I wanted to let you in on my process for preparing a sermon when I am offered the privilege to preach. My process is far different than it might be if I had to prepare a sermon every week, as Pastor David does. For me, I find out a couple months in advance that I will be preaching, so step 1 of the process is to pull out the lectionary and look up what scripture readings the denomination “suggests” for the sermon topic.
The lectionary is actually a great way to make sure many of the scriptures available to us are covered over a 3 year period. It prevents over-using certain scriptures and ignoring others that might be difficult to preach on. It provides a very “balanced” approach for preachers to take.
In my process, I look up that week’s scriptures and read them. Then I let those scriptures percolate in my brain for a while to absorb some of their meaning.
Step 2 is to ask God to direct me toward the message He wants me to give to the congregation. I try to be completely open to whatever comes because sometimes the message seems a little harsh, or controversial, and since I don’t like confrontation, I shy away from those types of messages. So I try hard to stay open, no matter what the message might be. I look at the prophets of the Old Testament and see that God gave them messages that no one wanted to hear. As a matter of fact, nearly every one of them was killed for preaching those messages. Now, I don’t equate myself to the status of those prophets, but I sometimes find myself with messages I don’t want to deliver. Now that I said that, I trust I’m safe among this congregation.
During my process, I often gain many new insights that I never considered before, because the message is actually different than how I saw it prior to trying to prepare for it. Sometimes the message is tied directly to the scriptures listed in the lectionary, but often it goes a whole different direction. Today is one of those days. The message today has nothing to do with the scriptures suggested in the lectionary. This all came out of my study OF those scriptures, but the direction took a very sharp turn as I prepared for today.
It seems that the message today came from a lot of other directions. The anthem, which by the way, is one of my favorites, pointed me toward speaking on joy. Last week being Easter, pointed me toward speaking on eternal life. The internet pointed me toward speaking on kindness to others. There were so many possibilities in those different places. But a small voice inside of me pointed toward mundane everyday chores. I didn’t really understand why that kept coming back into my mind, day after day. It’s so boring, and trivial. So I decided to follow it and see where it went. So here’s what I found:
For me, Crosswalk.com is one of my favorite Christian websites. You may not know this, but our own Carrie Dedrick is the editor for the website.
As I prepared for today’s message, this particular article from that website fell into my lap. This is an article written by Denise Larson Cooper and was printed on Crosswalk.com. It reads:
“Easter is over. The contents of plastic eggs have been eaten. Hard boiled Easter eggs are now egg salad and only the head of the chocolate bunny remains in the box. Baskets have been tucked away in the basement waiting for next year. And Jesus has been tucked safely back in the tomb.
Wait! What?!”
She goes on to say:
“On Easter Sunday morning churches fill with people to celebrate the glorious resurrection of Jesus Christ. The organist pulls out all the stops (pun intended) to fill the sanctuary with triumphant sounds to honor the risen Lord. Trumpet fanfares accompany the congregation’s voices, which are raised in the singing of Charles Wesley’s hymn “Christ the Lord is Risen Today.” The choir joins in festive songs of victory. Hearts soar and joy fills the souls of the faithful who rejoice in Christ’s triumph over sin and death.
Then comes the morning after. The emotional charge of Easter Sunday has left our hearts. Our soul, which had soared upward into the heavens on the wings of the truth of the resurrection, is brought earthward and burdened with the cares of the day. Our minds exchange meditations on the glories of Christ, for a list of errands and groceries.”
I’ve noticed that at Easter, our sanctuary seems to get very full of people who come to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. There’s something special about that day that draws people in. Many who never set foot inside a church the rest of the year, will do it on that particular day. We see the same thing at Christmas, but today, I am speaking about Easter.
Going back to the article:
“We treat Christ as though his resurrection from the dead is the climax of an Easter play. When the music stops and the church service ends we applaud His performance and leave, remembering that we can catch the same show again next year.”
In reading this, I had to wonder, what is it about the Easter story that draws people in? Is it the promise of new life? Is it all the special activities at the church? Is it a longing to be closer to God, and the additional fanfare makes it seem possible? I really don’t know.
I do know that some show up out of obligation to family. Some show up because they live at a distance and the school system plans Spring Break at the same time, so families can visit, and since Mom and Dad do the church “thing”, they will do it too. After all, it’s just one day out of the year.
But rather than being cynical, I like to think that it’s a time when Jesus can become real for those who have doubts. Or for those who are seeking for meaning in their lives. Or those who are just empty and want to be filled. The resurrection of Jesus was for the entire human race, and we can all connect because of it.
Looking at today’s scriptures that Bob read for us, how did the disciples react when Jesus returned to them after his resurrection?
First they were terrified because they thought he was a ghost. We can do nothing more than imagine what they must have felt when the man that they knew was dead and buried suddenly shows up and talks to them. Even though he spent plenty of time telling them that he had to be killed, but would be raised up again, they still couldn’t wrap their minds around it. This was a discussion our Sunday School class had last week. After seeing Jesus raise people from the dead, most famously Lazarus, they still couldn’t believe that Jesus himself might have been raised.
This passage also tells us that they felt great joy, but they were also disbelieving at the same time. I tried to imagine this myself. I could see myself saying something like, “I am so glad to see you Jesus, but seriously, aren’t you dead?”
So Jesus continues, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.”
He continued on saying, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”
When Jesus is finally taken up into heaven, the disciples returned to Jerusalem with great joy and the continually worshipped God in the temple.
For the disciples, Easter didn’t end because the day was over. Easter was the springboard into great joy and constant worship of our God. There was no returning to things “as normal”. Easter changed how they saw the world. Their lives took new directions and spreading the good news became a daily activity. They didn’t show up for a special celebration and then go home to mundane living. They experienced the resurrection of their Lord and they were changed forever!
Many people who know me, know that I don’t like traditions. I don’t really put much stock into holidays, or celebrations of annual events. But at the same time, over the past few years, I have come to appreciate how other people see traditions and holidays as a way to remind themselves of important things.
So I have to ask, “Do we see our celebration of Easter as a regular event, meaning something we do because, that’s what we do? Or do we see Easter as a reminder that Jesus was raised from the dead, and because of that we live our lives in joy and are in constant worship of our God? Does Easter really mean more to us than something we do every year, or do we allow it to transform us into new creations that want to do nothing but live life for God? Yes, we have daily mundane things to do the day after Easter, but do we allow Easter to change us so that those mundane things can become instruments of worship? Does our approach to our jobs show others that we can be joyful no matter how mundane our daily tasks might be? Does Easter affect you in any way at all?
For me, Easter is so important in my understanding of God. So let me continue by asking a few more questions. Why do we make such a huge production of Christmas in the church, but Easter doesn’t seem quite as important?
Think about it, Christmas is about the birth of Jesus. This is the day Jesus entered our world as a human being. He set down his existence “as God”, and traded that in to become human. Now I don’t want to take away from Jesus’ humanness because our own denomination bases all our service to the world on the actions and character of Jesus. This is a very important aspect of Jesus. But think about this, if Jesus had not suffered and died, and 3 days later been raised from the dead, the church would not even exist. The resurrection of Christ is the pivotal point in human history that changed the entire relationship between God and the human race. The entire church was founded on the very fact that God raised Jesus from the dead. If he had not been raised, the church would not exist today.
I believe that for the church, Easter should be the most important celebration we have. But we tend to follow the world in our “ranking” of holiday celebrations. Obviously, if Jesus was not born, he could have never been raised from the dead later on. But we are all born and we all die. The difference is that Jesus triumph over death is what gives us our identity and our hope of a future, even after death.
So how shall we respond to Easter? Well, Jesus told his disciples how to respond with these words, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” So we are supposed to go into the world as Jesus went into the world.
The Church of the Brethren uses the tag line, “Continuing the work of Jesus, peacefully, simply, together”. Our own congregation developed its own mission statement, which is much like the denomination, which reads, “Seeking to be God’s voice and hands of love, we continue the work of Jesus, peacefully, simply, together.”
I like our mission statement. It isn’t that we are just continuing Jesus’ work. We are doing it by seeking to be just like Jesus AS we do it. That is such a powerful statement!
But how can we be like Jesus, or how can we identify with Jesus. After all, Jesus lived, died, and then was resurrected back to life. How can we identify with that?
I’ll tell you how. In Paul’s letter to the Romans, he writes:
Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.
Baptism is essentially an act of dying to sin, as Jesus died on the cross, and being re-born into new life as Jesus was resurrected from that death. Paul’s letter to the Romans makes it clear, our baptism is when we die and are born again into a new life with Christ. This should not be taken lightly, because this is how we can identify with the risen Lord. We died WITH Jesus, and we are also resurrected with him. THAT’s how we can identify with him.
But we are not to merely to live like Jesus lived, feeding the poor, housing the homeless, visiting those in prison, clothing the naked. Those things are truly noble indeed, but Jesus is far more than just a good example of “how to live”. He is more than “a good man”. Jesus is the Son of God, and we are brothers and sisters WITH him. We share in the inheritance promised by God to His children. When we are baptized into Jesus’ death and raised to new life, we become a true child of God, and therefore an heir WITH Jesus into eternal life.
All this was accomplished with God sacrificing Jesus for the atonement of our sins. I have noticed that a lot of Christians no longer accept that Jesus willingly gave up his life to become the sacrificial lamb to atone for the sins of the human race. I find that to be an unusual position to take as a Christian. Following Jesus, living a “good life” does not make you a Christian. Accepting the grace of God, through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus for your sin, which reunites us with God, is the only way to become a Christian. I have always seen it this way, and from my study of the Biblical writings, I find no reason to understand it any other way. Both Old and New Testaments bear this understanding out.
Peter writes in his first letter, “For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God.”
I have been told that I am too “conservative” in my view of the Bible. I need to be more liberal in my interpretations of the Biblical writings. I’m told that since the Bible was written by human beings, they contain human biases. And since the Bible was copied by hand, over many centuries, mistakes have been made in the copying of the texts, as evidenced by the differences in some of the copies of the oldest manuscripts that still exist today. Also, the Bible I use is written in English, so the translation cannot always capture the meaning of the original language.
I totally agree that the Bible may not be “perfect” and may contain some errors. But I also know that many of the “progressive” thoughts on the Bible, and some of the progressive interpretations often require throwing out pieces of the writings to make them true. If there is something in the Bible you don’t like (For example, God telling the Israelites to go to war), that doesn’t mean you get to throw it out. What it means is that you are going to have to struggle with what it means for us today. Throwing something out just because it makes you uncomfortable changes the message God intends for us to hear. We need to figure out what the significance of those passages are, and how they apply to us. Many people question how a loving God can judge someone and punish them at the same time. And I admit, I often struggle with this myself. But we do that with our own children. We love them, but if they do something wrong, we punish them. It doesn’t matter how much you love them, they still need to pay the consequences for their actions.
My best example from my experience as a father was when my children learned to lie. (Yeah, children lie, go figure!) When I caught them in a lie, I gave them a choice. I made it very clear. I would say, “I asked you ‘this…’ and you said ‘this…’. That is a lie because I saw you do ‘this…’ So I’m going to ask you again, and this time, if you say ‘this…’ and continue to lie to me, in return I need to punish you. If instead, you decide to tell the truth, which is ‘this…’ (I even supplied the words), I will help you fix the issue and no punishment will be handed out.” So I would ask the question again. If they decided to continue in the lie, I still loved them, but they got the punishment as promised. If they told the truth, I still loved them, but they received the help I promised. The choice was theirs. I laid out the rules governing the situation, and they got to choose how they wanted to proceed. But no matter what they chose, I still loved them. I just had to do what was required BECAUSE I loved them.
God did much the same thing with us. We are told that Jesus was the sacrifice for our sins, and all we need to do is accept that sacrifice, die to our sin, and be raised up into eternal life WITH Jesus. Our sins are then forgiven and we become children of God. However, if we don’t, we will be cast out of God’s presence and spend eternity in eternal torment. We don’t like to see our loving God as someone who would do such a thing, but I see it as no different from how we handled discipline of our own children. It pained me to my core to see them choose punishment over forgiveness. But BECAUSE I loved them, I had to carry out the punishment as it was promised. Being a loving father does not mean you forgive your child even if they don’t repent, it means carrying out what is required to bring about that repentance, so that you CAN forgive them.
God provided the sacrifice to redeem us and bring us back into His family. It is simply up to us to choose to accept it.
Jesus being raised from the dead, was our key to living in the eternal presence of God. God raised Jesus and promises to also raise us.
I want to finish by reading a little more from the article I began with. Denise Larson Cooper continues to write:
“The church’s existence is proof that Christ is risen. The church lives in the world. The church is not a business or organization but living proof of the Lord’s resurrection. The apostle Paul wrote, “The church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills everything in every way” (Ephesians 1:23). The fullness of the risen Christ fills the church through the person of the Holy Spirit. By His power the living Christ still reveals Himself to His disciples in the world and exhorts and emboldens the faithful to participate in His ministry of reconciliation. As ministers, the faithful are to dispense the duties of the church on Earth: preach the Gospel, forgive sins, baptize, and unite believers in the foretaste of the supper of the Lamb.”
We should not treat Easter as an “anniversary” of something that happened 2000 years ago. As we move forward, we should be treating it as a reminder of how to live every single day.
AMEN.
Below is a link to the full article I referenced in my sermon:
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