The Gospel in Color: What If Easter Was Never About Fearing God? | In Color (Easter) | Chad Belew

It may be a little, I mean, it's the Arsenal. It may be a little different.

Easter message than you're used to. So buckle up. Here we go. The Gospel in color.

Let me get a feel for things real quick. Raise your hand if you grew up in some form like Christianity,

church, Catholic. Some people are like, Catholic, that's not, it is Christian. All right, cool.

So a lot of us, a lot of us. Did anyone ever hear the phrase that Christianity is a relationship?

It is not a religion. Have you guys heard this before? Yeah. Do we believe that?

That you guys weren't as confident. That's what I learned my whole life. I was told my whole life

that Christianity is a relationship. It's not a religion. And I do think that's true.

It's also a world religion. So like there's some differences there, but I do believe this is a relationship.

But because of that, there are moments where I step back and I wonder if that is true, if it really is about relationship,

then what would happen if we looked at our faith through the lens of a relationship?

What would happen if we looked at a relationship with the Creator God through the lens of relationship and not just some religion?

Not just theology, not just belief, but we have this like soft science, the science called psychology that helps us look at how we, they call it soft science.

We have this science called psychology that helps us actually look at what happens in relationships and how we handle ourselves,

who we are as people and how do we interact in psychology speaks to how healthy relationships happen, what happens in a healthy relationship,

what doesn't happen in a healthy relationship or what happens in an unhealthy relationship.

All of these things we have learned, not just through coming up with ideas, but through studying relationships.

And yes, I get that the relationship with a Creator might be different, but if we're going to call it a relationship, then we got to look at it as one.

And so there are parts of the relationship for me that when I started looking at what I was told about God, what I was told about myself and how we interact God and I,

it just didn't feel like a healthy relationship, right? Like, I don't know that it was real healthy for both of us.

So, we're going to look at some of that. You guys know, a lot of you that have been here for a little bit know that over this past year I dove,

I mean, I've always studied in red psychology, but this past year I dove into it in a way where at 44 years old,

I enrolled back in college and I'm going to school for psychology. I think, in fact, I have a picture of me.

Mottie made me take a picture. This was like, almost a year ago, I'm a future Yara called it Yagwire.

She said, "Dad, you're going to be a Yagwire." I said, "I am." So I'm studying psychology at Texas A&M San Antonio.

Woo-hoo, shout out. And I'm the old guy in the class, right? Like, usually, you guys know this. Usually I wear a hat.

Right now, you guys are looking at me like, "Oh, he is old." I do not go to my class bald because I'm already the old guy.

And they're going to look at me and be like, "Oh, this guy's real." I was talking to one of my professors this last week and

I was like, "Oh, we're at this event." A couple of masters students had just defended their thesis and so we were all eating some snacks and they were all going to go eat.

And they were like, "Hey, you're going to go eat with us?" I was like, "I can't. I'm going to go pick up my daughter." She's at gymnastics.

And my professor looked at me and she was like, "In your kid, like 21?" I was like, "That's my oldest son."

She's like, "How many kids do you have?" I said, "Four. What? You're four kids?" "Yeah." "Yeah, I'm old. I'm older than you, doctor."

Literally, I think I'm a decade older than her.

She told me not too long ago she was like, "Hey, we're talking about my future. I want to do a PhD in psychological research."

And she was like, "I think out of a lot of the students, you're really well prepared to go to a PhD program."

And I was like, "Well, I'm twice these kids age." She was like, "No, you're not. Literally."

And I told, "I'm 44." She was like, "Oh." I was like, "Well, you don't have to react like that."

But yeah, so anyway, so I'm back in school studying psychology because I think if we're going to look at our relationship with God as a relationship,

then I think we can find some really good insights into what relationship speaks to on how we can have a relationship with God.

And it's because if we look at this story of humanity with God through that relational lens, what will we see?

Every relationship has patterns. There's trust or mistrust. There's closeness or there's distance. There's safety or fear.

And if we brought that lens to the story of our faith, we might start noticing something that we've missed, I think.

I'll give you kind of an example of relationship. So I'm not a cat guy. I've said that my whole life, my entire life.

I've got two dogs, not a cat guy, but I'm not a terrible human. So I can care about animals even if they're not a dog.

And a while back, this cat broke into our house. And by broken, I mean, Mottie opened the door and let it in.

And she told me that she was just going to get the cat fixed so that it wasn't out on the streets just having babies.

And then we would keep the cat for a couple of days while recovered from the surgery, and then the cat would eventually go outside.

I think it was like over a year ago, and I have not seen the cat go outside yet. She's still in recovery.

We call her cat. Really we do. Last name is Baloo, so we call her Cat Baloo. And if you're over a certain age, you know what that is.

Two of us, the two of us didn't know, yeah. So, Mottie knew I wasn't super excited about this, but in a relationship, sometimes you just have to do what your wife tells you.

And there was one day early into my relationship with this cat. Mottie was gone for the day and I was downstairs.

The cat had kind of mosey downstairs. Usually she stays upstairs. She'd come down and I sneezed.

She goes, "I have old man sneezes now." So it was just like, "Achoo!" And the cat was like, "Boom!" Like so fast.

And she went one direction, like back door, and then she went back, and then she went upstairs, and I was like, "That was crazy."

She's really fast. She has this thing where she'll run and just jump off of our door, like parkour.

I sneezed. The cat took off. I had no idea where she went. I lost the cat. We were there. I had no idea.

So I'm like, "Alright, let me go find the cat. Make sure I didn't kill it." Or it didn't get out somewhere.

And so I went looking. And I looked everywhere. I looked under the beds. I looked in each room in the house, the bathrooms.

She has a bad habit. My dog's never did this, but she likes to go into our bathroom and turn our faucets on.

To a point one time, she didn't turn on all the way, actually, twice now. All the way, it just kind of dripped.

And it flooded my living room. The cat. She's amazing.

But she disappeared. I didn't know. I looked everywhere for her.

And, like I said, I've had dogs my whole life. She had fully disappeared. I'm in trouble.

Mottie is going to kill me. So, I'm looking one last time through our room. I walk into our closet and I'm looking underneath.

Like, our clothes are hanging. I'm looking underneath to see where she's at. And I hear something above me.

And I look up. And in our closet, it's ten foot ceilings. And there's something on top of my shoe boxes that are almost to the ceiling.

And I look up and there's these eyes just like looking at me. Big eyes just staring at me.

My dogs don't get up there.

And I looked up and it was like she's like, "I'm not coming down there with you. I don't know you. I don't trust you.

Which fair. I don't know that I trust her."

But she wasn't hiding. I don't think she was hiding because she was in trouble for doing something wrong.

I think maybe she had a guilty conscience. But really, she was hiding because she didn't trust me.

She's like, "I don't know you. I don't trust you. I don't know who you are. You make weird noises."

And I'm still not sure that she trusts me. But there's this thing in relationships where if you don't really know someone or another character,

then you don't trust them. That's where me and the cat are right now. I fear for my life when I go to sleep.

But also, I think I'm her favorite human.

Monty said it's so annoying. Can't help it.

Don't get me a shirt ever.

And to be clear, this is not one of those sermons where I'm going to ask, "So what are you hiding from God?"

I'm not trying to spiritually corner anyone today. I don't want to create any more trauma.

I think there's something really human here, even though it's a cat.

Because there's moments for us, and we all know these moments where maybe we do something and we're not sure how people are going to respond.

Maybe we mess up. Maybe you say the wrong thing. Maybe no one even knows what you did, but you know.

And before anything is said, something in you moves. There's a response.

Not toward honesty, not toward connection, but toward hiding.

You manage what people can see.

And it's strange because sometimes no one has even threatened you in that moment, but your body already knows the script.

If I'm fully seen here, I may not be safe.

And maybe that's the fear kind of underneath it all, that this idea that if I share my struggles, that if they know, then I'm going to be rejected.

We expect distance, but there's something in us that aches for nearness, and I think a lot of us have brought this same kind of script into our relationship with God.

Not because we're rebellious, some of you are, but because somewhere along the line, we became unsure of what God is like, especially when we fail.

And the reality is, for most of us, it's not because it's the way that we met God on our own.

We were told about God, who God is, what God expects, how God responds.

And for a lot of us, the explanation of the character of God was, for me, was pretty confusing.

He's all loving, but also just God, who expects a lot, or a distant God that is watching every move just waiting on us to mess up and say, "Yep, I knew it, they're all the same."

They can't do anything right.

But he loves you, he's kind, kind of loves you, but he does because of Jesus.

And for some of us, an angry God that's matted us for something our oldest brother, Adam did, but we've got another perfect brother that is going to appease Father, the angry Father, to protect us.

But it is God, but it's the Son, but anybody else ever get confused?

And I probably shouldn't say this on Easter as a pastor, but he could get real confusing.

So Easter weekend then becomes about guilt for a bad behavior by this one man, Adam, which we then inherit his bad ideas and bad nature, and we can also, we don't do anything perfect.

And then Jesus comes as God, the angry Father with the nicer version, who's going to fix what Adam did by being perfect, and they take the punishment for all of us because we deserve it.

That Sunday school lesson that we all learned at like seven years old, that you're dirty, rotten, sinner, you deserve death, but if you accept Jesus into your heart, then God will forget it ever happened.

In theological circles, this is called, it's an atonement theory, it's this idea of penal substitutionary atonement that what most of us were taught at Easter, that we deserved penalty for our sins, and Jesus came to be perfect, and he's going to be the substitute for us, substitutionary, and he's going to atone for the sins that we committed.

And he's going to take the wrath of God, who's loving, but also just take that wrath so that we don't have to, God's going to pour out his wrath on him to keep it from us.

Then after that, we can, we'll be good. But if this is all a relationship, then it really sounds like a pretty dysfunctional one to me.

And I know that's probably not safe to say with everybody, but God doesn't sound like a very safe individual to be in a relationship with, especially if you ever mess up.

And like I said, penal substitutionary atonement, it's what most of us were taught, it's about a 500 year old theology or theory, so it's not even the oldest theory about what happened at the cross with Jesus, so I'm not going to go into all that, but look it up.

So, as I was told, if this is a relationship, then we have to look at this from a more relational lens this Easter.

What if Easter's not about answering guilt? What if it's answering this question? How did humans become so afraid of God that hiding started to feel natural?

We have to go all the way back, back to the beginning of the relationship, the honeymoon phase in the garden, where we look at this relationship and there's some, like, a very specific thing that happens.

There's a problem that enters the relationship in Genesis 3. This relationship between God and humans, Adam is our representative and his wife, Eve, they are representing us.

And in the garden, this happens. Now, the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made.

He said to the woman, "Did God really say you must not eat from any tree in the garden?"

The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say you must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden and you must not touch it or you will die."

You will not certainly die, the serpent said to the woman, "For God knows that when you eat from it, your eyes will be open and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.

She also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were open and they realized they were naked.

So they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

Now, this is a relationship. This part of the story, the focal point, is not about disobedience. This is about distrust.

From a psychological perspective, that matters because when mistrust enters, it doesn't just change behavior, it changes perception.

When trust is broken in a relationship, you stop interpreting the other person through safety and you start interpreting them through suspicion.

Suddenly, everything gets filtered differently in the relationship.

This is what's happening in the garden. The serpent doesn't begin by making Eve defiant. He begins by making God suspect.

Did God really say? Who gets to tell you what God is like? Do you really know God?

Because now the serpent becomes the interpreter of that relationship. He says, you will not certainly die.

For God knows that when you eat from it, your eyes will be open and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

The serpent says, maybe God's withholding something from you. Maybe you can't trust God.

Maybe you need to take for yourself.

Maybe God's not the most trustworthy person in your relationship, Eve.

And once that shift happens, everything else begins to follow.

Because when perception bends, when you see someone differently than emotion follows, God no longer feels safe in this relationship.

They feel exposed. Others feel like threats.

And it leads to something very specific. Shame.

Not I did something bad, but there's something about me that is not safe to be seen.

Psychologists have studied this emotion of shame.

When shame takes over, people don't move toward connection.

They move toward hiding, blame, self-preservation, self-protection.

So in this story, then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord.

Right after Eve has eaten this, she gave the fruit to Adam. They both eat.

When the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord, he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day,

and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

But the Lord God called to the man, "Where are you?" He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid."

Shame says hide.

And he said, "Who told you that you were naked?

Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?"

The man said, "The woman you put here with me, she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it."

Because shame says to blame.

Then the Lord God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?"

The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."

Because shame says to self-protect.

Because in a relationship that feels unsafe, you don't move toward repair, you move toward protection.

And this is what Adam and Eve did. They no longer trusted God.

Their God image, the idea of what the character of God was like was no longer trustworthy.

So they must protect.

They can't say, "Hey, we messed up."

And trust that God's love will be forgiving.

We'll be caring. We'll help repair a relationship.

No, no, no. They must hide. They must blame. They must self-protect.

So I'd argue that the problem from the garden wasn't even really the misbehavior or the disobedience.

The deepest problem we see here in Genesis 3 from a relational perspective is mistrust.

In this framework, humans stop receiving God.

They stop receiving themselves, and they stop receiving the world through trust.

And they begin interpreting everything through suspicion.

And that immediately distorts their perception.

God is no longer felt as safe and generous, but as threatening and withholding.

The self feels exposed.

So I must sew fig leaves together to hide.

What I believe is shameful about me, to you in a relationship.

And then other people start to look like rivals, judges, dangerous.

In this moment, God did not change.

Humanity's perception of God changed in that moment.

And once perception bends, emotion follows.

The result is shame and fear.

Shame is not just, "I did something bad. It's this painful sense that I myself am unsafe.

I'm exposed. I'm not enough."

And when shame takes over, people do what Genesis describes.

They hide, they protect, they blame, and they grasp.

And when I have to hide, I put on a mask to present what I perceive as the safest version of myself.

My friend, author, Pastor John Lynch, says that when I wear a mask throughout my day,

the only thing that received love that day was the mask.

Not the real me.

And when love is present, even in that relationship, it can't reach you if you're hidden.

And here's the reality of the relationship.

No matter how much love I have for you, I can only love you to the level that you trust me.

So if we don't trust God, we don't trust the character of God,

then no matter how much God loves us, pursues us, if you look through the Scriptures,

God is pursuing us constantly.

We turn our back. God comes, "Hey, hey, I'm here. I'm here. I love you. I care for you."

The Israelites mess up. They do the same thing. God pursues them constantly

over and over and over again, even to the point where

He comes in the form of Jesus.

Because after the trust is fractured in the relationship, the love doesn't stop.

But it stops being experienced.

So if we go from the garden with humanity's new perception of the character of God,

what happens inside of people doesn't stay inside of people. It scales.

And so you go from the garden, fearful people build fearful systems.

Belonging becomes conditional. Holiness becomes distance. Religion becomes gatekeeping.

And exclusion becomes powerful because it hurts.

We know that if you look at studies that social rejection activates,

a lot of the same regions of the brain is physical pain.

So to be excluded doesn't just

define community. It controls it.

Because nobody wants to be excluded because that hurts.

So if I can tell you that you must do these things in order to belong,

so you won't be excluded, well you don't want to be excluded because that's painful.

And this is the world that Jesus walks into.

You see it through His ministry.

There's one of my favorite stories at the table. Jesus is sitting with tax collectors and sinners.

And the religious leaders are watching. Because in that culture,

the table decides belonging. And Jesus is disrupting this.

In Matthew 9, it says later when Jesus was eating supper at Matthew's house

with His close followers, a lot of disreputable characters came and joined them.

When the Pharisees saw Him keeping this kind of company, they had a fit

and lit into Jesus followers. What kind of example is this from your teacher acting cozy with crooks and riffraff?

Jesus overhearing shot back. Who needs a doctor? The healthy or the sick?

Go figure out what the Scripture means. He quotes Hosea 6-6 here.

I'm after mercy, not religion.

I'm here to invite outsiders, not coddle insiders.

He's pushing back in a system that's built on exclusion

and revealing a God who moves toward the outsider.

And this insider outsider, this is relational language.

It's social psychology. It's in-group, out-group. It's mentality

that human tendency is to sort people

into and in and out. Us and them.

We usually give more trust, empathy, loyalty to our own group

while viewing outsiders with more suspicion, distance, stereotyping.

In social psychology, sociology, this helps explain how identity,

belonging, prejudice, cohesion, and conflict can form so quickly.

Because I got to trust my group, but

there's someone else that's an out-group. I have to exclude. And I don't want to be part of that.

What Jesus is doing here is he's shifting people out of this fear-shaped world

into something else. Because the relationship with God

will always dictate our relationship with others.

If I can't fix this relationship, I say this,

but if I can't fix this relationship with God,

if I feel like I'm untrustworthy, I'm shameful, that I have to prove something

that I can never show myself to anybody else.

The way that I see God

will always dictate the way that I see reality.

So shame and fear, they push people

to seek safety, belonging, protection.

So they cling more tightly to their own group that often turns differences

into threat, making outsiders easier to distrust,

stereotype, blame, or exclude. We see this everywhere. And what Jesus is doing here

is he's shifting people out of this fear-shaped world into something else

into a world of belonging, mercy, compassion, into this emotion of

awe that we keep talking about. It's the difference of experiencing something

that is greater than you and feeling that small self, but in a way

that says I'm so connected to everything around me.

This is beautiful. It opens us

back up. It reduces the defensiveness.

It increases connection. And that's what Jesus is doing here.

He makes love believable again.

He was here to fix the misperception

of God, to show us exactly what God actually looks like

and how God loves. He tells Philip exactly these words. He says,

"You've been with me all this time, Philip, and you still don't understand

to see me is to see the Father."

Jesus is the lens through which we see the character of God.

So every time he's trying to fix

our perception of God, Jesus consistently pursues

everyone in his life that have been told that they do not belong

over and over and over again. He shows us who God really is.

This was relational repair

that Jesus came to do, not just fix behavior,

but to repair the most important relationship that we could have

with God, who is love.

And that kind of love, it becomes dangerous.

Because it threatens everything built on fear

in society. Eventually, this is

what leads to the cross for him.

We have to look at like the cross

is not just this religious symbol. It is a psychological revelation.

It shows us what fear shaped humanity

does when it's exposed to pure love.

Because when love can't be controlled, then fear escalates.

And when fear escalates,

it looks for someone to carry this fear.

Who can I blame, remove, sacrifice?

Because it's easier to unite against one person than to face what's broken

inside all of us. The Caiaphas, the high priest

at the time of Jesus, he says it. And John 11, he says, then one of them,

named Caiaphas, who is the high priest that year spoke up, you know nothing at all.

You do not realize that it is better for you that one man

die for the people than that the whole nation perish.

This is scapegoating.

It's fear stabilizing itself, trying to protect everything

that is built around it. Not to

stop. Jesus steps in.

Not to just stop what's happening, but to expose it.

We talked through it the last couple of weeks, through his trifle entry,

through him flipping tables. And we're not just

looking at us like, what does this relationship

look like? And when

he's hung on a cross, when he's

beaten and walked through the streets, he doesn't respond with fear.

He responds with forgiveness

over and over.

Even on the cross, he says, father forgive them for they know not what they do.

They don't understand. They still have a misconception

about who you are.

And so, forgive them.

Because that's what love does, even in a

broken relationship when it's trying to prove its love.

And then resurrection happens, and resurrection is where everything

turns. Because if the cross reveals what fear does,

then resurrection reveals what is

actually true about God. That fear is not

ultimate, that shame is not final, that God is not like we feared.

Like we poured out the worst that we could

be in humanity onto Jesus.

And God, who we thought we should fear, and we're

shame we have to hide from, God says, I forgive you.

You could do the worst of the worst, even to the point of

killing me, and I will still forgive you.

Do you see who I am? This is what Easter

is. This God is not like the God that we were told

to fear. Watch how Jesus shows up

after the resurrection. The disciples are hiding. They're in this locked room.

Jesus walks in and he says, what? Where were you guys?

Ah, hey, peace be with you.

I wouldn't do this for someone who punched me.

Brutally murdered him.

Jesus walks in and says, peace be with you.

Not shame, not where were you. Peace.

Because this is what love does, even when it

encounters mistakes. Then Peter,

who denied him three times, I don't know who that dude is, three different times.

Jesus shows up, the disciples are out fishing.

He's yelling at him that Peter can't even recognize him.

He's like, hey, hey, come in here. Let's have some breakfast.

None of the disciples, this says dared ask,

who are you? They knew it was the Lord.

Jesus came and took the bread and he gave it to them

and he did the same with the fish. This was now

the third time that Jesus appeared to his disciples after he was raised

from the dead. Jesus doesn't pull Peter in and lecture him.

He cooks breakfast.

He sits with him. He restores him. He says, we're okay.

Because in this relationship the one person

that should be upset is the one friend that you denied

when he needed it the most. And Jesus says, hey, we're good.

Brings him back into belonging.

Because this is what forgiveness looks like.

It's not distance. It's presence. It's not exclusion.

It's not invitation. And this is where everything changed

for our relationship with God. Because if God meets us like this

then we don't have to live in fear anymore.

Paul says in 2 Timothy 1, for God

will never give you the spirit of fear. But the Holy Spirit

who gives you mighty power, love, and self-control

in your senses, he gave us resurrection life. And drew us to himself by his holy calling on our lives.

And it wasn't because of any good we have done but by his

divine pleasure and marvelous grace that confirmed our union

with the anointed Jesus. Even before time began.

We were united.

The truth is now being unveiled by the revelation of the anointed Jesus,

our life giver who has dismantled death, obliterating

all its effects on our lives and has manifest his immortal life

in us by the gospel. This is why the gospel is good news to

all people.

We haven't received a spirit of fear but a spirit of adoption of belonging.

And when belonging becomes secure

in a relationship then everything reorganizes.

There's less hiding. There's less fear. There's more trust.

There's more love.

And Paul prays this in Ephesians when he's talking to the Church of Ephesus.

And this is a prayer that I look

to as a pastor constantly. So I kneel humbly

and aw before the father of our Lord Jesus the Messiah.

The perfect father of every father in child in heaven and on earth.

And I pray that he would unveil within you the unlimited riches of his glory

and favor until supernatural strength

floods your innermost being with his divine might and explosive power.

Then by constantly using your faith the life of Christ will be released

deep inside of you and the resting place of his love will become the very

source and root of your life. Then you will be empowered

to discover what every holy one experiences

because once you trust love you can experience love.

The great magnitude of the astonishing love of Christ in

all its dimensions. How deeply intimate and far reaching is his

love. How enduring and inclusive it is. Endless love beyond measurement

that transcends our understanding. This extravagant love pours into you until

you are filled to overflowing with the fullness of God.

Never doubt God's mighty power to work in you and accomplish all this.

He will achieve infinitely more than your greatest requests.

Unbelievable dream and exceed your wildest imagination. He will outdo

them all for his miraculous power constantly energizes you.

Now we offer to God all the glorious praise that rises from every

church and every generation through Jesus Christ. And all that will yet

be manifest through time and eternity. Amen.

I pray that we would grasp how wide, how long,

how high, how deep is the love of God.

That we would actually experience it.

Because when that love becomes real it rewires us.

Love invites us to the table where we find belonging.

Today we're going to close this out with communion.

And sometimes communion

turns into, or has turned into just this thing we do.

It's ritual.

One of the things I love about communion

is that it's something that we practice and it's

a setting around a table.

We used to do communion in a circle.

We just can't do that in here right now.

Oh yeah they're giving you.

Oh if you're gluten free raise your hand.

This also loves you.

So the beautiful part about communion, and I think, I mean it's in this word, right?

Like communion is communal.

And I don't believe that it's just communal, it's not, this is like just

always this personal thing, just me and God, but I think it's communal

with us. All of us. We sit at the table when, because when you

experience belonging,

and when someone has

felt that belonging for a while

and you're new to the table and you're like, I don't, I'm not sure I belong

here and they look at you and they go, oh no, if I belong here, you belong here.

And then they say, you know what though?

The longer you're here, the more you'll experience how incredible

this love is, that brought you to this table.

It made a seat for you here that actually never said

that you do not belong.

But the entire time that you thought that you were not good enough, that shame told you

that you could not sit at this table, that love said, no, no, no, I've

got a seat for you no matter what. This is what Jesus was

teaching us at Resurrection Sunday, that no matter what

you do, even to the point of killing him,

you're forgiven and you still have a seat at the table. Come sit down, let's have

breakfast Peter.

God's plan

was to show us

that the serpent lied about who God is.

And even though Adam and Eve were deceived about their relationship with God, they were told

that they could not trust God. The work of Jesus, and if you look

through the Gospels, he's doing this over and over and over again, the work of the Gospels is Jesus

showing those that were told that they did not belong,

that you have a seat at the table.

And we can try to spin this and turn into, yeah, yeah, yeah, but he was saying that if they like

did something different, right? That's not what

unconditional love and forgiveness look like.

We can't take back murdering Jesus as humanity on the cross.

But Jesus says, you're forgiven.

Because I understand that you're afraid.

And fear makes us do crazy

things in a relationship. And so the only way

that we can fix this relationship, the only way I can fix it is to show you that you were loved

and consistently and constantly pursue you, which is what God did.

Rob likes to say that God

made peace with you.

And when you realize that God,

God bless you, when you realize that God

is the person offended in the relationship, right?

God is the one that was

misobeigh that was something happened against the relationship.

God is the one that could be offended and God

we're good. We're at peace.

Believe that. Because when you

begin to trust me, I can love you to the fullest

that I can. And you'll experience it.

Will you stand with me?

This has got to be the coolest communion stuff ever.

Marley and Cass, thank you.

Thank you.

Like I said, this isn't private. This is a communal thing.

Because when we look around this room, there are people that have experienced the love

at even a deeper depth than maybe you have.

All right.

All right.

If you look around this room, there are people that have experienced the love at even a deeper depth than maybe you have.

And you can look at them and go, is it really that good?

And they can say, yeah, it really is.

And the more that we see that and we experience that in community,

the more that we begin to believe in.

The communion is where hiding ends.

The bread says that you don't have to hide. The cup says that love

has entered the wound of this relationship and has repaired it. The table says

that you belong here.

Paul says, in Corinthians,

"For I received from the Lord what I also pass on

you." The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread.

And when he had given thanks, he broke it

and he said, "This is my body, which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me."

Will you experience what it looks like to not hide

anymore and take you to the bread with us?

This is what not having to hide looks like.

Sorry. In the same way,

after supper, he took the cup,

saying, "This cup is the new covenant.

In my blood, do this

whenever you drink it in remembrance of me."

Will you drink with us?

Paul goes on to say, "For whenever you eat this bread

and you drink this cup, you proclaim

the Lord's death until he comes." So then

whoever eats the bread and drinks the cup of the Lord,

does it keep going? I stopped. Never mind. I had extras.

So today, we get to stop hiding.

That's what Easter invites us into.

We come back into trust in a relationship

with God our Creator, who is love

at its fullest, who shows us that there's nothing

that you could do that would disqualify you from

belonging at my table.

And when we come back into

trust in this relationship, we receive the love

that moves closer. And we're reminded

and we get to experience that even in the sharing

of my struggle, when I believe that love would move away,

I get to experience that love actually moves closer.

He grabs his arm around me and says, "Oh, we're good.

I love you. I forgive you.

Let's go do this life thing together."

My favorite verse is

it's in Romans 8. It's in the message.

Eugene Peterson translates it. "This resurrection life is not a grave

tending life. It is a life that says, what's next,

Papa?" Because when you've experienced

love and forgiveness and belonging, man, life

gets good. And now you get to go share that.

You haven't even experienced it yet. Come back. Come sit down.

Realize that you belong, that you were loved, that you were forgiven. There's nothing you could do that whatever

removed God's love from you, even if you've been told that

you could.

Because when you receive this love,

when you understand what belonging really looks like,

it is not something you can keep a secret.

And this isn't some, "Hey, go out there and save the world."

Go out there and love people. Because that's what

God called us to do. That's what Jesus shows us over and over and over again.

"How did he save the world through loving those that thought that they did not

belong?" Pulling out a chair.

Just loving. No questions asked.

That's why every single week

we say at the end of our services

that arsenal, go love well

because that's who you're made to be.

Experience the depth of God's love so that you can share

the expansiveness of God's love with this world.

I love you. Happy Resurrection Sunday.

Never, ever believe the lie that you do not

belong. Let Jesus remind you that you are loved,

you're forgiven, and that this resurrection life is yours to share.

I love you guys. Happy Easter.