(Un)Prepared

2020-04-04 SWCC Worship Gathering

Pre-Service - Sheryl

Welcome

Call to Worship: Flowering Cross - Christ is Risen! He is risen indeed!

Songs of Praise: This is Amazing Grace & Happy Day (Jeremy)

Announcements -

Sunergo roll-out - THANK YOU Note: Giving - all through Sunergo now, PushPay is no longer active

Luke for Lent - ALMOST DONE! And I’d love to hear what you noticed. What is sticking with you as you get to the end of the gospel?

Mission Partner Update: Treasures of God - a new addition and a fundraising opportunity - also special request for prayer for one

Prayers of the People in breakout rooms

Andrea prays

Sermon Intro:

As people who know the story of Easter, this can be a text we don’t read all that well. We can’t suspend our disbelief. We know what’s going on and so we miss that the people in the story don’t know what’s happening.

We know that Jesus is risen and so we want the Easter story to be happy and joyful and full of light. But it’s actually not really that kind of story. Especially in Luke’s gospel where Jesus is actually ABSENT in the Easter morning narrative. He’s not going to show up until later in the chapter - the Emmaus Road account which we’ll look at next week. But this week, in the garden by the tomb, it’s just women who are prepared for one thing and get another. Apostles (men) who don’t believe the women when they come with their story. And Peter walking home scratching his head.

So as we hear the story this morning, let’s go in with our eyes open. Don’t watch for Jesus...he’s not in this story. Don’t insist that the people in the story are rejoicing over an absent Jesus. They don’t yet know quite what is going on right in front of them.

Which means we’re in good company this morning.

Perhaps you have arrived here. Here to Zoom or YouTube. Here to Easter 2021. And you are not sure what is going on. In the text, in your life, in the world around you. You are not sure who to believe about what. And you don’t know where Jesus is in all … [gestures] this.

Come. Let’s hear the Easter story as Luke has recorded it for us. Linda, would you read for us?

Reading: Luke 24:1-12 CEB Linda

Sermon: (Un)Prepared

Have you ever been prepared?

Tofino honeymoon shovel?

We learned that we prepare differently for things. (ha!)

Our text today. This famous Easter story highlights this idea of preparation.

The women are prepared it says.

They have come to the grave at the first opportunity.

Early in the morning it says. Literally, those words are “at deep dawn”... and the reason they are up so early, eager to come and care for the body of Jesus is that they have been unable to do so until now. For he died and then there was this rush to get him into the grave before the Sabbath began at sundown. Now, after a long Sabbath and the night that follows, they are up, on their way. Prepared.

They are ready. But it turns out they are ready for a reality that no longer exists.

Jesus isn’t in the tomb.

He is not here.

As they will be told.

And while we read the story with a sense of triumph and victory - they are not experiencing triumph and victory.

They are perplexed and upset.

The women have come prepared for one thing.

But when they arrive, they find things to be not as they anticipated.

And the women respond much as we do when we encounter something unanticipated… they “didn’t know what to make of [what they saw when they arrived].

And here we come to the first of three (sets of) words spoken in our text. The words of the shining men. The angels.

“Why do you seek the living among the dead?” they are asked.

And let’s answer that question even though Luke doesn’t let the women do so. “We aren’t seeking the living. We’re here for the dead.”

Why do they seek the living among the dead?

Because they don’t know that Jesus is alive.

And the shining men then go on to let the women know that they are not as unprepared as they think they are.

“Remember what Jesus told you when he was still in Galilee, that the Human One must be handed over to sinners, be crucified, and on the third day rise again.” Then they remembered his words.

We don’t know exactly what they remember. But they remember enough. They put the events of the last couple days together with the things they heard Jesus tell them as they followed Him. And it’s enough that they run to find the apostles and the other disciples.

These disciples, run to find the other disciples. These women function as the apostles to the apostles. In Luke’s version of the Easter morning narrative, they don’t encounter Jesus like Mary does in John. But the remembering is still enough to send them back to the others.

And of course, they come to the disciples and the apostles who are reeling from an entire weekend of unanticipated events. They are trying to prepare themselves for “what comes next.” What will be our “new normal” now that Jesus has been killed? And they, much like the women, are totally unprepared for what’s coming.

But the women return from the tomb and this is where the second of three words shows up in our text.

The women tell what they have seen and heard and remembered.

First, the shining men spoke to the women. Now the women report to the apostles.

And the apostles? Well, they dismiss it. “Nonsense” our reading translated it. The King James renders this with the phrase “an idle tale” … and there’s something so perfectly patronizing about that translation.

But Peter, impulsive as always, runs to see if there’s anything to what these women have said. He finds nothing but the graveclothes. And he returns home wondering what had happened.

So, some of you are wondering, now Andrea, didn’t you say there were three sets of words? The angels. The women. But where are the third set of words? Ah. Those are the words remembered. The words of Jesus.

I wonder what sort of plans and preparations you have made and then had to abandon because of unanticipated realities. Even before a global pandemic, we have all experienced this. We have prepped and planned for one thing only to live something else. And then this year, we’ve done that quite constantly. And not just individually, but as families, as a church, as communities, and as a society. Which has been challenging on every level.

In that way, I wonder how are we prepared and unprepared to enter into Easter this year.

I wonder how we have made preparations for coming out of the pandemic only to realize that we may well be “in it” for awhile longer?

How have we pinned our hopes on the “after” and potentially ended up missing out on what is right in front of us.

What would an angel tell us to remember? What is it that Jesus has told us that has actually prepared us for this moment? What is it we need to remember?

There are likely many more than just 2, but these are the 2 things I think we need to remember this year on Easter Sunday in 2021:

Easter isn’t a switch that gets flipped. I mean, there’s the moment when Jesus BREATHES again. Perhaps that moment is a switch. But for the disciples, for the women and men who had begun to follow Him, Easter was a gradual dawning. A realization. A progression of putting together the things that hadn’t made sense before, but that started to fit. That started to click into place. And so I think that’s good news for us in 2021. Because it means we don’t have to flip a switch either in our understanding or in our experience of what it means that Jesus is alive. It can be slow. It can be gradual. It’s okay.

Jesus isn’t where they think He should be. In fact, Jesus isn’t in Luke’s account of Easter morning. He’s conspicuously absent. I mean, we know He’s alive. But He doesn’t show up. The women go to the tomb and He is not there. They go to the disciples and the apostles. And He is not there either. So where is He? (Well, stay tuned, next week we’ll look at the rest of chapter 24...and we’ll discover that Jesus is hiding in plain sight. Meeting disappointed disciples on the road and at the table.) But Jesus isn’t there on Easter morning. He’s not where they expect him to be. He isn’t among the dead where they seek him.

In light of these two things. That Easter may well be more of a gradual dawning than the flip of switch and that Jesus isn’t to be found among the dead… In light of these, where are our invitations this morning.

Well, I think the first invitation is into the season of Easter. We get 50 days to lean into and explore the reality of resurrection. We don’t have to get it all today. We don’t have to fit all the celebration into this one day. We can gradually enter in. So if you’re ready to jump in with both feet, great. Go for it. But if you are feeling a little uncertain today. The Easter season is for you. To explore what it might look like for us to be “an Easter people” as Pope John Paul the second put it:

“Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are an Easter people and hallelujah is our song.”

And so we begin today. But we have some time now to enter in.

Our second invitation is to turn away from the things of death, including the lie that death has the last word.

And turn TOWARD the living. Toward the God who lives. Toward the God who brings life, even out of death. Toward the God who is inviting us to come along, even with all of our doubts and questions. Easter is a moment to doubt our doubts and question our questions.

St. Augustine: “Easter is a foretaste and promise of the joy that will be ours in the future. It points to something we do not yet possess.”

Let’s journey with the women, recognizing that the ways we think we are prepared might turn out to be completely useless. Ointments for the dead. When the dead aren’t dead.

Let’s journey together, trusting and discovering that Jesus has prepared us in ways we couldn’t have realized.

May we be and become an Easter people.

Let us learn and sing our hallelujahs!

Amen

Song: In Christ Alone (Jeremy)

Benediction

Whether you feel prepared or like you prepared for something completely different than what you’re experiencing.

Whether you speak of the risen Jesus and are met with nods of understanding and acceptance or are disbelieved by the very people you thought would be rejoicing you.

Whether you do so for the first or the thousandth time, may you turn toward the living One. Toward the future that Easter proclaims. Toward the One who can bring life even out of death.

May the grace of the risen Lord Jesus Christ,

the love of God,

and the intimate friendship of the Holy Spirit,

be with you now and always. Amen.