Empty Promises of Easter Carroll First UMC 4/12/2020

Empty Promises of Easter

Carroll First UMC  4/12/2020

We know about empty promises, don’t we?

We know campaign promises… elect me and I will fix all of your problems the day I take office. 

We all know advertising promises… use this cream twice a day and you will not only look 10 years younger, you will be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.

There is the empty promise of the salesman this car was only driven once a month by a little old lady, or this vacuum is so strong it will rip the carpet right off your floor.

By no fault of their own, there are the empty promises of the addict … I can stop I promise.

And who can count the empty promises in phone calls… you have won a million dollars, just give us your bank account number.

Maybe you heard the one about two brothers who were getting ready to boil some eggs to color for Easter. "I’ll give you ten dollars if you let me break three of these on your head," said the older one. "Promise?" asked the younger. "Promise!" Gleefully, the older boy broke the first egg over his brother’s head, then another one. The younger brother braced himself for the last egg, but nothing happened. "Ain’t ya gonna break the third egg?" the boy asked. His brother replied, "Nah, if I did that I’d owe ya ten dollars!"

After being disappointed by broken promises over and over and over, we start to get just a little skeptical, don’t we?   We hear a promise and automatically assume it is an empty promise… and say,” I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Sometimes it seems like a promise is just an invitation to disappointment. It is as though promises are meant to be broken. People don’t follow through on their commitments and it seems they never intend to fulfill the promises they make. Some people even wonder about God’s promises. Our God is a God of promises. In fact, the Bible records hundreds of promises, (maybe more depending on how you count them. I read a pastor who said there are over 7,000 promises from God to his people.)

 God’s promises are not like human promises. When God makes a promise, God keeps it. So today, rather than promises full of emptiness and disappointment and hurt… I want to talk about the emptiness of Easter that proves God’s promises.

There are at least three things that are empty in our Easter story today. There is the cross on which Jesus was crucified which now stands empty. There are the graveclothes that lay empty, and suspiciously, neatly folded up. And there is the tomb given to Jesus by Joseph of Arimathea, which now sits empty. Empty, Empty, Empty, but far from being empty promises, they are emptiness that proves God’s promises.

 

THE EMPTY CROSS

An empty cross.  We are accustomed to seeing empty crosses. Beautiful shiny brass crosses, polished wood crosses, crosses on necklaces and more. But those tidy, beautiful crosses are not the empty cross of which I speak today.

Our beautiful crosses represent the old rugged cross. Rough and gray and stained God’s love. The empty cross that proves God’s promise is the bloody, ugly, old rugged cross “Stained with blood so divine” says the 5th verse of The Old Rugged Cross. Stained with blood so divine?  Yes, that is God’s blood.  We see Jesus in human form hanging on the cross but remember that human skin contains God. God incarnate. That means God in a body.  That is God’s blood that stains the cross. That was God’s blood that dripped from the thorns of the crown. That was God’s blood that oozed from the nail wounds and gushed from the poke of the spear.

That blood is the saving blood, the redeeming blood, the blood of the lamb that takes away the sins of the world. This is the blood that was shed because of our sin.  Because God loved us too much to leave us in our sin.

It was sin that took Jesus to the cross, anger, hate, racism, lust, killing, lying, stealing, degrading, using and abusing, selfishness, greed the list goes on and on. I understand that YOU did not nail Jesus to the cross. I did not nail Jesus to the cross. The guards did in obedience to Pilate, who bowed to political pressure from the Sanhedrin, who acted out of fear.  They all thought they were getting rid of a problem. They were, but not in the way they thought.

The problem was not Jesus… he was the answer to the problem. The problem was the gulf created by sin that divided God and people. The problem was that God loved us too much to be separated from us like that. So, God made promises. Promises like:

 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. Ez 36:26

  "You forgave the iniquity of your people; you covered all their sin... (Psalm 85:2)..

 The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, is slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin (Ex34:6-7). 

In order to fulfill those promises God was willing to be born in human skin and die on a human instrument of torture.  Just as the lamb took away the sins of the people on the day of atonement, Jesus once and for all, took away all our sins and drowned them in the bottom of the sea so they cannot oppress us anymore.

Romans says, “The payment for sin is death” (Romans 6:23 NCV). Simply put, the cost of your sin is more than you can pay. We can’t afford forgiveness, can’t earn it, don’t deserve it. But the grace of God is more than you can imagine. Do you know what God did with your list of sins? Listen to what Paul writes:

 You were dead in sin, and your sinful desires were not yet cut away. Then he gave you a share in the very life of Christ, for he forgave all your sins, and blotted out the charges proved against you, the list of his commandments which you had not obeyed. He took this list of sins and destroyed it by nailing it to Christ’s cross.” (Colossians 3:13-14 TLB)

The empty cross Is the fulfillment of God’s promise of forgiveness.  After six hours of torture upon the cross, Jesus said weekly “It is finished!” (John 19:30). I didn’t realize until this year, in The Walk study, that the Greek word translated “it is finished” is actually an accounting term that means “paid in full.” Our sin debt was paid in full. When Jesus uttered those words, he fulfilled the promise and the empty cross is our reminder of the promise of forgiveness fulfilled.

 

 

 THE EMPTY CLOTHES

Prisoners were stripped of their clothes and their dignity when they were crucified.  sometimes they just left the bodies on the cross for the birds to peck at and to encourage the obedience of the crowds. If the body was to be buried--- they were often taken to a mass grave and buried just as a means of disposing of the body.

Joseph of Arimathea, however, like Nicodemus, was member of the Sanhedrin who secretly believed in Jesus. He received permission from Pilate to claim Jesus’ body and have it buried properly. Often it took days for someone to die on a cross. Eventually exhaustion, congestive heart failure, and suffocation would take their life. Jesus died in a remarkably short period of time. The Bible tells us 6 hours.  Perhaps it was because he was beaten and abused so badly before he was crucified, or maybe God was merciful to his son. So, after Jesus died at 3 on good Friday, Joseph of Arimathea took his body down. And “Following Jewish burial custom, they wrapped Jesus’ body with the spices in long sheets of linen cloth” (John 19:40 NLT).

For the disciples the wrapping the body and the spices had to dash any last hope they had. Jesus was ACTUALLY, REALLY, FACTUALLY dead. This was no trick.  They were devastated.

You know what it is like we hold up hope and hold up hope until reality slaps us in the face and we must give up any hope we had.

We hope and hope for a miracle, and when the miracle we want doesn’t happen the way we expect we have to let go.

We try and try to hold on to our faith but sometimes something happens that just knocks us for a loop.

So, the disciples spent the weekend huddled together comforting each other, trying to come to grips with what had happened.  It had to be the most pathetic sight to see Peter the rock, and James and John the sons of thunder cowering in some cramped, windowless, nondescript shack. Trying to figure out what they would do next. Wondering if they would be on Monday’s list of people to be executed.

Very early on Sunday morning Mary busted in and announced, “Jesus’s body is missing!” Peter and John ran after her to see for themselves.  As they stooped to look in the body was missing, but the thing they noticed is that the napkin that covered Jesus face was folded up neatly on the floor separate from the rest of the clothes

If someone stole they body, they wouldn’t do that. 

In fact, they wouldn’t have taken time to unwrap the body.

If they Jews or romans had done it, they would have taken the whole body, spices, graveclothes and all and dumped it in a hole to be buried.

So, what do we conclude- Jesus was raised from the dead! Jesus was raised from the dead.  He is risen, just as he said. Not only was sin defeated, Death is defeated.  All the sin that robs us of life and death itself are defeated once and for all. If Jesus was still dead the gravcloths would not be empty.   But they are. 

  "God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave, for He shall receive me" (Ps. 49:15).

  Isaiah 26:19: “But your dead will live; their bodies will rise. You, who dwell in the dust, wake up and shout for joy. Your dew is like the dew of the morning; the earth will give birth to her dead.”

 But God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol,

    for he will receive me. Ps 49:15

S uddenly angels appeared to Mary and announced, “Don’t be afraid. I know that you are looking for Jesus, who has been crucified. He is not here. He has risen from the dead as he said he would. Come and see the place where his body was!” (Matthew 28:5-6 NCV). Come and see the cloths in which he was wrapped.

The empty graveclothes are our reminder that God has fulfilled the promise to defeat death once and for all.

 

  THE EMPTY CAVE

The tomb in which Jesus was laid to rest belonged to Joseph of Arimathea. Tombs for the wealthy in those days were usually hand dug caves. There would be a low shelf or two on which the bodies would lay. Just like New Orleans, in time the bones were swept aside, and another body was laid there.

A preacher I read this week claims that a friend pulled Joseph aside and said, “Joseph, that was such beautiful, costly, hand-hewn tomb. Why on earth did you give it to someone else to be buried in?” Joseph just smiled and said, “Why not? He only needed it for the weekend.”

That preacher may be all wet, the conversation might not have happened. It’s true, nonetheless. Jesus only needed it for the weekend.

The empty tomb of Jesus remains the great symbol of life that outlasts the grave—it is the symbol of eternal life.

eternal. How do we understand that?

Is eternal how long it takes to get to the front of a long line at a buffet when the kids are hungry?  No, it’s longer than that

When Noah was wrestling, I thought each match was Eternal because it was so hard to watch… but eternal is longer than that. 

Eternal is even longer than we will have to practice social distancing… even though it seems eternal some days.

Jesus                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        promised eternal life over and over.

  He told Nicodemus, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16 NIV).

  He assured the woman at the well, “those who drink the water I give will never be thirsty again. It becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them eternal life” (John 4:14 NLT).

 He announced to the crowds, “For it is my Father’s will that all who see his Son and believe in him should have eternal life. I will raise them up at the last day” (John 6:47 NLT).

Eternity is more than a long and happy life; it is beyond time in the same way that God is beyond time. Time will be meaningless. Since it is not a quantity of time, we understand the eternal life is a quality of life. It is the quality of living intimately with God. 

The apostle Paul put it this way:

 And since we died with Christ, we know we will also live with him. We are sure of this because Christ was raised from the dead, and he will never die again. Death no longer has any power over him. When he died, he died once to break the power of sin. But now that he lives, he lives for the glory of God. (Romans 6:8-10 NLT)

As the last verse of amazing grace says, “When we’ve been there 10,000 years, we no less d ays to sing God’s praise than when we first begun.”

 

Conclusion:  There is one more empty thing this Easter. The pews.  Listen to this, though,… the church is not empty… the pews are empty, but the church is not empty.

Just like the empty cross, the empty cloths and the empty grave, the empty pews speak of another one of God’s promises fulfilled.

 

 In these days I have said the church is deployed.   Sometimes the church is gathered, and the operative word is “come.” When the church is deployed the operative word is “GO” Today it is Go. Go into all the world. Go into all of Carroll. Go into your neighborhood and live the gospel. Don’t preach it. Live it.

The sanctuary is empty, but the church is on the go

People are checking on others.  I have heard so much gratitude from those being checked on that people remember them/.

Rides are being offered to grocery stores, doctors and wherever people need to Go.

The grocery shopping is getting done by neighbors, friends, and relatives so the most vulnerable folks don’t have to go to the grocery store.

Parades are being planned like the two I talked about last week and the Porch parade this afternoon at 2pm.

Families are receiving the gift of time and people are discovering what they were missing when they were running around like a chicken with its head chopped off.

Let the empty sanctuary be a reminder that the church is on the move. The church is spirit- deployed. The church is busy being the church and let it remind you of the fulfillment of Jesus Promise… Behold I will be with you (wherever you go) even to the end of the world.

Let the empty grave speak of the destruction of despair and the fulfillment of God’s promise of eternal life. 

Let the empty grave cloths speak of the defeat of death for you and me, which is the fulfillment of God’s Easter promise.

Let the empty cross speak of the erasing of our sin debt because God loves you too much to leave you without a savior.

“Let’s keep a firm grip on the promises that keep us going. He always keeps his word.” (Heb 10:23)

He is Risen. Alleluia.

Two Parades Palm Sunday 2020 April 5 First UMC

Two Parades

 More than 80 cars gathered in our church parking lot to form a parade.  They were creating a surprise parade for Ed Lawler a longtime pharmacist and Carroll City Council member.  Obviously, Ed has many friends. And the surprise was a wonderful success.  E

d enjoyed this act of kindness tremendously as did all his friends.  There was an undertone of sadness though. The parade came about because Ed has a chronic lung condition that makes him very vulnerable in our current pandemic.  Friends know that it could be a long time before they can visit him, and they know how fragile life is. So, behind all the hellos and balloons, there was sadness that their friend is sick. 

 24 hours later there was a second parade. 70 cars of teachers and staff from Carroll Community Schools drove a slow serpentine route through the city Wednesday evening waving at students.  There were smiles and waves.  Horns honking and People yelling hello. Neighbors who had not seen one another because we are all keeping to ourselves, had a chance to see one another from afar.  It was a wonderful tribute to the relationships built at school between teachers and students and a strong statement about the dedication and caring of school district employees and the respect and care we as a community have for them. But there was a note a sadness.  The parade only happened because we have been trying to stop a nasty virus.  The students are missing learning, they are missing their friends, their dances, their athletics. Teachers, are, I’m sure a little stir crazy.  But sadly, it is necessary. So, the festive parade had an undertone of uncertainty or sadness.

If any of you were involved in either parade, Thank you.  We need creative things like that so we can reach out to one another in this time of physical distancing.

 

We had two very different parades in the same week. Two parades …very different purposes. But both were beautiful in their own way.

Everyone loves parades, don’t they?  I do. I think we should rename Holy Week.  I think we should call it “parade week.”  It was a week of parades for Jesus.  It is a week of parades for our church.  Let’s look at these two parades from the last week of Jesus’ life.

 is Palm Sunday. We celebrate what we call Jesus Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem. The people cut branches (it doesn’t say palm branch) they cut branches and lined the roadway.  They waved the branches and placed coats on the roadway.  The coats were like a red carpet so that not even Jesus’ donkey has to touch the ground. A few weeks ago, I explained that the palm branch is a symbol of victory.  They were welcoming Jesus as the victorious and triumphant warrior entering Jerusalem. It seemed like it was all joy… almost.

In the background, however, there was a murmur of discontent. That murmur was disappointment and misunderstanding. They wanted Jesus to be the Messiah. They believed him to be the Messiah. And he was the Messiah. He just wasn’t able to be the messiah the crowd expected . . . or wanted. Truthfully, Jesus, the grand marshal of the parade refused to be who the crowds wanted him to be.

They wanted a messiah to come in on a tall white horse, Jesus chose a small unassuming donkey almost as a quiet protest to the crowd’s misguided expectation.  They wanted someone riding tall so they could look up to him. On the donkey, he was on their own level looking them in the eye. They wanted a messiah to kill and route out the Romans, not heal the lame and love the unlovable. They wanted a messiah who would “eat tax collectors for breakfast,” instead Jesus invited himself to the tax collectors house for lunch. 

The other murmur behind the parade was from the religious leaders. They had expectations too. Their expectations revolved around people quietly and respectfully, doing as they are told. They didn’t like Jesus’ miracles because they made him very popular. They didn’t like Jesus’ teaching because he undermined their teaching with radical statements.  He was a Rabbi that didn’t teach the approved curriculum. And he wasn’t righteous enough because he hung out with tax collectors, prostitutes, and other sinners.

Additionally, the Romans were upset with him because the religious leaders kept going to the governor griping about Jesus. The Zealots were upset with him because they wanted him to join their little band of assassins.

Unmet expectations from the crowd, from religious leaders, from Romans, from Zealots lead to disappointment which lead to the second parade at the end of the week. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that Jesus was clueless about the future. He spoke of his suffering and death, he spoke of his cross, he spoke of his resurrection many times. Even if he didn’t know all the details, I believe Jesus knew at least that everything was coming to a head.

Jesus knew that he was causing a murmur.  Jesus knew he was ruffling the feathers of the religious leaders.  Jesus knew that he was disappointing the crowd.  He knew that he was headed for the worst week of his life. He could have gotten off the donkey and run into the hills.  He could have… but he set his eyes on his life mission to save the world and plodded ahead.

He rode on atop his dusty little donkey right into the suffering. He called the disciples to have the Passover supper knowing that he would be betrayed. He went to the garden of gethsemane knowing that he would be arrested.  He faced the trial knowing that it really didn’t matter what he said. The verdict was predetermined.  He remained steadfastly faithful even when it meant his life was in danger.

When I think of Jesus courageously facing his death, it makes me think of this passage from 2 Cor 4.  Paul writes to the church in Corinth

 8 We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; 9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; 10 always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. 11 For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. (2 Corinthians 4:8-18 English Standard Version (ESV))

 

The days before the next parade on Good Friday are filled with some of the most prophetic teaching in all the New Testament and each of the Gospels has just a little something different to add to what Jesus thought was so important that he crammed it into those final days.

Jesus knew on the day of the first parade there would be a second and he made use of the time between the two. He cleansed the Temple, gave us the Great Commandments, told his followers the Temple would be destroyed, promised the Judgment of the Nations, had his hair washed with alabaster, celebrated the Last Supper with his Disciples, and prayed his last prayers in the Garden

 And then it began. The arrest the trials, the beating, the mocking, the spitting, the harassment, the hatred.  And the crowds.  The crowds that were shouting Hosanna at Palm Sunday now filled the Praetorium (If they were brave enough to come, because it seems that most of the disciples were not) they filled the praetorium with cries of “crucify him.”

And they lined the streets with cries of, “if you are the messiah save yourself.” “Where are your miracles now Jesus of Nazareth?”

There were no beautiful floats or horses or bands.  This was a funeral procession. And the guest of honor was forced to carry his own cross.

Instead of Hosanna the cries are be crucify him.

 Instead of a donkey, Jesus will be on a cross.

Instead of a victory parade it was a parade to pain and suffering.  ... and death.

 

He willingly marched from the Palm Sunday parade to the Good Friday parade and into death.

If we had our way, we would skip from Hallelujah to Hallelujah. We would go from the “Hails and Hosanna’s” of Palm Sunday to “Up from the Grave He Arose” for Easter. We would rather pass over the betrayal, the trial, the scourge, and the crown of thorns and move to the resurrection. But Jesus wouldn’t hear of it.  And we must not do that either. We cannot, we must not, pass over the second parade, the crucifixion and the death of our Christ. We must come and see Christ carry the cross down the Via Dolorosa. We must understand the anguish of the cross or we can never appreciate the meaning of the resurrection.

 

Think about that.

Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. Extraordinary measures require extraordinary people filled with extraordinary love.   Our heroes of today might have been filled with love of country and buddies fighting next to them, love for their families, love for a certain group like the poorest of the poor in Calcutta.

The extraordinary people we remember are the ones who focused so intently on a single mission that they were willing to give up all for that mission.  Soldiers, firefighters, police officers are great examples. As are the medical personnel on the front lines of the covid 19 pandemic. They put themselves and sometimes their families at risk to save one more life.

              We are in extraordinary times.  How’s your focus.  Our mission is to do to others as though they were Jesus himself.  We have people in this congregation serving meals on wheels, doing grocery shopping, offering rides, checking in on people who might be more vulnerable.  Yes, they know the risk, but they are so focused on the mission of treating each and every person as though they were Christ, that they march ahead anyway.

              Jesus was completely focused on saving you and me. He was so focused on the saving of the world that he marched on in spite of the warning signs.  In spite of the threats. In spite of the

Injustice. In spite of the suffering that lay ahead, Jesus marched on in his own holy week parade.

 

Extraordinary measures require extraordinary people foiled with extraordinary love. Jesus was not only extraordinary, he was unique. He is the one and only incarnation of God in human flesh. We say son of man or son of God, or lamb of God, but what we really mean is that he IS God.  We say he is the Christ or the messiah, the lord, but what we really mean is Jesus is our personal savior.  And he was made out of love. I John tells us that God is love.  Jesus is God. The ingredients label on Jesus would have been 100% pure, untainted, undiluted, unequalled divine love for all people.

              We are surrounded with extraordinary people with extraordinary love.   Agree with them or not our leaders who are making decision to keep us safe are extraordinary people. The National guard taking supplies into the hot zones are extraordinary. The medical personnel and public safety workers are all extraordinary people. The teachers and administrators who organized the parade to reconnect with the students this week are extraordinary people. The person who organized the parade for Ed is an extraordinary person. And you are extraordinary people able to do extraordinary things whether it is sharing music, or teaching, or serving at new hope, or giving rides (or in this time of covid 19 Maybe it is  checking on people, or shopping for someone or whatever you can do.)  You are all extraordinary people because God made you that way.

              But the most extraordinary of the extraordinaries was Jesus.  He was the most extraordinary person to ever walked the face of the earth because he was God. His life, death and resurrection changed the world and its people forever. The parent throws herself in front of the vehicle in order to push her young child out of the way of danger. The firefighter runs into the burning building to save a life. The police officer runs toward the danger rather than away. The medical personnel take on extra shifts so maybe one less person will die. Extraordinary? Yes, but none of that is as extraordinary as marching through Palm Sunday with the cross on the horizon. Marching toward the cross all week never wavering from his mission. Steadfastly gathering his disciples on Thursday evening for Passover in spite of the fact that he knew one had betrayed him.  With unbelievable calm and extraordinary love Jesus walked into the Garden of Gethsemane. He faced the Sanhedrin, and Pilate with exceptional self-control for one who was being railroaded toward execution for political purposes. And he died an extraordinary death on the cross to prove God’s extraordinary… no, but I don’t know what is more than extraordinary…  super extraordinary, mega extraordinary, hyper extraordinary… take your pick love for not just the world, but you and me personally.

There were two parades in our town this week. One in honor of a well-respected community leader. The other an act of love from teachers to students.

There were two parades for Jesus during holy week. (or maybe you think of them as one big dramatic parade.) Either way we need to understand both because together they set the stage for the greatest surprise in the history of the universe. The greatest gift anyone could ever give.  The greatest love anyone could ever imagine...  But that is for next week.  This week lets walk this dark, sad, terrifying parade with our friend and savior Jesus.