4-5-26 Easter Sunrise

Good morning and thank you everyone for coming.

This year has been quite the year.

I bet each of us could tell a story of a memorable year.

Not necessarily a good year, but memorable.

A year where you didn’t need to take notes on your life, but you remember details of days and weeks and months. Even years and decades later.

This has been one of those years for me here in Bly.

In the last year, I’ve met with an architect over a dozen times, a contractor, members of the Church, the community, other pastors, and so much more.

The thing is, if you had told me in 2024 that in 2025 I would be learning about building insurance, how to design a new church building, fellowshipping with another congregation, and more, I would have thought you nuts.

But even though I didn’t know what was coming about in 2025 God was preparing me and my family.

We took a sabbatical in 2024 and unknown to me at the time I was looking at 13 different churches and how they looked.

And when we came back I felt something different. I’d walk into the church building and something felt off.

The only feeling I can equate it to was when I was a kid and the house I lived in was being foreclosed. We had to move and very slowly the house I grew up in got more and more empty.

That is what October of 24 to January of 25 felt like.

I didn’t say anything, because I didn’t know what to communicate. I didn’t know how to relate what I was feeling. I’d walk into the church building every day and it started to feel strange and absent.

Bly still felt like home, I wasn’t getting that feeling. I felt on mission, doing what I was supposed to be doing, but the building felt like it was fading away.

And then it did, and it all made sense. It still hurt. God didn’t prepare me for this to take away the pain of loss, but instead to prepare me to carry on in spite of the loss.

I know if not for the sabbatical, I would be grayer or even more bald now that I am.

Sometimes God prepares us for something and even if we are told, we don’t understand until it happens. And once it happens we might fully understand, or we might fight it a bit.

Sometimes, we might spend, weeks, months, or years, seeking something and we don’t even fully know or who or what we are seeking.

In Matthew 20 we see the fruition of years of seeking.

There were people who followed Jesus for years and didn’t truly know who they were following, some knew, but didn’t know the full scope.

And Jesus was clear about it.

Matthew 6:33 ESV

33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

From the Sermon on the Mount Jesus was plainly telling everyone within earshot that he came to promote the Kingdom of God.

On Friday night we talked about how Jesus came to save souls, not bodies.

Our time here on earth is temporary, but our time after is eternal.

Most people who followed Jesus thought he was there to save them physically. Even over a month after his resurrection the followers still asked if Jesus was going to restore the kingdom to Israel.

He spoke plainly about the things to come, but even then they didn’t get it until much later.

John 20 has one such an account of someone looking for someone, but not truly understanding what they were looking for until they found it.

John 20:11–13 ESV

11 But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb. 12 And she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. 13 They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”

Prior to this, Peter and John were in the tomb and saw it empty and figured it out. This isn’t a men figure out things faster kind of thing, but Peter and John had a tiny bit more information than Mary Magdalene did about Jesus that she would get soon, but it’s not that she was at any other disadvantage here other than having less information that the two who came before.

She was distraught, sad, her friend, as far as she knew was not only dead, but missing.

John and Peter ran off without a word and here she is alone and weeping.

Or is she alone?

From Good Friday we were reminded that God never leaves us or forsakes us.

But sometimes, we don’t really know where he is because we don’t know what to look for.

She looks into the tomb. Jesus was clear that he wouldn’t be there, why are they looking?

She gets a little push. Jesus isn’t in the tomb, but two angels speak to her to comfort her and show her he is not there.

John 20:14–18 ESV

14 Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus. 15 Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” 16 Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means Teacher). 17 Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ ” 18 Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”—and that he had said these things to her.

The key here is Jesus is doing two things for Mary. He’s caring for her in her distress. He knows why she is crying, but he is engaging her where she is. She is distraught, her world is crushed. Why are you weeping? Because the person she has sought and followed for years isn’t where she expects him to be.

“Whom are you seeking?”

She thinks she knows who she is seeking. She thinks she is seeking her dead friend. But really, she is seeking her risen LORD.

And it’s Jesus asking her these questions, but because she “knows” he’s dead, she can’t see him.

But as he calls out she does see him. She see’s Jesus, the risen Lord. She get’s it.

That’s how it is for us sometimes.

We have a goal in life and the end result is often very different than we think or perceive.

Living through 2024 I didn’t think my 2025 would have turned out as it did, but now that I have lived 2025, it makes perfect sense that God was preparing me in 24 for 25. I was seeking him without fully understanding what the end result would be.

For 4,000 years God spoke to the people of Israel and the prophets about Jesus. But it wasn’t until Jesus came that it made sense.

The Bible speaks of Jesus’ second coming and there are a lot of thoughts and opinions about how all that is going to work. I have my own thoughts, but I will tell you this, there are going to be a great deal of us who when he does come back, we’ll all smack our foreheads and say, “of course he came back this way, it makes perfect sense”.

The big question this morning is; “whom are you seeking?”

Are you seeking God’s will in you life?

Is what you thought 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago about his plan for your life turned out how you thought? I know mine didn’t.

But I will tell you I’m in a better place than if my dreams came true. I’m more stressed, but more blessed. I’m strained, but more fulfilled.

God’s promises don’t ever tell me life is easy, but it does say he will walk with all the way.

If you want to really seek him and follow his plans you can start today, or continue if you are already on that path.

Keep going and enjoy the surprises.

We are going to go have breakfast at the firehall and then continue with this theme of seeking with looking at a guy named Thomas, so I hope you can join us as we learn more about what it means to seek and follow Jesus.

Let’s pray