Pastor Fred kicked off the Easter sermon by reading out of Mark 16. There are several things that caught my eye. The first one is that we are not much different than the disciples. The disciples spent three years with Jesus and still had trouble believing in Him. So one of the questions that came to me, are we more concerned about making Jesus our Lord or for Him to make our lives easier? The disciples saw countless miracles and heard Jesus preach countless messages and yet they still had a hard time believing that He was the Messiah. Maybe that’s why everyone was asking for one more miracle because they either wanted to put off making Jesus as their Savior or they were more interested in living comfortably than denying oneself. This is a guess, but there were probably people who followed Jesus around for the dog and pony show and just wanted to be entertained. So my question is, do we do the same thing?
In high school, I took a class at a neighboring school and when the school van brought me over, we listened to Paul Harvey and the rest of the story on the radio. The concept of the segment was that Paul would give the epilogue to either a famous or not so famous story. They usually had a happy ending and it encouraged people to look at life differently. I wonder if Paul Harvey would do a rest of the story on Nicodemus. In John 3 Nicodemus started off such a religious skeptic with Jesus that he had to visit Him in the cover of darkness. We see through out the Gospel of John that Nicodemus moved from a religious skeptic to a follower of Jesus, to the point of making it so that he couldn’t participate in the most holy of Jewish Holidays, the Passover, because he was unclean for taking the body of Jesus and placing it in a tomb. So here is my question, are we willing to either deal with our preconceptions or hurts surrounding religion and Jesus, or are we going to wallow in them? Remember, Christianity is more than a list of rules, but it’s a relationship. For those of you who are in a serious relationship or even people who have some friends that know everything about you, how would the relationships do if was strictly based on rules. Those relationships would be purely transactional, robotic and filled filled with unmet expectations. This is how are are relationship with God would be if we focused on rules and not being relational. In essence rules can lead to more of what I can do for God instead of what God does through me.
To wrap up, here are some thoughts. Easter has to be more than ham dinners, Easter eggs and pastel colored church cloths. Easter needs to be about the Son of God coming to earth not only to dwell among His creation but to show us who the Father is and to provide a way to be reconciled with the Trinity in heaven. The Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 that death has been swallowed up and that it has lost its sting. So my question is are we willing to put are stupid riles away, have Jesus heal our hurts and instead of asking for one more miracle so we can be entertained? Remember Easter believing in what Christ did for us and have Him go from some guy with good things to say to making Him the Lord of our life.
Grace and Peace
Tom Boustead
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