Come and Go | Ps. Keith Pittman | Easter Sunday

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If you have your Bibles, I would love for you to join me in the reading of the accounts of resurrection morning.

In the Gospel of John, chapter 20, verses 1 through 18.

John 20:1–18

And saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb.

So she ran and went to Simon Peter, the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don't know where they have laid him.

So Peter went out with the other disciple when they were going to the tomb.

Both of them were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first.

And stooping to look in, he saw the linen clothes lying there, but he did not go in.

Then Simon Peter came, following him, and he went into the tomb and he saw the linen cloth lying there, and the facecloth which had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen cloth, but folded in a place by itself.

Then the other disciple who had reached the tomb first also went in, and he saw and believed, for as yet they did not understand the scripture that he must rise from the dead.

Then the disciples went back to their homes.

But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept, she stooped and looked in the tomb, and she saw two angels in white sitting there where the body of Jesus had lain, one at his head and one at his feet.

They said to her, Woman, why are you weeping?

She said to them, They have taken away my Lord, and I don't know where they have laid him.

Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know it was Jesus.

Jesus said to her, Woman, why are you weeping?

Whom are you seeking?

Suppose him to be a gardener, she answered him and said, Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.

Jesus said to her, Mary.

She turned and said to him in Aramaic, Raboni, which means teacher.

Jesus said to her, Don't cling to me, for I have yet to ascend to my father.

But go to my brothers and say to them, I am ascending to my father and your father, to my God and your God.

Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, I have seen the Lord, and that he had said these things to her.

Family, today is probably the crescendo of the Christian faith.

At Christmas, we celebrate his birth, we we analyze his life, and this time of year we honor his death and we celebrate the empty tomb.

This is what it's all about.

So today I just want to take a few moments to walk through this narrative as shown through Mary and the disciples in the hopes that we can identify with their story and we can feel activated by what they saw.

If you're taking notes, and I certainly hope that you are it's short and sweet.

Come and go.

Let's pray and see what it is that God wants to speak to us today.

Lord, we thank you for your word.

We thank you for your presence.

We thank you for your life.

We thank you for the blood and the life.

And we thank you for the amptitude.

So God, as we decrease, I ask that you increase.

Father, I pray that you speak to our hearts and our minds and you stir us in a way that can allow us to leave here transformed.

So I pray for open eyes that we can see you above all else.

I pray for open ears to hear you above all else.

And I pray for open hearts that we can receive what it is that you want to do in us.

It's in Jesus' name that we pray.

Amen.

Amen and amen.

Come and go.

Church family, will you turn to someone next to you and tell them you look good this morning?

Turn turn to the people that you've been ignoring and say to them, you look good this morning.

All right.

Man, y'all, y'all getting excited.

I feel like somebody's shooting their shot.

Y'all could do that later.

Let me let me let me get into this, man.

I'm I'm trying to help a little bit.

I I've been thinking a lot over the past couple of weeks about traditions and how things become a thing.

Like at some point it was nothing, then it became a thing, and then that thing became a tradition.

And traditions are basically things that have been repeated and passed down and are meant to represent values or things that we celebrate, and all of a sudden it becomes a tradition.

And we're surrounded by tons of traditions.

But when I try to get the origin story of certain traditions, I've I can't imagine the person that first said, let's make this a thing.

Like, for instance, can you think of the person that said, Hey, hey, we're celebrating your birth, and we're gonna put some candles and light them on fire on this cake, and then you're gonna wish for something, and then we're gonna blow it out.

And we're gonna put our germs all over the cake, and then we're all gonna celebrate eating it.

Let's make that a thing and see if it sticks.

And now here we are, eons later, and this is what we do.

If you go to a gathering and there's no birthday cake and there's no candles, you feel like you've missed it.

And in fact, you gotta make sure you don't tell anybody your wish because it won't come true.

It's amazing how things become things, and we're surrounded by so many things that become tradition.

And Easter is one of those things.

Whether you're religious or not, people just know that this is the time of year that families get together, they have incredible brunch meals.

I'm telling you, nothing slaps more than a post-Easter brunch.

I get it, I know.

I remember when I used to sit in your seats and I would come to church on Sunday anticipating not the message, but going to get something to eat afterwards.

But since I've laid my life on a line, I haven't had post-Easter brunch in a very long time.

Y'all pray for your pastor.

But I re but I remember those days of being excited.

I also know that the tradition that it's inevitable that you have to dress up.

Like it's it's just what you have to do.

I don't know when that became a thing.

I I don't know if when Mary went to the tomb, did she have on a church hat?

I doubt it.

But but I know somewhere along the line, within traditions and within cultures, it became a thing.

And in the Pittman household, we we also honor and celebrate the Easter season the way that our cultures and tradition is.

And that is you dress up on Easter.

It's just what you do.

And I don't know if this comes from Megan's side of the family or from mine, but I can remember and just kind of feel in my spirit a grandmom saying, Listen, if Jesus got up and didn't wear the same clothes, then neither will you.

New Sunday, new resurrection, new clothes.

That's just what you do.

So for me, that's what you do.

We always go and get a new outfit for Easter.

It's just what the tradition is.

And this year, it was trying, I was trying to be a little bit different.

I was trying to get ahead of it just a little bit.

So this is what I did.

About eight weeks before Easter came, I I went to my wife, the love of my life, my rib, the one I would lay my life down.

I said to her, I said, hey, I want to let you know something.

This year, Easter's coming.

It's gonna be here in eight weeks.

And every year Easter comes.

But what I know is every year at Easter, I'm in the mall on the Saturday before Easter.

So I said to her, I said, Hey, so what how about this?

This year, Easter is coming, so why don't we go to the store earlier so that we're not in the store dealing with the chaos on the Saturday before Easter?

She said, Absolutely, that's an amazing idea.

Thank you for your leadership.

I honor you as my husband.

I like, I honor you too.

This is how our bond works.

Let's go and celebrate this thing together.

Eight weeks ago.

So now, six weeks into this journey, I'm like, hey, I just wanted to circle back.

It's kind of like one of those emails when you're waiting for somebody at work to come back.

Hey, I just want to circle back and see if you receive my previous message about the importance of us going to the mall before Easter weekend.

Babe, I got you.

Let me do some things.

Maybe we can get there next week.

Next week comes, nothing.

And you don't want to be an annoyance.

So then I begin to solicit the support of my children.

I say to them, this is gonna be a team effort.

I need you to do your part, I'm gonna do my part.

I'm gonna mention it, but then it would be really helpful if maybe, Daniera, you could just go to the store with her.

It could be a great mother-daughter moment, something that I think that she would absolutely cherish three weeks in.

And Daenerys, like, okay, yeah, I could possibly do it.

I have to look in your schedule, I have to see if I can make it happen.

I'm like, what do you mean you have to see if you can make it happen?

You honor your father.

Like, it's in the Bible.

Two weeks.

Da Nera's like, hey, does she go get an outfit yet?

I'm like, I don't know, you tell me.

Did y'all go yet?

And she said, no.

I'm like, well, Nera, I need you to take her to the store so that on Saturday before Easter, I'm not going out to the stores and dealing with the chaos.

I need to be laboring and praying in God's word to stand before God's people.

So I was at the mall yesterday with my wife.

Because my daughter wouldn't go in my place because she refused to honor her father and she doesn't clearly love me.

But but to my wife's benefit, as we were walking into the mall, she held my hand, knowing that every ounce of anxiety was about to burst over me because I was hoping to avoid this very moment.

And she says, Lord, as we walk into this store, let me find an outfit at the first store that we go into.

In Jesus' name.

Now, I'm not sure if you ever heard somebody pray, and when you hear their prayer, you're like, Well, that ain't gonna happen.

Well, that was me.

So as we're walking into the store, she's like, in the first store, I'm like, that's never happened.

But let me tell y'all something.

We went into the first store.

Not only did she pick out this amazing outfit that I have on right now, but then she immediately went upstairs, found her dress, tried it on.

We were out of the mall inside of an hour, church.

He is risen like he said he is.

The tomb is empty.

It is empty.

And we're gonna take up offering we're gonna wrap up right there.

Miracles happen, but but here's here's the point.

Traditions are powerful.

It's just what you do and you kind of go into autopilot mode.

But but I've been thinking a little bit about this tradition of Easter, just a little bit.

What if, what if the Easter tradition wasn't just about brunch?

What if the Easter tradition wasn't just about us going and getting a new outfit?

What if the Easter tradition wasn't just for us to go to church that one time a year, check off the box, and go on about the rest of our business?

But what if the Easter idea was meant for us to go from tradition to transformation?

What if the idea of Jesus getting up and coming out of that empty tomb was meant to be something that was transformational for all of us?

What if the Easter tradition was us to come for celebration but to go with a commissioning?

What if Easter is not about remembering something that happened a long time ago, but encountering someone who's alive right now?

We can come in tradition but go out with transformation activated by the very resurrection power.

What if today God wants to take something familiar and turn it into something life-changing?

Because the truth is that is exactly what happened on the first Easter morning.

What you may not recognize is that on that first Easter morning, it was saturated with traditions.

Let me give you the short version of it.

For for Mary and the rest of the disciples, they had just witnessed their Savior get brutally murdered.

Something that was jarring to their senses because they knew him to be the Messiah, and even the scripture says they didn't understand that the Messiah had to come and suffer and die and rise from the dead.

So there was this moment where they still were waiting for Jesus to kind of do his glorification moment, and then they would have the crown without a cross.

But Jesus modeled and walked through suffering to let them know the price that needed to be paid for all of humanity.

So you can imagine that after Mary and the disciples watched Jesus taken away, and she and just a very few were there when he breathed his last breath, the anxiety and stress that they were wrecked with.

And the Bible tells us that most of the disciples scattered.

And because Jesus died at 3 p.m.

on a Friday and Sabbath started at sundown, which started around 6 o'clock, they had to rush to hurry up and bury him, which means that for their traditions of wrapping him up with anointing and washing his body, they had to skip over that.

So when Mary got up early on that Easter morning, she wasn't going there to celebrate an empty tomb.

She was going there to honor their Jewish tradition, which is you anoint the body of the dead.

Saturday they had to sit still because it was the Sabbath.

But on that early Sunday morning, she went to the tomb with an expectation that I'm just gonna follow through on tradition.

And I suspect for many of us, much like Mary, we came here today saying, I'm gonna honor tradition.

I go to church on Easter Sunday, but what if God wants to do something different?

What if instead of honoring tradition, you experience a transformation?

Well, I think it's safe to say that we are not Mary and Mary is not us.

I do believe that there's something that we can hopefully pull from her experience because I think we too know what it feels like to have disappointment, like Mary.

I suppose we too know what it feels like to have to manage unmet expectations.

I suppose we too understand what it feels like to wake up in the morning and feel as if your entire world has been lost.

But I also believe, like Mary, we can have a moment where we can have an encounter with the king that can change everything.

I want to give us three quick thoughts, and then we're gonna celebrate the empty tomb together.

If you take a note, so I want you to write this first thought down.

Because the tomb is empty, we can come with tears and go with joy.

We can come with tears.

We're allowed to have the feelings, we're allowed to have the emotions.

God meets us there, but he brings us to a place of unspeakable joy.

Early that morning when it was still dark, Mary got up to come and pursue Jesus.

Let me let me pause there for a moment because it paints a beautiful picture that Mary, who was dealing with disappointment, Mary who was dealing with pain, Mary who was dealing with anguish, the text says that even though she was in this darkness, she still got up early to go and pursue Jesus.

My question is, do you still pursue Jesus in your darkest moments?

Do you pursue Jesus when it's not clear?

Do you do you pursue Jesus in your disappointment?

Do you do you pursue Jesus even in your grief?

Do you still pursue Jesus?

Because it's possible that maybe on the other side of that pursuit, you may experience your breakthrough.

The text tells us that when Mary got there, she had seen that the tomb had been rolled away, and that when she looked in and she didn't see his body, she was filled with with panic.

She goes and gets the other disciples, and and John and Peter somehow turn this into a foot race, and John wants to let you know that he won, but doesn't want to say his name.

It's kind of weird.

We'll talk about it when we get to heaven.

Um but but John races Peter to the tomb and he beats him there.

And then Peter goes in, they both see that the tomb is empty, and they go back, and in fact, the Bible says they go back to their homes.

That happens so often.

We come to church and we see the tomb is empty, and we just go right back home.

Just just come and then we go.

But the Bible says that when Mary was there, she stayed and she began to weep bitterly.

She has an encounter with these angels, and they're talking to her, and she continues to weep bitterly.

But then there's a moment where Jesus appears right in front of her and she looks over to her periphery and she sees him there and she says, Listen, like, I don't know where you've taken my savior.

I'm I'm looking for Jesus and I can't find him.

I'm looking for Jesus and he's not here.

I'm looking for Jesus and I'm still filled with fear and anxiety and stress.

I'm looking for Jesus and I can't see him.

And meanwhile, she's literally looking right at him.

It is possible for us to be filled with such grief and disappointment that the answer of our prayer is right in front of us and we don't recognize it.

It is possible that the very thing that we have been pursuing and praying for could be right in front of us and we don't even see it.

Let me make this plain for a minute.

When we get into our relationships, Lord, if this is not the person for me, then you close that door.

And then he closes it.

And then we're praying, Lord, what are you doing?

That this is my person, this is my person, this is what I'm supposed to be with.

And Jesus is saying, You prayed and asked me that if this was not your person to close the door, and you're now looking at this door that is closed, and you think that this is the end of the story, but you've lost sight of the reality that if I close this door, it's because I've opened a better one for you.

Sometimes we can miss what God wants to do because we're fixated on how we want it to be done.

The Bible tells us that as Mary is there grieving and her emotions are there, he then asked the question.

He says, Woman, why are you weeping?

Who are you looking for?

And the beautiful thing is, he's not asking her this question as a form of rebuke.

He's asking this question from a space of curiosity.

I want you to bring me into your tears.

I want you to invite me into your disappointment.

I don't know about you, but my faith tradition and my upbringing was one where I almost had to check my humanity at the door.

Because if your faith filled, then you're never disappointed.

If your faith filled, that God works all things together for the good, if you're faith filled, you can't give yourself the space to be a human being because you just quote a scripture that somehow fits the situation often out of context.

But what we see through the person of Jesus is that he is so compassionate that he holds space even for our suffering.

He holds space for our disappointment, he holds space for our fears and our tears.

So when Jesus is asking her, why is she crying?

he's not rebuking her, but he's inviting her and himself into a situation.

And when she says, I'm looking for Jesus and they've I've lost him, he then calls her by name.

And in that moment, her tears get transformed into joy.

I want you to know that oftentimes, as followers of Christ, we're grieving alone and we've missed an opportunity to invite Jesus into our disappointment.

But Jesus calls her by name, and that's when she recognizes that it's him.

She was looking right at him and she couldn't see it.

But when he said Mary, there was something about the way that he said her name that allowed her to recognize that this was the voice of my loving God.

I don't know who's in here with me today, but maybe you've been grieving and maybe you've lost sight of the reality that God is for you.

But I want you to know that you serve a father who knows your name.

He's calling out unto you.

And it's in this moment when she recognized him that her tears turned into excitement.

The Bible tells us in Psalm 30 that weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.

That we have space for our tears, but there's also a resurrection that makes our peace available and apostles so that we can engage him.

That you may be dealing with some disappointment, but because the tomb is empty, that lets me know that we don't suffer like those who don't have hope.

We don't grieve like those who don't have hope, but we recognize that because the tomb is empty, that there's always hope.

The Bible tells us that because of this, that Mary was able to go in with grief, go in with tears, but she was able to leave filled with joy.

I remember not that long ago, there was a man who came to our church and he'd experienced a devastating divorce.

And much of the circumstances and the demise of his relationship, he would say, was his fault.

And I remember him struggling with forgiving himself.

I remember him struggling with how to move forward with his life.

But then he heard this empty tomb message of talking about that maybe because of the empty tomb, it may close one chapter, but it actually opens up another one as well.

It was in that moment that he began to recognize that maybe his story wasn't done, that maybe God wasn't done with him yet.

It was then he began to do some deep work with God and go into therapy.

He learned to forgive himself and his dreams of ever having a family that the enemy continued to place over his head, that because he got healed and recognized the empty tomb means that it's not the end of his story, he was able to finally move forward.

He ended up getting remarried, he ended up having the family of his dreams because he recognized that the empty tomb means it's not the end of your story.

You can come in with grief, but you can walk out with joy.

The second thing I think is worth noting is that we can come in fear, but we can go with peace.

The Bible tells us that the disciples were wrecked with fear.

In fact, when when Mary goes back and tells them that they seen, that she saw Jesus, the scripture tells us that they were sequestered away in fear.

Fear of the Jews is what it specifically says.

Now, these men, they were also.

Jewish, so I want you to see a distinction here that the very community that they should have drew strength from was the very community that they were afraid to suffer through.

It's possible that sometimes the people that are the closest to us can also be the conduits that make us the most uncomfortable.

We see here in the text that there's anxiousness, there's anxiety, but then Jesus shows up in the midst of all of that, and he says these words to them peace be with you.

While they're fearful, Jesus shows up.

While they're filled with anxiety, Jesus shows up.

That while they feel distant from their families, Jesus shows up.

We see over and over again in scripture that it tells us that do not be afraid, be of good courage.

It's not that fear is something that should cripple us, but it's recognizing that fear is recognizing that I can invite God into this situation and I can indeed experience peace, shalom, wholeness.

That means that even when I don't have it all together, I can have inner peace on the inside of me.

We all have fear of something.

We're living in one of the most anxious eras where there's more prescribed anxiety disorders, more medicine to help us to regulate the fear and anxiousness that we have, fear of the unknown future, fear of the economy, fear for the country, fear for our families.

We're filled with fear.

And yet, in all of these things, I believe that Jesus is saying that in spite of all of the outside activity, peace be with you.

I remember several years ago I had an opportunity to go to Israel and I took a team of about 10 to 15 people, and while we were there, there was a gentleman that was with us who received a call from his doctor.

He had previously gone to the doctor, and the doctor had given him a call and said, Hey, when you get back from your trip, I want to schedule you for an appointment so we can go over your results.

That was pretty much it.

Now, any of us knows that that seems like fuel for anxiety.

That if I go in and get a test, and then you're telling me that you can't give me the results over the phone that I need to come in so you can talk to me about it, you can only imagine the anxiety that begins to build up as a result of that.

And that's exactly what happened with him for three days.

While we're in Israel visiting these incredible sacred sites, he's wondering to himself, like, man, like my my father died of cancer and and and my and my uncle had cancer.

So he's beginning to process, and you can see the anxiousness and the fear that was welling up on the inside of him, understandably so.

But then the day came when we went to the garden tomb.

We were there, and I remember us walking through, and they were showing us where they believed that Jesus had laid in this tomb, and they rolled the stone back, and the door had written on it.

If you're looking for Jesus, he's not here.

And we stuck our head inside of the tomb and we we envisioned what we saw in scripture.

We saw the place where they potentially laid Jesus, and there's like this worshipful moment.

And I remember for this man that after he had this radical moment inside of the tomb, something snapped on the inside of him.

He said, Because the tomb is empty, I still have hope.

Because the tomb is empty, I still have joy.

Because the tomb is empty, I know that I have peace.

Because he's alive, I know that I am secure.

I've learned over and over again, friends, that sometimes our worst case scenarios is the scenario that God does his greatest work.

I've seen in the Bible over and over again these instances of these powerful moves of God.

For Joseph, it was the worst case scenario for him to end up in prison, but God did a mighty work.

For the children of Israel, finding themselves at the edge of the Red Sea was the worst case scenario, but God did a mighty work.

For Daniel, being in a lion's den, that was a worst case scenario, but God did a mighty, a mighty work on the inside of that.

For Lazarus, being in a tomb for four days was a worst case scenario, but God showed up and did an amazing work.

If the same God that did it for them is the same God that can do it for me.

So even while I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I don't have to be wrecked with fear and anxiety because God is with us.

Peace is available because the tomb is empty.

And here's my third and final thought that I want to share with us.

I'm gonna invite worship to come back out and join me.

But we come to church and then we go to the world.

We can come in one way, but we go another.

The resurrection didn't just bring comfort to Mary and courage to the disciples, but it commissioned an entire community.

Jesus didn't rise from the dead just so his believers could turn into a holy huddle and keep it to themselves.

In fact, when Jesus has this encounter with Mary, he says, Don't cling to me.

And there's a lot of theological nuances as to why he says that, but I'll give you the simplified version.

Don't cling to me because you can't keep me for yourself.

You now have a responsibility to take this kingdom message and share it everywhere that you go.

Jesus says that as a Father has sent me, I am now sending you.

All authority has been given unto me, and I'm giving unto you.

Go and make disciples in all nations.

The first Easter, the first message was from Mary, and she was given the responsibility to tell them to go.

The book of Acts carries this pattern of the people coming together, being equipped, being encouraged, being challenged, being corrected, and then they would scatter.

They would come together, they would take communion, they would hear the activity of God, they would be encouraged, they would be challenged, they would be inspired, they would be rebuked, and then they would go, and then they would come back.

They wouldn't allow their feelings of being hurt to keep them from being in an environment that's meant to make them better.

They wouldn't allow the convenience of going off to another location that can hopefully not speak to the areas of their life that needs to be correction, but they dealt with it, they processed through it, and then they were sharpened because of it, and then they would go out into community.

As a church family, we don't gather and huddle away.

We are not a cruise ship, but we're a battleship where we come together, we get fueled up, and then we go out and we look for those who are lost and stranded at sea.

That is the assignment of the church.

Over the past couple of weeks, we've been immersing ourselves in the Sermon on the Mount.

And one of the things we wanted to do was activate our community.

So we had an activation wall out in the lobby.

You'll see that when you go out, a great space where you could take photos.

But before you saw the photos, there were these challenge cards that people from our community would go and take a card and read it and be activated to take the gospel message beyond the four walls of the church.

Messages that said, go and forgive someone.

Oh, that's uncomfortable, but I'm gonna go and do it.

Messages that said, go and be generous to someone, but I'm gonna go and do it.

Messages that said, go and have an uncomfortable conversation with someone and then go and do it.

These messages that were meant to activate us because God's intent was never for us to stay inside of these four walls, but we gather to go and be scattered.

That is the rhythm of the church.

We gather and then we scatter.

Then we gather again and then we scatter.

We gather again and then we scatter.

We take the gospel message with us everywhere we go.

This is not a tradition where we come and check off the box and say, I went to church this week, but it's me being the church everywhere that God has called me to be.

I want us to recognize that we go from tradition to transformation to activation because God wants to do a powerful work on the inside of us.

So we come to church and then we go to our families.

We come to church and then we go to our workplaces.

We come to church and then we go to our neighborhoods.

We come to church and then we go off into the herding.

We come to church and then we go into our schools.

We come to church and then we go into communities.

We come to church and we have uncomfortable conversations.

We go to church and then we go to broken conversations.

We come to church and then we go into difficult moments.

We come to church and then we go to the world as Christ's ambassadors.

We go to the tomb and then we go to the nations.

We come to remember, but then we go to proclaim.

We come to worship and then we go to witness.

We come alive in Christ and then we go in his spirit.

We come in empty, but then we go out filled.

We come in weakness and we go in resurrection power.

Church, the tomb is still empty.

But the empty tomb is not for us to come once a year and to go back and live our lives as if it never happened.

But we come and we are allowing ourselves to be transformed by the gospel.

That is what the empty tomb means.

So as a family as a community, let us stand on our feet and celebrate the empty tomb together because he has risen.

That same resurrected power that rose Jesus from the grave is alive on the inside of us, and because of that, we give him all glory and all honor and all praise.

Let's give him support the family.

Thank you for joining us to learn more about Celebration Orlando, a church devoted to reaching the lost, equipping the found, and helping the hurting.

Follow us on social media using the handle at celebrationorl or visit our website, celebrationorl.org.