Lord, Who Am I in You? - Life"

Preached on Sunday, April 21, 2019

Easter-Resurrection Sunday, at the main service

Scripture readings: Matthew 28:1-10

Some people complain that each of our four gospels tells the events of this Resurrection Day differently, some more differently than others. You’d think that, with an event so big, the tellings would come out the same.

Walking near Crab Creek, Desert Aire-Mattawa
Holy Week Crosses, Riverside Community Church
April 2019

Actually, if the tellings had all come out the same, the world would suspect the authors of collusion. The truth is that, when the world judges the actions of God, for better or worse, God never gets treated quite fairly.

I would say that this has been true since the first humans believed devil’s lie in the Garden of Eden. This is only one symptom of why we need the cross and the resurrection of Jesus in the first place.

Adam and Eve took the first bold step of human nature in the direction of a lie. It was the first layer that humans laid for themselves on top of God’s foundation.

It was never built straight after that. It all needs to be done over, from the bottom up. That’s why God became a human. The Lord came to earth in Jesus in order to become the first true and genuine human being in a new human race. Jesus was and is the beginning of a new creation of a new heaven and earth. In the end, his death and his life will work backward until this world’s last day becomes the new creation’s first day. God will say, “Let there be light!” and there will be a new heaven and earth.

You see, it’s important, this day.

The English and the German speaking people are pretty much the only people in the world to call this day by a pagan name. All other languages use a better name: something like pasch, or Pascua de Resurrection. Pasch and Pascua mean the Passover.

The Hebrew, Jewish Passover was from slavery to freedom in the Promised Land. It was really a prophecy of our own Passover: our passing over from death to life in Jesus.

You might say, “But we still live in a world where everyone dies.” That’s true for now. Christians believe that life with Jesus, in this world now, is a richer, fuller life: what the Jesus called life abundant. “I have come that you may have life and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10) You might say, “At least, life now has a little bit of heaven in it.” Or you might call it “Life with a little bit of resurrection in it.

In the old world, as it was before Jesus came, you died in a world where no resurrection had ever happened. Someday that would come, but it wasn’t a part of that old world yet.

There was heaven, yes, but heavenly life only after departing from a defeated and tired world that was lost in lies and death. It is a very different thing to die in a world where someone has defeated the power of sin and death. Because of Jesus we depart from a changing world, where someone has made a start by rising from the dead.

In his body now, Jesus carries around with him his own tiny bit of this defeated and tired old world. Only, that bit of our world, from which we have been made, isn’t defeated and tired anymore. We live, now, in a world where there is someone who will not die, and cannot, die.

We die, now, in a world that is in its first stages of being brought back to life. In Jesus we have the slow beginning of a tidal wave of life.

In God’s time, we will all be part of the great change that will bring an end of death: an end of lies, an end of brokenness, and hurt, and scars, and hate, and fear, and decline, and every kind of ugliness.

The day of the cross and burial, and the day of grief, and the day of rising from the dead are the days that changed with world. It’s the three days that changed the world, and heaven too. Life without sin, life where every human achievement, every blessing of your life and mine will reach its mark, life without death, has begun.

Everything that ever has caused harm, and pain, and tears was carried by God, in our mortal flesh and blood, in Christ Jesus. Our freedom from all of that is gone, when we seek Jesus, and Jesus comes to us and says “REJOICE!” Xairete, in Greek!

English Bibles are so mild-mannered. Jesus walks right up to those women disciples and says “Greetings!” “Hail!” It’s like saying howdy! “Hi there.”

In the Spanish Bibles Jesus walks right up to the friends who are looking for him and says, “Salve!” That can mean “hello” too. But Spanish says salve (as in salvation). Jesus has given the word a hidden power because, from the mouth of Jesus, you feel saved, and safe, and healed, and joyful. Jesus has given this to us: Salve!

Those who spoke Greek usually said “rejoice” instead of saying “hello” or “ola”. They said it as a polite custom, just as we Anglos say “how are you?” without really wanting to know. What the Greeks said without caring, Jesus says because his dying and rising for us are real. His living and dying, and rising are where all lasting, never-ending joy will come from: A new heaven, a new earth, and a new everyone, and that means you.

It can be you.

I know Jesus. Jesus is my oldest and dearest friend, but I seek Jesus every day. I look forward to my friend, and Savior, and Lord every day. Do you? Do you seek Jesus? Then Jesus says “salve” to you. You are saved. You’re eternally safe. Rejoice!

In my imagination, the angel says these words with a smile, a joyful smile. The angel knows that what these women and disciples will find is much better than anything they are looking for now. They’ve been seeking the dead instead of the living.

The angel knows that they will have to get used to living in a whole new world. So do we. So do you. Someone has risen from the dead. No one ever saw the need before. And, if they saw the need before, they weren’t able to do it.

Jesus saw our every need: above it all and beneath it all. Jesus saw our need to die to a dying world, and to live an undying, everlasting life. When we grieve, or when we fear a future grief on the horizon, it’s the image of God in us, telling us that love is meant to last forever and never, never die.

Because Christ has risen indeed, from now on, we die in a world where we will never do anything in the future but live: live now in the Lord’s well-being, live to come, in the Lord’s heaven, which is only the recess until a greater life comes, live into the living future where death will be no more. The only brave new world is found in Jesus.

Are you looking for this? Then are you looking for Jesus, the Lord of Life. Today is the Passover to life. Life invading a dying world has begun, and we celebrate today because we know that we belong to life. We are part of this invading life, in Jesus.

Passionate Jesus - Blowing Our Minds

Preached on the Sunday of The Resurrection of Our Lord (Easter Sunday), April 1, 2018

Scripture readings: 1 Corinthians 1:18-31; Mark 15:1-8

Spring Walks and Gardens of  My Past

One of the greatest events ever to happen in the history of the universe happened around the dawning of the first day of the week, almost two thousand years ago. The first people who discovered this greatest thing were three women carrying armloads of funeral spices. They were on their way to a stone tomb carved into the side of a hill, just outside the walls of Jerusalem.

They were on their way to give a very sad and tragic gift to their dear, dead friend and hero, whom they had lain to rest in that tomb.  They were on a mission to complete the embalming of his crucified corpse. They had loved Jesus, and they had hoped great things of him, but Jesus had led them straight into a fatal ambush, and a dead end to their love and to their hopes.

Jesus had seemed to have what it would take to open up a new world that they had all learned to call “the kingdom of God.” Jesus had freely owned-up to being the rightful king of the kingdom of God.

This was surprising because, although Jesus was a descendant of the famous David, the greatest of the kings of Israel, he had long worked as a carpenter, just like his father Joseph. The clan of David had been poor and struggling for so long that they had made a sort of mockery of the whole idea of their family producing anything like a Messiah. It just looked totally impossible for any of them to be a king raised up by God to conquer the world and put all nations under the power of the kingdom of Israel, the kingdom of God.

But, when Jesus was with his friends and followers, anything seemed possible. With God’s help their possibilities looked unlimited. And God was definitely with Jesus, making the impossible things possible: the dead rising at one touch of Jesus’ hand, or the mere sound of his voice. The wind and the waves of the sea stopped at his command and they became a place where a man might walk, if he had the faith to do so. People of wealth and influence were becoming beholden to Jesus for his healing of their loved ones and servants. Yes, with Jesus the possibilities looked endless.

Then Jesus was arrested less than a week after his triumphant, royal parade into the capital. The Passover crowds claimed his as their king under the noses of the Roman army and the Temple police. No one raised a hand against him.

Then, Jesus was seized by a joint action of the Roman Army and the Temple Police. Jesus was beaten, and scourged, and nailed on that cross; heckled, and bleeding, and suffocating to death, defeated for all the world to see.

He was clearly done with and finished for all time. Jesus had even yelled, “It is finished.” But he shouted those last words as if he didn’t mean them. Or else he meant something completely different from the way they felt, and from the way they were feeling now.

They were all finished now.

They and their friends would be lucky to survive much longer. The world had turned out to be much worse, and much darker, and more hopeless than they had ever imagined before Jesus had come to them, and called them, and raised their expectations.

They knew, now, that they lived in such a world where even someone as remarkable as Jesus could come and never make any difference at all. They had good reasons for being afraid but, somehow, their sense of fear was very low compared to their mountains of disappointment.

They and their friends had felt all of this for three days, but they had lost their sense of time. Their feelings were immeasurable. There is a modern British poet named T. S. Eliot. He was a great poet, really, and a Christian but, looking at the world and where most people’s ambitions were taking them, he wrote one of the bleakest and most depressing poems ever written, and it ends with these lines. I think it gives us the picture of life in this world as the disciples of Jesus were seeing it in their own time. Here it is:

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

                                                                        (“The Hollow Men”)

I’m sorry to talk like this. Even on the celebration of the resurrection of the Lord we can’t understand the greatest things that have ever happened in the universe unless we see how Jesus had actually judged his own accomplishment when he shouted that it was finished.

There’s nothing good about any cross, and there’s nothing good about the cross of Jesus, unless it leads from something bad to something good. In a world like ours, the best possible good would be to produce the end of all crosses (or anything like a cross). The best possible great thing would bring an end to everything that could be woven into a world where crosses exist. The cross of Jesus exists to put an end to all other crosses, someday.

There’s nothing outstandingly good about the resurrection of Jesus except for the fact that it follows something evil. The resurrection of Jesus is the ultimate cure for all evil and sin. We share in that cure when we die with Jesus by faith, on the cross, and rise with Jesus by faith from the darkness of our living tomb. The resurrection of Jesus creates a new world that is going to destroy the old world of crosses.

The Cross is the picture of death and evil completely defeated and completely destroyed. This is why we talk about that Old Rugged Cross and cling to it. The gift of the old rugged cross is to exchange itself for a crown on everyone’s head.

If we truly understood this, in all its weight and glory, it would blow our minds.

Where the cross and the resurrection are not understood, they seem foolish and perhaps even evil. Some people who are much too modern for their own good, or anybody else’s good, say that a father who sends his son to die on a cross is an abusive father. That’s what some people say.

The ancient Greeks and Romans thought the same way. This is why Paul wrote about the foolishness of God in the cross and, by extension, in the resurrection. What God knows is wise and what we humans think is wise are at odds with each other, and who will you listen to?

Paul wrote: “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:18) In his own time Jesus also knew that most people wouldn’t understand him and wouldn’t believe that he was who he claimed to be. (Luke 7:33-35) Jesus knew that few of his own people (God’s people) would appreciate how his death on the cross would explain the old laws and prophets, and the perpetually unsolved conflicts between God and his people.

It is a shock to the system to go from seeing things the way they normally make sense to us to seeing things the way God sees them. It’s a shock to go from what you thought made sense of your life, to what God sees as sense: from what you think is wise to what God knows is wise, from what you think is powerful and possible to what God knows is powerful and possible.

In the early morning hours of the resurrection, the women, who had just been confronted by God’s wisdom and power, were scared by what they found. When the women did their appointed job to share this frightening good news with the other disciples, those others found God’s wisdom and power not to be scary but to be impossible, something not to be believed.

That first Easter dawning, the whole church as it was, or the whole family of Jesus was in two locations. One small group stood at the empty tomb and talked with angels. They were given a calling, or a mission, to help people believe what seems, at first, to be impossible.

They had an impossible mission even though they believed that the truth they served was true. The other disciples were called to believe what seemed impossible and foolish.

We have been given both callings; both jobs. The women couldn’t reach inside the doubting men and push the faith button. They had an impossible task; an impossible job to do. The men had to believe the impossible. In the end, only Jesus could make their calling work.

Our job together, like all of those apostles combined, is to believe the impossible and to do the impossible.

In the end, they did both. In the end, we can too.

It must be said here, that having this twin calling of believing and doing the impossible doesn’t make you special. It only makes you very, very needy. And that’s the only place where the impossible becomes possible. This is the foolishness of what we preach: the foolishness of our message. “For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” (1 Corinthians 1:25)

In his second letter to the church in Corinth, Paul wrote some of my favorite words. He wrote of a time in his life when he prayed and prayed for God to mend some desperate situation and the Lord gave him this solution: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Paul wrote how the solution worked for him in his mission impossible: “When I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:9-10)

Working together, and working each in our own way, we are called to something that the world and the people around us would regard as foolish, irrelevant, a waste of time and effort: an impossible faith for an impossible mission.

For the disciples at the tomb and the disciples in hiding, two of the best things the world could offer (the Roman peace and the Jerusalem Temple) were bad enough and strong enough to kill Jesus, the Son of God, God incarnate. It was a horrible thing think this way. It was even more horrible to watch it happen. And it was a horrible thing for Jesus to go through. Therefore, the only valid, logical option left was for Jesus to rise from the dead.

Jesus died on the cross, bearing the weight of the attack of the world on his own shoulders. It’s a weight that we all must carry, either with Jesus or without him. It’s a weight that seemed to defeat him because it killed him.

Then Jesus did the impossible thing. He defeated the power of defeat. Jesus defeated the power of evil to defeat, or corrupt, or ultimately co-opt goodness.

Afterwards, the world didn’t seem any different as a result, but God was beginning a long impossible victory. This victory would challenge and inspire those who came to him for all the centuries that have followed. It was the victory of having faith in a future new world: a whole new creation.

The cross and the resurrection are things that seem impossible but they make everything else possible. They are the victory in Jesus that becomes our victory: the cross and the resurrection of Jesus.

What’s possible or impossible is a matter of perspective. In the spring of my twenty-first year, when I was in college, I was helping a bunch of friends pre-fabricate a log cabin. I didn’t know what I was doing, of course, but I did as I was told.

I found myself standing on the eaves, above the loft, when I fell. I fell as far as most people fall when they fall off the eaves of a house.

Amazingly, I landed on my feet. I also landed on a nice wide board that was steady enough for me to keep standing on my feet, when I hit the ground. And that board had a fair-sized construction nail pointing up through the board at the point where my right foot landed.

That nail went through the sole of my right shoe and up between my second and third toe. I felt it go between my toes and it came out the top of my shoe. I saw it sticking out, about two or three inches, above the top of my tennis shoe.

I was fine. I was untouched. There was not a scratch: not one scratch, or mark, or bruise. It seemed impossible, but many such things happen.

I don’t know if that would be a miracle or not. It’s within the realm of remote mathematical possibility. But perhaps God’s miracles are just his input into our universe with its laws of nature and physics. We have our input, and God has his. And the two sources of input are not worth comparing. But they work together.

Paul wrote about this in his letter to the church in Rome: “We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28)

With God there are possible impossibilities that work, that have power, that change everything. These possible impossibilities change us.

The cross and the resurrection of Jesus give us a foolish message as far as this world’s wisdom goes. It’s an impossible message, and sometimes we are tempted to rejoin the world in our opinions.

The cross and the resurrection of Jesus call us to walk into the impossible where we take up our cross and follow Jesus. We can love and serve our Savior, and we can love and serve the world, and our neighbors for whom Christ died and rose from the dead, even when it all seems impossible.

With our minds properly blown by our Jesus, this will surely take us through whatever comes next.

Faith for Life - The Power for Getting Unstuck

Preached the Sunday after Easter, April 23, 2017

Scripture readings: 1 Peter 5:1-4; John 21:1-19

On a Walk by the Columbia River, Mattawa/Desert Aire, WA
April 24, 2017

When you get to the end of Chapter Twenty, in the Gospel of John, it sounds like John is bringing his writing to an end. Then he starts Chapter Twenty-One and he brings it to an end, for a second time, with these words: “Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.” (John 21:25)

I think that’s why John couldn’t quite bring himself to stop. There was so much to say about Jesus. I also think that’s the reason why, when you read about Jesus rising from the dead, in all four gospels, they don’t tell us any of the same things, except that the tomb was empty. There is always too much to say when Jesus is doing something.

In the twentieth chapter, Jesus teaches us about the power of his rising from the dead, and how this power works for our peace, and for our own forgiveness, and for our giving forgiveness to others. It tells us how his rising from the dead gives Jesus the power for sending us (making us sent people; people with a mission like the mission of Jesus).

In the twenty-first chapter, Jesus gives us a demonstration of how his rising from the dead gives him power to be the good shepherd, even after he lays down his life for his sheep. His rising from the dead also gives him the power to make us shepherds like him, if we love him.

Part of our church’s ordination vows (both for pastor’s and elders) is a promise to submit to the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as “God’s word to you.” I have to submit to them as God’s word to me and, if you became a minister or an elder, you would need to vow to accept them as God’s word to you. But, if you’re not what we call “ordained”, that doesn’t let you off the hook.

Besides, our church holds the belief that all of us are ministers. Minister is an old word that means servant. So we are all servants of Jesus, the chief servant, and servants of each other, and servants of the gospel to the world, and servants of everyone out there.

Peter writes, in his second letter, describing himself as an elder and (as such) he addresses his fellow elders, and calls them shepherds. Here, again, you’re not off the hook, you are all shepherds.

When I say that I’m a pastor, pastor is simply a fancy old word meaning shepherd. When I say that I’m a pastor, you shouldn’t quite believe it, because it isn’t exactly true. It’s more correct to say that I am an under-shepherd to the head-shepherd Jesus.

You are shepherds, too. You are not shepherds under me. You are under-shepherds just like me, because you and I serve together under Jesus, the head shepherd.

Also, we are not only shepherds to the church and our brothers and sisters in Jesus. Jesus once described his job this way: “For the Son of Man (Jesus) came to seek and to save the lost.” (Luke 19:10) So we’re shepherds to everybody.

Oddly enough, this is the very thing we see Jesus doing in the twenty-first chapter of John. The disciples (bless them) had managed, in just the few days since Jesus rose from the dead, to get themselves lost again: not lost from him or from the Father, but from themselves and from their purpose in life.

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus gave instructions for the disciples to leave Jerusalem, for a while, and go north, back to their home places in Galilee. The instructions were that they would see Jesus there. (Matthew 28:10)

Someone remarked that, after the resurrection, none of the disciples ever went searching for Jesus. He always came in search of them.

Of course, they wouldn’t even have known where to look, would they? If they went to Jesus’ house in Capernaum, looking for him there, the gospels don’t tell us, but we’ve already noticed that there is way too much to tell.

They went to Galilee, not knowing what to do next. They decided to go fishing, instead. At least that was something they knew how to do, and they might make a few bucks while they were at it.

It was their old way of life. They grew up with it. It felt good. Or it would have felt good, if they had caught anything.

Well they knew all about that, too. Just because you know what you’re doing doesn’t mean it will go well. And they were dealing with nature: with fish and with weather. With our orchards in bloom and our freezing spring nights, I’ve been praying for the farmers. They know what they’re doing, and yet who knows what will happen by the time harvest comes around again. It’s the same with fishing.

The disciples didn’t know how to look for Jesus. They were wandering. They were on auto-pilot. Yesterday, I heard the pastor at Bill Siegfried’s memorial service, talking about the disciples, after Jesus rose from the dead, being “stuck” in the past. I’ve been reading the same thing all this past week, so it must be important for you and me to get unstuck.

The funny thing, here, is that Jesus takes those disciples back in time, in order to unstick them. In the Gospel of Luke (Luke 5:1-11) you can read about the first time, or so, when Jesus found Peter and his friends.

It was almost the same. They had been fishing all night and they hadn’t caught a thing. Jesus told them to go out again and, that time (again), they caught so many fish that they needed another boat to come out to help them haul the net.

Even after Jesus rose from the dead, Peter and his friends had to learn the same old lessons. Both times, they were lessons about themselves. Both times, they were lessons about Jesus being up to the task of taking care of them, and providing for them, and leading them.

In the twentieth chapter of John, Jesus said to them “Peace be to you.” (John 20:19,21) He actually said it twice in close sequence. This time Jesus said to Peter, “Do you love me?” and he repeated the question three times.

The disciples had all deserted Jesus when he was arrested, and Peter had (three times) denied even knowing Jesus. The offering of peace and the question of love may have had something to do with their guilt, shame, sin, and regret. They had all gone through something terrible, and they had all responded badly, and they were lingering over it. They had gotten stuck.

Jesus never mentions their guilt, shame, sin, and regret. He never names them. But Jesus shepherds the disciples in their stuckness.

Jesus repeats his lessons willingly. They don’t look for this. They don’t expect this, themselves. Jesus is the one who knows better, and so he looks for this, and he works it out, again and again.

He repeats himself a lot with you and me; and, boy, do we need it. If this is God’s word to you, then it’s your job and mine to do this (to repeat the same things) for each other, and for those who don’t really know much about Jesus and who aren’t even looking for him. We are willing to repeat the same things over and over, because we know what it’s like to not be looking for Jesus, because the word of God teaches us that we aren’t.

Also, it teaches us that we can be creative, like Jesus. It’s hard to talk about sin. Jesus, at this point, wasn’t saying anything about sin; or about any such things. All he did was talk to them about peace, and love, and taking care of others. We can do the same.

Maybe, like Peter and his friends, we are not only dealing with guilt, shame, sin, and regret. Maybe it was (and is) simply discouragement. So, Jesus teaches us about his ability to find us, take care of us, and feed us, so that we can be shepherds to the discouraged.

We can be shepherds of encouragement. We need it ourselves, and so does everyone else.

One of the secrets of getting unstuck is to not hold so tight to the past and its patterns. “Do you love me?” “Feed my sheep.” “Follow me.” These are not about the past. These are about the present, and the future.

I get awfully stuck in the past. It’s one of my sins. I try to focus on what God wants me to do next. I make lists of things to do, and people to think about, days ahead of time. I have a sticker on my prayer wall that says, “Next Thing.” I need even better reminders than that.

The Gospel of John ends on a note where Jesus says, “Let me get you unstuck, so that you can follow me.” This is his command to every disciple, including you and me.

It’s his command to every church, including this one. We are commanded to come unstuck, because Jesus has died to make this possible; and Jesus has risen from the dead to make this possible. So, anything is possible. All things are possible. And Jesus says the words you’ve heard him say many times: “Do you love me? Feed my sheep. Follow me.”

Faith for Life - The Wounded Hero's Arsenal

Preached on Resurrection Sunday, Easter Sunday, April 16, 2017

Scripture readings: Exodus 15:1-3; John 20:19-31

I saw a cartoon once with a young minister talking to his little boy. The minister has his sleeve rolled up, and he’s pointing to a long, jagged scar on his forearm, and he says, “And I got this scar in the battle for the new church carpeting.”

Spring Photos Around Desert Aire/Mattawa, WA
             April 2017

We get other kinds of scars from much worse battles and ambushes.

Jesus got many scars. He was scourged, and crowned with thorns, and nailed to a cross, and he died there. On his way to death he received many wounds. After he was dead, his heart was pierced by a spear. When he rose from the dead, he showed those wounds to his disciples.

Most soldiers would rather not talk about their battles. Still, Jesus was like a soldier showing the scars he had gotten in a war that he had won.

In another way, Jesus was briefing his disciples by showing them his wounds. His disciples would have to take up the fight for themselves because, although the war was won, the enemy had not surrendered and the fight was still going on.

The same fight is still going on to this day. It’s our fight too, and we need to be briefed in the fight by Jesus.

The scars of Jesus are the signs of his victory. The simple fact that he was so terribly wounded, and died, and rose from the dead was the very way he won the war. His scars are his trophies, his medals, from that war.

But Jesus has better trophies than these: the trophies that he is most proud of. After he showed the disciples his wounds, he told them what he had won for them, and for us.

The greatest trophy is everlasting life as the gift of Jesus to us; with heaven first, and then our very own resurrection (the resurrection of all things). When he raised his friend Lazarus from the grave, Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live; and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.” (John 11:25)

After the resurrection, Jesus seemed to be always starting with the word “peace”. We catch him repeating himself, that first day with the disciples. “Peace! Peace!”

When Jesus said “peace” the second time, he began to give his disciples some gifts and instructions. I think it’s not out of line to look at those gifts and instructions as playing a part in the peace he gives to us.

These gifts are his arsenal and strategy. Even peace is part of his arsenal. All of these gifts are his resources for us in the good fight.

I think I should say something about peace, first. Peace, in the Bible, means “well-being”. Peace is a kind of healthiness and thriving. You have peace when things are working well inside you, no matter how things are working on the outside.

Of course, there is an outward peace too. In the outward peace, in a nations peace, in a world truly at peace, everything works. Everything and everyone thrives. We don’t always see a lot of that in our world. That kind of peace will be the rule only when God creates a new heaven and a new earth.

Right now, by the word peace, I mean a spiritual health within. Things are working well in your soul. Also, peace means that things are working well between you and others or, at least, you are relating to others in a healthy way, whether they relate back to you in a healthy way or not.

Even on the cross, Jesus had this kind of peace. This is part of the peace that we need, and that Jesus gives.

The kingdom of God will be a kingdom of peace, because everything in the kingdom of God will work in healthy ways. There will be no injustice. There will be no judging or lording over others. People will serve and take care of each other. People will be free to grow and develop their gifts without fear.

Peace in the church is supposed to be exactly like that. Peace in the church can be seen where the grace of God is evident. People serve and care for each other. People grow together spiritually and in their ability to use their gifts, and there is plenty of wisdom and mercy spread around.

Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” (John 20:21) “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.”

There is peace in being “sent people”. It means that wherever you go you have a purpose. You have a mission. You have a mission to your family and neighbors. You have a mission to people who are completely different from you, to people who are strangers, and to people you may never meet. You have a mission to people you disagree with, and you have a mission with people who are in conflict with you. You are always sent.

Sometimes we don’t want to be sent. We want to pursue our own priorities. We want to be on our own, and to be independent, and we want to be uncommitted (or at least selectively uncommitted). If this is what we want, then we won’t receive the peace that Jesus is reaching out to give us: the peace he wants to breathe into us.

Jesus said, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” Jesus was sent from the heart of God. In the first chapter of John, John tells us, “No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side (or the Father’s bosom); he has made him known.” (John 1:18)

The One and Only is Jesus, who came to earth from the Father’s side, taking up our human nature. We have to be sent from the heart of the Son who is in the heart of his Father. We have to serve where we are sent, knowing the very heart of God. We have to know what it means to say, “God so loved the world.” This is an essential part of our arsenal: the arsenal of the wounded hero Jesus.

We are not sent just to serve any old way that suits us. Jesus was sent as the incarnation of God; as God present in the flesh. We are sent to incarnate Christ. We are sent to be the hands, and the feet, and the voice of Jesus in the world around us.

We can only do this, though, if Christ has taken us, and sent us from his own heart. We have to be sent from his love if we are ever going to embody it. His love is grace, and the best grace is freely given. The best grace is unconditional.

“And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” The Holy Spirit is the Giver of Life, the Breath of Life.

The first time anyone in the Bible breathed into a person to give them life was in the story of the creation of the first humans. In the second chapter of Genesis it says this: “The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” (Genesis 2:7) The older translations say that God’s breath, or Spirit, made the man (the human) into a living soul. I like that translation. The ancient people thought of souls.

In partnership with Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit is an agent of creation. In the creation, in the Book of Genesis, only of humans is it said that their soul is something that God has directly breathed into them. Other scriptures tell us that there is some way that all other creatures have their life from God’s Spirit. But Genesis tells us that our life is different from any other creature. What God has breathed has made us into living souls in his image.

Sin robs us of the true life of the soul. Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit into his disciples to make them truly alive, spiritually and personally alive, as they (and we) were created to be. Jesus made them alive within, in a way that they could never have imagined on their own.

Peace comes from Jesus breathing into you. Jesus breathes a presence that makes you alive in a way that you could never guess beforehand.

Without the breath of the Holy Spirit we can act like good people. We can act and talk like religious people, but there’s no true life in it.

Without the Holy Spirit, we are only a bare image of life, just a picture; maybe even just a cartoon (or a stick drawing) of life. Without the Holy Spirit, we are only play acting; and we will always be afraid of being found out. We can’t have peace that way.

We are sent, simply, to be truly alive; to be real, genuine people, each in our own unique way but, most of all, in God’s way: Jesus’ way.

Jesus said, “If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.” (John 20:23) The best way you can forgive another person is to give them Jesus, and also to be Jesus for them.

Real forgiveness, the most important forgiveness, comes from God. Jesus is saying, “If you let someone know about me, then they can experience forgiveness. If you don’t let someone know about me, then they may never experience true forgiveness.”

But, in order to have peace, and to share peace with others, we need to know that there’s a proper time to speak of Jesus, and there’s also a proper time to simply be Jesus. To know the gospel, sometimes, people need something besides talk. The Holy Spirit will change you into a real, living person who can know the difference between the time for talk and the time for service.

Then the Holy Spirit will show you when other people need some explanation from you, to explain why you are so different. Then you have the chance “to give a reason for the hope that is in you.” (1 Peter 3:15)

There is something important about Jesus’ using his resurrection as the time to give his disciples their instructions and their arsenal for bringing forgiveness into the world. You can’t have real forgiveness without the resurrection.

If there was only the cross, and no resurrection, then you would have only the kind of forgiveness that brings pain and guilt. Without the resurrection, you would have a sacrifice for sins without any victory.

Forgiveness is so hard, and so costly, that some people will say that they can forgive, but they can never forget. So, their forgiveness always carries a chip on its shoulder. It gives comfort and peace to no one.

Forgiveness is costly, but real forgiveness needs victory. The resurrection takes the cross to the next step. The cross forgives sins, but the resurrection reverses the effects of sin. It brings true change.

This is a mystery, but this is why the Bible can say that God not only forgives sin, but even forgets it. I can’t explain this, but God speaks through the prophet Isaiah in order to say this: “I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.” (Isaiah 43:25)

We feel lost because we can’t forget what we regret. Peace comes when we know that God has forgotten what we regret. Then this new life calls us to forget as well. Or this new life gives us the gift of acting as though we have forgotten.

There comes a time when we are told by God to forget our own sins, and to forget the sins of others. That gives us (and them) God’s peace.

We are sent from the heart of God. We are breathed into by the breath of the Holy Spirit of Life. We are people of forgiveness, who can bring the message of forgiveness to others.

These are the trophies and the arsenal of a wounded Savior who give his awards to us. These are the trophies of a risen Savior, who enlists us in a war that’s already won. This is the power of the resurrection for the life we are living today. If we believe, then we will have this new life in Jesus’ name. We will have it now, and we will have it forever.

Faith for Life - The Resurrection Revolution

Preached on Resurrection Sunday (Easter Sunday) April 16, 2017, at the Community Sunrise Easter Service by the Columbia River, at Desert Aire/Mattawa, WA

Scripture reading: John 20:1-18

Even though Jesus showed the power to raise people from the dead, his disciples had never been able to grasp that Jesus might also be able to raise himself from the dead; no matter what Jesus said about it before his crucifixion.

Community Easter Sunrise Service
On the Columbia River
April 16, 2017

All four gospels show us that the friends and the followers of Jesus were full of doubt and fear at the discovery of the empty grave. John believed something when he saw it for himself, but we are told (and he’s the one telling the story) that he couldn’t understand it. He couldn’t understand how Jesus rising from the dead formed any part of the witness of the Scriptures.

All of the friends, and followers, and believers of Jesus were properly dazed and wonderstruck. His rising from the dead broke all of the rules of the world as they knew it, and this blew their minds.

We should all be more like them: more mind-blown!

But would that be right? Would that be safe? Isn’t it wiser and much more mature to accommodate, and to accept things as they are? I’ve been told this, many times. They’ve told me, “Dennis, don’t be unrealistic.”

April 2017, Photos Around Desert Aire/Mattawa, WA

 If I had listened to such people, or even to my wiser self, I would never have gone into the ministry because I was told that I didn’t have the aptitude or the gifts for it. I already knew that. I didn’t even want to do it.

If I had listened to such realistic people, I might not even be able to drive a car. But that’s another story.

The good news of Jesus made me unrealistic and foolhardy. Jesus himself forced me to be unrealistic and foolhardy.

Jesus forced an alternative reality on those who knew him and loved him most. There is another world beside the world as we know it. Jesus rules both worlds but it’s actually that alternative world that will have its way over you and me. That alternative world will win. This world as we know it, this world that we are so tempted to accept and accommodate ourselves to, will pass away.

Something inside us knows this. Otherwise our outrage, and anger, and sorrow, and grief, in the face of so much wrong in this world wouldn’t make any sense. If we were made for the world as it seems to be to everyone else, we wouldn’t have enough imagination to be outraged.

We know this. When the world maddens us, when we madden ourselves, we are right to respond so. Let’s not “settle” for things, or settle for ourselves, or settle for others as they are. Jesus represents something completely different and, truly, so much better.

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! He rules. He has defeated evil, sin, corruption, sickness, pain: all of this world’s injustice. Jesus has conquered death. He rules over it, and he will destroy even death, in time.

We know this is right. The Bible tells us so. Love tells us so. Jesus tells us so. I believe our greatest growth will come from learning to live accordingly.

This growth is what prepares us for Jesus, because Jesus has created the reality that makes this growth possible. He makes life in the new reality possible, by dying on the cross for the sin of the world (and for our sin) and so becoming the conqueror of that sin; and by rising from the dead, and so becoming the conqueror of death.

Sometimes this seems too much for us. We don’t want to be so wonderstruck, and surprised, and overwhelmed by glory.

I think, in our churches, we try to keep things safe. We’re like Mary Magdalen, holding onto Jesus in such a way that tries to keep everything from changing.

That’s why Jesus told Mary to let him go. We want to hold onto Jesus and keep things steady and familiar. Jesus wants us to let him go, at least for our own sake, so that he can push the boundaries for us. We want to hold on when Jesus wants us, ourselves, to go forth, and to be willing to push the boundaries of our own lives. Jesus wants us to push the boundaries of our serving him and our neighbor.

Jesus wants us to let go, so that we can go forth for him, and with him. Jesus wants us to let go, so that we can go forth for him and for others.

That’s why Christ has risen.