Enough

He is Risen

He is Risen! That’s the part where you say “he is risen indeed!”

So let’s try that again. “HE IS RISEN!” ________ yeah ok that’s good. That’s the extent of the interactive part of this sermon. But just remember your line and this is going to go well.

How many times have you heard that in your life though? “He is risen” ________

Maybe 20, 30, 100, several hundred?

Have you ever found it curious that we don’t say “he HAS risen?” But rather that we say he IS risen?

It makes for a peculiar and yet deeply important distinction. When we say He IS risen _________ we are acknowledging something really profound. We are confessing with our lips that the resurrection of Jesus is not something that simply happened 2000 years ago. We are confessing that the resurrection of Jesus is a current reality. It happened yes, but it is continuing to happen around us and among us as we celebrate and acknowledge Jesus’s power over the grave.

And that’s a really really important reality because we aren’t gathered here today to simply remember something that happened in the past. We are here today to celebrate the work of God in our world and in our lives. We are here to celebrate the fact that because a Jewish Rabbi was crucified and died a criminal’s death and then came out of the grave 2000 years ago we have the opportunity to experience a transformed world.

We celebrate that — because Jesus, the Son of God, paid a debt that we could never pay — that we now have the freedom to live our lives in new ways that leave behind all of the destructive behaviors and negative patterns that lead us to live unfulfilled lives that miss the call that God has placed on our lives.

But the really sad thing is that we do this every year. And often nothing changes. We still live lives that are lacking.

We still go about our lives left feeling like there’s something missing. Like there’s got to be more. I’ve got to be more. God’s got to be more. Life has got to be more.

We just can’t seem to get or be enough - and it kills us slowly. We march forth every year closer and closer to death while we celebrate once a year that Jesus came up out of the grave to literally be enough for us. To show us that we are enough. To show us the power of God to transform us and our world and help us see just how much enough there truly is. But a once a year just isn’t enough for us. We go right back to our lives that feel somewhat lacking.

Dutch Theologian Henri Nouwen diagnosed our human condition in this way:

While our minds and hearts are filled with many things, and we wonder how we can live up to the expectations imposed on us by ourselves and others, we have a deep sense of unfulfillment. While busy with and worried about many things, we seldom feel truly satisfied, at peace, or at home. A gnawing sense of being unfulfilled underlies our filled lives… The great paradox of our time is that many of us are busy and bored at the same time… in short, while our lives are full, we feel unfulfilled.

I think that we all face this reality on some level or another if we are honest with ourselves. It comes to us because of a sneaky scarcity complex that is buried inside of us. It tells us that somehow we need to always be doing and getting more in order to get ahead, in order to keep up with the Jones’s.

But while we are all twisted up and distracted, Jesus is calling to us from the empty tomb, like hello? Why are you looking for the living among the dead? Why are you looking for life, for fulfillment, for enough-ness in a graveyard of busyness and exhaustion?

The problem is that the empty tomb, that Easter Sunday, isn’t enough for us because we aren’t allowing it to clue us into the greater truth that the empty tomb symbolizes.

The Empty tomb means nothing if we don’t recognize that what came out of it is the very presence of God coming to dwell with us for eternity.

The empty tomb is either a once and done “has happened event” or it is an “IS HAPPENING” event that continually allows us to experience the presence of God. And the difference between being unfulfilled and fulfilled, not enough and enough, is directly related to which way we choose to see it.

An Unexpected Encounter

In the years that followed Mary’s interaction with Jesus at the empty tomb, after she was sent to tell the disciples what had happened, the message of Jesus spread across the known world. Jesus’s resurrection made clear that Jesus was present in this world, but then the gift of the Spirit of God came to fill everyone who believed. That Spirit is the very presence of God come to live amongst us.

As the story and truth of Jesus spread, people began to wonder just how far out the love of Jesus was meant to go. Was it just for Jewish people? Was it for everyone? If it was for everyone — did they need to become Jewish first to receive these gifts, because the early Jesus followers were almost all from the Jewish faith. In fact, Christianity was first recognized as a sect of Judaism.

So Peter, one of Jesus’s disciples who had become the leader of this new movement decided that he would try to figure it out. He was invited to come to the house of a Roman soldier named Cornelius, who was clearly powerful and had influence — shown by the fact that he has a number of people gathered at this dinner party that he threw.

Now it was really unconventional for a Jewish person like Peter to eat with non-jewish people because the food laws and cleanliness standards were so stringent for Jewish people.

But God came to Peter in a dream and said “go on and eat. Don’t call anything unclean that I’ve called clean.”

What God meant was that not only was it ok for Peter to eat the food, but that these people who were considered “unclean” by Jews were no longer to be considered that way. They were enough. And so Peter went to the dinner and proclaimed these words:

Acts 10:34–43 (NRSV)

Then Peter began to speak to them: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality,

but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.

You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all.

That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced:

how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.

We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree;

but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear,

not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.

He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead.

All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”

What Peter has done is he has opened the tomb so to speak. Peter has given these non-Jewish people access to the truth and to the presence of God in Christ Jesus. Only believe. That’s all that you all need to do in order to receive this gift.

And this is really good news, because if the people were required to become Jewish in order to be a part of this new Jesus movement and the Kingdom of God that Jesus taught, then that would be a significant stumbling block.

Peter says “you are enough for Jesus, all that you need is to believe.” But Peter also says “Jesus is enough for you.”

So while these folks don’t need to become Jewish, there is something that they need to do.

They need to stop the busy body worship of their many pagan deities. Those gods whom they wasted so much time and energy and business on appeasing and hoping to be “enough” for —they all had to go.

I think that you can probably see the correlation here to our modern lives right? We might not worship Zeus and Athena, but we sure do expend a lot of time and energy on the gods of consumerism, consumption, and personal vanity don’t we? If only we can get enough or look good enough or eat enough or whatever enough… then we’ll be fulfilled.

But Peter says “no. Worship Jesus as Lord of all. Believe in him and receive forgiveness.” But that’s not where this story ends. Because leaving it there would be the same as if Jesus had come out of the grave and just left us to figure it out for ourselves. So the story continues:

Acts 10:44–48 (NRSV)

While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word.

The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles,

for they heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God. Then Peter said,

“Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?”

So he ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they invited him to stay for several days.

The Spirit, the very presence of God, comes to live in and among and with these people that were once seen as “not enough” and being outside of the plan that God had for the world. Jesus’s Jewish followers, really all Jewish people saw their Roman and Greek neighbors as their captors — as their oppressors.

In a stunning reversal, the God of Israel came to the oppressors of Israel through people from Israel to show them that they were enough, and that through him they could find new lives that were fulfilling. They were invited to participate in God’s mission to the world.

This moment in time sparked the movement of God across the known world that saw a new cooperation between God’s people as they sought to bring the knowledge of this “Enough-ness” that they found around the Roman world. It was a mission that demanded dedication and commitment but paid dividends in the form of fulfilled lives as the people of God witnessed the transformation of people and communities.

Empty Tomb 2023

And so what we need to ask ourselves is this… Has the empty tomb been enough for me? Have I truly embraced the reality that the empty tomb invites me to live a life that recognizes that God is enough, that I am enough, and that just maybe those people that seem far away from God’s grace are also enough if they are just given the opportunity to hear the message of Jesus and to abide in his presence forever?

And what would it look like for me to live in the presence of God on the other 364 days of the year that aren’t Easter Sunday?

What would it look like if every say we acknowledged: HE IS RISEN _________

What if that’s how we told our stories? I am risen! My child is risen! My community is risen! My purpose is risen! My life is risen! All because HE IS RISEN!

There’s no has been in those statements. They are statements of now and forever. Statements that recognize that the presence of God is at work in the world. We didn’t just accept Jesus one day. We accepted Jesus for all of the days. That’s real, that’s actionable, thats who we are called to be and how we are called to live.

He is RISEN ___________ and that my friends makes all the difference. That is enough. That makes you enough. That means everyone in this world is enough, because God, the one who knows every hair on the head of every person who has ever lived is enough and says they are enough.

The empty tomb invites you to leave scarcity behind and embrace a life of enough. The choice is yours to make — every single day. HE IS RISEN.