The Easter Way:Face to Face

Amen. Matthew 26, verses 1 through 16.

Matthew 26:1–16

When Jesus had finished saying all these things, he's just unpacked all kinds

of parables and teachings after coming through Jerusalem or Jericho.

And he said to his disciples, as you know, the Passover is two days away and

the son of man will be handed over to be crucified.

And the chief priests and the elders of the people assembled in the palace of

the high priest, whose name was Caiaphas.

And they schemed to arrest Jesus secretly and kill him.

But not during the festival, they said, or there may be a riot among the people.

While Jesus was in Bethany in the home of Simon the leper, a woman came to him,

with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume.

While she poured out on his head and was reclining at the table.

And when the disciples saw this, they were indignant. Why this waste? They asked.

This perfume could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor.

Aware of this, Jesus said to them, why are you bothering this woman?

She has done a beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you,

but you will not always have me.

And when she poured this perfume on my body, she did it to prepare me for my burial.

Truly, I tell you, wherever the gospel is preached, wherever this gospel is

preached, throughout the world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her.

Then one of the 12 the one called judas iscariot went to the chief priests and he asked,

what they count uh sorry what are you willing to give me if i deliver him over

to you so they counted out for him 30 pieces of silver from then on judas watched

for an opportunity to hand him over lord we just thank you today for the privilege

of coming into your presence the privilege of gathering lord.

At this point in our history, in our timeline, we are still free to gather,

Lord, and we are grateful for that, that we get to come together side by side

and worship and freedom and beauty.

And today, Father, Lord, as we go through the rest of this day,

as we continue on this Easter way, Lord, we just ask that you just come and

do what only you can do, that you would just be glorified, exalted in our midst,

that you would reveal yourself to each and every one of us in a very real and

personal way, but also to us corporately, Father, because it's more than just

our personal understandings and our personal encounters, Father.

You have called us together, Father, as your temple.

And so today, Lord, be manifest here in this temple and be glorified, and we thank you for it.

In Jesus' name, amen.

Amen. Well, children, you can go ahead and be dismissed if you haven't already gone out.

Babies can go make noise wherever you want to. You can make noise here if you want. I'm not afraid.

About 15 years ago, I think, I can't remember the exact year,

maybe 16, I had the privilege of one of the places that I've gotten to travel was Armenia.

I haven't been as many places as my parents or Dr. Wilson, who's passed now,

been all over the world, but I have been able to go to India,

been able to go to South Africa and spent a little bit of time in London,

literally one 24 hour period, which is really cool.

But I got to go to Armenia. I never knew much about Armenia.

It's a tiny country right next to Iran, between Iran and Turkey.

But while I was there, we got to spend some time in the capital, Yerevan.

It's a very poor country. It was one part of the Soviet Union.

And in the eighties, when they separated from the Soviet Union,

what happened is what happens every time you separate from communism is communism

is revealed and there's nothing left.

And everything is gray. There's no colors. Though the people love to dress as

beautiful as they look like a bunch of supermodels walking the runway.

Every time you see anybody in the street.

But I happen to go to Yerevan, which is a really cool city.

But from Yerevan, 105 miles away is Mount Ararat.

The same Mount Ararat that many people believe is where the ark still is.

I don't know if it is or it isn't. There's the Ararat region.

That doesn't matter. But this is not by any means the biggest mountain in the world.

But from Yerevan, which is 105 miles from this mountain, no matter where you

look in that direction, you see this mountain just looming in the distance.

In fact, they actually call it the Shy Mountain because it's always,

it looks like you're just seeing the tip of a mountain in the clouds because

it's surrounded by clouds, but it's staggering to see.

But you see, from 105 miles away, and even as we got closer,

because we spent some time in the town of Ararat,

it still is just shrouded in clouds, and I can have all kinds of ideas of what's

on top of that mountain, what it's like to be at the summit and look out, or even to scale it.

It would take at least four days to scale it.

All I can do is imagine what's up there. I'd have to take the four-day trek

up that mountain to truly understand the scope of it.

Here on this Easter way, and as we go to Matthew's Gospel this week,

next week we'll go to John's.

We could have the opportunity to engage the reality of what happened all those years ago.

And for us, the crucifixion is kind of like climbing this mountain.

And from a distance, kind of like 105 miles away, I can imagine what was up there.

I can even write stories of what it looks like from the top of Mount Ararat.

But until I get there, until I climb the summit and actually come face to face

with its scope, All I can do is assume and imagine.

You know, we've all had our theological and philosophical explanations from a distance.

Atonement theories for the cross. There's all kinds of different theological

theories. And they're all great. They all have value.

I'm not here to say we should throw away all of our theological understandings and get deeper.

But the problem is most of them are something that we can explain from a distance.

And then with all of those theories, we have all of our self-centered personal

ideologies of what the cross meant to me personally, still always kind of keeping it as a distance.

And not that I want us to live every second of our lives just constantly rehashing this awful moment.

But at Easter, in this way, though I do think that this should be something

that becomes a central part of our worship, at least now in this moment we have

the opportunity to maybe strip away the distance,

maybe lay aside our understanding of phrases and words in just for a moment.

Because you see, I think often we pay very little attention to this.

We kind of brush past the crucifixion. We don't really want to talk about it.

We don't want to see it. We don't want to look at it.

Let's just get to the resurrection. The cross with that kind of mindset becomes

nothing more than a utilitarian act, a tool in our belt.

The cross was important. It gave me heaven.

And not that that is bad.

I'm not telling anyone to throw away that idea, though I think it is so much more deep than that.

Just allowing the crucifixion to become this distant, utilitarian,

pragmatic act, a tool in my tool belt, it robs it of the absolute beauty and

love that it actually was.

Where God came to us. You see, we get wrapped up in our distance ideas of the

cross being all about me being able to come near to God, when in truth,

all that Jesus did was God coming to us.

But whatever our philosophy is whatever our religious

or theological understanding of it

is all human history lives in

the shadow of this event but if we actually stood at the top of this mountain

if we actually climbed during this easter way all the way to the top and looked

face to face we would come face to face with the harsh reality the unpleasant reality of his death,

There's so much mystery in all of this.

I think the problem that we sometimes have in all of our traditions and theological

perspectives and philosophical perspectives is that we think we have to completely

remove any mystery, but that's never going to happen.

There's so much mystery in God himself, in Jesus' nature, even in the cross.

What did it do? How did it do it? But there is no mystery in climbing this mountain

and staring face to face into the beautiful, horrific laying down of life.

This is the place in history and our experience as Christians where we can actually bring our humanity,

come on, where our humanity is connected to an infinite God who subjected himself

to the worst part of the human experience for us.

I don't like penal substitutionary theological perspectives. You're all like, what?

Every time I say that, Josh laughs. Penal substitution. It just sounds funny.

Where we make this entirely about somebody had to pay for our crimes.

That's not how the scriptures tell us. That's a part of it.

The scriptures tell us that God came to the most broken parts of our humanity,

our fallenness, where we separated ourselves from God's goodness.

He came right into the middle of it. Didn't just come to say and linger and

visit, but he came right to the pinnacle of the consequence of our fallen nature,

not the punishment necessarily because we committed a crime,

but the consequence of us choosing ourselves is that we are all going to die.

And not only did he come and experience death, but all of the brokenness of

humanity so that we not can have this utilitarian freak, take it to heaven,

but so that we can live once again in the beauty that that came to give us.

It is here And the top of this mountain where I would argue that all of our worship Must begin.

Listen, we live in the resurrection The resurrection gave meaning to the cross

with the cross is what gives meaning to our worship You know,

it's very popular And not wrong to say That jesus gets me remember there were campaigns.

I don't know if it was this super bowl or as well as last super bowl And it just sounds so amazing.

Jesus gets me and it has all these beautiful images of all of these twisted,

broken people and Jesus at their feet.

And it just looks amazing. But the idea of that is that he gets me and he loves

me as I am. And that's the end of the story.

The cross makes it so that as I am, I'm good.

But I think this begs to actually ask the question, do we actually get Jesus?

And here Matthew has been taking us on this upward journey and now gets to the

end of the trek where that question is addressed. Do they get me?

With each of the different characters in this story, looking up at the mountain.

And as you read this story, as we just read this passage, there will almost

certainly be someone within this story that we can identify with.

Someone that we can come alongside as we make our way up the top to come face

to face with the summit of his death.

You know, I think it's sometimes dangerous the way we expository preach,

which means we take a passage and we exposit it. We make it into a message.

We take it and make it something, which is nothing wrong with it.

But what we often tend to do is we go to David, we go to Joshua,

we go to Jericho, and we insert ourselves as a hero in that story.

I'm the new David. I need to get my stones. And I'm not saying there's anything

wrong with that per se, but I think the Bible, though, it is intended to be

meditation literature.

If we're being honest, the characters that we are most likely supposed to find

ourselves as is not the hero. Okay.

There's really only one hero in this story. You can find the beauty that God

chooses the unqualified.

You can find the reality and the beauty that God always chooses people according

to their heart and not their outward appearance.

That's great. But you are not the hero in this story.

And I think it's important sometimes as we look at the scriptures for part of

the way we're supposed to read them.

This is ancient Eastern literature. It's meditation. You're supposed to read it, meditate on it.

And as we go through this story, just for a few more moments,

20 minutes or so, we can come alongside some of these characters,

and I assume, and I can imagine, or I can guarantee, we may find ourselves.

As we set the stage, it says, this is how it finally happened.

It's two days before Passover, the day that it will all happen.

You know, we make most of our resurrection or crucifixion theories based on

the atonement, but it happens on Passover.

Which is the moment in Israel's history where God rescued his people from death.

And here it is. It's finally about to happen. He's now finished with his earthly

time of ministry, and he's just preparing himself for what he has to do.

Imagine what he's going through. Just imagine how you feel when there's like

a looming dark cloud over your day, whether it's an interview for a job or a

conversation you have to have, or I don't know,

raking the leaves if we're really

living in our comfortable Western lifestyles. This is just terrible.

Whatever it may be, or like some of our family members here,

Lance has to go to a funeral on this coming Saturday.

Whatever it may be, imagine how you feel when there's something looming that

you have to do that you don't want to do.

And just for a moment, let's just separate Jesus from his deity and realize

that he's also a human being. He's also a man because he's completely divine,

but he's completely human.

So imagine how he's now two days before what he has to do.

And here he is, what he's going through under the dark cloud as he comes into

Bethany about two miles from the very place of his death.

And here he is at a dinner party with his friends.

Different accounts give different versions of the story. John has it at Lazarus'

house, and Luke has a completely different story years earlier,

but I don't think that really matters.

The writers of these Gospels, write with intention and doesn't make the story untrue.

But imagine again what is going on in his mind as everyone is laughing,

having a good time, reclining in their seats, as is fitting for a dinner party.

And let's just for a moment, let's just look at the characters in this dark

story as we maybe see ourselves in them.

Number one, we have the chief priests and the elders of the people and the high priest Caiaphas.

Because it starts out, this is how it all began And then it goes right to this plot,

It's very easy as we read the stories, we immediately put this group of people

into the antagonist or the enemy category.

Not that there's no truth in that. And it's one way of telling the story where

we can make them the antagonists.

But if they're simply the evil entities in the story.

Then that would mean Jesus sees some parts of humanity is not worth dying for.

They're the enemy. I'm not dying for them. I'm dying for everybody else.

Because honestly, if you think about it, that's what an enemy is.

They're the ones you defeat and you put under your feet.

Here's the thing about these people. They have in their way that they know how.

The only way they know how, they've remained faithful to the covenant,

to the God that they knew and who knew them.

This is all that they knew. It's been hundreds of years of silence.

The second temple has already been rebuilt another time under Herod.

God's presence isn't there. The Torah was given over a thousand years prior.

And now here they are desperately trying to understand this ancient document.

How do we live honoring God? And they honestly believed the Pharisees,

the ones we're talking about here, because Judaism in this time in the first

century was not just one thing.

And then there was Jesus. Because we often lump the Jews, the Pharisees,

as they represent the Old Testament. they did not represent the Old Testament.

They didn't get it. It was ancient to them. And so they've added all kinds of things.

And you had the, also you had the Pharisees and the Sadducees who were kind

of working with Rome and the Pharisees, they thought that Rome was part of their

slavery and they needed to do whatever they could to get out of exile,

to get back into God's favor.

They were just doing what they knew, holding on to their understanding,

holding on to their truth, holding on to their identity, holding on to their

power, being faithful the only way they knew.

We can see their flaws. We can see their selfish ambitions, their political

agendas, and even their lack of true faith in God. But we must also see it through

the lens of humanity, maybe even our own humanity. It was all that they knew.

And though even them at first, they saw Jesus through hope. Maybe he's the one

finally to come and restore things.

But it became clear to them that he was going to turn their worlds upside down.

Their fear of change, their need for personal power, kept Jesus at a distance

and made his death a political necessity.

Now we can look at this culturally for a moment. We live in a culture that sees

Christianity as an opponent to its power.

Someone can say amen. I know in this church, I see some of your Facebook posts.

You'd be all about that. Down with Disney.

Kill the government. And we can certainly see that we live in a culture that

Christianity, it threatens their power.

All cultures live, though, under the shadow of the cross.

Every human culture is governed by some kind of power struggle,

and Jesus challenges all of them.

But if we stop the reflection there at an evil culture, I think we may fail

to see the story and fail to see ourselves.

Do we often keep Jesus at a distance because of our own fear of change?

Do we here lose yourself to find it and think, but I like myself?

Surely there are parts of all of our lives that we want swallowed up in Jesus' death.

But what about the parts you want to hold on to? What about the parts that I like?

What about the power I want to keep The autonomy I want to keep That I want

to hold on to Holding on to our power Maybe it's our power of unforgiveness,

Maybe it's our power of resentment Maybe it's our power of nationalism I'm holding

on to We need a president who's going to bring revival A president's never going to bring revival.

Maybe it's our power of ambition. Maybe it's our power of desires.

Maybe it's the power of our dreams. I want Jesus, but I want my dreams.

I want to keep him at a distance because he threatens my power if I get too close.

But if I can keep him at a distance, he gets me. He knows that I need these things.

Even if it's not what he wants from me, he still loves me no matter what.

And that is so true. I'm not stealing that from anybody. He does.

He's not keeping you at a distance because you're keeping him at a distance.

Of course he does, but it's so much easier to love and be loved from a distance.

Think about these beautiful long-distance relationships where you never actually

have to come face-to-face. It's so easy. You don't have to change your life.

You don't have to worry about melding your life with this new life.

You just have to keep it at a distance, and you can keep yourself and just have the illusion.

I think sometimes all of us, though, we love to make the Pharisees the enemies

and the people in all these rules, and that's part of it.

But what it was, was they wanted their power and they also wanted a Messiah,

but they couldn't have both.

So they chose their power.

When we have the disciples and the party people, they've left everything to follow Jesus.

Because though they didn't truly understand his plan, they recognized something

in him that was worth following.

Where else would we go? They said when many of the disciples just abandoned

Jesus when he said some hard things and Jesus is like, do you want to go too?

And they're like, where else would we go? There's nowhere else where we'll find life.

But at the same time, here is

getting close to the end. They still have no idea what's going to happen.

To them, Jesus was their key. It's a purpose and meaning.

They have grown from captivated followers to believers.

And Jesus was now the source of their personal purpose.

But in their following, they'd become comfortably complacent,

probably even had a sense of superiority.

They could recline at the table in Jesus' presence and enjoy their place of

assurance and even prosperity. We're with Jesus.

It says, not make them bad. Do not get me wrong. I think we've got to be careful

to make anybody a villain in this story.

These are people trying to understand this mountain.

We can certainly rest in Jesus' presence. Following Jesus sometimes as a place of purpose.

Comfort. It puts all the urgency in my personal comfort and purpose,

becoming just another avenue for the human fundamental need for meaning.

Now I found my meaning in Jesus. Again, we do find meaning in Jesus.

But you see, for the disciples, and I think this is probably more for those

of us, probably my generation who grew up in the church, have known Jesus for

a long time, we've just kind of got comfortable, and we don't want to be uncomfortable.

I'm with you. This is not me pointing a finger.

I'm wrestling this season of my life with things that are uncomfortable,

and I just want to be comfortable.

I mean, this generation, my generation is probably the earliest generation to start retiring.

Again, this isn't to vilify that, but we just are tired of wrestling,

so we just want to be comfortable.

And Jesus becomes our way to comfort, and he is our comforter.

He is there to give us the greatest life.

But sometimes we keep Jesus at a distance in our complacent,

comfortable need for personal purpose that becomes his own agenda.

And it reduces Jesus' crucifixion to, as we mentioned earlier,

that utilitarian tool affording us the comfort of heaven.

Just, Lord, just let me be comfortable.

And I want to be comfortable. If we kept Jesus at a distance in our complacency

at times, our apathy, have we reduced it to nothing more than a means to an end?

I'm going to heaven. That's good enough, even though I've argued that's not

the story of the scriptures, but whatever, if that's your understanding. I'm going to heaven.

Thank you. That's what the cross did for me. I can just go to heaven.

Let's just make this as quick as possible.

I've given enough. I think that's like I said, my generation,

we've already raised our kids.

We've already worked hard. And now we're like, I've done enough.

Given enough. I've engaged in the mission enough. Let somebody else do it now.

I'm sure I could do more, but I'm saved. I go to church most of the time.

I'm doing my best and Jesus gets me. I'm comfortable right here.

You see, comfortable complacency is the opposite, though, of passion and urgency.

And complacency and comfort gets very uncomfortable when it sees urgency or

passion or sacrifice or complete surrender in someone else. It's like, oh God, here we go.

And we can see the extreme example of this is the end of the story and Judas.

And again, I'm not calling anybody here Judas, but I think we need to ask ourselves

more often, Lord, am I being Judas?

Because you see Judas, as his comfortable understanding and agenda was overturned,

whoa, this is getting way uncomfortable.

His complacency was challenged. it became betrayal.

Nobody here is selling out Jesus. No one's going to the news and say,

I'm going to give you some good things.

But perhaps at times in our lives, we sell out because we just want to be comfortable.

And right here in the middle of these characters is Jesus, middle of plots and

parties and agendas and good people.

The sacrifice he has made about to make is forefront of his mind.

And with it also, the love that he has for all of these people.

That's the good thing to understand is that wherever we find ourselves in this

story, we are met square face to face with Jesus' love.

He's not like, well, what a bunch of jerks. No, it's love.

Wept over Jerusalem. We make the Pharisees the enemy, but Jesus wept over them.

He's looking ahead to Passover, the time of freedom symbolizing the death of

the firstborn of humanity's evil, knowing that he is the firstborn now about

to die for the freedom of all humanity.

And in walks a woman with a jar.

And I've read this story again this week, and I've preached on so many times.

And as I evaluated myself, reflected, first, I just wanted a cool message.

But then as I sat in it, as I began to see myself in all of these people,

I failed to immediately recognize myself in the woman.

Here she walks in, past the agendas of power and politics,

past the reclining of comfort and assurance, carrying all of her pain,

all of her past, all of her future, all of her present,

everything that is of value to her, and right up to the suffering servant,

face to face, with a beautiful horrific death, and pours it all out on his head.

Makes no sense to the elders and the priests, and makes the comfortably complacent

disciples so very uncomfortable and even infuriated in its wasteful display

of surrender and sacrifice.

This could have been sold and used for better things.

Worship that had nothing to do with agendas, nothing to do with anything but

pure love and gratitude for the one who was giving everything for her.

You will always have mission, Jesus says. You will always have need, always have the poor.

And you will, I think he's also

implying, in my name, because he tells him you'll walk in this purpose.

But while you are all resting and making your plans, she is preparing my body

in advance for my death. She gets me.

She's standing at the top of this mountain and looking right into my death.

There's so much mystery again in this, but there's no mystery in a man choosing to lay down his life.

You know, we don't really know this woman in this story. She's not given a name,

and I don't think that she necessarily knew.

This is not Jesus saying, oh, she had a foreknowledge of my death.

What he's focusing on was her act of surrender and worship made a place for

his death, where nobody else was.

The sacrificial act of worship.

Face to face. You see, making a place, particularly in Easter,

I love Easter. I love holidays.

I love Easter baskets. I love Easter eggs.

I love chocolate. I love getting dressed up, coming to church.

I love that everybody brings someone to church.

And we can let it be that, or we can let it be a time to truly make the place

to truly look into and at the death of Jesus.

Because when we do that. It turns our worship into more than a mandatory response,

more than a means to an end.

It connects us to the suffering servant and the perfect, holy love of God.

Because you see, to just a king, you give what's required.

To an agenda, you give what's enough.

To be comfortable, you give just what you have to.

But in response to the suffering servant who gave everything,

The only response is to bring everything.

And when this becomes the seedbed of our worship, our worship becomes beauty.

And from that flows all of the other things.

Because worship is more than just the songs that we get to sing.

Worship is an entire life oriented.

Worship is how I work at my job. Worship is when I bring my tithe laid at his feet.

Worship is when I love my family and my kids. Worship is when I see the oppressed.

Worship is all of these things my life oriented. And when worship begins at

this place that everything was given for me, I don't have to understand all

the theories and theological ideas. I don't need to know what my personal purpose

is and what my mission is.

I just have to know that everything was given.

He came close to me so that I can be alive and free. And so everything is all

that I can truly give in response.

And therefore, all of those things that we just do ritually all of a sudden

become full of meaning and beauty.

Because as I said in the beginning, perhaps it's the resurrection that gives

meaning to the crucifixion, but it's the crucifixion that gives meaning to our

worship because it is there where we actually as human beings connect to a living

God who came to our humanity.

Cardinal Archbishop of Paris, this is a story that I've heard a few times.

Jean-Marie Lustiger used to tell the story of three boys who played a trick

on the local priest by going into the confession and confessing all kinds of wild stories.

I would have done that if I grew up Catholic.

The first two ran away, and the priest wasn't fooled.

He gave the third boy, he grabbed to him and he gave him, who actually happened

to be Jewish, a penance to perform.

He told him to go to the far end of the church, to look up at the large crucifix,

crucifix, sorry, hanging there, and to say to that figure on that cross,

you did all that for me and I don't give a damn.

He told him to do it three times.

So off went the boys and big deal.

This was all still part of the game. So he gets up there, you did all that for

me, and I don't give a damn.

And it took him a moment, and he knows so part of the game when he says it a

second time, you did all that for me, and I don't give a damn.

And then he couldn't say it the third time as he broke down and left the church a changed person.

And the bishop says, and the reason I know that story is that I was a young man.

And he spent the rest of his life following and serving the Jesus who had come

to the place of brokenness, a failure of lies, the Jesus who had loved him to the end, to death.

I'm not here accusing anybody of looking at the face of Jesus and saying, I don't give a damn.

But maybe I have without using so many words.

When I've allowed it to just become a utilitarian tool to give me comfort,

to give me purpose, when I've allowed myself to keep him at a distance,

knowing that he loves me and isn't going anywhere, as I try to keep him and my power.

I can't have them both. Maybe sometimes we don't need to live our whole lives

while whipping ourselves and, oh, you just died.

But perhaps sometimes we need to remind ourselves and climb this mountain again

and come face to face and get a view of the reality that though I don't understand everything,

there's no mystery in the reality that God became a man just so that he can

experience the worst that I could possibly experience.

So he could take it all, the betrayal, the lies, the abuse, the abandonment,

and then even finally the death, which is my end.

All of the things that I have to experience, he came to take them all.

He came to me in that place, not so that I could be comfortable,

though I know comfort and beauty is my reality and my future, so that I can be free.

So I can be free from the person that climbed the mountain, the wretched man

that lies and deceives and betrays and hurts, who's going to eventually die. I can be free.

Sometimes we've got to remember because we do forget.

As I said it already, the resurrection gives meaning to the cross.

But for me, the cross gives meaning to my worship.

To all of my acts of sacrificial love, to my serving, to my loving,

to my giving, my tithing, all of it,

everything as a response to everything that was given so that I could be free.

And not just free, so that I could be folded into the beautiful story of God's

plans, of God's future, of God's now. Psalms 22, 12-18.

Psalms are considered a prophetic psalm of the crucifixion.

Many bulls surround me. Strong bulls of Bashan encircle me.

Roaring lions that tear their prey open their mouths wide against me.

I'm poured out like water and all my bones are out of joint.

My heart has turned to wax. It is melted within me.

My mouth is dried up like a pot shirt and my tongue sticks to the roof of my

mouth. Yet you lay me in the dust of death.

Dogs surround me. A place of villains encircles me. They pierce my hands and my feet.

All my bones are on display. People stare and gloat over me.

They divide my clothes among them and cast lots for my garments.

I don't know if this woman was Mary of Bethany, Mary Magdalene,

or someone else. It doesn't really matter.

But one thing I think that we can be sure of, whoever it was,

that she was there for the crucifixion, watching the whole thing,

when all but one of his disciples is absent, when the elders and the priests

are celebrating probably from a distance.

I can only imagine that she was there at his feet, not afraid to look face to face.

And I have to ask myself, where would I have been? One of my favorite scriptures

as we close, you can go ahead and stand up, is Galatians 2.20.

It's Paul who's done so many things for the kingdom, more than any of us will ever do.

It says this, I have been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who live,

but Christ who lives in me.

In the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved

me and gave himself for me.

In that there is no mystery.

He gave himself for me. But what does that mean? You don't have to know.

Just know that he did. He gave himself for you, for your freedom.

So this morning, can we just take a moment and just...

Climb this mountain. Let's just stand at the summit just for today.

And you can climb back down. I'm going to climb back down because it's hard

to live up here all the time, but we must.

Lest we forget. Lest we let this just become,

ritual and habit rather than life. A lifestyle without a life.

Because a life was not possible without the death.

We'll talk about the resurrection. That is the most important moment in human

history. But there is no resurrection.

There was no rising to his kingdom to sit on his throne until he had gone into

the ground, until he had done what he had to do.

So can we just for a moment here,

on this Easter way, just,

this isn't about leaving here ashamed because you're any of these characters

we are all of these characters we are every one of them.

And I'm grateful that Jesus doesn't hold me at a distance even when I'm holding him at a distance.

Thank you today. Gracious Father, His blessed Son, Jesus Christ, came down from heaven,

put on flesh,

put on all of the broken realities of my humanity,

to give life to the world,

Father, forgive us for forgetting.

Forgive me for forgetting.

I'm so grateful that your love never changes, that your grace is not dependent

upon my heart posture, that your mercy is not dependent upon my heart posture.

But Lord, I want a heart posture that truly comes face to face with your love

in such a way that it changes me,

from the inside out.

You're not asking any of us to carry a cross to Golgotha.

You're just asking us to give what we have as a response to what you did.

And so we bring today, Father, our alabaster jars. We pour it at your feet.

To all of it, Lord, our lives, our dreams, our ambitions, they're not evil.

We just can't hold them tightly and still hold tightly to you,

so we hold them loosely and we bring them Lord as we come face to face with

who you are and what you did,

you are worthy of it all that's more than just a cool line in a song it is our

reality you deserve it all,

you deserve it all,

in Jesus name.