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Holy Week - Matthew 28:5-20
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
But thank you for being here with us on resurrection Sunday. The moment where regardless of doctrinal distinctives, regardless of faith traditions, regardless of personal theological eccentricities, we stand together with the entire chorus of Christian saints, and we affirm today the central story of creation, that death has not overcome and that life springs eternal. Now, one of the traditions of the church is that on this day, I would say he is risen, and you would respond by saying, he is risen indeed. Oh, you guys are on top of this already. There's a third service today, and you guys were by far the best on the first go round.
Speaker 1:Let's try that one more time. He is risen. He is risen indeed. That was really impressive, honestly. At 10:30, we were packed out in here, and I do not think they said that as enthusiastically as you did.
Speaker 1:Always enjoy that at Easter. Today, we have created more space than normal to sing and to celebrate, and we will end today with the table of the Eucharist. I do still, however, want to take some time to look at the Easter story and to reflect on what this might mean for us today. And so I want to begin by reading from the gospel of Matthew. This is chapter 28 starting in verse five.
Speaker 1: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.
Speaker 1:There you will see him. So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and they ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly, Jesus met them. Greetings, he said. They came to him.
Speaker 1: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. There, they will see me. Let's pray.
Speaker 1:Lord, of such amazing surprise as to put a catch in our breath and wings in our heart, we praise you for this joy too great for words, for this new world unleashed in us and now us in it. There are no more dead ends. And in this resurrection wonder which is wiser than we are, in which we see how great you are, may we humbly enter your resurrection and experience your new life today. Would you remind us this day that resurrection is happening all around us. As life returns with spring, as hope is renewed within us, as you work and you repair and you redeem your world.
Speaker 1:And so spirit of God, would you breathe new breath into dusty lungs and pump fresh blood into tired hearts? Would you bring new vision to eyes who have become too dull to see your beauty around us. May we celebrate resurrection as it finds us. In the strong name of the one who died and who rose to new life, we pray. Amen.
Speaker 1:Alright. Alright. Well, we'll come back to Matthew in a bit, but I wanna talk first about the trouble with Easter for a moment. This weekend, Rachel and I had the opportunity to meet up with our son's birth mother. Most of you know that our son, Eaton, is adopted, and we have had contact with his birth mom since we brought him home from the hospital.
Speaker 1:She is this incredible young woman who gave us this indescribable gift, and we have always wanted to keep that channel open with her. But this is the first time that Eaton has actually seen her. This is the first time she has seen him since he came home. And Eaton is, of course, still too young to understand all of this right now. He just knows mommy and daddy and Cedar, our golden retriever, and also Batman.
Speaker 1:But for now, that's enough. It's okay. And I was really happy for him to meet his birth mother. I knew this was a great moment. I was excited for it.
Speaker 1:And yet, I can also admit, at least a little part of me just wanted to call this off. Not for any particularly well founded fear. I really don't have any. But simply because of the point of no return. I mean, once he's met her, once that cat is out of the bag and we can be honest here.
Speaker 1:His ethnicity is mixed Caucasian and Vietnamese, so it was never going to be a secret for long anyway. But once it's out there, once he really understands his full story, who knows how he will respond? Will he be sad and wonder why things unfolded this way for him? Will he be grateful and thank God for his family? Will he be angry or hurt or feel blessed or even more likely all of the above, perhaps all at the same time?
Speaker 1:There's so much good behind that door. There's so many healthy conversations for us to have. There's so much more love in the world for him there. But at the same time, there is no going back from that. And I think that sometimes Easter feels a lot like that for some of us.
Speaker 1:We like Jesus. We may even be coming to love him in our own way. We enjoy community, the pattern of Sunday, the ritual, and the liturgy, the tradition of the faith. This helps to ground and center and heal us in some way. But to sign off on resurrection, that seems like a point of no return.
Speaker 1:There's really no coming back from that. You're really religious once you buy into that. Now I can get behind the Jesus who walked through Nazareth, who taught and welcomed and ate with anyone. I can even imagine the Jesus who gave his life, who refused the sword, who set a path of nonviolent resistance that would change everything. But to dive into resurrection and to swallow this idea that a man could live and then die and then live again.
Speaker 1:Doesn't that just make you a religious fanatic? There's this passage at the end of the gospel of Mark, and the authenticity is disputed. It will probably be footnoted in your bible. But it talks about how the followers of Christ will be bitten by poisonous snakes and not die. I don't know if you know this, but there are actually Christian groups who take this very, very literally.
Speaker 1:And not just that they don't worry about wearing, hard boots when they go on hikes. They actually actively play with snakes, poisonous snakes in their churches on purpose. Like, if there was a spider in here, my wife would freak out and probably never return to church. If you see one, gently show at the door, but do not show it to Rachel. She is not a fan of spiders.
Speaker 1:But these guys, they bring snakes into their churches on purpose. They are like the anti Saint Patrick, unlikely historical reference for the wind. I mean, that is crazy. Right? But what does it say about the fact that I believe that a man lived and died and lived again?
Speaker 1:Because let's be honest here. That is the central motif of the Christian story. And yet, this is also probably, if we are really being honest, one of the things that we struggle with in some secret or perhaps not so secret corner of our heart. I have never seen a person come back to life, not even once. And yet that possibility, that story, this fact of my faith somehow still sits at the center of my journey.
Speaker 1:Is that even intellectually honest? As the poet John Updike writes, if he rose at all, it was as his body. If the cell's dissolution did not reverse, the molecules renit, the amino acids rekindle, then the church will fall. The same hinged thumbs and toes, the same valved heart that pierced, dyed, withered, paused, and then regathered out of enduring might new strength to enclose. Let us not mock God with metaphor, analogy, side stepping transcendence, making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the fading credulity of earlier ages.
Speaker 1:Instead, let us walk through the door. But what if you just can't? What if you can't turn that corner and cross that point of no return? One of the very beautiful things about the gospels is that despite our separation from them, they remain very human. In the passage we read earlier, Jesus appears first to these women, and he asked them to go and tell his disciples to meet him in Galilee.
Speaker 1:They will see me there, he says. But when that meeting finally arrives in verse 16, it says that when the disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go, they saw him, They worshiped him, but some doubted him. Now that's the NIV. But there are some interesting things going on in the text here. And first of all, there is no sum in the Greek.
Speaker 1:The word there between worshiped and doubted is simply but. They saw him. They worshiped him, but they doubted him. So there is no distinction in this story between those who doubt and those who worship. In this moment, before the risen Christ, they are simply fully one and the same.
Speaker 1:And maybe you have been caught in a moment of worship before. Maybe a walk in the mountains or fresh snow on the hill if you've skied. A song at church where the melody seemed to resonate almost in a physical way with you. Maybe a moment of quiet prayer or good coffee, a healing conversation. And yet in the midst of a moment of pure thankfulness, all of a sudden, you began from the back of your head to wonder whether it was real.
Speaker 1:Maybe it just seemed too good to be true. Maybe you wondered whether it was manufactured in some way. And so you worshiped, but you doubted. And somehow, that moment, it coexisted within you. And perhaps this is simply what happens when something like resurrection invades our world.
Speaker 1:But there's even more here than that. Because these words, worship and doubt, proskuneo and edistazo in Greek in the original text. These are not abstract ideas. These are actually images of motion in the Greek language. Proskineo is the idea of worship, but, literally, it is the word to bow down.
Speaker 1:Now we're pretty tame here when it comes to worship. You know, we like to say we are intellectually honest and spiritually passionate, but sometimes I think that just means we like to keep our hands in our pockets when we sing. And that's okay. I like that too. Nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 1:We did put some colored lights on the stage for Easter after all. Now I've seen churches where if you're not raising your hands as soon as the drumbeat kicks in, people assume they should slip you a bible tract on your way out. Let's get you saved and singing your hands in the air. Am I right? So Jesus knows who we are.
Speaker 1:But there is something beautiful about involving your body in worship. And sometimes we raise our hands, and sometimes we bow down in prayer. And sometimes we move, and we walk, and we come to the table of Christ as we will this morning. This is what the word means. It is worship, but it is movement to bow down.
Speaker 1:Then there is this word. This is the word doubt in Greek. But the image here is the idea idea of hesitation, to stop short. That doubt is a notoriously tough concept to communicate. And so in a lot of languages, it is expressed in metaphor.
Speaker 1:In some languages, it will be the idea of having two minds at once or to question one's own thoughts. But in the Greek, the metaphor for doubting is to hesitate or to stop. So there's a story about Peter in the gospels. And he sees Jesus walking on the water, and he wants to come to him. He says, that looks cool.
Speaker 1:I need to try this. And so he gets out of this boat, and he actually starts doing it. He starts literally, truly walking on water. But then the waves rise, and they begin to catch his attention. And he takes his eyes off Jesus, and he looks at the water, and he begins to sink.
Speaker 1:And so Jesus has to come to him. He has to get him. He has to rescue him. And what does Jesus say when he reaches him? He says, you of little faith, why did you doubt?
Speaker 1:Perhaps more literally there, why did you stop? You were doing great. You were walking on water. Why, Peter, why would you stop? You see, I wonder if here at the end of Matthew, this image isn't just about abstract belief.
Speaker 1:It's about our movement toward someone. It's about a group of disciples who've had their master, their lord, their friend taken away from them. And they have sat with the loss of Friday, and then the emptiness of Saturday. And they've sat with the guilt of their abandonment of Jesus. And now they are confronted with something they had not dared to hope for.
Speaker 1:The Christ resurrected their Jesus in front of them. And they believed he was the Christ. Of course, they did. They wouldn't have followed him otherwise. So they hear the story from the women, and they go to the place they were told.
Speaker 1:They crest the hill, and they see him. And he's alive again somehow. And so they bow down in worship, but they hesitate. They stop. They just can't bring themselves to move any closer toward him.
Speaker 1:They worship with their heart and their soul and their mind and their body, but of course, they doubt. Of course, they hesitate to move towards the resurrected Christ. I mean, wouldn't you? And yet what does the text say next? Verse 19 says that Jesus came to them.
Speaker 1:It's in the Greek this time. It means to turn toward, to approach, to move toward. Even when his disciples hesitate, Jesus doesn't. You see doubt and hesitation and our concern about crossing that line of no return, the inability to wrap our heads around something that just doesn't fit into our world. This is not a problem for Jesus.
Speaker 1:Because all of that is part of life. And this entire resurrection idea is about life. I mean, even the way the story is told, it's earthy. It's skin and bones and sweat and tears and blood and dirt under fingernails. Yes.
Speaker 1:It's belief and faith that in it is soul and spirit, but it's movement and hesitation. It is wondering and embrace. It is losing your breath to the harsh cold of winter and then breathing in the warm scent of spring. Because resurrection is the ultimate affirmation of real life. And not some distant far off when you die life, but all life.
Speaker 1:This life and the next life, your life, my life, life wherever we find it. God pulls that all together in this story, and he says, life and doubt and hesitation and embrace, this is what I wanted to redeem. One of the sad, great ironies of Christian history is that traditions like ours that want to affirm the physical, literal, bodily resurrection of Christ, we often miss its full significance Because we turn it into a sacred spiritual moment, which, of course, it no doubt is. But we miss this doubt filled, dusty sandaled moment where the resurrection comes to meet us where we are. And we miss that resurrection is actually the ultimate affirmation of real life.
Speaker 1:See, the resurrection was physical not because it bypassed this life. It was physical so that this life and all its pockmarked beauty could be caught up into the divine. See, the resurrection is God's statement that life is good. It's very good. The tears and laughter sex and sun and rain and beaches and snowboards and mountains and lilies and kids and diapers and the smell of wet dogs.
Speaker 1:That good music and the scent of fresh coffee, that the hand that your friend puts on your shoulder just when you need them to, that photos with family and moments and community and maybe even Easter bunnies, all of this is good and it is worth saving. Resurrection tells us that God loves your body even when you don't. That he embraces your doubts even when you're not sure if you can. He turns to you, and he moves towards you even when you can't force yourself to move a step closer to him. Resurrection says, it's okay if you can't close that gap right now.
Speaker 1:Because even if you can't walk through the door, I will come and I will meet you wherever you are. Because I came to redeem life, but not some made up pretend life where you already have things altogether. No. This life, this messy life, this broken, beautiful, radiant, sacred life in which you have been given breath. That is the life that God is in love with.
Speaker 1:And so whatever sacred energies you have been given to breathe and believe and to bring life back to your world in some way. That is because of resurrection. You and I, we are not waiting to be resurrected as something perfect someday. We are being resurrected as something in progress right now. And to write says it this way.
Speaker 1:He says, Jesus' resurrection is the beginning of God's new project. Not to snatch people away to heaven, but to colonize Earth with the life of heaven. You see the reason that I can trust in the next life even when I doubt is because of all the resurrection I see all over the place right now. I see it in my marriage. I see it in our adoption.
Speaker 1:I see it in this community that is gathering four times today to celebrate resurrection. I hear it in conversations with you. I glimpse it in the stories that you tell me about your life. I find it even in the response of Jesus to his disciples, even as they struggle to make sense of it all. Because faced with friends who doubt as he stands in front of them, there are no harsh words.
Speaker 1:There is no condescending tone. There is only invitation. Jesus says to his disciples, go and make disciples of all nations. Baptizing them in the name of the father and the son and the spirit, teach them to obey everything I have commanded you. For surely, I am with you to the very ends of the age.
Speaker 1:You catch that? That's what he says to his disciples who are doubting him in that moment. He says, tell your story even when you can't quite believe it. Teach what I taught even when you can't quite follow it. That is the difference between a God who asks for what we can't give him and a God who instead asks only for whatever we can.
Speaker 1:And I know that sounds like a lot. He wants everything from you, and he does. But trust me on this. That is less than anyone else you could ever possibly follow. Because everyone else will eventually want you to be something you're not.
Speaker 1:And what God wants from you right now in this moment is whatever you have and whoever you are, wherever you happen to be, and nothing more. Because that is where resurrection finds us. Now he will certainly not leave you where he found you. I can promise you that. Remember, these same disciples who struggle to believe that the Christ stands in front of them will go on to give their lives to tell that story.
Speaker 1:But our resurrection into a life that never ends begins exactly wherever we are.
Speaker 2:I was working in the oil field and I was battling alcohol and drug addiction and in between contracts I would stay at the shelter. I would blow through the cash that I have on hand and it would be a day to day kind of living. There were a lot of times in my life when I knew that life had to change. I overdosed on drugs quite a few times and I can remember being in the hospital and my heart rate was astronomically high and looking at the nurse and saying, someone live through this? And she looked at me kind of like.
Speaker 2:When you're living in, you know, in the middle of a Mars like wilderness in Fort McMurray and you're just sleeping in an oil camp every night, all you know is work and addiction. And when I would come to Calgary see what the sense of community and connectedness that people had here was something I always wanted. But it took a lot longer to get here than I thought. I'm in my tenth month now of recovery, but I've lived here for almost two years. You know, my journey now with a new life with Jesus is that it's starting to pay off dividends.
Speaker 2:And I'm finally getting to a point in my life where I'm actually grateful and happy to be where I'm at and the challenges that I have right now. And that's okay. You know, I'm not exactly where I want to be in life, but I'm where I need to be, and that's the big difference. I mean, I don't practice perfection, I practice progress. But Kensington Commons is where I'm supposed to be.
Speaker 2:You know, Calgary is where I'm supposed to be. And it's just one day at a time.
Speaker 1:See, when I doubt, the reason that I can trust in the next life is because of the resurrection that I see all over the place in this one. And it is skin and bones and sweat and tears. It's found sometimes overdoses and in those moments where we find ourselves overjoyed. Because resurrection is only the beginning, and the journey gets better from here. Today, perhaps you have stood at a distance from God, and you have admired, maybe even worshiped from afar.
Speaker 1:But you have hesitated, perhaps perhaps with good reason to move any closer. And you have wondered if your inability to move through that door would disqualify you. Would you sense today the move spirit that draws close to you in this moment? And would you be aware of the Christ who approaches you with open arms? Would you feel the life courses through your body right now, and would you know that you are meant for life?
Speaker 1:And then, when you are ready, perhaps one small step to start. Would you move toward him? Sometimes when we eat the Eucharist, it is a moment of sober reflection. Sometimes it's a moment to consider the death and the sacrifice of Christ. Sometimes it's a moment to look inward and reflect on our sin.
Speaker 1:But today, this meal is nothing but joy because it is a taste of the life that we were meant for, and it is real life. And real bread and real real wine really shared with us. And so as the band plays and sings again, I invite you to come. To know that resurrection has moved toward you so that you might now move toward life. As the band sings, come up the center aisle.
Speaker 1:Take the bread and the grape that represent our Lord, and then eat and taste and savor and celebrate life. Would you come and taste resurrection again? This Easter, wherever you are in your journey, may you sense resurrection this day. May you recognize life in this moment, and may you come to know the source of this sacred beauty, this resurrection energy that sits below the surface of all that is. In the strong name of the risen Christ who has brought his life back to the world.
Speaker 1:We pray. Amen.