Welcome to the New World

As Saundra, our Shih Tzu puppy Brownie, and I are preparing to move, we’ve had some serious sorting and packing to do. Our new parsonage is nice, with a bit more living space than this one, but it has considerably less storage space. So we have been giving away books to the Lost Creek Library, giving Andy spare furniture, selling some items, donating a lot of stuff to the mission and Helping Hands House, and filling up multiple trash bags. Our dog Brownie has been very upset with the activities. 

Did I say I’m sore and my back hurts?

In addition, there are other ways we have to get ready for the move. We’ve cut back on grocery purchases so we can reduce the amount of food we move. I’ve been in contact both with Brian Plum at my new churches and Nathan Weaver, your incoming pastor, to make sure the transitions are smooth. And then, there’s Brownie.



Brownie has gotten a bit scruffy over the winter. Her hair has grown long – I wish I could say it is sleek, but it isn’t. It’s tangled and matted and even after repeated washings, it’s dirty. Her nails have grown long because they haven’t been trimmed since last year. I’d like to say to her, “Clean yourself up!”, but she isn’t a cat, she can’t trim her claws, she can’t cut her hair, and she can’t comb it out.

Since I’ll need to walk Brownie around the new neighborhood on a leash – there isn’t any nice big, safe yard for her like there is here – I figure she’ll need to be cute. Nothing like walking a cute dog in the neighborhood to meet people. So we’ve begun to trim off hair, grooming her.

But Brownie doesn’t like being groomed. Brownie is extremely good in setting boundaries. You can trim some hair off her back, a bit around the eyes, but you are not to do anything near her tail or feet or tummy – and she is very clear about that. So the other day, I gently pinned her down, holding her tightly and talking quietly to her while Saundra attempted to use the clippers on her.

Isaiah 25:6-9, Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11, Mark 16:1-8 

It didn’t work. First of all, Brownie began with a low rumble. Then a more open mouthed growl. Then she jerked and snapped – and my finger was the target! So we decided she could look grungy for a while longer...

Folks, when we live in this life, left to ourselves, we start out all cute and fairly clean. But as the rough times of life come, we begin to look scruffy. Our souls become tangled and matted and dirty. We are more likely to scratch others with the claws that have developed on our souls.

We need to be groomed. We need to be cleaned up. We need trimmed.

But what soul can clean itself?

We need someone who is ready and willing to groom and bath us. We need someone who is gentle and kind and yet firm and strong who can remove the tangled, dirty mats that have found their way into our souls.

And so God sent part of Himself to earth as Jesus Christ, the Babe of Bethlehem.

Jesus grew in wisdom and statue over the next thirty years. And then, He began to conduct His mission.

He taught us a different way. He taught us that God was not a gruff, hateful God who wanted to destroy us. He taught us that God is a loving Father who wants a good, close, pleasant, gentle, relationship with each of us. In fact, Jesus used the same word a Jewish child uses in talking to His Father – On the night Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prayed to his “Abba”, his Daddy.

And throughout His teaching, Jesus repeatedly told the people around him that He was the same as God. Sometimes it was subtle, like the days he forgave people their sins against God. Other times, it was a bit stronger, like when he would say, “I am”, which was short for “I am that I am”, the holy name that God had answered Moses with when Moses asked the talking, burning bush His name. And sometimes it was very blatant, like in John 10:30, when Jesus said, “I and the Father are one.”

Most of the time, the people weren’t happy. They’d pick up stones to stone him or try to grab him and push him off a cliff. They understood exactly what he was claiming and considered it blasphemous. And so, when he was arrested and told the Sanhedrin, the ruling Jewish council, that they would see him sitting at the right hand of God, they took him to the Roman governor to be sentenced to death. And eventually he was executed on the cross on Passover Friday for the crime of claiming to be God. He died around 3 pm and his body was taken down in a hurry and placed in a tomb before sundown, for Jewish Law required this. A two-thousand pound disk-shaped stone was rolled down into a trench in front of the tomb to block the entrance, while Pilate’s wax seal was placed on the stone and a 16 man guard was established.

The next day, the Jewish Sabbath, was uneventful. His followers laid low.

And the next morning early, as our reading as well as sections of the other Gospels tells us, the women went to the tomb. In the rush to put Jesus in the tomb on Friday evening, certain things had not been done. So these women went to the tomb, intending on unwrapping the linen mummy wrap around him, washing his body, coating him with embalming spices, and rewrapping his body. It was a grim task, but the task of the loved ones. But they were worried that they wouldn’t be able to open the tomb because of the heavy stone. “Who will roll away the stone?” they asked each other.

When they arrived, things were not as they expected. The stone was rolled away. Mark tells us his account:

As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed.

“Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’”

Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.
The Apostle John adds in his account that Mary Magdalene stayed in the cemetery garden weeping. She ran into the man she thought was the gardener and asked him where they had taken Jesus’ body. The gardener turned to her and said one simple word. “Mary”.

Such a simple word. The most common woman’s name at the time. Just a couple of syllables. Just the most basic way to address someone. But it instantly told her something.

It told her that this man knew her. Of the hundreds of thousands of people in Jerusalem that weekend, this man knew her name. Of the hundreds of thousands of people in Jerusalem that weekend, this gardener that she thought she’d never met before knew who she was. Of the hundreds of thousands of people in Jerusalem that weekend, that voice and that single word told Mary that a new world had begun, that everything was turned upside down, that her grief instantly became joy because the gardener was Jesus walking around!

Mary grabbed Jesus and looked into His face. She yelled “Teacher!” And Jesus told her to tell Peter and the rest of the disciples that he was still with them.

And she did.

Later that day, a couple of disciples met Jesus walking along a road. Still later, most of the disciples were visited by Jesus. The next week, even Thomas, the one who had doubted the first stories, was met by Jesus. Later on, others met Jesus – five hundred people saw the risen Jesus. In eleven separate appearances to different people at different times and in different places, over five hundred people saw the risen Jesus. They saw him, talked with him, saw him eat some fish, and even had breakfast cooked by him.

And they told people. The disciples saw Jesus ascend to Heaven. They replaced Judas the traitor. And Seven weeks after Easter, on the festival day of Pentecost, miracles happened and the assembled twelve disciples testified as a body to the people of Jerusalem what they had seen, and over three thousand people believed and were baptized.

After that, the movement grew and grew. There were persecutions, a believer named Stephen was killed while a man named Saul looked on. Saul later encountered Jesus, changed his name to Paul, and began to preach and teach and establish congregations across Turkey and Greece and Cyprus. Paul spoke of the gospel, the good news, about Jesus Christ. Paul wrote letters, one of which, in part reads this way:

Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance:
that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
that he was buried, 

that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures 

(Paul was counting Friday, Saturday, and part of Sunday) 

and that he appeared to Cephas (the Aramaic name we translate as Peter), 

and then to the Twelve.

After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.
Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles,
and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 

(How much more sinful can you be than to persecute and kill people simply because they are Christians? Look how what we've done pales in comparison to Paul's sin!)

But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. 

(He’s saying that God changed him for the better.)

Whether, then, it is I or they (the apostles), this is what we preach, and this is what you believed.

And this is what most Christians have believed throughout history and today.

• Jesus died as the payment for our sins. 
• He was buried and came back to life, proving He was indeed God as He had claimed. 
• Hundreds of people saw Jesus, multiple, credible witnesses who were willing to die before changing their story. 

Andso  today, we live in a new world.

We have found that our souls are scruffy because we are trying to stay clean ourselves. But we can’t clean our souls by ourselves – we need a Groomer.

And because of Jesus’ words and deeds, we know that God is a gentle Groomer who wants to clean our souls, to allow us to live in this new neighborhood in which we find ourselves, in this new world.

Everyone here walked in with scruffy, dirty, matted and tangled souls. We all needed our claws trimmed back. We all had a tendency to bark and growl and bite at those who were just trying to help us – even the gentle Groomer, God. Most of us are still being groomed. It takes decades to properly groom a soul.

• But by coming to church every week, we learn to hear God’s voice. 
• By coming to church every week, we learn to know what God wants of us. 
• By coming to church every week, we find out that God wants us to have peace, sunshine, and joy in our lives – and we find out how to get to that new world of peace, sunshine and joy. 

Consider yourself and your family.

• Is your soul looking and feeling a bit frazzled? 
• Have you been scratching those who love you a bit too often, a bit too much? 
• Are there those around you who would love to give you a gentle petting, but you are so irritable, so angry at the world that you growl and bark and even bite back? 
• Are your children beginning to lose their cuteness and become a bit scruffy? 

Join us here, week after week, and learn with us. Unlike the caricatures of Christians found in Hollywood movies and television, unlike the terrible teenage memories that some people have of the one or two highly judgmental Christians, unlike the handful of strident people who strive for headlines - The overwhelming majority of us quiet Christians mostly understand that we are not perfect people – but we are getting better, week after week. When we growl at each other, we mostly have learned to apologize and forgive each other. We pray for each other – and we’ll pray for you. We’ll ask the great Groomer of the Universe, God the Father almighty, to help you as he has helped us.

And in all that flying fur as it is clipped off, that snipping of claws, that soaping and bathing and removal of dirt from our souls, we hope you’ll find new friends here, as we look with worship to our great Groomer.