Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
Message: Our King Loves You, And He Lives in Us!
In all of Christendom, in this reality of existence, this season is the Holiest time of our calendar year. People in Rome have listened to the kind words of the Pope, blessing the moment. Our brothers and sisters in the Eastern Orthodox Church are preparing for this moment next Sunday, since they use a different calendar and will bless and pray for peace. Last week and this week will be in Jerusalem a time for Christians to pray for peace and harmony, as our Jewish brothers and sister complete their Passover.
People of good will all over the Planet are hoping for the best in other people, and expecting the best from themselves as all of humanity continues to learn what it takes to worship God, and live in harmony with other people.
For me I think what is key, is there are people everywhere who really posses that good will for others, and are sincerely working for a better more harmonious and loving existence with all of God’s creation. In response to all of that goodness, that wholesomeness existing in our world, many times just below the radar of life, perhaps our witnessing should proclaim for all those we meet, the invitation to a better life. Hence today’s message title; Our King Loves You, And He Lives in Us!
Our message applies to all of the creation, the Lord’s creation. God’s invitation is not for our censorship, but for our sharing the Good News always, and especially in a hurting and needful time. We must be about following up the tragedies that occur in life with the Good News of our Lord. That Good News is expressed in His Word, and His Holy Spirit, that lives within us, and is available to all of those people our King loves in The Creation!
In today’s early morning or our Easter Sunrise Service (celebrated at the civilized hour of 9:30), we read from John 19:16-42, telling us of the Crucifixion of our King. We followed the scripture narrative of how our Creator sacrificed for you and I, the whole of creation to bridge that gap, humanity had created in our sin. We noted the sadness of the whole event, explaining how the only man who ever had lived a sinless life of service to the Father in Heaven, and to all of the creation, was convicted as a criminal and sacrificed for the blood on everyone else’s hands.
The sad passage in John’s Gospel ends with Jesus being placed in a near by tomb. But God’s Narrative does not end on that miserable note of woe which is why we are talking the Gospel (Good News), of our Lord. As always God has an answer to the sadness, loneliness, and gloom of life, with the breath of the Lord in the form of His Word, and Holy Spirit.
In the next chapter of that same Gospel of John, we have today’s Call to Worship Reading of how God takes the evil of humanity and converts it into His Agenda of Reconciliation (or in laymen’s terms; bridging the gap of our continual sin in this life, to God’s Holiness), through His Resurrection anew.
Reading again from today’s Call to Worship John 20:1-18;
1Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. 2 So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”
3 So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. 4 Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5 He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, 7 as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. 8 Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. 9 (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) 10 Then the disciples went back to where they were staying.
Side Point; Up to this point we could be reading a worldly novel of intrigue and suspense, and that is just what the world tries to do with a God it doesn’t understand or whose goodness is beyond worldly comprehension. For many the idea of Easter is candy, chocolate bunnies, and the question of why it never happens during the week so that we can get yet another day off from school and work.
Sadly, if we just sit at the entrance of the beginnings of faith, we struggle like the rest of the world. Our belief in Him must go deeper and beyond just what lies within this reality that we kind of understand in life. And as I hope you will see now and for the rest of your life, our God has answers to our groping in the dark. And now verse 11;
11 Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb 12 and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.
13 They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”
Interrupting to Say; when we are struggling, struggling to understand the hard things in life but unlike a lot of the world really struggling to understand God… We are struggling and living up to our middle name Israel, which means to struggle with God. Our Lord is available to you with His Holy Spirit, and is always there. Mary continues in verse 13;
“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” 14 At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.
15 He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”
Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”
Side Note; If you are in search for the Lord, you will find Him. For each of us, the search, discovery, and realization are unique to our sole that seeks for Him. Mary is like a lot of us this Easter Sunday, who are experiencing deep torment, pain, suffering, and anguishing in the experiences that life is presenting. Trying to make sense of things that seem on the surface to be beyond her and our ability to understand. Initially she seeks out her family in God for support and discernment in understanding what God is doing.
Today, many are suffering in a world that is imploding in on itself in so many ways, and yet in the midst of all this adversity, we have a Lord that stands ready to walk with us as we sort out life, one challenge at a time. And when it’s all overwhelming like it was for Mary at times, well, that’s when God brought the Disciples together back then, and He brings us together in the here and now, so that we are never alone. And together we are better equipped to discern His voice in our lives. Continuing with verse 16;
16 Jesus said to her, “Mary.”
She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”).
17 Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”
18 Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had said these things to her.
This is what Easter is all about my friends! Sharing the Good News that He lives, and that our God, in spite of all the mistaken conjecturing and conjuring that has taken place over the years, Jesus is alive. Our God is not dead but lives in the hearts of all of us who believe and trust in Him!
Beginning with Mary on that first Easter (our Passover from eternal death, and the abys of going it alone without God), we reflect on the bigger, deep things of existence. That Jesus tells Mary to tell the others that: ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” And what do you know, Mary did that very thing, and we walk in her shoes each time we share this Good News. That; Our King Loves You, And He Lives in Us! That, our Lord lives and sits at the right hand of the Godhead in Heaven and that we who live in Him will one day as well.
That we are looking at more than the mere life and death stuff of this world, but in terms of living through eternity in Him who lives. That is the true Passover, the real Easter Miracle that we observe and celebrate today. And that is the fact that Easter is so much more than a day in time, but a passing in time into much deeper, richer, and lasting reality.
This leads us back to today’s Message Reading from the Apostle Paul, who instructed all of us through his witnessing to the Church at Corinth about these deep things of life and beyond. Reading again from Paul’s 1 Corinthians 15:19-26;
19 If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.
*Side Bar; If we have put our hopes in the Lord only for things to be better in this life, we are no better than those charlatans’ peddling prosperity and liberation theology.
So many come to church in order to make a deal with God or the congregation, that if they show up, God and His church will repay them in kind. That’s no reason to come to the Sanctuary of life. Our Faithwalk in and with the Lord is so much more than getting ahead, or back at, or an advantage over other people, in order to find petty material gain, popularity, and comfort.
It’s been said in this room before and bares repeating, all the stuff in this reality will rot, whether, rust, and wilt away, but the relationships you learn to live with, love, and then cherish, will endure forever into eternity.
It is all so much more than the here and now that our real treasures are stored. Paul indeed gets it. If we are just about this life we are truly to be pitied! Continuing now at verse 20;
20 But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. 21 For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. 22 For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.
**Side Bar Again; Our Lord’s visible return to the Disciples (His Resurrection), shows us that death can not hold our Lord, nor can it hold us that believe and trust in our Lord Jesus Christ. And if we know that we have eternity, all the material treasures of this life have been turned into the temporary junk that only serves a temporal purpose and is not worth all of the angst and effort people so often expend to control over.
Paul continues to provide a general plan of future process that our Lord will use to claim His family in God. Or in English, what the Lord is going to do to reach out and claim you for Himself, because you have asked Him to. Paul resumes his outline of the future in verse 23;
23 But each in turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. 24 Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power.
***Picking Up on Paul’s Outline; But each in turn:
- Christ arose, our beginning reason for the observance of Easter. As the Hymn states; He (Christ) Arose, and so will we in the ultimate Passover from death to eternal life.
- Then when Christ comes again, all of us who belong to Him, and everyone is invited. Another reason to celebrate Passover Easter! Forever!!
- Then we and His Kingdom will be handed over to the Father when our Lord has destroyed all the stuff that has been pulling each and every one of us down, since we were born. The stuff we come here to Church to learn how to fight against.
Paul finishes with our Savior’s reign over all of the enemies of our God. Those burdens of evil that cause affliction, heartache, hopelessness, and guilt will surrender to our God. Paul completes this thought with verses 25-26;
25 For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death.
I am very careful to interpret anything in regards to our Lord having to do anything. Beware when you hear someone like me say it, and when you read something like this in scripture, you have discovered a place in God’s word where He shares with us His very nature, which is why He would consent for us to use words like “have to“, when it pertains to Him. In other words; the Lord has to be true to Himself in the way He allows us to understand Him, for He is a God of clarity, and He shares this clarity with us when it suits Him.
And it suits God to share with us, that the last enemy to be destroyed is death. Easter reminds us all that we get to share in this victory over death, when we are in and with our Lord, His family, and are in a relationship that we call a Faithwalk.
My hope and prayer for each and every one of you, is that beginning with this Easter, your Passover from the death we all have been living in this life… That you will give yourself the opportunity to reflect with the Lord all of the beauty He provides us, and the opportunities for growth in Him, He affords us, and all the potential He has placed in each one of us, for the future of His never-ending Kingdom.
Amen!
Benediction; Psalm 118:22-24
22 The stone the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
23 the Lord has done this,
and it is marvelous in our eyes.
24 The Lord has done it this very day;
let us rejoice today and be glad.
and Numbers 6:24-2624 “‘“The Lord bless you
and keep you;
25 the Lord make his face shine on you
and be gracious to you;
26 the Lord turn his face toward you
and give you peace.”