“The New Creation” Elite Eight #1 Carroll first UMC 9-13-2020 (easter celebration)

  “The New Creation”

Elite Eight #1

Carroll first UMC 9-13-2020 (easter celebration)

 

 I have been known over the years for celebrating holidays at odd times. I’ll never forget the Christmas in July we had in Muscatine. As I walked in the church, I heard one of our grumpier remembers grunt “Humph, Christmas in July. What's next fireworks In December?” I will admit I was sorely tempted. I wonder what she would think if she saw Easter in September.

 Happy Easter. It may seem strange, but not as strange as other things in the last 8 months.

Everything has been turned upside down just as much as it was from Palm Sunday too Good Friday.

The loss of businesses and jobs has plunged us into a dark cave much like the newly hewn tomb in was Jesus was laid.

Social distancing, fear of one another AND the politicization of the pandemic has left us mistrusting and confused like the disciples must have been in that locked room on Saturday

The list goes on:

Separating families even when a loved one resides in a care center or are dying in the hospital

Derecho and hurricanes including twin hurricanes

Record breaking wildfires scorching the earth

Drought

Racial unrest and rioting.

Then add on top of that our inability to have face to face worship in our sanctuary for 21 weeks starting on Palm Sunday and this has seemed like a truly dark time in which our morale, our mental health, and our relationships have been deeply, if not fatally, damaged.

The church suffered during this time too. Next week would have been the first Sunday of Sunday School. He can’t have UM kids. We have postponed funerals. Almost all pastoral visits are by phone, text, or messenger now. Honestly, Covid has taken a tremendous toll on the mental, relational, and spiritual health of churches… us included. 

We have all adjusted. From online Good Friday services, we had a trial by fire becoming an all-digital church. (actually, it felt more like a trial by fire) We started online communion, had two virtual vacation Bible schools, learned how to do even better online services. We had the car-naval. We're still adjusting to using zoom. You all saved the day when you picked up and made caring for one another a priority. I was so proud of the way you took care of one another. Others stepped recording music and scriptures, and Sherri became a video editing superhero. Like every other organization including our schools, businesses, and government we have experienced locked doors, masks, shields, testing, quarantine, and anxiety. We are having Easter to remind us that when all this is said and done… God is the God who brings life out of death.

How many times during the last 7 months have we heard, “The world will never be the same?” I would be very surprised if those same words were not on the disciple’s lips after Jesus arrest.

 We are in desperate need of resurrection. We need Easter; individually, in our congregation, and everywhere else. We need to do over for 2020. We need a fresh start. Fortunately, God is the God of do overs and fresh starts. God is the creator and re creator. God is both the Alpha and the Omega. Alpha is the 1st letter of the Greek alphabet and God was not only at creation but was the sole cause and source of all creation. Omega is the last letter of the Greek alphabet and it is a promise that in the end God's plan, purpose, and power will be victorious over all else.

God is the source and the power behind the divine incarnation in Jesus Christ, ALPHA. And God’s all-time best promise is that nothing can keep him away from us. Neither the Roman government, unfair trials, hatred, fear, torture, death, or darkness will be able to put out the light of Christ. Nothing: including coved 19, quarantines, isolation, anxiety, locked churches, economic crisis, political crisis, natural disasters like fires and derechos…can keep God from bringing us new life. We need a resurrection… and we need it now. 

 

Last spring you voted for your eight favorite Bible stories. This is the first sermon in a series of eight in which I will try to Help you see new things in your favorite stories. Our first story is creation. We heard that story. Now I want us to look back and see the how the gospel of John’s connects creation and Easter, which he understands as the new creation of easter.

 

 What was there before creation? Emptiness. Genesis says, “the earth was Formless and void.” It had neither shape nor substance. It was a vast emptiness.

Before Jesus there was emptiness. The powerful emptiness of sin. God seemed far away and unapproachable. Much like today, hypocrisy was rampant. There was even an emptiness in religion; a lot of going through the motions.

 In Genesis, besides nothingness there was only God.

In the gospel of John, we read, “in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.” The word of course is Jesus with God the creator. That’s all there is.

 In Genesis God says, “Let there be light, and there was!”

The first chapter of John says, “the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.”

 The climax of the creation story is on day six when God creates people, God looked at people and said, “It is good.”

 “After questioning Jesus, Pilate brought Jesus out for the crowd to see saying “Ecce Homo” look at the man- He is innocent. “Look, It is good.”

 In the creation story Adam and eve are placed in a beautiful garden to be with God forever.

John says, “There was a garden called gethsemane where he and his disciples prayed.”

 Again, in the story of creation The Garden of Eden is the cradle of all life.  It is were all life starts.

John writes, “Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified and, in the garden, there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid.” The garden where new life starts.

 Finally, Genesis tells us that God created the world in 6 days and rested on the 7th. Days 1-6 were creating days.

It is no accident that Mary Magdalene and the other Mary go very early on “The first day of the week.” The first day of the new creation.

In so many ways John is trying to tell us that Jesus’ resurrection is the beginning of a new creation. Easter was day one of the new creation. You know how they say, today is the first day of the rest of your life. John says Easter is the first day of the new creation.

 

Now I wish I could say the pandemic is sealed in the tomb and we've all been raised to new life, new normal, and a new way of being. I can’t say that, by a long shot. But I can say that this day… EASTER is beginning to bloom…This is easter … this is the first day of the new creation and new life for you. Starting right now we have a new opportunity to begin to bloom for God and change the world with Jesus Christ.

There is a gift in all of this. We don’t get many do-overs in life. Churches, including ours have been doing the same thing for years, and doing it well. But maybe what we have been doing is not quite what we want it to be… that’s OK. Easter gives us a do-over. Maybe we have dreamed of a certain program but never taken be big step…Easter gives us a new opportunity. Maybe we have been doing something with diminishing returns, but we can’t figure out what else to do… That’s OK Easter brings us a new creation and a new vision of who we are.

In Liturgics we say Every Sunday is a little Easter, so every Sunday brings with it the opportunity to be a new creation. We find ourselves again and again standing at the precipice of the new creation promised from the beginning. A flower bud, just ready to burst open.

This worship service is part of the new creation… This church is in the new creation. The next person you invite to church, you can invite to our budding church in the new creation. The next time we bless our community and neighbors, we will be doing that as a budding church...in the new kingdom of the resurrection. (Now people will think we are still the old first united Methodist church… but the way you treat them will prove that we are new.)  This week’s Ad Council meeting will be the first meeting for pour budding church in the new creation. And all the possibilities are open. You say, “we’ve never done it that way before” and someone is likely to say “True, but we have never been here before, everything is new.” Anything is possible for the new church in the new creation.

But it starts with you.

The next breath you take, will be as a new creation blooming in Christ Jesus. The next beat of your heart will be a beating of your new hearts not made with stone but made with flesh by the heart of God. The next step you take will be into as a new creation in Jesus Christ.  So, let’s join our hearts as brothers and sisters of the new creation and take one giant step into the new kingdom, the resurrection kingdom, the kingdom called “EASTER.”