Living In Light of the Resurrection

The following video transcript has been lightly edited

Happy Easter, everybody. So at my house, we've had this scraggly looking pine tree that grows up behind our kitchen window. And it's been there the whole time we've owned the house. And it's one of those trees that you look at and you're like, whoa, what is going on with it? It looks so unhealthy. We brought a tree guy out and had the tree guy look at it and asked the tree guy, so is this dying? Is it going to fall over on our house? And tree guy's, no, no, no. The tree's healthy. That's what it's supposed to do. . I mean, this thing is scraggly. Scraggly like, you know, someone who's trying to grow a beard, but it's so patchy that it can't. So, my wife, who prefers things to be beautiful, decides that we need to cut it down.

And I don't know if you've ever had a tree cut down, but it's not free. So at any rate, we save up our pennies, and we cut this tree down. And I'll tell you what, it's transformed our backyard and transformed the view out of our kitchen window. So our neighbor has a lot of different bird feeders and so when you look out of our kitchen now you see all these different birds on these different trees and we have this crab apple that blooms and it's really beautiful.

Additionally, the sun sets behind our house and so now in the evening as you look out the window you see the sky filled with purples and oranges and pinks, and it's just so beautiful. Now here's the thing, that view has always been there. It's been there the whole time we've owned the house. The problem was, we could never see it. And we could never see it because that scraggly old tree was blocking it. But once we cut that down, then we get to see this beautiful image. We get a full vision of what our backyard could be.

This is the idea that I think shows up in the midst of the story of the resurrection. The world is good. That's how God created it. It's beautiful, and it's wonderful, and the moments in which it's filled with love are all that the world should be. But the problem is, the world is marred. Our view is blocked by sin, and death, and brokenness, and hardship, and things like cancer, and divorce.

And so what we get to celebrate in the midst of Easter is that that view, that broken view, that view that feels more like the scraggly old tree, isn't meant to be there forever. That God is in the process of chopping down sin and death. And that's what happens in Jesus life, death, and resurrection. And so because we get to see that reality, I want to offer up three ways that I think it should reshape the way we live.

And do that from the story. So Mary Magdalene, and Mary, mother of James, and this woman, Salome, go to the tomb. And they're going to the tomb to take care of Jesus body, because Jesus body was put in the tomb, but had not been prepared in the spices. And so they go, first thing on Sunday morning, and they go expecting to take care of Jesus.

But what they discover is that Jesus is no longer there. That the stone that covers the tomb has been rolled away, and that they go in the tomb, and the tomb is empty. Jesus isn't there, but there's an angel that says, Hey, Jesus isn't here. He's going out ahead. Go tell Peter and the disciples that Jesus will meet them in Galilee.

Now there's a couple of things I want to just sketch out real quick. One, what we see is these women, they love Jesus. And so they're going to continue his burial and continue their mourning. And so one of the things we have to recognize that while the future is a future of restoration and resurrection, our life now still has a bit of mourning in it. And you and I need to learn how to be people who become good at mourning.

I think a lot of times we either avoid mourning or we go to the other extreme in which we ruminate on mourning. And either way it gets stuck. It's like being stuck inside of that scraggly old pine tree. We can't see anything else.

What we see these people do is we see them love Jesus. They go and they mourn and they mourn the loss of their friend and their leader. And in the midst of that, What they see is that the death and loss that they're experiencing is not final, it's not permanent. They're offered hope in the midst of it.

And so for you and I, that's what we need to do. We need to learn to have resurrection resiliency. We need to allow the resurrection to reshape our stories, in which we acknowledge the hardship, the loss, because we all face it in life, whether it's a job or a broken relationship, or even a dream that didn't get realized.

We have to acknowledge those and wrestle through the disappointment and the hurt. But then what we want to do is we want to undo some of the thinking in our mind. The things that aren't true, the things that are exaggerated. And then ultimately we want to anchor ourselves to hope. Anchor ourselves to Christ.

And that message is that death and sin and brokenness are not the final word. That God is renewing the whole world. That's what we see in the resurrection. Second, what we want to do is we want to be a people who believe that love is the path to open up possibility. These ladies love Jesus, and so they're going to care for him.

And as they're going to care for him, one of the things they're talking about is they're worried that the stone in front of the tomb is gonna be too heavy for the three of them to move. And so how are they gonna go care for their friend with this giant stone in the way? Because the stones are often five to six feet in diameter- five or six inches thick, and they would lean against the tomb. So hundreds of pounds, and these ladies would not be able to do it, and so they're worried. How are we going to take care of Jesus with this stone?

You know, I think the stone represents the challenges in our life. You and I have these different stones that feel like they're blocking our life from moving forward. And we try to overcome these stones in a variety of ways. Sometimes through control. Sometimes through manipulation. Sometimes we try to just force our will. We're gonna make things happen. We're gonna be our own people. But in the midst of that, the stones don't seem to budge. And what the pattern we see in the scriptures and what we see in this story is that the path of love is how new possibility is opened up.

So the world is in need of love. So Jesus comes, lives his life, dies, submits himself to death in order to conquer it, and then is raised to new life. That's the path of love opening up new possibility. That's exactly what happens for these ladies. They show up believing that they're there to love and care for Jesus. And the stone gets rolled away. And so you and I have to do the same thing. So what challenge are you facing? And what does the path of love look like?

What does it look like to engage relationally? What does it look like to serve? What does it look like to hold open handedly your own expectations? So that you might experience new possibility in this situation that feels so blocked. So living in light of the resurrection, we want to be a people who understand that for now morning is a part of that journey. And we mourn in such a way where we connect to hope. Second, we believe that new possibility arrives. When we choose the path of love.

And lastly, we have to be reminded that grace goes ahead of us. So Jesus, the angel tells the ladies that Jesus is going to meet the disciples and to go tell Peter and the disciples that Jesus is going to meet them in Galilee.

Now this is a big deal because Peter and the disciples have essentially abandoned Jesus. They told him that they wouldn't, but then they did. And so, I don't know about you, but when I've done things like that in my life, there's a sense of shame, a sense of doubt. And so what Jesus offers is restoration of relationship.

It's grace that's gone ahead. And I think that grace goes ahead of us in our life. Certainly God has gone ahead in the person of Christ, tackled death, defeated it. So that's a way that God has gone ahead. But I think that God also goes ahead by breaking into our world.

Recently, we were traveling out to an area about 45 minutes away from here to get skis for my son. And it was a horrendous snowstorm. And we got ourselves behind a snowplow. And that made the journey really a lot easier. Because the plow was plowing, throwing down some salt. And what was treacherous became easy. It was a little slow, but it was easy. I like to imagine that that's what God's grace is like in our life. Going out ahead, we're still in the midst of the storm, but it's pushing the snow to the side, throwing down salt off, offering us traction, gonna get us home. And so God shows up. Giving us new opportunity, new relationship, maybe restored relationship, the strength to persevere. These are all the ways that grace goes ahead of us and allows us to live in light of the resurrection, allows us to see the hope of the future.

And so I encourage you to not get distracted, to not let your vision of this good, beautiful world be completely blocked by sin and death and brokenness, but rather live in light of the resurrection. Recognize that we have to mourn for now, but that that's anchored to hope. Choose the path of love to open up new possibility.

And trust and have faith that grace is going ahead of you. And that God is already ahead of you with whatever you're facing.

Hey, Happy Easter everybody. He is risen. Have a great week.