This is a sermon that was preached on Sunday, February 18, 2018 (the first Sunday in Lent) at United Presbyterian Church in Sterling, KS. Listen to the audio
here.
Read Matthew 27:62-66 & Psalm 25:1-7
here.
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Many of you know that I grew up in
California, which means I grew up with earthquakes. Even though I haven’t lived
in earthquake country since 2005, I still live in some ways like I learned to
there. For instance,
·
I
don’t have anything hanging on the wall over my bed.
·
I
am careful how I stack things in cupboards and on shelves.
When you live in earthquake country
you live with the expectation that shaking can start at any minute, and in an
instant everything can change. And so you
plan accordingly. Buildings are built
differently. Knick knacks are anchored
to shelves with putty. Because even
though you don’t know exactly when earthquakes will happen, you know that they will happen.
Figure 1 Probability of earthquakes
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Earthquakes are
also common in Palestine, which may be why Matthew is the only gospel writer to
tell us about them – the one that happened when Jesus died on the cross, and
the other that happened when he was resurrected., There’s a major fault line that goes right along
the Jordan River, up through the middle of the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee,
because it’s the edge of a tectonic plate.
Earthquakes are so common in Israel
that they just spent almost $10 million to upgrade their earthquake detection
and warning system.
If you live where earthquakes are
common, you plan accordingly, just like we plan here to be prepared for cold
weather and tornadoes.
The expectation of earthquakes and
cold weather and tornadoes changes how we live.
How does the resurrection change how we live?
Nobody expected it, but they should have.
Jesus had told his disciples several times that he would die and then three
days later rise again. ( mt
16:21; 17:23; 20:19, 27:60)
When the
Pharisees asked Jesus for a sign, he told them that their sign would be Jonah.
“ Jonah spent three days and three nights in
the belly of a great fish, as the Son of Man will spend three days and three
nights in the belly of the earth.” (Matthew 12:40 The Voice)
The Pharisees remembered this, and in
today’s reading they ask Pilate to seal the tomb where Jesus is buried and post
a guard – not because they believe the resurrection will happen, but because
they want to make certain nobody tries to make it look like it happened. Ironically, in doing so, they also ensure
that when it does happen, we have additional evidence because of the seal and the guard.
Posting guards to watch a dead man is
kind of like something we probably have all done – asking somebody to watch our
stuff. Someone will say, “Watch my bag
while I go to the bathroom.” And I’ll
say, “Why? Is it going to do
tricks?”
No, of course not, it’s an inanimate
object. We don’t really expect an
inanimate object to do anything.
Expecting an inanimate object to move
or a dead man to rise both sound like an exercise in futility. How in our lives are we doing like Pilate did
and doing things that are futile? Why
are they futile? Because the resurrection changes everything.
We sometimes live as if the
resurrection didn’t happen, and death is the end. We pray but so often we don’t
really expect God to do anything. Maybe
Paul realized our tendency to live this way when he wrote his prayer to the
Ephesians:
I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of
glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know
him, 18 so
that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to
which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among
the saints, 19 and
what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according
to the working of his great power. 20 God put this power to work in Christ when he
raised him from the dead. (Eph
1:17-20)
The immeasurable greatness of his
power for us who believe…. resurrection power.
Nothing, not even death, can separate us from the power of God’s love
(Romans 8:38). When we pray we are asking God to bring that resurrection power
into the situations and people for whom we’re praying.
Resurrection changes everything. Resurrection shakes our assumptions about the
world, about life, and about death. Resurrection changes our past, present and
future.
Resurrection changes the past
·
Releases
the tension
Most earthquakes happen along the
fault lines that exist on the edges of the earth’s tectonic plates. Those plates are not fixed and static. They are moving. Tension builds up along those fault lines. For example, in California, the Pacific plate
is slowly drifting north, while the North American plate is drifting south at a
rate of about 1” per year. Tension builds up where these plates are
sliding against each other, much of it along the San Andreas fault.
When something happens, and people are
trying to figure out what happened, they’ll ask, “Who’s fault is it?” And of course the answer is, “It’s San
Andreas’ fault.”
Sorry.
California joke. Anyway,
earthquakes happen when the tension is released. Similarly, our lives build up tension when we
are hanging on to things – guilt and hurts from our past. But we don’t have to. The resurrection shows
us that because of our faith in Jesus, death and sin don’t have power over us
anymore. Jesus conquered sin and death.
Romans 6:6 (The Voice) We know this: whatever we used to be with
our old sinful ways has been nailed to His cross. So our entire record of sin
has been canceled, and we no longer have to bow down to sin’s power.
Living in the resurrection’s power
means we let go of the baggage of our past, let go of our guilt and shame, and
accept the forgiveness and new life that Jesus offers us.
Paul Laurence Dunbar[8] was one of the first
influential African-American poets. His home in Dayton, Ohio is open to the
public. He died young – he was only 33. When Dunbar died, his mother left his
room exactly as it was on the day of his death. At the desk of this brilliant
man was his final poem, handwritten on a pad.
After his mother died, her
friends discovered that Paul Laurence Dunbar's last poem had been lost forever.
Because his mother had made his room into a shrine and not moved anything, the
sunlight had bleached the ink in which the poem was written until it was
invisible. The poem was gone.
It would have been wonderful to have
shared that poem, but in trying to hold on to the past, it was lost.
If we make our faith a shrine, it
fades and no one benefits. But if we
share it, it lives on, and we find that….
Resurrection
changes the present
We know that it’s hard to change old
habits, and so during Lent we give up a bad habit or try out a new discipline. Sometimes we get to thinking that we need to
do this, that we need to do something difficult, to punish ourselves, to do
something that makes us suffer because Jesus suffered.
But we attempt hard things during lent
not because Jesus endured death on a cross, but because he overcame it and was
resurrected. Whatever we decide to do
during Lent ought to be something we truly want to change, something we attempt
because we trust in God’s power to resurrect us, to change us, and to make us
new.
·
“anyone
who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life
has begun!” (2 Cor 5:17)
Resurrection power is at work in our
present, even we can’t see it. As we
work on trusting, this can be our prayer from Psalm 25 (1-2, 4-5):
To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul. 2 O my God, in you I trust
Make me to know
your ways, O Lord; teach me your
paths.
5 Lead me in your truth, and teach me,
for you are the God of my salvation; for
you I wait all day long.
We wait on God and keep on walking forward
in the present, knowing that …
Resurrection
changes the future
Even when things look bleak now, we
know that God’s resurrecting work continues, and we keep on praying and seeking
God’s guidance because we DO know that God changes things, and even if we don’t
know what exactly to do right now, we trust that God will show us what to do,
and point us to opportunities to help others know God’s resurrecting love.
We grow impatient like the prophets
did and cry out to God to do something NOW.
·
Isaiah 64:1 Lord, rend the heavens and
come down.
God doesn’t act in the timing we would
like, but if we believe in the power of the resurrection, we are believing that
God does and is acting, and will keep on working through willing hearts and
hands.
I read this week about a teacher who
is making a difference in a surprising way. She knows that loneliness is a
major factor in determining which kids become bullies or are victims of
bullying.
“Every Friday afternoon, she asks her students to take out a piece
of paper and write down the names of four children with whom they’d like to sit
the following week. She also asks the students to nominate one student who they
believe has been an exceptional classroom citizen that week. All ballots are
privately submitted to her.
And every single Friday afternoon, after the students go home,
she takes out those slips of paper, places them in front of her, and studies
them. She looks for patterns.
Who is not getting requested by anyone else?
Who can’t think of anyone to request?
Who never gets noticed enough to be nominated?
Who had a million friends last week and none this week?
[This] teacher is not looking for a new seating chart or
“exceptional citizens.” [She] is looking for lonely children. She’s looking for
children who are struggling to connect with other children. She’s identifying
the little ones who are falling through the cracks of the class’s social life.
She is discovering whose gifts are going unnoticed by their peers. And she’s
pinning down—right away—who’s being bullied and who is doing the bullying.
This teacher is looking for ways to
make things better for the kids in her classroom. Reading her story made me wonder who I might
be overlooking in the places I go. We
pay more attention to the people who we know, the people who engage us and connect
with us, the outgoing and gregarious people, and in the process we may be
unwittingly ignoring those who are suffering in silence, those who most need to
know that resurrection changes everything.
There was a little boy
named Philip who was born with
Down's syndrome. He attended a third-grade Sunday School class with several eight-year-old
boys and girls. Typical of that age, the children did not readily accept Philip
with his differences, ... But because of a creative teacher, they began to care
about Philip and accept him as part of the group on the surface.
The Sunday after Easter
the teacher brought L'eggs pantyhose
containers, the kind that look like large eggs. Some of you may remember
those. They stopped making them in
1991. Each child was given one, and told
to go outside on that lovely spring day, find some symbol for new life, and put
it in the egg-like container. After running around the church property in wild
confusion, the students returned to the classroom and placed the containers on
the table. Surrounded by the children, the teacher began to open them one by
one. After each one, whether a flower, butterfly, or leaf, the class would ooh
and ahh.
Then one was opened,
revealing nothing inside. The children exclaimed, “That's stupid. That's not fair. Somebody didn't do their
assignment."
Philip, the boy with Down
syndrome, spoke up, "That's
mine."
"Philip, you don't ever do things right!" one student retorted. "There's
nothing there!"
"I did so do it,"
Philip insisted. "I did do it. It's
empty. the tomb was empty!"
Silence followed. From
then on Philip was fully accepted by the class. He died not long afterward from
an infection most children without Down Syndrome would have shrugged off. At
the funeral this class of eight-year-olds marched up to the altar not with
flowers, but with their Sunday school teacher, each to lay on it an empty
pantyhose egg.
Resurrection
changes everything. It changes our expectations and the way we
see the world. Because Jesus was raised
from the dead, we know that sin and death do not have the last word. They do not win. Love
wins.
I really love that this book we’re
reading for Lent is called Easter Earthquake,
·
not
just because I grew up in earthquake country,
·
and
not just because there were earthquakes in the gospel story,
·
but
because knowing God’s love has rocked my
world, and it is my hope and prayer that everyone would know God’s earth-shaking
love.
·
Everything
can change in an instant, but God’s love does not change.
Though
the earth gives way and the mountains fall into the sea, the steadfast love of
God is ours forever. (Psalm 46)
This season of Lent, let us seek God
with all our hearts and ask him to help us take to heart the victory that Christ has already won through the resurrection,
·
to
help us let go of our baggage from the past,
·
trust
in God’s work in the future,
·
and
see our present with resurrection eyes,
·
watching
for opportunities to be the hope and victory of the resurrection in the lives
of those around us,
·
that
all might know God’s amazing, life-changing love.
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