conveyor belt, got to the end of the conveyor belt.

There was a bin at the end of the conveyor belt to collect the

boxes to take them to another part of the factory.

And that box fell into the bin and it landed upside down and he

was back at the bottom of the box.

So he pushed and he shoved and he shoved and he pushed and he

pushed and he shoved and he pushed till he got to the top of

the box. Being the great little cornflake

that he was. Now it was taken to another part

of the warehouse where it was placed in a crate.

That box was placed in a crate in order to be placed in a

truck, and it was placed in a crate that was on a pallet.

And when they picked that box out of the bin and placed it on

the crate, they turned it upside right side up again.

And so the cornflake was back at the bottom of the box.

So he pushed and he shoved and he shoved and he pushed and he

pushed and he shoved and he pushed till he got to the top of

the box. Being the great little cornflake

that he was. Forklift came, picked up the

pallet with the crates on it was taking it across the warehouse

to the truck loaded in the truck was late on a Friday afternoon.

The forklift driver was tired, wasn't really paying attention

thinking about the game that night.

And he had a bump and the crates fell off and that box was upside

down on the bottom of the warehouse.

So that cornflake pushed and he shoved and he shoved and he

pushed and he pushed and he shoved and he pushed till he got

to the top of the box, being the great little corn flake that he

was. Well, of course people came.

They still need to get the box of the corn flakes on the truck.

So they came and they picked them all up, put them back in

the crate, put them back on the pallet to be loaded into the

truck. And of course, when they did

that, they put the box back right side up and the corn flake

was back in the bottom box. And so he pushed and he shoved

and he shoved and he pushed and he pushed and he shoved and he

pushed till he got to the top of the box.

Being the great little corn flake that he was.

They loaded that pallet and those crates into the back of

the truck. The truck was driving down the

road. It was rough Rd.

It was bumpy Rd. There were lots of potholes on

the road. I'm not going to say where it

was, but you know, you know, with a lot of potholes on the

road and, and it was shaking and shaking and shaking.

And that shift, that corn flake right back down to the bottom

box. Well, he pushed and he shoved

and he shoved and he pushed and he pushed and he shoved and he

pushed till he got to the top of the box being the great little

cornflake that he was. Now we're stopping the story

there. I usually tell that story and

how long the ghost depends on how polite the audience is until

someone says, hey, does this story ever end?

I just told you I got 3 1/2 hours once.

Does this story ever end? To which I replied, no, it never

ends. It's a cereal.

Thank you very much. Thank you very much.

I'll be here all week. The corn flake, The corn flake

in that box remind me very much of the message that I believe we

have today for Easter and what it means to live the Easter life

in a world that has been turned upside down.

You see, go systems might be stacked against you, but at

Easter God has turned the world on its head.

God has turned the world on its head.

So. So the fact that the systems of

this world are stacked against you might be stacked against us,

ultimately is not relevant, ultimately doesn't matter,

because God has turned the world on its head.

When the women went to the tomb that morning, they expected to

find Jesus dead in the tomb. They had seen him on the cross,

the one they thought was the king, the one they thought was

the Messiah, the one they thought was the Savior.

They had seen him crucified, killed by the Roman Empire and

his body placed in the tomb, and they thought that was the end of

the story. But then they got to the tomb

and everything got turned upside down.

He wasn't there, the Angel said. He is not here.

He has risen just as he said. This had never happened before.

People have been raised from the dead before, but always there

was a prophet there. There was a person of great

power and and righteous standing with God there to do the

raising. There was no one there like that

for Jesus. Jesus had just risen from the

dead. And Mary, one of the folks at

the tomb, I got to think maybe she remembered something she

said all the way back before Jesus was born.

When she was pregnant, went visitor relative Elizabeth, and

inspired by the Holy Spirit, she said this of God and the baby

she was carrying. He has brought down rulers from

their Thrones and has lifted up the humble.

Jesus will take the people on top and bring them down and take

the people on the bottom and lift them up.

She prophesied that about her son before he was ever born and

then after he was born and they took Jesus to the temple to be

circumcised and they met 2 prophets there and one of them,

Simeon, had this to say about Jesus.

This child is destined to cause the rise, rising, and I'm sorry,

destined to cause the falling and rising of many.

This child is going to turn the world on its head.

The people on the bottom are going to be on the top.

The people on the top are going to be on the bottom.

And both parts of that equation are important because Jesus

isn't just taking the people on the bottom and lifting them to

the top. Jesus is taking the people on

the top and putting them on the bottom.

The first will be last as much as the last will be first in the

Kingdom of heaven. This is what Jesus came to do,

and this is what is accomplished at Easter.

The world turned on its head, and we see this at Easter in a

number of different ways. We see it first of all in that

the crucified slave triumphs over the Roman Empire and the

local authorities and religious elite.

The Romans crucified lots of people.

The Romans crucified thousands of people, and they did it for a

very specific reason. It was part of their strategic

plan. There was a lot more poor folks,

There was a lot more powerless folks out there than there were

rich and powerful folks. And the people that were rich

and powerful needed to make sure that the poor folks knew what

could happen to them if they stood up against the powerful

folks. And so when they saw fit, they

would take them and they would crucify them always for the

purpose of saying we are in charge, not you.

We have the power, not you. The Romans have almost

exclusively crucified slaves. The thing was, if someone wasn't

a slave that they wanted to crucify, they would make him a

slave. There's records of people that

that were leaders in the Roman government, senators even, that

were stripped of their position, stripped of their status,

stripped of their citizenship, turned into slaves and then

crucified so that the Roman Empire can say we own you, your

life is at our pleasure, we can take it whenever we want.

There's nothing you can do about it except Jesus said take your

best shot. Crucify me if you want crucify

me. I will not be your victim.

Ioffer my life willingly and my life will not end on your cross.

My life will end, will not end on my life will not end.

I will die on your cross, but I will rise again and live forever

in the Kingdom of my father. Jesus, the crucified slave,

triumphs over the Roman Empire, the most powerful force in the

world at that time. Instead of life ending and

death, now, death ends in life. Anyone here like clowns?

Is anyone here like clowns? You like clowns?

Awesome. I like clowns.

Anyone here hate clowns? Yeah.

OK, we got folks that hate clowns.

I got good news or bad news for you, depending on your

perspective. You might not know this, but

clowns started in the church. I don't mean that pastor's a

clown. That's not what I mean.

What I mean is that now this is hard to believe, but it's true.

There have been times in church history when pastors preached

really long, boring sermons. Really.

I'm serious. It happened.

It happened Back in the Middle Ages.

This was apparently a regular thing.

And so clowning was developed when the congregation got so

bored that they were like, you know, drifting off, not paying

attention from a door behind where the pastor was preaching.

A clown would emerge. And without speaking, they would

only do mine. They would do something to draw

the attention of the congregation back to what the

pastor was saying, not to distract, but to draw their

attention back. And in doing that, they were the

makeup that we traditionally think of as clown makeup, which

was white on 1st. White symbolized death.

White had symbolized death in ancient cultures for years and

years and years and years and years.

This was nothing new. It was nothing unique.

People, when someone died or when they wanted to remember

death or symbolize death, Everyone, everyone has skin

color. They would take ashes or some

other white substance and cover the color of their skin to say

that life ends in death, to remind folks that life ends in

death. Except the clowns and the church

put the white on, and then they put the color on top of the

white to remind the people in the church that we know life

does not end in death. Death ends in life.

And that's the origin of clowning.

That's where it came from. So the next time you're watching

it, just think of Jesus. You know, it's hard sometimes,

but clowns are there. They can remind us of Jesus,

that our life does not end to death.

Our death ends in life. And that happened at the

resurrection of Jesus Christ. And that is the promise that

stands in front of all of us who put our faith and our hope and

our trust in Jesus Christ that our life won't end to death.

Instead, our death will end in life.

Another way that the world was turned upside down was that

women were made the first apostles and evangelists.

The women, depending on which gospel we read, it's different

women. They, they, they don't all tell

the exact same story, but they all tell us that the women were

there first and that the women were first appointed as

apostles. That word apostle.

What happened? What?

Oh, was it a bug? Oh, I had, I had a ladybug

landed on my neck during the sunrise service this morning.

Yuck. So, so where was I?

Women? That word apostle, that word

apostle in the New Testament just means one who has been sent

out. And the Angel first came to

these women and sent them out. The Angel said to the women, go

quickly, tell his disciples, he has been, he has risen from the

dead. He's going ahead of you into

Galilee. There you will see him.

And what they were sent out to do was share the good news of

Jesus's resurrection, which made them not only the first

apostles, but also the first evangelists, the first sharers

of the good news. And that turned the world on its

head And Jesus's day and age and that culture and that time and

that place, women were not considered credible witnesses.

That's why one of the reasons why we can say if this whole

story was made-up and is a lie, it's a really bad lie because

people making up this lie would not put women as the first

apostles and evangelists. You would put men there because

that's more easily believed. But the story is that the women,

that God turned the world on its head from the very beginning of

the resurrection, and he sent the women as the first apostles.

To who? To the men who'd been following

him for all those years. He didn't go to them first.

He came to the women first. Jesus came to the women right

after the Angel told him. Jesus said, showed up and said

to them, do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to

Galilee. There they will see me.

So instead of sending the men, instead of the men being

appointed first, it was the women who had spent all those

years following Jesus who were first sent out as apostles and

as evangelists. Easter turning the world on its

head. And finally, the strategies of

the powerful that we see are powerless to stop the tactics of

the crucified slave. Rome crucified people

strategically to send a message. It was the part of the way that

they maintained control over a vast empire of diverse

ethnicities, religions and politics through brute force and

violent intimidation. And Jesus said I will not be

your victim Ioffer my life. I could call 10,000 angels.

They could come and set me free. But I'll die on your cross, not

because you want me to die there, but because I choose to

die there. I choose to die.

What you intend as an act of punishment and retribution and a

display of your power will instead be an act of grace and

mercy and salvation and a display of God's power over even

the Roman cross and the Roman Empire and the religious elites

that are manipulating things behind the scenes.

That's what happens at Easter. The crucified slave, his tactics

of love and mercy and compassion.

What a crazy. There's no strategy, but what a

crazy tactic. Hanging on the cross and praying

for forgiveness for the people crucifying you, explaining to

God they don't really understand what they're doing.

But that's what Jesus did from beginning to end.

Compassion, love, mercy, grace, truth, right up to the point

where he died and rose again. And those tactics overwhelmed

the might of the entire Roman Empire.

There was nothing Rome could do. Nothing Rome could do in the

face of Jesus tactics, the tactics of a crucified slave God

brings restores order to what sin has disordered.

See our our minds and our perceptions of life and the

world are so disordered that that we think of, and I've

phrased the whole title of the sermon and I repeatedly in the

message of God turning the world upside down, that at the

resurrection Jesus was turning the world upside down.

That's the most natural way to say it.

The most accurate way to say it is that at the resurrection God

turned the world right side up. It had been upside down since

Adam and Eve ate that fruit, the tree of the knowledge of good

and evil in the Garden so many years before.

And sin came into the world and death came into the world, and

now God is not turning things upside down.

Really, from our perspective, it feels that way, but He's turning

things right side up. We get it confused because our

perceptions are out of whack because we're born dead into a

dead system and we don't even really know what life is.

I have taught and said for years that when when, when God told

Adam and Eve, if you eat from the fruit of the tree of the

knowledge of good and evil, you will surely die.

And then they ate, but they didn't die.

But what if they really did die? And, and the problem is, is we

just don't recognize death when we see it.

And we don't recognize life when we see it because we've never

really seen someone really alive.

No one had until Jesus rose from the dead.

Here's a way of thinking about that.

Dallas Willard talks about this in his book Divine Conspiracy.

I think it's a wonderful book. And he tells the story of pilots

in the Air Force training on fighter pilots flying fighter

jets. And they were learning to fly on

instruments alone. They were, it was a night and

they were flying on no visual instruments alone, so no, no

visual reference points for them as they're practicing right now.

And then they receive the instruction to pull up and one

of the pilots pulls up, does the gesture and the move with the

stick to pull the plane up and fly straight into the ground

because she was upside down and didn't realize it.

This is how we live. This is how human beings live.

We live born upside down and and what is really up seems down to

us, and what is really down seems up to us.

And so when God puts the world right side up, it feels like

everything's being turned upside down because those on the

bottom, God is lifting to the top, and those on the top, God

is pushing to the bottom. And we can't forget that part of

the equation because that's part of it too.

Now, anyone here, MCU fan, anyone like Marvel movies,

Marvel Cinematic Universe? I love you, man, but I don't

love the MCU anymore. I used to love the MCU, but not

anymore. I think the MCU has become

boring. They've got a real problem.

And the problem is the multiverse, right?

That's it. The mall.

If you don't know, if you're not a nerd like Brenna and AJ and I,

the multiverse is this, that it's in the, in the Marvel

Cinematic Universe, loosely based on some sort of science,

that, that there are an infinite number of universes out there.

And in that infinite number of universes, everything that can

happen does happen. And what happens now in the

Marvel Cinematic Universe is if someone dies, even a really,

really important character, it doesn't matter.

They just find that same person in another universe and bring

them in. And so never whatever really

dies, there's no tension it it makes for boring storytelling.

And we're getting that. You know, they're trying to save

it with a new Avengers movie in which they're bringing back Iron

Man and they're bringing back Captain America, all these

people that had a heartbreaking death in Avengers End Game and

now they're going to come back. And but they've been doing that

for years. I just think it's boring because

there's no stakes anymore and it's boring storytelling.

However, that's the blessing of Easter, right?

The the curse of the MCU is death ends in life.

Everyone who dies comes back to life if the fans really want

them to. It's a curse for storytelling,

but in the Easter life, that's the blessing.

Death ends in life, and now there's still heartbreak,

there's still loss, there's still pain and separation.

But ultimately we know that that death will not be the end, that

life will be the end for that person.

And we have that hope and we have that confidence.

We have that blessing that our lives will not end in death.

Our death will end in life. And while it makes for Bory

storytelling, it makes for a wonderful grace and peace and

living when we can face our own cross and say, yeah, OK, kill

me, All right, God will give me my life back.

You took my family. It breaks my heart.

I lost my family. I wanted more time with my

family, but God's going to give them back to me and me back to

them. You can take the lives of

whoever you want to take, but God can give life back to

whoever God wants to give life back to.

And that's the blessing of Easter.

There's still pain, there's still death, but there is a

sequel. And we know the ending, just

like we know the ending to every Marvel movie that's been made in

the last 10 years. We know the ending.

We know the ending. For us, that's good death, sins,

and resurrection. One day Jesus will return.

The dead in Christ will rise, and the scripture says we'll

rise to get this. We will reign with Jesus

forever. The dead will be lifted up to

the top to live on high with Jesus.

Now, I don't mean on high in the sense of way up in the

spiritualized heavens someplace. This will happen on earth.

The dead rise on earth. We have bodies.

We're not cast for the friendly ghost, and we reign with Jesus

in the Kingdom of God, which has now come fully and completely on

earth. When that resurrection day

happens for us all, we know the ending.

If you don't know the ending in your own life, take care of that

today. The promise is most clearly and

directly for followers of Jesus. And it's this has been turned

into sort of a religious territorialism and religious

triumphalism. But if if we think of death as a

disease and Jesus is the cure, it's not about being a Christian

or being a church member. It's about turning to the one

who has life for everyone and making him the center of our

lives, saying, Jesus, I belong to you, not to me now you're

not. I don't want you to just be my

savior. I want you to be my Lord and

King. And I want to live my life your

way and in service to you because I know that you will

raise all of your servants to life in the end and all who

follow you in the end. I want to be part of your family

because your family you will raise to life in the end.

I think there's going to be a lot of people there that we

don't expect to be raised. I hope I'm one of those people.

You know, a lot of people don't think I'll be there, but you

know, I'm hoping because of the mercy of Jesus Christ.

But the clearest and surest way to have that hope is to

surrender our lives to Jesus. I'm not going to do every head

bowed, every eye closed thing. I got a lot of that preaching

when I was growing up. I found it really annoying.

I got saved like 14 times growing up.

I don't do those kinds of sermons, but take care of that.

It's not complicated. Just talk with God about it,

surrendering your life to Jesus and making Jesus your Lord and

and having that hope for yourself.

If you're uncertain about that today, look, hey, right, see it

cornflakes. Boom.

My very first gift. It's the first gift I've ever

made. So I don't take it doesn't take

me much to impress myself, but I I made that and and if you

pronounce it Jif, then then you're wrong.

But I love you anyway. It's either either way.

I call them gifts. But we the good news, really

good news for us is, is we're not the little Cornflake.

Little Cornflake had to push and shove and shove and push to get

himself to the top of the box by climbing up and over and on top

of other people to be the greatest little cornflake.

Our mission and Our Calling is exactly the opposite.

We're not in a race to the top for power and authority over

others. We are in a race to the bottom

to join Jesus in serving others. Remember, the greatest among

you, Jesus said, is the servant of all.

We're in a race to the bottom because we know that God is

turning the world upside down. We don't have to struggle to

get. We don't have to struggle.

We don't have to strive. We don't have to to get to the

top. God's turned the world upside

down. If we can get to the bottom and

serve others with love and humility and grace and

compassion in the name of Jesus, then when that turning over is

revealed for all the world to see, we have that hope that

Jesus will have us at the top of the box.

And we don't have to step on anyone to get there.

That's the hope that we have in living this Easter life.

We're going to talk more about that over the next few weeks.

But in a world that's upside down, we're not in a race to the

top. We're in a race to the bottom.

And we're trusting in Jesus to set all things right in the end.

In Jesus name, Amen. Amen.