Easter: Part 2

We’re going to take communion together. It’s something we do each Sunday here at the Vineyard to remind us of what Jesus did. We take this little cracker that tastes like cardstock to represent Jesus’ body and the grape juice underneath reminds us of his blood. On the night Jesus was betrayed, he had one final meal with his closest friends and followers. During that meal, Jesus said this about the bread, in Matthew 26:26 “While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take and eat; this is my body.””

Let’s eat the bread together.

Jesus goes on to say this in verses 27 and 28: Matthew 26:27–28 “Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”

Let’s drink the juice together.

Pray.

To get to know Jesus, we need to know what he did. Yes, the story is important, and there’s a deeper knowing we’re invited into, where what we know in our heads gets into us, into our hearts, our bodies and changes us from the inside out.

Something we’re invited to know is Jesus’s resurrection means there really is a happily ever after because Jesus brought victory over sin.

Victory Over Sin

In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul reminds us of what Jesus has done. He writes in verses 3–4: 1 Corinthians 15:3–4 “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,”

Jesus died, he was put in a tomb and he rose from the dead on the third day. And, maybe to those of us wondering, it’s considered three days because in Jewish culture, no matter the time of day, even though Jesus died in the afternoon on Friday and rose Sunday morning, they count the start of a new day as a full day, different from how we count today. So, three days, fun facts maybe no one else cares about, but there you go!

Why does this matter? Paul goes on to tell us a few verses later, starting in verse 13: 1 Corinthians 15:13–18 “If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost.”

This seems pretty intense, right? Without the resurrection, our faith is meaningless. We have victory over sin because when Jesus rose from the dead, our sins were paid for—atoned for. The word atonement means making things right between God and people. God is holy, he’s perfect, just and good. Initially, we humans got to live in heaven on earth, in the garden of eden. And then we turned away from God, we wanted to be in control and in charge of our own lives. And that fractured our friendship with God.

Before the resurrection, back in Old Testament times, sin required payment. Every year, during Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the high priest would enter the innermost part of the temple—called the Holy of Holies—to offer a sacrifice on behalf of all of the Israelites. Once the priest entered the Holy of Holies, everyone would wait, holding their breath, wondering if the priest would make it out alive. If he did, it meant the sacrifice had been accepted. They’d breathe a sigh of relief. They’d celebrate. But this had to happen again and again, because in Leviticus 16, a book of the Bible filled with all these laws God’s people needed to follow, they’re told this has to happen once a year to atone for the sins of all the Israelites. Because one sacrifice could never fully cover the sins of the people.

Until Jesus. He lived a perfect life we could never live ourselves. He died the death we deserve, he took the place for every decision we make that doesn’t align with the perfection found in the garden of eden. He took on, he absorbed the consequences for our sin so we don’t have to.

Then, when he rose from the dead, he broke the power of sin and death. He was the perfect sacrifice that only had to be made once, to atone for the sins of the entire world. Jesus now represents us before God. When our time comes to face judgment, Jesus steps in, hands God the receipt, and says, “No need—they're with me. It’s been paid for. In. Full.”

That’s what victory means. Not that we can do it, but that it’s been done for us.

We can’t fix ourselves—our actions, our thoughts, our intentions. We’re invited to depend on the one who can. The one who already paid the price. For every one-too-many drinks. For every moment of envy when we saw that other family looking all cute and put-together on this lovely Easter Sunday. For visiting that website once again, even after swearing we wouldn’t. For that little white lie we told again. For yelling at our co-worker. For saying something cruel about someone behind their back that we’d never say to their face.

No matter what it is, whatever we think it cost, Jesus paid for all of it.

If this is true, if there really is victory over sin, why don’t we see it more today? This, friends, is the tension of something we here at the Vineyard know as the now and the not yet of the kingdom of God. We’re living in a liminal, in-between space, one where Jesus went back to heaven, to prepare a place for us. And, he told us he’d be coming back again, bringing heaven with him and permanently establishing it here on earth, but he hasn’t come back yet. There is still pain, heartache and brokenness, we humans still chose our own way over and over again. So, why the delay? How many of us find ourselves saying on a regular basis, just come back already, Jesus, isn’t enough enough?! Waiting is the worst.

And, there’s an opportunity for us in the waiting. As we wait, as we place our faith in Jesus, in who he is and what he did, we get to be transformed.

The transformative power of faith.

The author of 1 Corinthians is a guy named Paul. But before he was known as Paul, he was Saul. Saul was a Pharisee, a Jewish leader committed to knowing the religious rules and scriptures. Even being a Pharisee is a big deal, it’s like if we were to imagine Harvard’s religious studies graduating class, then take the top 1% of them, that’s the level of honor and education of the Pharisees, they were so stinking smart and committed to Jewish tradition. Saul considered Jesus followers a threat and spent time arresting and persecuting them. Then one day, while traveling to arrest more Jesus followers once again, he unexpectedly encountered Jesus, heard his voice, asking why Saul was persecuting him. He was blind for three days until Ananias, a follower of Jesus, prayed for Saul, he got his sight back, he later changed his name to Paul and went on to be one of the most well-known early Christians leaders, writing nearly half of the books of the New Testament. Talk about transformation.

If this can happen to someone who was actively persecuting Christians, it can happen to any of us. Something happens when we encounter Jesus. We see it in Paul’s story, and we see it again and again in Scripture. And, we still sometimes can think, “yeah, ok, maybe Paul was this jerk who persecuted Christians but he had an insane encounter with God!” Maybe the reason Jesus met him on that road was because maybe he was so stubborn, so filled with pride that that was the only way to get through to him.

When we are able to believe into the resurrection, when we finally let down our guards, we can consider that maybe God does actually love us exactly as we are right here and right now. And from that, our dependence slowly begins to shift off of ourselves and onto Jesus.

We can’t fix ourselves and then come to Jesus. Left to our own devices, our own willpower, we’ll all fail, we’ll all mess up. Paul talks about this in Romans 7, what my dad calls the “do-do section” because Paul keeps saying, “I do the things I don’t want to do, and I don’t do the things I do want to do.”

We’ve all made promises to ourselves that we wouldn’t do that thing again—and then we do it again. And again. And again. Anyone else been there?

It’s like for some reason we just can’t help ourselves. And that’s exactly the point.

David Benner puts it like this in his book Surrender to Love: “I only know Divine unconditional, radical and reckless love for me when I dare to approach God just as I am. The more I have the courage to meet God in places of weakness, the more I will know myself to be truly and deeply loved by God.”

Meeting God as we are is risky. Maybe terrifying. This week, I tried something I haven’t done before. I’ve been wrestling with an unhealthy thought pattern I just can’t shake. My normal MO is to bury it, ignore it, pretend it’s not there, or bring something less ugly, something more acceptable before God and hope this deeply ugly part of me will just disappear in the shadows. I struggle to simply talk to God in prayer and so when I need to talk to God I usually go for a walk or journal and that day, I started to write out my thoughts. I admitted that not only was I stuck, but I didn’t even want to let this thing go. I was just, well, really honest with the junk. In a way I’m embarrassed to say as a pastor, I haven’t been before.

I’d love to tell you the desire magically disappeared, but it didn’t. Something did happen though. As I sat with Jesus in the middle of my mess, something loosened. I felt his love—not for some future, fixed version of me—but for me right there, right then. That love was tender and kind and stronger than the shame. It didn’t erase the struggle, but it reminded me I wasn’t alone in it and even with it, it could never change how much he loves me.

We’ve got this cultural narrative that says we have to get our act together before we come to God. We even joke about it—“If I stepped foot in church, the whole place would burn down.” But what if church is actually the exact place we can bring our mess? What if it’s not about trying harder to get it together but is about receiving unconditional love and learning to live out our true identity as sons and daughters of God?

Romans 3:23 says “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Every single one of us. That’s the bad news. But the next part is the very good news, in verses 24 and 25: “and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25 God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement,[i] through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith..”

That’s what faith is—it’s daring to believe this love is real. It’s trusting that Jesus meets us in the brokenness, not once we’ve climbed out of it.

Because if we could fix ourselves, we wouldn’t need a savior.

God made a way for us, in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, to stand face to face with perfect love. And if you’ve ever been loved right in the middle of your icky-ness, you know that kind of love doesn’t leave you the same.

Back to 1 Corinthians 15. Not only is Paul transformed, let’s take a look at a couple other Jesus followers, in verses 3–8. Paul says that after Jesus rose from the dead, he appeared to Peter, then to the disciples, then to over 500 people, and then to James, Jesus’s brother. Peter, on Good Friday, denied Jesus three times. James didn’t even believe in Jesus while he was alive. And Jesus went to them. He didn’t avoid the people who hurt him—he chased after them.

That’s who Jesus is. That’s the upside-down kingdom. Nothing we’ve done can separate us from the perfect love of God that is found in Jesus.

If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, none of this matters. But if he did—and we believe he did—there is hope, there is transformation, there is a happily ever after.

And next week, we’ll begin to consider what it looks like to naturally live out this kind of love in our day to day lives. Since December, we’ve been walking through the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus gives us a radical vision of the kingdom of God. At its core is a call to love—not just with feelings, but with action. A love that seeks the good of others. A love that reflects the heart of God.

This new series will help us explore how to live out that love—with grace, humility, and the help of the Holy Spirit. Because when we love like Jesus, we don’t just talk about God’s kingdom, we get to show the world what it looks like.

Transformation into Christlike-ness is a lifetime journey. And all of us fall somewhere on that journey. Some of us have been following Jesus forever and others of us are just here cuz it’s Easter Sunday and we promised our family we’d go to church with them. And many of us are somewhere in between. I believe God has an invitation for all of us today, beyond a delicious meal and so much chocolate and jelly beans.

We are invited to experience perfect love, to be reminded that we get to be God’s kids, we get to have our hearts healed, we get to be set free.

Jesus is still meeting us right where we are—on the road, in the questions, in the mess. The invitation isn’t to get it all together. It’s simply to come. To be honest. To let yourself be loved, right now, as you are. And that love is what awakens hearts, breaks fear and restores hope today.

So let’s consider opening ourselves up to that love right now.

I’d like to invite you, if you’re able, to stand and we’re gonna transition into something we call ministry time.

Let’s pray.

Ministry time

I’d like to invite up our prayer ministry team. These are folks who have been trained to pray—not to give advice or try to fix anything, but simply to listen and pray with you. When you come up, they’ll ask, “How can I pray for you right now?” , they’ll listen, and then they’ll pray.

Sometimes, they may share a Bible verse, a song lyric, or a thought that comes to mind—something they feel God might be highlighting. But they aren’t perfect. They’re human, just like the rest of us. Sometimes they hear from God, sometimes they don’t. If they do share something, I invite you to receive it with curiosity—not pressure—just asking, “Could this be true? Could God be speaking to me in this?”

There will be folks up front who would love to pray with you—whether you’re carrying something heavy, asking big questions, or just need to be reminded you’re not beyond God’s love

Raw before God: maybe it’s just something between you and God right now. Maybe you want to trust your icky-ness to someone else.