 |
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
 |
|
|
|
Remember and Be Amazed When I remember I am often amazed. These past few weeks have been spent in calling, in preparing worship and our capital campaign, and in cleaning out stuff. It is awe inspiring how much stuff you can accumulate over 41 years of ministry. The other day I found my first sermon and as I remembered those hesitant words preached in 1961 I was amazed. They were actually pretty good stuff. Wow. Amazing. I went through lots of files too this past month in odd hours at the office and at home. Amazing how much hair I’ve lost. Amazing how Kay never changes. Amazing how God’s love showed through my journey in so many ways. Remembering can be amazing. The problem is that it takes a lot to amaze us these days. When was the last time you were amazed? Was it when you saw your first child handed to you in a blanket? Or when you realized you had done it, graduated, from high school, or college, or graduate school? Were you amazed as I was when you saw your bride coming down the aisle, dressed in white, radiant and lovely? Or was it when you saw that beautiful sunrise, or sunset, or snow flakes on the Easter finery. ? The problem is that we do not get amazed. We have been to Disney World. What’s left? The Easter story is about remembering and amazement. The women went early to the tomb on the day following the Sabbath. They were hesitant, not sure who would help them roll away the stone. They knew where they were going. That was sure. They had seen Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus bury the dead body of Jesus. It was done in haste as the Sabbath was nigh. They knew where they were going. But when they got there, they were shocked. All four gospels tell us that the women who went to the tomb were both amazed and filled with fear. There were angels, two in Luke’s account, who tell the women not to be afraid. Strange, the reaction of the women on that first Easter was like that of someone encountering a force so powerful that it is overwhelming. It’s interesting because we have completely domesticated Easter. It is a tame holiday, a day filled with rabbits and eggs and pretty clothing and flowers. It has turned into a spring festival. Perhaps that is because we have failed to connect Easter with our everyday lives. You see the women were also instructed to remember. “To go to Galilee” as he told you. They were told to remember what Jesus had told them. Remembering changes everything when we are amazed. The amazing news of Easter, of resurrection, was connected to the teachings and healings and everyday encounters with Jesus. The fear of the women was transformed. In Matthew’s gospel we are told of two kinds of fear. The guards we are told were so filled with fear that they were like dead men. But the women had a different kind of fear. It was an amazed fear, an excited fear, a fear like that of standing on tip toe, a fear that was to be connected to God, a fear of the Lord. A fear of the Lord is much different from our everyday garden variety of fear. Fear of the Lord is the fear that we have when we are truly shocked and amazed in a positive way that God is acting in some new way. The women had to have their fear channeled and formed into an awareness of resurrection life. That would come in the encounters in the Garden and in the forty days after Easter, as the Risen Lord appeared to his disciples and shaped them to the power of the resurrection. You see, we have disconnected the resurrection with our daily existences. There is no longer an excited fear of the Lord, standing on tip toe, in what we do. We just plod through life, doing one more thing after another, with no amazement, no quality of awareness that Jesus has been raised triumphant and that the way of death no longer controls our journey. Billy Sunday was a great revivalist of the early twentieth century. He would call for conversions and people would walk the sawdust trail. You see Sunday’s tent floors, he used great tents almost like a circus tent for his meetings, had dirt floors that would be covered with several inches of sawdust. Thus the saying “walking the sawdust trail.” Sunday would convert people and then say something rather strange. He would say that the new convert should pray that he, or she, would be hit by a truck walking out of the amphitheater so he, or she, would go to heaven in resurrected glory. There is a problem with this. Lots of people think of the resurrection only in terms of conquering death and life everlasting. That is certainly true. But Jesus was alive in the here and now. Think where he met people. He ate dinner with Cleopas and his wife. He ate breakfast with his disciples by the Lake. He asked for a fish and ate it in their presence on one occasion. Jesus met people in resurrection glory at meal time just as he did in his ministry. How amazing. Jesus came to people in the everydayness of lunch and supper. And he came and shared with his friends. Please notice that Jesus did not talk about death or life after death with his disciples! He talked with them about loving people, about tending the sheep, about caring for one another and sharing the good news of the Kingdom of God. Jesus came, says John, that we might have life and have it abundantly. Abundant life is a change in our quality of life. Paul says that we are to “present our bodies as a living sacrifice,” and that we are to be transformed in our minds so that we might transform the world. Resurrection life has everything to do with life after death, of course, but resurrection life also has everything to do with how you and I live our lives today! You know, I rejoice that God raised Jesus from the dead. I rejoice that my loved ones are enjoying life eternal with their Lord, and that we are all promised the glory of the resurrection at some future time. But right now I rejoice that God through the risen Christ has affirmed all that Jesus said and did. Just think: if God had not raised Jesus from the dead, then all his teaching about love, about sacrifice, about giving, about caring for others, about sharing love, all that would have been cancelled and negated by the force of evil. But Jesus has defeated evil. Jesus has been raised. Jesus’ life has been affirmed and gloriously so. That means that when we remember Jesus and his resurrection our everyday lives take on new meaning. Frankly, I hope none of you are hit by a Mack truck after you leave this place! Because the amazing thing about Jesus is that he wants through his resurrection power to transform the way you live your everyday life, so that each day is filled with amazement and love as you remember what God has done for each one of us. The commercial world has never conquered Easter as they have Christmas. They are trying, but it is hard to sell resurrection power. But think how amazing it would be if we did remember the resurrection, each day of our lives, and if we did remember the amazing story, and if we were in turn amazed, amazed that love is the key,. amazed that death and evil are no longer to be feared, amazed that fear has been transformed to wonder, amazed that God’s love is active in every corner of our lives. Friends, I ask you today to remember and be amazed, and to live your lives as a journey of amazing love. That is what the resurrection means for us today. Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! And my life and your life will never be the same again! That’s amazing! Thanks be to God for his victory! Thanks be to God for his inestimable gift! Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen and Amen. |