Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] You're listening to a live recording from Westside Church in Bend, Oregon. Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:06] Millions right now and throughout this day in every time zone and every culture and every language are going to be celebrating this same thing altogether, that thousands of years ago a tomb was left empty. And ever since then, people have been searching out what that means and the implications of that on our lives and our cultures and our world. And this surprise of the empty tomb, the surprise of Easter Sunday, extends to us the hope that maybe there are surprises for us brought on by the grace and the mercy of a loving God. It's a big day for our faith. It's a big day for us as we remember what is true all year. But these are the moments that we mark that Jesus is alive. And because of that death and darkness and all the powers of all the empires will not have the final word because he is alive and on the move. Amen.
[00:01:01] But for those on that first Easter in and around Jerusalem, especially for the friends of Jesus, the first Easter wasn't a party.
[00:01:10] It wasn't a time of great, necessarily, excitement or joy, not yet.
[00:01:18] They were walking through the grief on Friday of watching the man that they followed, the man that they loved, be brutally murdered and crucified on a Roman cross. They watched as Joseph of Arimathea carried his body from the cross to the grave. They spent Saturday behind locked doors, wondering if they'd be next.
[00:01:40] And now on Sunday morning, three women who love Jesus very much go out. They venture out to the garden tomb to embalm the body of Jesus, while the men stay behind in fear.
[00:01:57] This is a setup, seemingly for great sorrow for the friends of Jesus, all their hopes that they had placed on him, some for revolution, others for mercy. All seem to have been dashed as they watched him die on the cross. And I want to read the Easter narrative out of the Gospel of Mark, picking up on Easter Sunday morning, mark chapter 16. When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Salome, brought spices so they could embalm him. And very early on Sunday morning, as the sun rose, they went to the tomb. They worried out loud to each other, who will roll back the stone from the tomb for us? Then they looked up, saw that it had been rolled back, it was a huge stone, and walked right in. They saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in all white. They were completely taken aback, astonished. And he said, don't be afraid. I know you're looking for Jesus, the Nazarene, the one they nailed on the cross. He's been raised up. He isn't here no longer. You can see for yourselves. The place is empty now. On your way, tell his disciples and Peter that he's going ahead of you to Galilee. You will see him there, exactly as he said. They got out as fast as they could, beside themselves, their heads swimming, stunned. They said nothing to anyone.
[00:03:19] Now, if you're reading this from the page in your Bible, you might notice a translation. Note that in the earliest manuscripts, the earliest copies of the Gospel of Mark, that cliffhanger is where the book ended, as the story of Jesus life and his ministry would have been handed around and made copies of by scribes and passed out to the early churches. They certainly got to this like, that can't be the end. We can't leave it there. And so in the early church, they begin to fill out the rest of the story. And if you look in your Bible, you'll see that other verses are included in the Gospel of Mark. But the earliest versions, it stopped there, with women who were so full of grief entered into a whole new realm of shock, surprise, and confusion. And as Jesus is no longer in the tomb, and it's as if Mark was saying to all of us who would read his Gospel for all time, that the empty tomb stands there, is an invitation for you to wrestle for yourselves what it means if Jesus is no longer in the tomb. Mark is saying, I'm not going to tell you what to think. I'm not going to tell you what to do with that, but you better wrestle with that. I'm out.
[00:04:36] And so we are left with this sense of needing a resolve, wondering like the women surely did, if Jesus isn't here, well, where is he?
[00:04:48] Well, we know where Jesus went, because in the Gospel of Luke, which would have been written after the Gospel of Mark, Luke tells us the story of where Jesus went after he walked out of that tomb. Luke, chapter 24. It says that same day, two of Jesus followers were walking to the village of Emmaus, seven miles from Jerusalem. So if you know how the story went, in the last couple weeks we've been talking about this, all of the nation would have pilgrimaged to the city of Jerusalem for the great festival and Passover. This was a huge holiday weekend in Jerusalem. And so with all the crowds pressed into the city, now it's Sunday, the first day of the next week, everyone's leaving, everyone's going back home to their villages. And so it is with these two followers of Jesus. And it says in verse 14, as they walked along, they were Talking about everything that had happened. As they talked and discussed these things, Jesus himself suddenly came and began walking with them. But God kept them from recognizing him. And so he asked them, what are you discussing so intently as you walk along? They stopped short, sadness written across their faces. And then one of them, Cleopas, replied, you must be the only person in Jerusalem who hasn't heard about the things that have happened here the last few days. And Jesus said, oh, do tell.
[00:06:08] No, he said, what things?
[00:06:11] The things that happened to Jesus, the man from Nazareth. They said he was a prophet who did powerful miracles and he was a mighty teacher in the eyes of God and all the people. In verse 21, we had hoped that he was the Messiah who had come to rescue Israel.
[00:06:27] You can hear it in the writing of their conversation, the dashed hopes that they are carrying as they went to Jerusalem, fully expecting, hoping, believing that maybe Jesus was the one that was gonna bring salvation and rescue and then to watch him die. It represented the death of their hopes.
[00:06:50] And Jesus in his very first act after he walks out of the tomb alive is not to make a show of things, but it's to walk three hours with a couple on their way home on a dusty road to listen to their story and to hear how their hopes had been dashed.
[00:07:10] If it's me, and it's not me, but if it was me and I am Jesus and I have just pulled off the impossible and that I've foretold my own death and resurrection and then pulled it off, come on, that's hard to do.
[00:07:24] If that's me, I am going on the biggest how do you like me now? Tour, right?
[00:07:31] Let's go to the temple, let's go to the city center, let's make a show of things, maybe stop by Pilate's house, have a little follow up convo after that last one, I would want people to know how right I was.
[00:07:53] And Jesus does the opposite.
[00:07:56] Jesus at arguably his most influential and powerful. He could have done anything at this moment. People would have worshiped him, people would have followed him.
[00:08:09] And instead he walks along a road followers who had lost all hope.
[00:08:17] And because they didn't know that he was alive, they were still living in the sorrow and hopelessness of a world in which Jesus was dead.
[00:08:28] There's a 20th century author and he's a psychologist named Rollo May. And he was not a religious man per se, but in studies he studied theology and he wrote a book called My Quest for Beauty. And in this book he tells the story of visiting Mount Athos in Greece in 1932. And he was there trying to discover different cultures and spirituality and religions and how people experience different ways of understanding and knowing God. And so he goes to this monastery, and on Easter Sunday, Orthodox Easter Sunday, he goes in the morning to the service that's happening in the sanctuary. And he walks into this small, dark sanctuary, and there's incense burning all around. So the air is thick with incense smoke. There's candles lit, there's beams of light through cracks and windows shining across the sanctuary.
[00:09:27] And the Orthodox priest at one point in the service presents these decorated Easter eggs to each of those gathered in this small sanctuary.
[00:09:37] And around the Easter eggs is this saying that's written that says, Christ is risen. And as they all hold these Easter eggs, the priest then says it to the crowd. He says, christ is risen. And like you did earlier, they all responded, he is risen indeed.
[00:09:54] And Rollo May is sitting in this congregation, this small congregation, and he writes this about his experience. He says, I was seized then by a moment of spiritual reality. What would it mean for our world if he had truly risen?
[00:10:09] And even this man, who is not necessarily committing himself to believing in a risen Jesus, acknowledges that if it were true, it would have wide ranging implications. It would shake the world if Jesus really and is now alive. It reframes everything.
[00:10:31] It tells a better story about what is possible and what our hope might lead us to.
[00:10:39] And we need good stories, every set of experiences and memories.
[00:10:45] We need stories to make sense of it. And what the resurrection does is oftentimes it doesn't come to immediately change our circumstances or give us an off ramp from all our troubles, but it reframes and it tells a better story about what is possible in the future because Jesus walked out of the grave.
[00:11:05] And this can be true even in the most difficult moments of our lives. And looking around this room. We are not here because we've all graduated from trouble.
[00:11:15] I've got some problems, you got some problems.
[00:11:20] You have some struggles. You might be fighting with a disease or an illness, or relationally, you have some struggles that you're trying to work. You might be facing addiction. You might be feeling hopeless today, this morning. You're not here because you figured it all out. You're here because in the midst of our trouble and our trials, the resurrection speaks a better word about what's possible.
[00:11:43] And for these disciples, because they had watched Jesus die, they came to the conclusion that all hope was lost. And this is what the resurrection does. It inserts into the middle of our hopelessness. The presence of a risen Jesus. Amen.
[00:12:00] Walter Brueggemann, the New Testament scholar, writes, hope does not need to silence the rumblings of crisis to be hope.
[00:12:09] Let the crisis rage on. We look to a risen Jesus today and our hope is brought back to life.
[00:12:20] The story continues. Verse 28. By the time they were nearing Emmaus and the end of their journey, Jesus acted as if he were going on.
[00:12:29] But they begged him stay the night with us. Since it is getting late at this time, they still don't know who he is. And by the way, it's kind of on them for not asking his name.
[00:12:40] I don't know how manners were in the first century, but you know, walking with a guy for four hours, seven miles.
[00:12:47] What's your name? What do you do?
[00:12:50] He couldn't lie. It's Jesus.
[00:12:58] A few years back, a friend of mine, Jackson, invited me to go skiing with him. So we go up to a bachelor, we're skiing mid morning, we run into a dad of one of our students from here at the church and we both talked to him many times. We should have known his name. My bad, I didn't know his name. He asked if he could ski with us and so oh yeah, that'd be great, we'd love it. So I quickly text Jackson and I say, jackson, do you remember this guy's name?
[00:13:26] Jackson doesn't get the text. We start skiing about an hour later. I've forgotten that I sent the text and we are back on the lift. I'm sitting shoulder to shoulder, Jackson on my right, this guy who I've been calling Buddy and Champ all morning.
[00:13:41] On my left, my phone beeps, vibrates. I pull it out. I've forgotten that I text him. I go, jackson, did you text me? And I read aloud his text. His name is Dennis.
[00:13:59] Not exaggerating. The conversation died and we rode in silence to the top of the hill.
[00:14:07] Dennis, wherever you are, and you're not here anymore, I'm so sorry.
[00:14:11] Always ask their name and always remember their name.
[00:14:16] Jesus walks with them all the way and they're not aware that the thing that they had hoped for once and will hope for again is actually with them. And I wonder if this is true for us that oftentimes we walk seasons of our lives, even years of our lives, unaware that Jesus presence is with us. When we thought we were alone and watching these beautiful stories and seeing these baptisms happen. This morning, I'm just struck that we come to Jesus and maybe we assume that this is the first moment where we are experiencing his grace. And I would propose to us that for so many of us we walked for a long time and he was right beside us and his grace was sustaining us and we had no idea, but his presence was close at hand.
[00:15:04] And so when we turn to Jesus and we invite his work in our lives and we acknowledge and we are experiencing his presence, oftentimes that is not the first moment that he's been with us. Tim Keller says it this way. He says the way it ordinarily works is that Jesus is in your life. And it's not until after the fact that you realize when he showed up.
[00:15:24] If you are looking for Jesus today, or if you're not looking for Jesus today, I want to throw this out there that maybe Jesus has been walking with you for a long time.
[00:15:36] They begged him, verse 29, Stay the night with us, since it's getting late. So he went home with them, and as they sat down to eat, he took the bread and he blessed it and then he broke it and he gave it to them. And suddenly their eyes were opened and they recognized Him.
[00:15:52] Jesus is not revealed to them when they make it to the top of a mountain and they glean his wisdom as they sit at his feet. Jesus has not revealed to them when they finally make it into the temple courts and all the rituals are completed and all the sacrifices has been made. No, Jesus is revealed to these disciples in the most ordinary place, their home across their ordinary table, doing what they would have done every single evening together, which is the breaking of the bread. It's in the ordinary places that Jesus is now revealed.
[00:16:24] And for them, and for all of Jesus disciples and his friends, they had experienced a religious culture where the only way you get to God is you gotta make it to the temple. Once you go into the temple, the priest will guide you through a process of religious ritual in which you can receive the forgiveness of God secondhand at best.
[00:16:45] This is how you experience the Father.
[00:16:49] And if you remember we talked about this a couple weeks ago, the Last Supper. Jesus is sitting with all of his disciples around another ordinary table before he's betrayed and he makes this outlandish claim. Philip, one of the disciples turns to him and says, jesus, will you please show us what God is like?
[00:17:08] And Jesus responds. He says, philip, have you been with me this whole time and still you don't get it? If you've seen me, you've seen the Father.
[00:17:17] If you've seen me, you've seen God. No more need to go into the temple and make the sacrifices and fill out all the forms and do all the rituals, because now God is sitting across an ordinary table from you.
[00:17:30] And one of the great missions of Jesus was to break God out of religious places and bring him into the ordinary spaces of our everyday lives so that we might experience grace and mercy and forgiveness, not only on Sundays in spaces like this, where the music and the lights are just right, but in our cars and in our homes and on our walk on the river trail, that his grace would go with us when we're aware and when we're not aware.
[00:17:58] It's in ordinary places now that the risen Jesus meets us.
[00:18:05] This now your everyday life is where heaven and earth meet, where the mercy and the greatness of Almighty God encounters the frailty of our human condition. And we find that he is not afraid or disgusted or angry or offended, but instead he comes close. And I hope that you feel Jesus, his grace and his mercy and his closeness in this space today. I hope as we worshiped and we read the story, that you sense the Holy Spirit in this space.
[00:18:46] What I hope even more is that you experience it tomorrow and the next day and the next day, and that you would have a sense for the rest of your days that you're never alone, because God has come close and hope is alive.
[00:19:08] Revelation, chapter 3, verse 20. Jesus, he says, look, I'm standing here knocking at the door. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into them and eat with them and they with me.
[00:19:26] This invitation that Jesus makes through the disciple John at the very end of the Bible, wildly inclusive in his language, he doesn't specify a list of steps to qualify as a house where he would like to eat, doesn't ask the menu.
[00:19:52] He doesn't specify the kind of person, the track record, the background check.
[00:19:59] Instead, he just almost irresponsibly throws it out there. If anyone would answer the door, I'm there.
[00:20:10] And I know that Jesus stands at the door of each of our hearts. And whether you've been in church and church settings your whole life, and this is something you've heard a hundred times before, if this is your first time in church ever, I just want to let you know that he has you in mind, as in anyone.
[00:20:33] If anyone wants to open the door, he comes in, he sits with us, and he makes that table and that space the place where God and us commune.
[00:20:46] And so I want to do this as we end this time and we're going to go back into another song, and we'll be done in just a few moments. But I want to create a space of prayer here in this room.
[00:20:57] Those watching online as well, I know you're there, wherever you're at, if you want to create a space of prayer as well. But if you could close your eyes and nothing magical about prayer. There is something mysterious about it though, that somehow God is close and he hears us. He hears us when we call out to him. He hears us when we pray.
[00:21:26] And so even as I pray, if you are feeling the stirring in your heart or your gut or whatever you want to call it, and you feel this knock at the door of your heart, I want to invite you just to pray this simple prayer. Jesus, I open the door to you, come close to me. And with that simple prayer, what you are doing is you're engaging and taking first steps on a long journey, not a destination today, a journey towards a life, knowing and acknowledging who you're walking with.
[00:22:03] And so, Lord Jesus, all across this room, we would ask for your closeness and your hope right in the middle of crisis and trouble and uncertainty and whatever we would face, that the real and living Jesus would come close to us. You would be revealed to us in the ordinary places of our lives and that we would sense your grace and your forgiveness on our lives.
[00:22:37] If you want to pray that prayer right now, you can just say that. Lord Jesus, I open the door.
[00:22:43] Come close to me. I want to follow you. Just pray that. I want to follow you.
[00:22:51] Lord Jesus, we thank you for your closeness today. We thank you for your presence. And we thank you that hope wins.
[00:22:58] Thank you that you're alive.
[00:23:00] And if the resurrection is true, anything is possible. We pray this in Jesus name.
