Responding to the Passion of Jesus (Week 6)

2020: A Year of Celebration!

“Finding the Hope we Need!”

Key Verses:  Romans 8:37-39

 

The Resurrection Narrative: Matthew 28; Mark 16; Luke 24; John 20

Written and delivered by Pastor Jerry Ingalls from the building of the First Baptist Church of New Castle, Indiana through an on-line service to the Church of Jesus Christ.

 

Resurrection Sunday April 12, 2020 (Easter)

COMMUNION MESSAGE

 

Let us set the stage for communion this Easter 2020, in these very uncommon days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

He is risen! _______________This is normally where I would hear hundreds of people saying in response: “He is risen indeed!” I am saddened that I am being greeted in person by less than nine people. But, it is for good reason that the hundreds of us who wanted to gather today did not because to not meet is the right thing for us to do.

 

In addition, I believe that our not gathering is neither a violation of our constitutional rights nor of our biblical mandate to not forsake the gathering of the saints. It’s neither! I directly, yet gently, say that knowing that some of my fellow pastors passionately disagree.

 

We are choosing to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ in word, online, because, at this unique moment in our lives, to do anything other than that is a violation of our chief evangelistic deed: To love our neighbors as ourselves! We don’t want our words of love and our deeds of love to cancel one another. Right now, we love our neighbors as ourselves by being the very best partners with our local hospitals and health departments that we can be in order to love our neighbors more than we love our own traditions and practices. We are called to fast these for a few months to actually live out our faith with full sincerity and conviction.[1]

 

Church, we’ll be together soon. I don’t know when, but be patient and trust God. We are prayerfully making the sacrifices necessary to speed our way through these uncommon days.

 

Here is the truth that I want you to come to the Lord’s Table knowing: Jesus’ victory gives us the hope we need to face life and death with a victorious mindset!

 

Paul teaches us this mindset in Romans 8:37-39, “We are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

 

Because of this truth, I can declare to an empty worship center the promise of the empty tomb without losing my hope. Because: HE IS RISEN! Nothing changes that! NOTHING changes the victory we have because of Jesus; therefore, let us view the world through these glasses—with hope, a hope that can look upon suffering and death and not lose perspective.  

 

We are not victims of circumstances or chance. We are victors—more than conquerors in Jesus Christ. Our circumstances don’t determine our hope! The hope we need to face our circumstances is found in the empty tomb! HE IS RISEN! Yell it out… Proclaim it!

Jesus’ victory gives us the hope we need to face life and death with a victorious mindset!

 

Listen to the word of the Apostle Paul from 1 Corinthians 15:17-22,

 

And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.

 

Serve Communion: Let us respond to this truth by coming to the Cup of Grace together. The  Table of the Lord is open and all who are have been invited by Jesus are invited to participate with us in the remembrance of Him—our Lord Jesus’ sacrifice, His death and resurrection, for our eternal life. (lead in partaking from 1 Corinthians 11:23-26).

 

Pray for all who have partaken in this meal and for God’s grace upon all who would receive.

 

Response Song: “Draw Me Close”

 

SERMON

 

That is the perspective we have today, after thousands of years of reflection—time gives meaning to events in history! Events are pregnant with meaning at the time, but it is hard to find meaning in the midst of a major, world-changing event when you are in the middle of it.

 

This was even true for the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Even at the resurrection, which we gather to celebrate today, there was unbelief, fear, and confusion.[2] The Bible doesn’t hide the real emotions of the first followers and disciples, we just read right over them.

Listen to some key words from the Gospel accounts of the resurrection of Jesus Christ:

  • Matthew 28:5 & 10 “Do not be afraid” and v. 8, “afraid yet filled with joy…”
  • Mark 16:6, “Don’t be alarmed” and v. 8 “Trembling and bewildered…they were afraid.”
  • Luke 24:5, “In their fright…” and v. 8 “Then they remembered…”
  • John 20:11, “crying” and the resurrected Jesus said in v. 19 “Peace be with you!”

 

The closest followers of Jesus experienced a full range of emotions on the first Easter morning because they did not have perspective, yet! The same is true for those of us who are trying to faithfully walk through the COVID-19 pandemic. We need time and separation from the event to give the event meaning. We have neither—time nor separation—in our current crisis, yet.

 

Let’s process our current situation and then learn how we can apply today’s teaching to it: Jesus’ victory gives us the hope we need to face life and death with a victorious mindset!

 

A Christian author recently wrote in his blog, “It’s like there’s a dark cloud called COVID-19 hovering over us. It’s generating worry, irritableness, and especially tiredness.” Then he asked, “What is the dark cloud? What is it that is sapping our energy and causing stress reactions?”[3]

 

The answer is grief. I know it sounds weird, but I have been grieving all week in anticipation of not getting to hear hundreds of people cry out with conviction and hope, “He is risen indeed!” Could you text Ken or me, or FB post, or YouTube comment “He is risen indeed” right now so we can encourage each other? Please…that will do my heart some good. We need one another! 

 

There is a sense of grief that is touching many of our lives in ways that have not been experienced in our well-regimented, orderly lifestyles as 21st century Americans. We are a time- driven culture. We are a people with a plan and have devices or planners to keep us on track. We get upset when things don’t start on time or take too long, by our own standard of effectiveness and efficiency. We are driven, but that leads to us being an intolerant and impatient people! What gets in our way of accomplishing our goals makes us angry…

 

It’s like there is a dark cloud hovering over us!

 

There is loss of safety from so many people getting sick from COVID-19, suffering, and dying.

There is loss of jobs, routines, and money.

There is loss of fun events and freedom of movement.

There is loss of opportunities to “touch” friends and extended family.

There is loss of gathering physically and doing life together.

There is loss of the security and safety of the “normal” life; whatever that means to you.

 

We do not know what to do for such a devastating event as COVID-19, because it is disrupting everything, right here and right now, and it has dangerous potential for the future, so we grieve and we start anticipating in our hearts and minds our worst fears. That is called “catastrophic thinking” and that leads to anxiety today and dread for the future, and we don’t quite know what to do about it or what to think about it. If we are not careful, that becomes depression and our hope bucket gets drained… And without hope, we die from the inside out…

 

It’s like there is a dark cloud hovering over us!

 

Like with any grief process, people are dealing with it differently. People are going through the five stages of grief: Denial; Anger; Bargaining; Sadness; and Acceptance.

 

Some of us are living in one specific state and others of us are oscillating through multiple stages in any given day or in any given conversation. Unfortunately, many Christians are living in denial and call it faith. Then they are controlled by what they are unwilling to recognize within themselves: real emotions revolving around a very real event that is affecting every aspect of life.  

 

In a recent article called “That Discomfort You’re Feeling is Grief,” the leading expert in the study of grief, Dr. David Kessler, stated about our current crisis with the COVID-19 pandemic,

 

We feel the world has changed, and it has. We know this is temporary, but it doesn’t feel that way, and we realize things will be different. Just as going to the airport is forever different from how it was before 9/11, things will change and this is the point at which they changed. The loss of normalcy; the fear of economic toll; the loss of connection. This is hitting us and we’re grieving. Collectively. We are not used to this kind of collective grief in the air. We’re feeling that loss of safety. We are grieving.[4]

 

I was talking (via email) to a friend about “anticipatory grief” and my friend said to me,

 

As followers of Christ, we have the advantage of hope, which may help combat the grief and trauma, but I also think we need to give ourselves some space and remind ourselves that it is okay to not be okay right now. The way we experience spiritual health in this time is that when we feel the need to attempt to escape that we escape into the arms of Jesus and not into the things the world says will bring us comfort.

 

We do need to cling to Jesus and the victory God has given us in Jesus Christ! His death on the Cross and His defeat of death—the resurrection—do give us a hope that is bigger than our circumstances, but that doesn’t mean we put on blindfolds to our circumstances! We hope in the New Heaven and the New Earth, but we live right here, smack dab in the middle of a broken, hurting, down-right scary world.

 

Jesus’ victory gives us the hope we need to face life and death with a victorious mindset!

 

In 1 Peter 1:3-6, Peter trumpets the hope we have from the resurrection of Jesus Christ in the midst of a broken world with trials and temptations, suffering and grief,

 

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.

 

People are suffering in real ways, people are dying, there is real reason to grieve and we can’t add a layer of Christian guilt for experiencing grief, sadness, anger, or anxiety. Complicating your grief process with layers of guilt for having real emotions, covered by a veneer of self-imposed Christian platitudes does neither yourself nor others any good. Can I just say that this is hard and I want it to be over? I want people to stop getting sick, stop dying, and I want our lives to go back to “normal”, whatever that even means for any of us.

 

My faith, and even the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, does not stop me from being human—a real person who needs sleep, rest, healthy nutrition, relationships, and emotional well-being. And trust me that I have tried really hard to live a super-human life. It doesn’t work, not for long…

 

As the leading expert on grief teaches,

 

There is something powerful about naming this as grief. It helps us feel what’s inside of us. Fighting it doesn’t help because your body is producing the feeling. If we allow the feelings to happen, they’ll happen in an orderly way, and it empower us. Then we’re not victims.[5]

 

The victory of the resurrection is that I can face today and every day, of not only this COVID-19 pandemic, but of whatever may come in this fallen, broken and scary world, with HOPE![6]

 

As Paul triumphantly declares in 1 Corinthians 15:54b-57, “‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’ ‘Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?’ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

 

It is my deepest prayer that today, this day we call Easter, the Holy Spirit will fill up your own personal “hope bucket” to overflowing! Hope doesn’t come from what’s happening out there (in our circumstances) or even what’s happening in here (in our heads and hearts), hope is firmly established in the fact that the tomb is still empty! Hope is a gift from God!

 

Yes, grieving the effects of the fall and the brokenness of this creation is a real part of life and our faith does not stop that from being our reality. But we do not grieve without hope!

In 1 Thessalonians 4:13-14, Paul teaches us, “Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep [people will still die], or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him [the resurrection from the dead].”

 

Suffering and death have always been a part of living in a fallen and broken world. One thousand years before the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Psalmist wrote in Psalm 43:5 a call and response to God in our grief: “Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.”

 

So let’s try our Easter call and response again: He is Risen!  He is Risen INDEED!

 

Jesus’ victory gives us the hope we need to face life and death with a victorious mindset!

 

The hope we have in Christ gives us purpose and resolve to live with hope even when we have not yet found meaning in our suffering, or in the current COVID-19 pandemic. We do not need to wait to find meaning in our own suffering because we can trust that God is with us. This does not need to make sense to us, right now and right here.[7]

 

Patience in our circumstances and trust in God allow us to remain faithful and not paralyzed by grief, fear, or anger. Let us remain mindful of God’s presence in our circumstances and through these difficult times! That is His promise—God is with us!

 

Suffering and death are pervasive and intrusive experiences for all people! And in the light of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, death has been reframed so that we can see an old picture with a new perspective. Death has been swallowed by the victory of Jesus Christ and it now stands within the boundaries of God’s all-embracing love! We are no longer alone; God is with us!

 

There is a lot of suffering, here and now, and if the predictions of medical experts are accurate, we are going to see much more suffering in the coming weeks. Jesus never promised us we wouldn’t suffer, but that He would be our Good Shepherd through it and with us in it.

 

Hebrews 5:7-8 teaches us, “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.”

 

And this is why we must remember that Jesus’ suffering did not have the last word, because the Passion of the Christ led to the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Good Friday happened but Sunday came!

 

It may feel like we are stuck in one long Good Friday, filled with suffering, but let us remember that Sunday has already came and death no longer has the last word. May we trust the Good Shepherd and the Hope He has given us. I join in the ancient prayer, written 3,000 years ago, relevant today during this COVID-19 pandemic: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me” (Psalm 23:4).

 

Jesus’ victory gives us the hope we need to face life and death with a victorious mindset!

 

Response Prayer followed by Closing Song: “One Thing Remains”
 
 
 

 

You can listen to this message here:

 

To watch the video click HERE

 

 

FOOTNOTES:

 

[1] One of our church’s elders responded to this section with the famous quote of St. Francis of Assisi, “Preach the Gospel at all times. When necessary, use words.” The more nuanced quote is actually, “It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.”

 

[2] A friend commented on this statement, “Just as it’s hard for us to see meaning in our current events, it is just as hard for us to have perspective that there was unbelief, fear, and confusion in the time of the Passion of Christ. We know how the story ends, so we view every event through the lens of victory (meaning)! But the people who were living it in real time were questioning their decisions and searching for meaning as their lives seemed to be falling apart around them.”

[3] Bill Gaultiere, PhD. https://mailchi.mp/soulshepherding.org/covid-19-help-for-grief?e=b4a0884ffa. Accessed April 8, 2020. There is a merging of Dr. Gaultiere’s thoughts on grief and my own in the introduction.

 

[4] Scott Berinato. https://hbr.org/2020/03/that-discomfort-youre-feeling-is-grief. Accessed April 8, 2020.

[5] Ibid.

 

[6] The same elder reminded me of the quote from Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.”

[7] My friend wrote of this, “This is where the concept of ‘daily bread’ really seems to matter. There’s nothing wrong with seeking meaning, but lacking meaning does not give us license to sit down and quit in this moment. God supplies us what we need for each day as it comes, and we have a rare opportunity right now to live more presently than we have likely ever allowed ourselves to do in our lifetimes.”


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