Speaker 1: The central story, the story from which all of our stories find their meaning is the story of the Christ. Who overcame death. Who conquered our violence. Who defeated sin. Who showed us that some things are worth putting our trust in.
Welcome to the Commons cast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to commons.church for more information. Welcome to Easter Sunday.
And it's already been a beautiful time together, seeing all of those faces on that opening video, sharing the Eucharist together across all of the homes that we occupy, singing and celebrating in this moment in these spaces, Easter really does feel more necessary than ever right now. Yet, here I am talking to you from an empty room. And let's just name the strangeness of that because this is not how any of us would have chosen to celebrate Easter. And yet this is both the curiosity and the beauty of this moment as we find ourselves in uncharted territory together. Trusting that somehow resurrection will find us regardless.
Because in some sense, this is what Easter is all about. The fact that resurrection breaks in where we least expect. And so wherever you are joining us from today, from hundreds of homes across Calgary, from living rooms across Canada, from all over the world, for those of you we have met online during this past month of streaming, you are welcome here into this room, in this moment, in this celebration as the risen Christ meets us exactly where we need to be met. Because this is it. The hinge point of human history, where we stare directly into the heart of the Christian story and we recognize the fact that love cannot be extinguished.
And one of the long and abiding traditions of Easter Sunday, one that we have always participated in together at Commons, is that on this day, I would say he is risen, and you would say he is risen indeed. Now, that is going to be a little more difficult this year, but I think we should just try it anyway. And so I'll say the first line, and then we'll all just respond together. He is risen. He is risen indeed.
K. Today, we find ourselves now at the end of a Lenten journey that started some six weeks ago. In the beginning of an Eastertide journey that will carry us into resurrection and through the next fifty days of celebration. But we began this journey toward this moment this year with the story of Jonah. This deeply funny and at the same time profoundly challenging tale about a man who does not want to let go of his anger.
In fact, he has become so wedded to it. It has become such a part of his identity that when confronted with the reality of divine grace, he thinks he might prefer instead death. So as we wound our way through this tale, we laughed at the silliness of Jonah's tantrums, but also I think hopefully came to recognize just how hard resurrection can be to make sense of. There is a real pain in choosing to forgive. In deciding to say that we will not pass our hurt onto someone else.
That sometimes starting again, we're turning to life again. All of this can feel too big for all of us. So Jonah led us to Palm Sunday, and we watched as Jesus enters into Jerusalem and the crowds come to meet him. We noticed how it begins to appear that Jesus has orchestrated this moment to highlight the differences between his imagination of peace and ours. As Rome's representative enters the city from the West, Jesus enters from the East.
As Rome comes with an army, Jesus is surrounded by the poor. With Rome on a war horse, Jesus is on a donkey, and yet the crowds imagine still Jesus in the role of Caesar. Thinking that the way he will put things to right is perhaps with the sword. And on Good Friday, even those hopes are dashed. Rome's sword was always more powerful after all.
And Jesus dies just like us, the victim of our violence and hatred. And in any other story, this is where the tale would end. Another of the countless casualties of our empires. Just Jesus entombed in the belly of the whale, confined and constricted like us. But instead, we find ourselves here on Easter morning.
Some two thousand years after the fact, celebrating still the story that refused to be over. And so this is our hope today. As we gather across homes and phones and TVs and tablets, as I stand here in the middle of an empty room to celebrate the return of hope. Ours is a story that refuses to be over. That love finds a way even when the darkest may still yet come.
So on this Easter Sunday, let me read to you from the Gospel of Matthew. This is chapter 28 starting in verse one. It says, after the Sabbath at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb. Now the other Mary here, this is the mother of two followers of Jesus named James and Joseph. This Mary and her sons are not part of the 12 disciples, but they are part of this extended family that has developed around Jesus.
And I love this little fact, that it's these characters on the edge of the story that get named in this central moment of the story. I mean, Mary Magdalene is of course one of the central characters in the gospel. She is, as the name Magdala suggests, a tower of strength. But here we glimpse the other Mary. And here we are called back to her sons, James and Joseph, names we barely recognize.
And for a moment it's as if the writer wants us to remember all of the lives that Jesus touched just off the page and just out of view. And I really like that because it reminds me that the divine is at work unnoticed around me all the time. But our story continues. It says that there was a violent earthquake and an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and going to the tomb, rolled it back and sat on the stone. Great image by the way.
His appearance was like lightning and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men. The angel said to the women, do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, he has risen just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay, then go quickly and tell his disciples, he has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee.
There you will see him. Now I have told you. So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy. Hold on to that phrase, it's important. But they ran to tell the disciples when suddenly Jesus himself met them.
Greetings, he said. And this is just such a weird moment because what the gospel says here is karete, which is essentially hello. That seems a little underwhelming for an instance like this, like tada maybe. I I don't know. What I do love about this is that in Greek, the standard greeting hello is also a form of the word cheris.
And cheris in Greek means grace. So in some sense, this is kind of like Schrodinger's greeting, where the time the risen Christ speaks to us, he says, hello. As if we should have always known to expect life to find its way back. But then at the same time, his first word to us is always grace, and I love that. But upon seeing him, they came to him, they clasped his feet, and they worshiped him.
But Jesus said to them, do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, for there they will see me. Now, we'll pick up the story in Galilee in a moment, but first, a story. Just over a week ago, I took my dog for a walk. And this is something that I do every day, actually twice a day.
You know that I love a good routine, but particularly right now, getting out to walk the dog socially distanced from my neighbors, of course, this is a welcome distraction. In fact, I've seen a lot of people getting dogs lately, and I feel like this COVID canine trend is only accelerating. But on this day, I put my son to bed, and I left our new daughter with my wife, and I went out for a walk around 9PM. Now the weather, as it tends to be in Calgary, has been a little all over the place. With snow and melt and freeze and ice, a pretty regular cycle here.
And so Cedar and I were walking down the pathway, I slipped and I fell. And I got up and I came home. And when I came in, I realized that I had actually pretty badly banged up my hand and it was dripping some blood on the floor. So actually took a picture, I sent it to a friend, I made a joke about fight club, I cleaned it up, and I went to bed. In the morning, my wife Rachel says to me, what happened to you last night?
And I told her my story and showed her my hand, she said, no, that's not what I mean. I mean, you took so long. You were out with the dog for hours on that walk. I wondered what was up. That seems strange, but it was early in the morning, so I brushed it off and I jumped in the shower.
And that's when I realized I also had quite a lot of blood in my hair and a large gash on my head. So after cleaning myself up once again, I sat down with Rachel to piece this all together. And that's when I realized that while I remembered slipping on the ice, and I remembered coming into the house, I didn't actually remember anything in between. So our best guess is I left the house around 9PM to walk the dog. I slipped on the ice at some point around 09:30.
I knocked myself out and laid there in the park for a while. And then I woke up around eleven, walked home, which is when Rachel heard me come in the house. And not realizing everything that happened, I went to bed. Now, for those of you worried right now, as soon as I pieced together what had happened, I did call HealthLynch, and I did watch closely for post concussion symptoms, and thankfully I have been symptom free. I feel strangely blessed to have come through this with little more than a sore hand.
But there's something strangely disorienting about realizing that you don't fully understand the story you're living in. Thinking that one thing has happened and then realizing another. Thinking things have unfolded in one way and only later realizing the truth is perhaps something entirely different. Obviously, parallels here are tenuous at best, but I can only imagine the disorientation the followers of Jesus must have felt to be utterly convinced that they were party to the story of salvation. That they had met the Messiah.
They had eaten with him, they spoke with him, they sat at his feet and soaked in his teaching. They knew that he was going to change the world only to have the rug pulled out from under them. They thought they were in one story, only to find out they were in an entirely different one. He was going to change the world. But then Rome decided they had had enough, and his own turned on him, his followers deserted him, we left him on His own to die.
And the story that was going one way, they were sure of it. Took a hard right into the ditch. All hope was lost, but then He was back. And so we pick up the story in Galilee. On the mountain where Jesus had told them, the disciples to go, they climbed the hill, they saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted.
That's what we read in verse 16. There's a lot of interesting stuff going on in this passage. I mean, imagine this moment where you hear about Jesus alive again after everything you have already seen. And you go to Galilee and you climb a mountain and as you do, you crest the top of the hill and you see someone you watched die. I mean this is quite a moment here.
There are some complications with what we're reading. On screen right now is the NIV, but there are some interpretive choices being made in how they are communicating the scene. Because first of all, there is no sum in this text. The English says, when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. And I can imagine that, I understand it.
But what it says in Greek is that they saw him, they worshiped him, but they doubted him. So there is actually no qualifier here. There is no distinction here. There is no some who worshiped and others who doubted. It's just they worshiped and they doubted.
And that actually also makes a lot of sense to me. I mean, I was there, I can almost promise that would have been my exact response. Of course, would worship. Of course, I would be overcome by that moment. Of course, I would be blown away at the grace of God to see my Lord alive again.
Of course, I would question myself. Of course, I would wonder if my eyes were playing tricks on me, wondering when I would wake up from this dream. In worship and doubt, these are like grilled cheese and mayonnaise. They just go together. And if you missed last week, you won't get that joke, but that's on you, not me.
Seriously though, anything that is worth our worship, anything worth being in awe about is by its nature, something we can barely begin to hold onto. That's why we worship. Stories that are too big for us, too good for us, too beautiful for us to properly comprehend. This is precisely what we give our worship to. And maybe you know exactly what I'm talking about.
That moment where you reflected on the power of love to change everything in your life. Then all of a sudden you think to yourself, sure, but not this time. I mean, this relationship is too broken, too far gone, too damaged to ever breathe again. Maybe you start to buy into the non violence of Jesus. And how this could change the world if we took it seriously.
But then all of a sudden from the shadows in the back of your mind comes this thought. Yeah, but what if they broke in? Or what if she was threatened? What if I was hurt? Does non violence really work?
Maybe it's that moment when we sing, and you are surrounded by good words that speak truth. And the melody almost seems to resonate physically within you, and you find yourself enveloped by voices that echo everything you want to believe about the world. And then in that moment, all of a sudden you find yourself asking, is this just the music? Is this just emotion? Is this the divine or am I just allowing myself to manufacture this moment?
See, worship and doubt have to coexist because worship is about the world we can't quite see yet. Here, the disciples see Jesus, but maybe they're not quite ready to see a world filled with the risen Christ just yet. But there's even more going on here in this story. Because the Greek language is an interesting one. It's a very exact language.
It's very different from the open ended malleableness of Hebrew that we saw all through the Jonah story. Greek often has very specific imagery. The writer here speaks of worship and doubt and uses two terms that carry with them very specific examples of those ideas. In Greek, the words are and they very much do mean worship and doubt, but they're actually examples of those ideas. Is actually to bow down.
There's something very beautiful about involving your body in worship. If you come from a tradition like the Catholic church, you might be familiar with all the standing and the sitting and the kneeling, and maybe at one point you even resented that imposition. But there is a sense of wonder when we involve more than our minds in our worship. And some of us like to raise our hands when we sing. And some perhaps want to dance when we feel connected to God.
A few weeks ago, when all of this COVID nineteen took over much of our lives, I made a video talking about praying with our bodies. There is this ancient prayer called the Jesus prayer that has been repeated for centuries. And on paper, it's very simple. Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. We repeat this sometimes in our worship at Commons.
But the tradition is that you would repeat this with the rhythm of your breath. Jesus Christ, Son of God, on the inhale. Have mercy on me, a sinner, on the exhale. The idea is that you breathe in the goodness of grace, this divine incarnation come close to you in the Christ. Also that you then can breathe out your shame and sin.
Anything that pretends to separate you from God. And for me, it's often this intersection, my thoughts and my breath, my mind and my body, this rhythm within me that grounds me when I am feeling lost. And so often, I repeat this prayer and I breathe it in, I breathe it out, and I find some safety in that. Well, is like this. It means worship, but it means an act of worship or an act in worship, expression.
It means they saw Jesus and they bowed down in worship before him. And it's not fear, it's not fealty. It's worship, it's relationship, but it's a movement they make. And then they doubted. This is a really interesting word because doubt is a really tough concept to communicate.
I thought a thing, but then I thought perhaps I didn't think that thing. I mean, that's weird. So what happens is that in a lot of languages, doubt is expressed in metaphor. You may have the idea of being of two minds or going in two different directions. In Greek, one of the ways to express doubt is the idea of halting or hesitating.
That's what edistazo means. There's this story earlier in the same gospel of Matthew where Jesus walks on water. And the disciples are in a boat and a storm comes up, and all of a sudden Jesus is just walking alongside beside them. And they all think this is weird, but Peter's like, well actually this is pretty stinking cool. Jesus, he says, call me and I'll come to you.
And Jesus is like, okay. And so the story goes that Peter gets out of the boat and literally starts walking on the water toward Jesus. And for a moment he's doing it. And the waves start kicking up and that catches his attention and he begins to take his eyes off Jesus and he starts to sink. And so Jesus has to come and get him.
And what does Jesus say when he reaches him? He says, you of little faith, why did you stop? You were doing great, dude, you were walking on water. So why on earth or maybe on water would you stop? And all of a sudden, with these two ideas in mind, we start to put together the scene here at the end of Matthew.
Matthew. Disciples think the story is going one way. They believe with everything in their being that Jesus is the one, but then he dies in front of them. And they realize that they are in a very different story than they thought. Except now they hear that he is back, the Lord is risen, and they're told to go and meet him, and there he is.
Their hope, alive again. I mean, what do you do with that? It's hard to believe, but it's even harder to believe again. And so they worship, but they doubt. They bow down, but they refuse to come closer.
It's an expression of worship. It's full of hope, but it's tender and it's delicate and it's frail. What if this isn't what we think either? Or if this gets taken away from us too, can we really afford to put our hope back in this kind of a story? Maybe this Easter that feels familiar.
You want to celebrate. You want to sing. You want to bow down and believe with everything is different now because love has overcome the world. But maybe also right now, you hesitate. And you pull up a little short.
And you ask, can you really trust this? Can you really believe this right now? Can you really count on resurrection now amidst a world where everything feels so unfamiliar? Can you afford to believe again? That's a good question.
But this is also the best part of the story. Because when the disciples hesitate, Jesus doesn't. And we read next that Jesus came to them. Literally, what it says is that Jesus walks toward them. When they are afraid to move toward Him, Jesus moves toward them.
And He says, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. For surely, I am with you always to the very end of the age. You see this is our story. None of our doubts, none of our hesitation, none of our inability to hold on to hope in the face of pandemic.
None of it ever separates us from the story we are actually in. Because this is the story of the God who cared so deeply, who loved so ferociously, that even our worst violence could not separate us from love. See, resurrection is not only for the good times, it is not only for the celebration of Easter. In fact, resurrection is for times just like these. Because resurrection is skin and bones and sweat and tears and blood and dirt under fingernails.
And yes, of course it is belief and faith and soul and spirit. But it is also movement and hesitation and wonder, and embrace. It is losing your breath to the harsh cold of winter and then breathing in the soft warm scent of spring all over again. Even when, especially when, that spring takes longer than we expected to arrive. Because the celebration of resurrection is not just for when we want it, it is for when we need it.
Right now, more than ever, we need stories of resurrection. Stories that remind us that the story, the central story, the story from which all of our stories find their meaning, is the story of the Christ. Who overcame death. Who conquered our violence, who defeated sin, who showed us that some things are worth putting our trust in. And even if we have to learn to believe all over again.
Even if we have to tell this story in empty rooms to empty pews, because sometimes we are preaching to ourselves after all. Even if we have to remind ourselves that when we can't move toward God, it is God that moves toward us, because this is what Easter is about. And maybe you have stood at a distance from the divine. Maybe for a long time or maybe it's this moment. These restrictions, this pandemic that have done it to you, but all of this has seemed to steal your faith and force you to hesitate in ways that are unfamiliar.
Maybe in this moment, we should be full of hope. You feel more hopeless than you have in a very long time. May you know that even here, as you stand at a distance, unable to move toward God, the spirit of Jesus does not hesitate even for a moment to move toward you. To wrap you in loving arms and remind you of the story that you are really in. Because you are loved.
And you are welcome. And your place at the table has been made ready for you. And your seat will be saved for as long as you need until you are ready. Because this is Easter. May resurrection find you this day.
May hope work its way into you this day. May the risen Christ meet you and heal you and bring you back to Himself this Easter. Because this is our story. Even in rooms that feel empty, love refuses to die. So join us as we sing one final time.