Easter Message

What is Easter all about?  As weird as this may sound, I don't know exactly what to preach on Easter Sunday.  I know that Easter is about Jesus' resurrection and I know that this is what we base our whole faith upon, for if this did not happen, then our faith is futile, says Paul.  So what do I preach when the congregation has all heard this message before?  How do you take a story so well known and reinvent it to the listener's ears to keep them attentive and move them to action?

When I was home last week, we heard a sermon entitled, The Upside Down Way of Jesus: Death is Life.  It really got me thinking.  Everything Jesus did while he was on earth was shake things up, from top down, from down up.  No one could ever get a step ahead of him.  Jesus' message was totally different then what the people were used to hearing from their religious leaders, yet when the leaders confronted him, they couldn't deny what he was saying.  The liked there traditions more then really getting at the heart of the message of God.  Jesus lived an upside down life.

Jesus whole ministry always turned heads.  From the very beginning at the temple as a boy to his death and resurrection, Jesus shook heads and made people think.  He made them think so much that they knew he was the Messiah.  He didn't hid it from them.  He told them many times that they were going to see him die and rise again, that he would leave them, but when the day actually happened, they couldn't believe it.  Was Jesus not the Messiah?  Was he not the one sent from God to set things straight?  Their hearts and hope in a Messiah probably started to disappear.  Yet Jesus knew what God was doing, he knew that once again, he would do something upside down, something contrary to anyone's thinking, he was going to rise from the dead!

Jesus disciples were left without hope.  They placed all their hope in this man, and now he was gone.  What were they do?  Some probably went back to work, others still in mourning just wept.  Had they forgotten Jesus' message throughout his minister?  Did they forget the warnings that Jesus told them?  They didn't even believe it when they heard he had risen and was alive.  They had to see him, touch him, and eat with him.  Their hope had been restored and their faith built even stronger.  They now knew they served a risen God, a risen Savior, and a man who set the whole world upside down.

Are you like the disciples?  Do you forget from time to time Jesus' message of forgiveness and loving others?  Do you forget that Jesus' death gives us life, and that we must die to ourselves to get this life that Jesus calls us too?  In a day and age that doesn't believe in life after death, it is quite odd that in so many places we see this.  Take flowers and tress for instance.  Every fall we see them die, but we know that life will come from this death.  Jesus even said in John 12:24-26 "I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed.  But if it dies, it produces many seeds.  The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life."

The resurrection of Jesus gives us hope again.  When we are down trodden and in despair, we can find hope in Jesus' resurrection.  We have a God who turned everyone's idea of God upside down, a God who was willing to send his son to die for us so that we wouldn't have too one day.  No other religions have this belief.  Aren't you glad that we serve and upside down God!