Getting Our House in Order

Acts 2:14, 22-32; Psalm 16; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31

Welcome to the first sermon in this series of four sermons – Developing a Joyous Family – Advice for Christian Parents and Grandparents.
Let me first thank you all for your prayers and support after my father Jack Boley’s heart attack last Thursday, and his passing on Monday. We are confident that my Dad is now awaiting the Resurrection and his face-to-face meeting with Christ.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing with you ideas from God’s Word about how to develop a joyous family, advice from the Bible about how to go about life. So today, we’ll be looking at how Jesus started things up with His family, the men we call the disciples, and how he led them to become known for their joy.

My Wife Saundra and I have moved twelve times since we’ve been married. And so we have developed a pattern for getting our house in order.

First, we walk the empty house. We look at each room and discuss and dream about that room, just the two of us. We might take measurements, but we definitely take some time talking and thinking about each room. We are developing a series of shared beliefs about what our house will look like, about how each room will be used, about what makes a workable and fun life in that house. We know what we will do in this house and we have a basic agreement on what is important, what is going to happen, and where we are going with each room. We are beginning to get our new house in order.

When Jesus came back on that first Easter after He had been executed on the cross, there were certain things he did.

First, He appeared to Mary and the other women, and He told Mary in particular that He was back and that His disciples should plan to meet him in Galilee. The women ran back to where the rest of the disciples were and delivered the message.

Then, Jesus caught a couple of disciples walking toward the village of Emmaus and explained Scripture to them. When they finally realized who they’d been walking with, these two disciples ran back to Jerusalem and found the other disciples.

And then, our reading for today begins.

On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.

Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you!”

So that first evening, Jesus laid out some basic ground rules for the new Jesus movement. You see, shared ideas and beliefs are the basis for a sound family and a sound church.

First, He said “Peace be with you!” twice. In the new Jesus movement, there would be peace. The Jesus movement was not a struggle, not a jihad, not a war, but it was peace-bringing. The people who follow Jesus will seek and bring peace wherever they go – in their personal lives, in their groups, and into the world.

And so, in a similar way, if we are starting a family, if we are forming a family, if we are training people in a family or in a group of disciples, we should also make our home or gathering place a place of peace and safety, a place where the struggles in the world disappear, like a great castle made of thick walls of stone and concrete which the storms in the world never move in the least bit. Here, at least, when people come home, they will have peace. They can sleep soundly at home. This peace is the basis for all good families – and all good churches.

Next, Jesus said that He was sending the disciples just as the Father had sent him. “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.”

Now, the disciples would no longer be students, they would be apostles – those who go out and proclaim. This was fundamental to what the new Jesus movement would be about – the people who follow Jesus proclaim. Families, you see, need a common purpose.

In the same way, the shared beliefs of a family will determine their purpose together. For example, from the earliest days, our children have known that they are to learn about Jesus and God and Christian ideas, because as they grow they will also change over from being disciples to becoming apostles as appropriate for their ages. Ian is in China but speaks to students from many countries about Christ. Andy is at WVU but speaks to many students about Christ – even online. Jessie is in Alaska and shows her Christianity in her compassion for her fellow workers at the fab shop she works in. They have each different professions, but still have a common purpose – sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ with people. It brings them together and is a source of conversation when they are together. What will you be sending out your children and/or grandchildren to do?

And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit..." 

Jesus breathed upon the disciples, His family, and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Jesus supernaturally put deep inside them His voice, His Spirit, His guidance about what was right and wrong, what should be done and what should not be done, about where to go in life.

Notice that Jesus did not give his disciples, His spiritual children, an option here. Although they may have had the initial choice three years earlier to follow Jesus or not, they no longer had a choice. If you were following Jesus, you received the Holy Spirit. That was the way things were done. A month or so earlier, we are told that Jesus and his disciples were baptizing people at the Jordan, the way John the Baptist had done. One assumes that all the disciples, if not previously baptized, were baptized at this time.

We would do well to imitate Jesus’ family, the group of disciples.

In the United Methodist Church, like many other denominations, we believe that God performs actions on our hearts during baptism. We believe that the Holy Spirit is given to the one being baptized through the laying on of hands. And we believe that this does not require our active belief to be helpful to us in life – only our lack of opposition. And just as we would have no difficulty baptizing a person who was mentally unable to make a decision for himself or herself, we believe that it is not only “okay”, but it is proper and ethical to baptize even the youngest children, because, after all, if we truly believe that Jesus is the only way to eternal life, it is the height of proper ethics, because who would want their child to live eternally in Hell?

Many modern parents, even church-going parents have adopted the idea that if we let our children grow up to a certain age of accountability, then they can decide what they want to believe. And this is where we have failed to connect the dots about what this means, we have missed something, a worldly argument has been made that ignores a couple of very important points.

First, it assumes time, time for people to grow up and make a decision. Now we live today in a world where most children live to adulthood. But let me tell you something…we don’t always have time. Two weeks ago on Friday the 7th, after I brought him home from an overnight stay at the VA because of a bit of atrial fibrillation and pneumonia, I had a discussion with my 83 year old earthly father about whether or not he had been baptized. He did not think he had been. He joked that he was too sick that day for the river. I pointed out we could sprinkle. He said, “Well...Let me think about it.” Over the weekend and week he recovered remarkably and changed out his mower deck on Wednesday.

On Thursday the 13th, feeling wonderful, he walked to the pizza place across the street after his followup doctor's appointment and and an over-the-phone discussion with his cardiologist, updating him on his recent visit to the VA and discussing medications. Apparently perfectly healthy, he sat down with his high school friends for their monthly lunch. A few minutes later, he had a massive heart attack. He never regained consciousness. Time was up. As his son, I assumed he would eventually want to be baptized, but that didn’t matter - I acted for him on his behalf in his best interest, so Monday morning I baptized him with the help of two other pastors. He died a few hours later.

We only have "all the time in the world" after we believe, turn our lives over to Jesus, and are baptized…not before. Until then, we are like an insect hanging on a piece of spider’s silk over a fire, ready to be dropped into the flame whenever God loses patience with us. Enough time is never a valid assumption.

The second thing that waiting tells us is something about the parent’s view of religion - although most people don’t realize this until I point it out to them, because the world’s view is so common, so pervasive, so tied to our ideas of personal freedom as the ultimate virtue that we simply don't notice this point until it is pointed out to us.

Please consider this: If you are a devout follower of Jesus Christ, truly believing that Jesus is “THE way, THE Truth, and THE Life,” then why won’t you baptize your child? Why will you give them a choice in whether to go to church or not, to be baptized or not? Is it because down deep you really think that Jesus is “A way, A truth, and A possible way to life?” Why else would you give them a chance to grow up as atheists, Buddhists, Moslems? You may not realize it, but your actions tell your children in no uncertain terms about how deeply you believe in the truth of what Jesus said.

And if YOU believe that Jesus is "The Way, THE Truth, and THE Life", what about yourself? Why are you putting off your own public profession of faith, your own baptism, your own point where you proclaim the truth in front of your family? Is it because you haven’t yet decided to commit your life to the God you’ve said you love? My friends, how much time do you have left?

But there are more things than our Christian faith we must pass on to our families. Like the early followers of Jesus, we all need to communicate to our families that in certain things we are so convinced of the rightness of those things that there is no other way allowed. We never drive drunk, we never do drugs, we vote every election regardless of the candidates. We go to church unless we are so sick we can’t. Following Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.

Some families make a choice at an early age. Soccer or dance or baseball is more important than church. Other families make a rule – we might miss one Sunday a quarter for another event, but it had better be important. I’ve seen other families decide - or allow their children to decide – that some sports or activities are more important than church. These rules need to be decided upon at the earliest age possible so they will become part of your children or grandchildren’s spirit. For example, you might make a rule that at Grandma’s house, we pray before every meal and if you spend Saturday night at Grandma's house, you will go to church with her the next morning.

In the same way, if you will repeat certain things every few months to your children, they will gradually sink into your family’s spirit. These can be practical things like how to tighten a nut on a bolt – “right to tight, left to loosen”, or they can much more general, abstract concepts like “If it’s big enough to worry about, it’s big enough to pray about.” Or, as in our family: “We are Boleys, we can read and find the answer.”

A family can establish a spirit deep into the family. In ancient Rome, there was an ancient, wealthy family, the Bruti. Around 700 BC, a member of the Bruti family killed the last king of Rome and the Roman Republic began. For almost seven hundred years, the Romans enjoyed a republic form of government, with elections and leaders elected to offices for short terms. But around 50 BC, Julius Caesar began to act as a tyrannical dictator, and so Brutus, of the Bruti family, led the conspiracy that knifed him to death in the Senate chamber. The Bruti family’s purpose and spirit was to destroy tyrants, kings, and dictators in Rome. That was why they did this – it wasn’t mere coincidence – it was what the Bruti did.

In the same way, your family may be pastors, they may be carpenters, they may be teachers, they may be politicians, they may be thieves. They may help the sick, they may build great public works in the town, they may be the people who show up with food when there are family crises around town. Your family may be known for being the best mechanics – or the people who shoot rabid dogs. What does your family do? What is the spirit of your family that you pass on from generation to generation? If you don’t know, then create a family spirit, a family motto, a family tradition. It will pull together your family! But start with a spiritual basis grounded in the Holy Spirit and baptism and the Word of God.

"But what if my child is a certain age? How do I ask them if they want to be baptized?" 

You don’t. If you really believe Jesus is the only way, you say, “You are now x number of years old. It is time you were baptized. It will be exciting because the Holy Spirit will come and live with you. Which Sunday will we do this?”

You see, your child, like all children, is infected with the disease of sin that will kill them. The vaccine is baptism and the Holy Spirit, which will allow them to live forever. Isn’t it about time for that vaccine?

That night in Jerusalem, Jesus said more to His family, His disciples:

“If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”

Jesus was establishing another ground rule for the disciples. He was establishing a rule which gave the disciples responsibility for their friends and neighbors. In the same way, in a family, it is important to get the house in order by establishing that the children will be held responsible for the behavior of their friends in the house. The friends are not responsible for the behavior of the children. And that establishes that the children have what used to be called noblese oblige, the obligation of the nobles to behave with a higher moral and ethical standard than the average person. “This is what makes our family different,” you say. “They may get drunk at the party – we drive them home soberly.” Or you may say, “Other people may not know what to do – we always have a plan. What is your plan for tonight?” We Christians build pride in belonging to our family – and we do that not by assuming superior airs over others, but by assuming superior obligations above and beyond those obligations others are required to assume. We want an attitude of “Our family isn’t better just because…it is better because we step up and do more for others.”

That first night, though, a family member was missing. Doubting Thomas was missing in action. He wasn’t there when the rules were laid out. But that didn’t stop Jesus...

Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!”

But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”

A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”

Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”

Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
The key lesson Jesus taught his family that second evening was that they could and should rely upon and trust one another. If Peter and John say Jesus is alive, believe it, Thomas! If brother and sister says “Dad said to clean the kitchen,” then you’d better get it clean before Dad comes home! You will notice that once again, Jesus insisted that “Peace be with you!” to his entire family before he dealt with the unbelieving Thomas. He wanted peace first, because it is only on a peaceful foundation that a house can be built.

Fifty years ago, families were generally more stable than they are today. Most people my age had only two parents each at their weddings. Today, it is a rare wedding that doesn’t have non-biological bonus parents present. Many grandparents are raising children, single mothers are common, foster parents are in need.

In all of this, those who find themselves with new, young people in their lives need to first of all get all - or most of - the important adults on board and attempt to establish the ground rules for getting the house in order - or back in order - in the same way my wife and I walk a new house to decide which room will be used for which purpose.

As you build your house and get it in order – or if you have to once more get it in order – look at the key steps once again that Jesus took.

First, He established a place of peace – the family of God.

Second, He established a family purpose – in his case, spreading the Gospel. I happen to think that that is a wonderful family purpose because it drives many other good things in a family.

Third, he made sure everyone had a common spirit, the Holy Spirit. He made sure that all were being guided by the Word of God and that Holy Spirit, which would lead them in the same direction, allow them to work together, and keep them on the common family purpose. And He did not give them a choice in the matter – "In this family, this is what we do."

And fourth, He made sure that everyone could trust the words of the others in the family, as Thomas learned when Jesus came back the second Sunday evening.

But I will tell you that there is something even more foundational than what Jesus did that first Sunday evening after the Resurrection, so many years ago in Jerusalem.

Jesus made it all possible, for Jesus was obedient to God’s will even to death on the cross. It wasn’t easy, it wasn’t fun, it wasn’t something He wanted to do – His words in the Garden – “Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me,” show us that it was agonizing for Him. But He obeyed God and did what had to be done. He did not run and instead he went to His death on the cross, a death that involved being beaten, stripped naked and embarrassingly was placed in front of many people, and then He died.

Sometimes, the heads of households have to do things which are embarrassing. Sometimes, heads of households have to do things which are painful. Sometimes, heads of households must do things which are agonizing, but they must be done for the sake of the children, as Jesus went to the cross for all of us.

Your example, like Jesus’ example, may be the very thing which saves your children or grandchildren. Your example, like Jesus’ example, may be what sets your children or grandchildren free to live life fully. Your example, like Jesus’ example, may be what leads them from a life of slavery to an abundant, eternal life, for we are the Body of Christ in this time at this place, and if our children and grandchildren cannot learn what it means to be Christian from us, then who shall teach them?

The world won’t. The world will teach them how to die young. The world will teach them how to love the wrong gods. The world will teach our children and grandchildren how to live in slavery to sin and death. Our responsibility is to lead them to Christ.

And so, I ask you now: Will you come to prayer and ask for the help of almighty God for a task too strong for any of us? Will you pray that God will give you the answers you will need? Will you pray in front of your children and grandchildren simply because you need your children and grandchildren to know that there are times in our lives when each of us simply needs to bow before God and this is a sign of our strength of character and not of weakness?

I Have Seen the Lord

Jeremiah 31:1-6; Psalm 118:1-2; 14-24; Colossians 3:1-4; John 20:1-18

In case you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m Pastor Brian. I’m the local manager of this branch of the worldwide Christian church, which is the largest organization in the world. And the best thing about this job is that my boss is the wonderful creator of the Universe.

Do you realize that over 1/3rd of all the people in the world claim to be Christians? Do you realize that 5 out of 6 people in America claim to be Christian? Do you realize that there are more than twice as many United Methodist Churches in the United States than there are McDonald’s Restaurants? There’s a little over 14,000 McDonalds, but there are over 32,000 United Methodist Churches.

And it all began about 2000 years ago just outside the walls of Jerusalem.

Most of us know the outlines of the story. A man named Jesus was born to Joseph and Mary of Nazareth, a tiny village located near the Sea of Galilee in what is today northern Israel. Jesus grew up extraordinarily wise, recruited a dozen followers, and taught them for about three years around the years 30-33 AD. Then, he was executed by crucifixion on a cross. And….

Well, those are the outlines. Let’s look at the details that make this Jesus story a bit unusual.

Around Jesus, there were always unusual claims. So four men wrote down separate accounts of Jesus’ life.

First, there was Mark. Mark, or John-Mark, traveled with both Peter – Jesus’ leading disciple or student – and with Paul, a man who wrote most of the scrolls that eventually became the New Testament. Mark was a teenager when Jesus was killed on the cross. But he had traveled with Jesus some and he relied heavily upon Peter’s memories when he wrote down his Gospel of Mark. Mark wrote for a skeptical Roman audience, people like us who really didn’t understand the Jewish religion.

Matthew was the second writer. He had been a tax collector for the Romans when Jesus asked him to follow Jesus and become his student. Matthew was Jewish, and he wrote for a Jewish audience, so his story took Mark’s outline and added details Matthew remembered, and also added a bunch of Old Testament prophecies that referred to Jesus.

The next man to write was Luke. Luke was a medical doctor, a Greek Jewish friend of Paul’s who met Paul while Paul traveled through western Turkey about 15 years later. Luke traveled with Paul back to Jerusalem and wrote down a journalistic account of what happened by interviewing Peter, Jesus’ mother Mary, and several other eyewitnesses. He also had the opportunity to read Mark’s account and probably Matthew’s account. Mark, Matthew, and Luke all completed their accounts in the 50’s or 60’s – within 20 or 30 years of Jesus’ ministry.

And then, there was John. John was a very close friend of Jesus, one of His first followers, and John wrote down many details the others had skipped over. John was more philosophical than Peter – who had been a fishing boat captain – or Matthew, the tax collector. And John took time to not only put down what happened, but why it happened. And he wrote later, probably in the 70’s or 80’s.

So if you really want to know the details about Jesus’ life and teachings, unless you have a strong understanding of the Old Testament, you probably should start reading with the Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of John, and then go back to Luke and finally Matthew. On Wednesday evenings at 6:15, we will be studying in detail the Gospel of John, looking at what this close friend of Jesus had to say about Jesus and his life. You are welcome to join us. We’ll even have a free dinner starting at 5:30 that you’re invited to.

As we read these Gospel accounts, several things strike us as we go along. First, Luke makes a series of extraordinary claims. In the first two chapters of Luke’s Gospel, there are a series of angelic appearances, first to the Zacharias, the father of Jesus’ cousin who would eventually become known as John the Baptist, and then to Mary, Jesus’ young mother to be, and then to Joseph, the man who would raise Jesus.

Luke soon claims that the twelve-year old Jesus is holding deep theological discussions with leading priests at the great Temple in Jerusalem, displaying a wisdom far, far beyond His age.

And then we have Jesus’ life of ministry. Apparently, Jesus was simply known as a solid, hard-working, intelligent and wise man until He was about thirty years old. Then, he starts to teach people. His major message was that the Kingdom of Heaven is coming soon!

Jesus begins to teach as one who has real authority. Unlike most teachers of the time, he didn’t hem and haw and defer to others, saying, “Well, Gamaliel says we should and Joshua says we shouldn’t, but on the whole it appears that Plato has the best view.” Uh-uh. Jesus says, “You have heard A, but I say B”.

For example, he says that you’ve been told to love your friends and hate your enemies, but Jesus says, “But I say love your enemies, too.”

He tells people that it is not enough to avoid murder, but we must avoid even the thoughts of violence. It is not enough to avoid adultery, but even the thoughts of adultery must be avoided. His teaching is deep, amazingly deep, and wonderful with the way it makes sense, ties all together, changes our lives and gives us peace that the world’s ways don’t give us. He is perhaps the sanest man who ever lived, confident and yet not arrogant, gentle and not bullying, peaceful and yet never timid. He shows us the way out of the insanity that is in the world, in places like Syria, in Libya, in North Korea. He shows us how to live together in sanity.

And then Jesus makes repeated claims to be God.

What? Jesus claimed to be God? Where?

In many different places in Matthew, and particularly throughout the Gospel of John, Jesus claims rights and powers that only God should have. For example, Jesus claims the right to forgive people’s sins – something only God can do. The people standing around recognize this claim and get very upset at Jesus for his cheekiness.

Jesus claims that He was living when Abraham, the great ancestor of the Jews, was alive – over a thousand years earlier. The people listening get upset.

Jesus claims that “I and the Father are one.” And people pick up stones to stone him for blasphemy. He even claims that He has come to fulfill the Law, the great moral law of Moses. He is claiming to be God Himself, so why should we believe Him? Yet his teaching is so sane!

But also, with these claims to be God, he performs miracles. Now, my college education was to be a physicist, more specifically, an astrophysicist. I know that miracles are when the laws of science and the Universe break down. Miracles are not supposed to ever, ever, ever happen. But then again, once in a while, it appears they do happen. That’s why we call them miracles. They are events that would never happen in a world with only natural science at work.

Yet, I’ve needed $6000 to pay my bills in a month and had no way of earning the money and seen my credit card limit increased the day after I prayed by $6000.

I’ve needed $300 to pay the rent, prayed, and caught a friend putting a $300 check in my front screen door.

I’ve needed $741.53 in money by 4:30 pm, prayed, and received exactly $741.53 at 4:10 pm that afternoon.

I’ve seen a man die three times over a month and after prayer be brought back to life each time and live another 18 months. I watched the WVU-Notre-Dame basketball game with him, talking and chatting, last month and finally buried him two weeks ago. These are miracles, things that aren’t supposed to happen.

Yet miracles can and do happen – things that scientific laws say can’t and won’t happen. And Jesus performed miracles.

In a time with primitive medicine, Jesus cured blindness, deafness, paralysis, and repaired lame legs. He opened up a withered hand, he turned water into wine, and he walked with his student Peter onto of water. He even brought a man who had died, been buried for four days back from the dead.

And so, when He claimed He was God, there were people who were beginning to believe him.

And some people say He couldn’t be God because God doesn’t exist. Yet many of those same people believe in ghosts, in spirits, in vampires, in zombies, in all sorts of supernatural things. If Jesus was not divine, then why are vampires afraid of crosses??? Well, the fact is that if a single supernatural thing exists, then God exists, because God is the supernatural cause of all things, including natural laws. If you believe in a mind or consciousness, then you believe in the supernatural for a biochemical computer cannot be naturally self-aware.

Either you believe in a totally natural universe, a place where your mind is simply a biochemical computer, where love is just another set of chemicals, where hate and envy are other chemicals, where everything follows step-by-step without consciousness – or you believe in a world where there is a mind that is greater than the brain, in a consciousness which is greater than your nerve cells, in love that goes beyond estrogen, in emotions that are more than a chemical mix, in the supernatural idea of a perfect triangle with 180 degrees, in the supernatural existence of number that have more zeros than there are atoms in the Universe, in short, in anything that doesn’t follow rigidly from the rules of natural law, and therefore you believe in the supernatural which means miracles and a God who created everything natural and supernatural.

One day, Jesus was arrested and executed for the crime of blasphemy, for the crime of claiming to be God to the religious authorities of the day. He was beaten and put on a cross to die a slow death by blood loss and suffocation as his body weakened and he could no longer hold himself up. And so he died and a Roman soldier stuck a spear in his side to make sure he was dead. And there was nothing special about this, to the Romans he was just another troublemaker, executed efficiently and quickly, put on a cross to die, he died, we double-checked, he was dead.

Because of Jewish burial customs, his body was taken down before sunset and he was quickly mummy-wrapped and buried in a tomb carved in the rock and a large 2000 pound boulder was rolled into a trench in front of the tomb. Then, everyone went home because the Jewish Sabbath was approaching at sunset. Plans were made that the women would come back early on Sunday morning to clean his body and properly rewrap it in a mixture of spices and ointments, as was the custom.

Friday night came and went...

Saturday came, it was an ordinary Sabbath day, more people in town than normal, but it was the Passover festival weekend. People slept in, went to the synagogue, ate lunch, talked to relatives in town for the festival, had evening dinner and went back to sleep...

Early Sunday morning, Mary Magdalene and several other women had agreed to meet at the tomb to clean Jesus’ body.

Let me take the eyewitness account from John, who soon arrived with Peter. (NIV 2011 version).

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, [John,] the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”

So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first.5 He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) Then the disciples went back to where they were staying.

Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.

They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”

“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”

Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”

Jesus said to her, “Mary.”

She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”).

Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”

Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had said these things to her.

Mary’s brief meeting with Jesus was just the first meeting Jesus had with his followers. That afternoon, a stranger joined two disciples walking about 5 miles home toward the village of Emmaus. They talked and decided to eat together. As the stranger blessed the meal, they realized he was Jesus and then he vanished. They ran back to the house where the disciples were staying in Jerusalem.

That evening, most of the disciples were there and Jesus walked in with them and talked with them. A week later, he came back to the group and had Thomas the disciple who had not believed in the first appearances put his finger into the hole in Jesus side where the spear had stabbed him.

Over the next month, there were a total of eleven appearances, in different places at different times to different people. Jesus walked, talked, taught, and ate with his friends. He cooked several breakfast. Once, over five hundred people saw him. And then, after giving further instructions, He went back to heaven.

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ that we celebrate today proved that what He had been saying was true – Jesus was indeed the Son of God, God Himself walking upon this earth, and so everything He said was of utmost importance to us because God had created the Universe and us, so who will you listen to for lessons about how to live your life?

The Jesus movement exploded. Within a month there were over 3000 believers. Within a year, there were followers in Damascus, Syria, and in Lebanon, and further up the coast. Within twenty years there were churches established on the Island of Cyprus and throughout Turkey and Greece, in Egypt, and even in Rome and Iran and India and Ethiopia. Within two hundred years, Christianity was the dominant religion of the Roman Empire and there were Christian churches in France and Britain and across North African and in Spain. And today, there are Christians in every country on earth, and it is the dominant religion in the Americas, in Europe, in Russia, in Sub-Saharan Africa, in Korea and the Phillipines, in Australia. Substantial and fast-growing Christian minorities live in India and China. 

Christianity is the world’s most widespread and most populous religion and has been shared by some of the greatest men and women of history, including scientists like Isaac Newton, Gregor Mendel, the discoverer of genetics, Presidents Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Reagan, writers like Harper Lee and Dorothy Sayer and Emily Dickerson, leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr and Tony Blair, and generals like Omar Bradley and George Patton. Movie stars like Bing Crosby, Mel Gibson, and Tom Hanks. In every field, intelligent, smart, and wise people have investigated the evidence and found that Jesus was indeed God walking upon this earth.

And now, you have a choice to make. For, as C.S. Lewis said, every person must look at Jesus Christ and make a decision about who Jesus is.

· Was Jesus a liar every time He said He was God, a man who duped everyone around him into thinking he could perform miracles?

· Was Jesus a crazy nutcase, a lunatic who just thought He was God and who stumbled onto the most sane teachings anyone has ever given the world?

· Was Jesus the Lord of all Creation, proven by coming back from the dead?

· Or Was Jesus just the most sane, wisest teacher that we’ve ever seen?

Our reason says to go with the last choice, to declare that Jesus was the greatest teacher, the wisest man, nothing more – and nothing less. That’s what everything we learned in school, in college, on television, in books wants us to declare, to believe, to shout!

But Jesus did not leave us with that option. He did not intend to give us that choice. For He plainly said, “I and the Father are one.” He plainly said, “He who has seen me has seen the Father.” Jesus claimed over and over again to be God walking on earth, so it leaves us in a pickle. You have a decision to make.

Was he lying? Was he a lunatic? Four separate men wrote down his life’s story and each one included his teachings, his actions, his miracles, and his Resurrection. The miracles and the Resurrection were the reasons the Jesus Movement grew in the first place. If we accept his teachings, we don’t have any reason to deny his miracles or his Resurrection except our own bias, our own blindness, our own fear of Someone who is far more than we can ever be!

Liar? Lunatic? Or, just possibly, perhaps most probably, Lord of all Creation?

One Morning in Bethphage

Psalm 118; Matthew 21:1-11

One morning in the spring of the year on the Sunday before Passover, a group of about a hundred people left the village of Bethany, the location of an inn and a poorhouse on the east side of the Mount of Olives and walked up the hill to the summit where the tiny village of Bethphage, the “house of unripened figs” lie.

For one of the party, this would be his last yearly trip coming up the hill from Bethany. For one of the party, this would be the last year he walked up that hill to stand at the top and look freshly down at the Lion Gate, the Eastern Gate of Jerusalem and the beautiful Temple of God that stood just beyond the walls of the city. For one of the party, today would be very special, a day that would be remembered forever. But most of the party didn’t realize this. It was just another trip to Jerusalem, something they did every year. They all stopped at the top of the Mount of Olives to take in the beauty and breathe in some air after the climb.

Jesus called Matthew and John aside and sent them into the tiny cluster of a half dozen homes that was Bethphage. “You’ll find a donkey and her colt tied there. Get them and bring them to me. If anyone stops you, say ‘the Lord needs them.’”.

The two men ran into the tiny little village. In front of the third house on the left, they saw the mother standing, eating some grain. And there he was, the cutest, sweetest looking donkey colt you’ve ever seen, tied up and standing there beside a water trough. They untied it and the colt squealed, which brought the owner around the corner. “The Lord needs them”, Matthew yelled. And the man said, “Fine! Just tie ‘em back up when you’re finished.”

As they moved off, Matthew asked the man, “What do you call this village?” “Bethphage,” the man answered. And the disciples and livestock were off, with the colt trotting behind Matthew as they went back to the road and the mother walking behind John.

A couple of minutes later, the two arrived back with Jesus with the colt and mother. The colt was young and skittish. It had never been ridden, but as Matthew held the colt’s head Jesus talked to the colt quietly. A couple of disciples placed a couple of cloaks on the donkey and then Jesus jumped up and swung a leg over and sat on the colt, who stood there as calmly as if it was a twenty-year-old experienced riding horse.

Matthew handed Jesus the rope and they began to walk down the hill. And as they walked, someone started to sing from Psalm 118:

“Hosanna to the Son of David!”

“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”

“Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

The volume increased as more and more people took up the cry and the song became a loud chant and then a chanted shout.

“Hosanna to the Son of David!”

“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”

“Hosanna in the highest heaven!”
People in the city looked up at the hill. Other people began running out of the city. A group of Temple priests looked up toward the hill in alarm. Off-duty Roman soldiers put their hands on their swords. And the little donkey’s colt carefully, calmly put one foot in front of the other as it carried its special burden down the hill, down the road, as if it knew this would never, ever happen again to it, as if it were a special time, a wonderful parade, a once-in-forever event that would never be repeated again, which, of course, it was.

Jerusalem’s rightful King, a Son of David, was about to enter the town for the first time since King Zedekiah had been taken to Babylon over 600 years earlier. And the people recognized that this man would be a good king, a wise king, a great spiritual leader first and a military leader second, for Jesus had shown through many miracles that He was sent by God.

Jesus had healed people, Jesus had taught ideas of justice to the people, and Jesus had even showed that He could feed people, for Jesus had fed 5000 people with just a handful of loaves of bread and fish. And Jesus was humble – after all, today he was riding on a donkey’s colt instead of a huge white stallion.

The crowd in the city began to realize who it was that was riding down from Bethphage and they really began pouring out of the city, for another rumor had reached them over the last week. It seems that a man most of the people knew, the young man who ran the inn in Bethany with his sisters had fallen ill and died a couple of weeks earlier, and Jesus had called him out of his grave and Lazarus might be in the crowd now, walking down the hill with Jesus!

And after fifteen minutes or so, the procession walked across the Kidron Brook and in through the gate. And women on the sides of the street asked one another and those walking with Him: “Who is that riding there?”

And the answer was “Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.” And they all smiled and cheered and waved and chanted.

“Hosanna to the Son of David!”

“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”

“Hosanna in the highest heaven!”
Less than a week later, he’d be dead, killed after the same crowd chanted, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!”

...

We love Palm Sunday, don’t we? We love the children waving palm branches, the chanting of Hosanna, the excitement. It’s almost as though we are there once more as Jesus comes into Jerusalem, a parade! It takes us back to times standing downtown as the marching band comes down Main Street and men and women ride by on horseback and there are floats and candy is thrown and another band marches by and you never know what will happen next. We love parades, we love the excitement of a group of people marching – maybe it is a circus parade and there will be elephants! Jesus is here, God is here, the Holy Spirit is working!

And you know, from up here it’s even better, for I get to yell and holler and egg on the children, and watch you all smile and laugh. I get to remind you of the excitement of that day and how much God loves us. And I’m talking of ordinary Sundays which are exciting enough because I never know, I never know when the Holy Spirit is going to break through to one of you and I’ll watch you run to the altar with tears flowing and then I know that God is here and your heart is melting and the world will never be the same because Jesus got your attention today. For me, every day is Palm Sunday because I’m involved, I’m praying for the Spirit to come upon us all, I’m working as hard as I can to listen to that Spirit and say the words that will allow that Spirit to break through to you and change your lives forever. And Palm Sunday is even better because you’re already up and ready for something unexpected to happen and that’s grand.

On Sunday afternoons, I get back home a bit before 1 o’clock. I walk into my house and eat a bit of lunch and put my feet up for a bit. And then, after an hour or so, I walk back out. Sometimes I have a class to teach – like now when we have a confirmation class going on at 2 pm. Other Sunday afternoons, I drive to the hospitals, for there are people who missed the parade, people who missed Jesus visiting the city today, people who need to hear the story second hand because they couldn’t be there at the parade in person. There are people who need my visit – and your visits.

And Monday or Tuesday, Rick, our custodian, will come in here, plug in his radio and listen to Christian radio. He’ll clean up crumbs left over from Communion, pick up some papers with a 6-year-old’s artwork, and he’ll bend over and pick up that Kleenex you left after you wiped your eyes, the program you forgot, and he’ll put that hymnal back into the pew and then he’ll run the vacuum so next week everything looks clean and perfect for you and the next time Jesus walks in here. For it is quiet on Mondays and Tuesdays around here. You are at school, at work, at home. But here behind the scenes, Rick is cleaning and I’m preparing for the next Sunday, reading the next scriptures and studying God’s Word and praying desperately that God will put together the next sermon.

And after the parade on Palm Sunday goes past, someone has to clean up the effects of the parade. There are palm branches that have sacrificed themselves for our enjoyment and now lay on the ground. There are hyped up children who even now are driving a few harrowed adults crazy in the basement. There are even people who can’t sing the next hymn because they wore out their throats yelling Hosanna!. 

We couldn’t take Palm Sunday every day or even every week. The Spirit is exciting and exhausting at the same time. We need time to think about what the Spirit has told us, time to make the changes the Spirit is urging us to make, time to recover our strength and share what we’ve learned with others who weren’t here watching the parade, for each of us is also called to share God’s Word with other people to help them move closer to God. For most people see Christ outside of the Temple as people tell other people about what He has done for us. They aren't in the Temple listening to His teaching - they ask other people what He said.

In Jerusalem that day, Jesus entered the town and went to the Temple for a while.

After the Jesus parade went past, I’m sure the crowd did like all crowds do. Some people followed Jesus into the city to the Temple to learn from His teaching, yes. But most people simply went back to their business, going to get lunch, buying groceries, getting their homes ready for family guests. Others talked about Jesus for a while with each other. We know a group of leaders from the Temple held a meeting where they discussed what to do about Jesus. The Roman garrison commanders probably did the same.

Did anyone stop to pick up the palm branches lying on the ground? Did anyone take them home with them to remember that on this day, a Son of David entered Jerusalem for the first time in over 600 years? Did anyone take the muddy, dusty cloaks off the ground and shake the donkey dung off of them? Did anyone just sit down and ponder what it all meant, how the world was changed because one man had ridden a donkey’s colt down the hill from little Bethphage?

There are two ways of looking at events in our lives:

Most people look at their lives as a series of unconnected events. They drive to work. They work. They have lunch. They work. They drive home. They maybe watch some television. Once a year, they have Thanksgiving dinner. Once a year, they celebrate Christmas. Once a year, they experience Palm Sunday. Once a year, they celebrate Easter. One day they are born. One day they die.

But a few people, a very few people see their lives as a journey with events that look repetitive but are different each time. This Christmas was not the same as Christmas 2010, it will not be the same as Christmas 2020. This Holy Week is different, for there will never be another Holy Week like this one. Even if we’ve experienced 95 Palm Sundays, this one is different. Even if we’ve seen 150 parades, this one is different. Every day is special and different and given to us by God for a special purpose that only that day was meant for. To live life abundantly means that we break out of the sameness of life to see the special gifts that God gives us today that He won’t give us tomorrow and He didn’t give us yesterday. An abundant life is abundant because we are able to see the daily gifts God gives us and experience them in joy and wonder. To a child, every day is full of wonder! Will you live this day full of wonder at God’s gifts He is giving you just for this special day, the day called “today”? Will you take time to notice them and be blessed? Each day? Will you take time before you go to sleep to remember your blessings, thank God for them individually, and feel the joy that God loves you? Each day?

Today is the day, for example, when you might actually realize that you’ve only got so many days left in your life and God has called you to a higher purpose in life than what you’ve been doing. Today is the day, for example, when you might realize that you need to talk deeply to your children or grandchildren about what Easter is all about, about how Easter is so tightly tied to them seeing you again – and you seeing them again - after you pass onto the next life. Today is the day, for example, when you realize that you don’t really need to hold so much money and things in reserve for the future, for it would make a tremendous difference to all those people served by the mission projects and it would show you that you really do trust in God and not in your bank account.

Today might be the day you moved Jesus from being the co-pilot in your life to being pilot, while you moved into the back seat and just hung on for the ride. Today might be the day when you decided to get baptized after all these years. Today might be the day when you decided that you really need to understand all of this talk about righteousness and justification and salvation, for you’ve understood it might be much more than cotton candy ideas with little practical meaning, but might be deeply important. Sometimes, you see, you just have to stop going to school and start putting into action what you’ve learned.

You see, after the parade passes by, we all need to take time and think about what it all meant. We need to think about what it means for each of us, personally. We need to think and ponder and let the Holy Spirit and the Word of God have some quiet time to change us. And we can do this, for Christ, the Son of God has come to our village and so our village will never be the same, and we will never be the same. You and I will never be the same and we will never look at our lives in the same disconnected way, because we have been changed forever – if we will listen to the Holy Spirit and the Word of God. And we will change every day if we will listen. We will change for the better. Like tiny Bethphage, our names will be known forever by God and Christ. Like the little donkey colt, we will be known forever for our service to Christ by Him.

Matthew understood. Three years earlier, Jesus’ parade had met him at his toll booth where he collected taxes for the Romans. Matthew had not been a very good man – he collected taxes for the occupying Romans. He was probably allowed to keep 10 percent of the revenue he collected, but he probably always collected an extra 10 percent, which doubled his take-home pay. He may have thought of it as good business. Jesus asked Matthew to follow Him that day as His parade was passing, and Matthew did just that. Jesus never accused Matthew of anything, but now Matthew saw what he had done as thievery and being a traitor to the Jewish people. Matthew had thought about the Jesus parade and what it meant for him a lot over the last three years. He planned to write a book someday about Jesus and how the scriptures of the Hebrew Bible had predicted everything Jesus did.

When the parade reached the Temple, Matthew took the colt’s rope and held the young donkey as Jesus dismounted. “Are you coming in with us?” Jesus may have asked. “No, I’ll take this donkey and colt back home,” Matthew may have replied.

As he walked through the crowd, a man offered to buy the colt from Matthew for a dinarius, a day's pay! Matthew just kept walking. Another man, loaded down with goods, offered two shekels of silver, two weeks pay! Matthew just kept walking with the donkey and colt behind him.

An hour or two later, up on the top of the Mount of Olives in tiny little Bethphage village, Matthew walked back to that little hut where the water trough was and he tied up that spunky little donkey’s colt. The colt’s owner wasn’t anywhere around. The older donkey simply walked over to the grain and began eating. But Matthew returned the colt, made sure it could get into the shade and get water and food, and then petted it on its neck. He took some time. Matthew’s time with Jesus had changed him. He was no longer in a hurry, He was no longer a thief. He was no longer a traitor.

The colt looked at Matthew nervously, for it was still very young. And for just a minute, they stared into each other’s eyes, as if to say, “I’ll always remember you and what happened today, this special day.”

And then, Matthew walked down the hill from Bethphage past the olive trees of the Garden of Gethsemane once again into the holy city. He knew he’d mention the little colt and the tiny village in his book. It was noon and that particular special morning was over in Bethphage.

Facts is Facts - The Story of Lazarus

Ezekiel 37:1-14; Psalm 130; Romans 8:6-11; John 11:1-45

In the story of Jesus Christ, nothing seems to hit us quite as much as the story of Lazarus and his two sisters.

The family owned an inn in Bethany, about two miles from Jerusalem. Many of the people from Galilee often stayed here on their way to Jerusalem, including Jesus and his disciples.

This was the place where Martha had served dinner and grown frustrated that her sister Mary sat at Jesus’ feet. Reading between the lines, it appears that Jesus had known the three members of the family for quite a while, perhaps decades.

And so, one day, Jesus and his disciples are at the place where John the Baptist did his work on the other side of the Jordan River, down in the Jordan Valley far below Jerusalem. They left Jerusalem a couple of months earlier when a group of Jews were ready to stone Jesus because Jesus had claimed to be God. It is well worth reading the passage in the last half of John Chapter 10. Jesus and the disciples left town because it just wasn’t safe for them. Now, down here in the Valley, word comes from Bethany that Lazarus has fallen sick and is very, very ill.

Now we have to remember that this was a time before antibiotics. It was a time when the average man died in his thirties. It was a time when a good strong sinus infection or an infected cut could kill you over the course of a week or two. You’ll remember that last spring at this time I had pneumonia and it took three courses of different antibiotics to clear me up. If I had been living in the days of Jesus, you’d have a different pastor today.

The sisters are very alarmed and worried about how sick their brother Lazarus is. So they send for Jesus, the one man they know can cure their brother’s sickness. And what does Jesus do?

He takes his time, staying where he was for another two days. But Jesus, who was God walking on the earth, Jesus knows what is happening. He knows that Lazarus is getting weaker and weaker, and Jesus knows that Lazarus has finally died. But he told his disciples: “Don’t worry. This won’t end in Lazarus’ death!

The disciples remind Jesus that the last time they were in the Jerusalem area, the Jews tried to stone him. But Jesus is ready to go. So Thomas the Twin – did you know the name Thomas comes from the Aramaic language and means “Twin” – Thomas says they might as well all go with him and die with him. So they head up the Jericho road that goes up, up, up 3000 feet to Bethany, over three times the climb to the top of Seneca Rocks, and they finally reach Bethany to find a funeral has been held and a bunch of people standing around weeping.

It is hard for us to understand the depths of their grief, for it is a core belief of Christianity that one day the dead will rise and go to be with Jesus again in New Jerusalem. We know we will live again.

But in those days, there was a great debate going on in the land of Israel. It is like the debates you sometimes hear today between different groups of people in America.

The Sadducees, the men who ran the great Temple of God in Jerusalem officially believed that there was no way for people to come back to life. You were born, you lived your life, then you died and that was it. Your existence was over, for, you see, it was very difficult to find passages which clearly point to a resurrection, a new life, in the first five books of the Bible, and that was the only part of the Bible that the Sadducees accepted as true.

The Pharisees, though, believed in the entire Hebrew Bible, what we call the Old Testament. And they had read and heard the great prophecy of the dry bones from Ezekiel 37, our first reading, where Ezekiel sees a valley full of old, dry bones, skeletons that have been laying in the desert sun for years, for decades, for centuries, bones which the vultures and the desert rats have picked every bit of meat off of, bones which the ants have taken every bit of marrow out of. These aren’t the recently killed bodies of a great army – no, this is a valley where the dead have been put for centuries, and the bones are all that remain. Ezekiel appears to speak of a time far, far, far into the future when the Spirit flows back into the dead of Israel. The bones are just lying there and Ezekiel writes that God spoke to him:

Then He said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’” So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.

 Then He said to me: “Son of man, these bones are the people of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.’ Therefore prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: My people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel.Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord.’”

The Pharisees saw that those who had died far from home would be returned to Israel in the far future. But to us looking back, thousands of years later, doesn’t the image and the prophecy remind us of the Holocaust of World War II, where 6 million Jews from Europe were killed in the camps, where those who survived looked like walking skeletons, and where many of those who survived came back on ships to the new land of Israel?

But the Pharisees did not know of Germany and Hitler and concentration camps. But they knew that in the far future, the people of Israel would come back to life. But still, there was this great uncertainty for the average person about death, because the average person didn’t know whether the Pharisees were right or the Sadducees were right. And the vision of Ezekiel of a valley filled with dry bones isn’t a very pleasant vision, no matter what, is it?

And so the grief of people when someone died was intense. Even today, when I do a funeral, there is a clear difference between Christian families and families who don’t believe. Christian families weep a bit, they laugh a bit, they miss their loved ones, yes, but they know deep down that they will see their loved one again someday, and that someday is not very long in the scheme of things, for they know that this life is just the appetizer life and the main course to come is in New Jerusalem with Jesus and our believing loved ones one day.

At this funeral, as Jesus came upon the mourners four days after Lazarus' burial, Jesus hated that Lazarus was dead and even Jesus wept. Remember always that Jesus wept when his friend was dead if you feel you shouldn’t cry about death. Even Jesus wept. It is the right thing to do, to weep. It helps us to remember, to process the anger that death exists in this world. Weeping helps us to heal.

But those who don’t believe in Christ go much further in their grief. They cry and wail. They feel sick, they are wracked with guilt, they hurt deeply, they fight, they make sick jokes, they really don’t know what they will do because they have either lost someone on whom they strongly depended - like a good car - or they have come to the funeral because they were expected to be there, and they know they’ll never see this person again. Ever. And it reminds them that their future after death is very uncertain. And so they are frightened. They are frightened of death, for it is also the fear of the unknown darkness that scares them.

Now imagine the grief of all the people who knew Lazarus, before Christ had shown His power over death, for Lazarus had been dead for four entire days and put in a tomb! 

When Jesus wants to open up the tomb, Martha feels she has to remind Jesus ("poor fellow must have forgotten in his grief!") that Lazarus’ body is going to stink like a dead deer’s carcass beside the road, since Lazarus has been dead so long. It won’t be pleasant, it won't be sweet, it will be terrible when the men open up that tomb. But Jesus insists on opening the tomb, because He has a point to make and it is an important point. And Jesus IS the highly respected Rabbi whom people follow and listen to.

The men go forward and roll away the stone blocking the entrance out of the way. And Jesus looks up and prays:

"Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.” When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”
And there is a pause. Then, someone sees movement in the darkness of the tomb. Everyone draws in their breath and holds it, because there is something moving in there. Something white is moving in there. It is walking towards the doorway upright like a man….

And Lazarus, the dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. 

He wasn’t a zombie, he was simply alive again and everyone was amazed! Everyone just stared, stunned until Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.” And then the celebration began!

That day, the fact was that Jesus had taken a man who was truly dead, had been dead for four days, had died in front of his family, and Jesus commanded him to come back to life and walk out of his tomb.

That day, the fact was that Jesus had shown that Jesus was more powerful that any prophet they’d ever seen, Jesus was connected to the same God that had prophesied through Ezekiel and Jesus was more powerful than death itself. No dead bodies were safe with Jesus around!

That day, the fact was that this miracle did not happen in front of a couple of witnesses in an out-of-the-way town, this miracle did not happen in front of picked friends, this miracle happened in broad daylight two miles from one of the largest cities in the world, in front of dozens of witnesses who ran back into Jerusalem and told people about what happened. You see, sometimes the facts are the facts and have to be reported as such.

But that day, the fact was that there were some people who were in power in Jerusalem who were more concerned with their own power than with the facts, and that day, the fact was that several of these men decided that Jesus had to die and soon, and the fact was that later that spring, the assembled people of Jerusalem would chant in front of the Roman governor that they wanted Jesus to die.

And so the fact was that the Roman governor ordered Jesus to die and the fact was that Jesus did die on a cross in front of many witnesses and a Roman soldier who stuck him in the side with a spear to make sure he was dead, and the fact was that he was quickly buried that Friday evening before nightfall in a borrowed tomb and a 2000 pound boulder was rolled into a trench in front of his tomb and a seal was placed on the tomb and soldiers stationed to guard the tomb.

But praise God, the fact was that Sunday morning there was an earthquake and the fact was that the stone in front of Jesus’ tomb was rolled away and the fact was that Jesus was not in the tomb but found Lazarus’ sister Mary that morning in the garden near the tomb and talked with her and the fact was that over the next forty days he appeared at least ten more times to over 500 people and those facts are why we are in church today because it means that death has been defeated and those who choose to follow Jesus will live forever, PRAISE GOD!