Easter: The Turning Point

[MUSIC PLAYING] Hello and welcome to the John Mark Ormiss Teachings podcast. My name is Yinka Dawson and I'm your host. Each week, we feature teachings by John Mark or other voices in the formation space. And it's great to have you with us. It's Easter. And so as we celebrate Jesus' resurrection, we wanted to share one of John Mark's Easter teachings. In it, John Mark explores the person of Jesus and how the ripple effects of the resurrection have transformed human history and is still influencing our lives today. Here's John Mark. [MUSIC PLAYING] Who is Jesus? That is the question that our society keeps coming back to year after year after year. After upwards of two millennia now, a Western European history, after the crusades and the Spanish Inquisition and the sex abuse scandal, the Catholic Church and the rise of secularism and the phenomenon that is Kanye West. And even in an urban, secular, progressive city like Portland, we just can't get away from the question who is Jesus. Was Jesus a teacher and no more? Kind of the first century equivalent of a Yappy self-help guru? Or was he more like a political revolutionary, a subversive kind of anti-establishment voice, more like a cheque Guevara, but with a Bible? Or was he more religious? Was he God, but in the avatar of a human body? Everybody has a theory, and at times it's hard to tell truth from fiction. So to start off tonight on Easter Sunday evening, let's have a run at the question who is Jesus. Well, if you know anything about the New Testament, you know that the first four writings in the New Testament are called gospels, and essentially a gospel is a first century biography of Jesus of Nazareth. And the four gospels form the nucleus of the New Testament as a whole. And when you read the four gospels, you really quickly come up with a synthesis, with a brief sketch of who exactly Jesus was in three parts. First off, Jesus was a teacher or a rabbi in Hebrew. That was what people would call Jesus. Hey, rabbi, Jesus. Unlike any good rabbi, he would travel around from synagogue to synagogue and village to village. And he would teach about God, about the Torah, or the Bible of his day, and about life and God's world, but really quickly his fame spread far and wide, all up and down Palestine to the point that Jesus had to teach out in the open in a field or up on top of a mountain. In fact, his most famous collection of teachings is in Matthew's gospel, chapters 5, 6, and 7. And we call it now the sermon on the mount. At the time it was just Jesus upon a mountain teaching. And it is the most, I would argue, it is the most stunning vision of what it means to be in Jesus' language, a disciple or an apprentice, in this brand new reality that he called the kingdom of God. And I, to this day, have yet to read a more compelling vision of what it means to be human. I still think it is without parallel in the history of the world. Jesus, I would argue, was the most intelligent, brilliant, thoughtful teacher to ever walk the face of the earth. So he was a rabbi or a teacher. But then secondly, he was also the Messiah. And that's language that you and I don't play with a lot. Messiah is a Hebrew word, meaning king. The main problem with the mantra that is so popular in our city and in our generation, kind of the Jesus was just a teacher and no more. Well, the main problem with that is Jesus. Because yes, Jesus was a teacher, but most of Jesus' teachings were not about abstract, ethical ideas or social justice or even love. Most of Jesus' teachings were about what he called the kingdom of God. So his biography, Mark, here's his one line summary of the entire message of Jesus in one sentence. The time has come, the kingdom of God has come near, repent and believe the good news. On a regular basis, I hear people say, Jesus was all about dot, dot, dot. And usually it's whatever that person's agenda is. Jesus was all about love or Jesus was all about social justice or Jesus was all about freedom from political tyranny or whatever the thing is. And Jesus had a lot to say about all of that. But all of that was secondary for Jesus. At the top of the list, Jesus' central message was the kingdom of God that it has come near, it's here and it's now. And so we have to actually reckon with that and repent and believe in this gospel or in this good news. Jesus' claim was that the kingdom of God, this is Jewish language that you and I are little, it's foreign to you and I, but this long awaited kingdom, this moment when God would break back into human history and put the world to rights when God would become king over the earth again. Well, Israel had been waiting for hundreds of years. Jesus' claim was that one that it's here, it's finally at long last year and two, that he was the Messiah or the king of Israel and the world, the one to usher in the kingdom of God. His claim was I'm the Messiah and I'm here to usher in the kingdom of God. And if that's not a staggering enough claim, Jesus was a teacher and he made the claim to be the Messiah and then third on top of that, he made the claim to be the Lord. Everywhere that Jesus would go, he would, if you read the gospels, he would heal the sick, he would cast out demons, he would prophesy over people right and left, he would work miracles. Early on, people essentially thought that he was a prophet, kind of like Elijah or a Lysha, if you've ever read the Old Testament. But after a while it became clear that no, something more is going on here. God was up to something special and unique in Jesus. In particular, after Easter Sunday, after the resurrection, immediately, literally within days, we'll read it in a moment, within days, people started to worship Jesus. Now, this is, imagine in your mind, you're a first century Jew. You are an ardent, passionate, monotheist, your anti- idolatry, you don't believe all of the Greek mythology. You are a monotheist, but within days of Jesus, resurrection, you start to worship Jesus, a rabbi, a teacher that you know and know well, as Lord. In fact, the early Christian claim, the kind of creed that people, that sound sentimental now, but people would literally go to death for in the arena in Rome, was this one line, Jesus is Lord. Now, Lord, the word that was actually used in Jesus' day was the Greek word, Kyrios. And that was the Greek translation of the Hebrew proper name for God, Yahweh. So if you were an early follower of Jesus and you make the claim, I believe that Jesus is Lord, what you're saying is that you believe Jesus is the embodiment of the God of the universe, that in Jesus, the Creator steps into the creation, into the story that you and I live in, that in Jesus, divinity and humanity exist in the same place. That's what you mean when you say Jesus is Lord. All over the New Testament, there are blatant claims to this reality of Jesus of Nazareth. For example, John 1, "No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is Himself God, and as is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known." Or Colossians 2, "In Christ, all the fullness of the deity lives in bodily form." Or of course, the letter to the Hebrews. "In the past, God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days, He has spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, and through whom also He made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God's glory, and the exact representation of His being, sustaining all things by His powerful Word." My point is that over and over again, within days, within weeks, within years of Jesus' resurrection, hundreds, if not thousands of people, made this audacious, unheard of before claim that Jesus, this poor anti-establishment rabbi from the north of Israel, that He was more than just a rabbi, that He was Messiah, but He was more than just the Messiah, even He was the Lord. And if you're here and you're not a follower of Jesus, and you don't buy that at all, first off, welcome, wherever you're at, in faith or not in faith. And if you're thinking, "Man, how in the world do you guys get all of this from a nice, like Jewish hippie from Southeast with the sweet beard?" Like, "How do you get all of this from Jesus?" The short answer to that question is Easter Sunday. We believe all of this to be true about Jesus, that He's a Messiah, but more that He was actually the Lord, because Jesus is back from the dead. Let's read that story. Hopefully, your Bible is open to Matthew 28 in your lap or on your phone. This is the end of the story of Jesus in Matthew's biography, and it's a surprise ending. You know, you would expect the life trajectory of a teacher, Messiah, Lord, to end in war with the Roman Empire, the overthrow of the pagan oppressor, but instead it ends with Jesus non-violent, self-sacrificial enemy love, his death on the cross. You would expect it to end with, you know, a throne and a coronation of Jesus, instead it ends with Jesus with a crown of thorns and on a cross to die in your place and in mine. You would expect it to end in victory, and eventually it does, but at first, it looks like it ends in defeat with Jesus dead, but then three days later we read this, chapter 28 verse 1. After the Sabbath at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to the church. look at the tomb. There was a violent earthquake for an angel, the Lord, came down from heaven, and going to the tomb rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning and his clothes were wide as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men. The angel said to the woman, "Do not be afraid, for I know that you were looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here. He has risen just as he said. He will come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly, tell us disciples. He's risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him. Now I've told you." So the woman heard away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy and ran to tell us disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them and he said, "What's up?" They came to him, clasped his feet, and worshipped him. Notice that, this is within hours, worshipped him. Then Jesus said to them, "Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee. There they will see me." Skept down to 16. Then the 11 disciples went to Galilee to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they heard us again, worshiped him. But some doubt it. Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me." That's how you say Jesus is Lord in the first person. Therefore, go and make disciples or apprentices of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. And teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always to the very end of the age. At the center of all that we believe as followers of Jesus is the claim that the tomb is empty, that Jesus is alive, not dead. He's here not far away and he's now not back in the past. That God has made this poor Galilee and rabbi, the king and Lord over all creation, and that his kingdom is here. That is the guts, the heart and soul of the gospel of Jesus. It's all about resurrection. Now, resurrection has all sorts of implications for you, for me, for how we do life in our city and our world. Here's two, that's all we have time for this evening. First off is this, the resurrection is God's yes to Jesus claims. There's little doubt from scholars and historians who believe in Jesus and who don't buy it at all. There's little doubt that Jesus claimed to be more than a teacher, that he claimed to be the Messiah of Israel. That's why he was put to death by the Roman Empire as a threat, as an enemy of the state. He was a political threat. And that he claimed to be even more, he claimed to be Lord. That was why he was put on trial by the Jewish leadership or establishment because he made the claim. He made himself equal with God. That was the charge in the court of law. He claimed to be the embodiment of God himself. But that doesn't mean he was, right? I mean, I'm here in the city every day. I work downtown. I live right up the street. So on a regular basis, I run into people who claim to be God. I don't know what I mean, like in a mean way. I just, I do. I'm pretty sure they're not. I'm pretty sure, you know? I think they just are not really well. So what makes Jesus any different from the guy down the street from my house that I run into? What makes Jesus any different? Well, the resurrection. I mean, more than just that. There are signs and wonders and prophecy and history and all of that. But head and shoulders above all of it is the resurrection. If a man or a woman claims to be the embodiment of God and then he or she dies, well, the verdict is in. I mean, either that person was not well or was a con artist or a fraud or a ripoff. But if that person then comes back from the dead three days later, that's grounds for a retrial or a full on dismissal. That means he or she was who he really claimed to be. And so the resurrection, it's God, the creator's way of saying to Jesus, yes, everything this man said was true. Every teaching, every word, every phrase, and everything he claimed, he claimed to be the embodiment of God. This is my yes to that. Jesus is exactly who he claimed to be. It's God's yes to Jesus. But then secondly, the resurrection, so it has implications for Jesus, but also has implications for you and for me and for the world. The resurrection is the beginning of a whole new age of human history. Everything changed on that first Easter. So really quick, if you were a first century Jew, you divided all of human history into two ages or epochs of time. This present age and the age to come. This present age was the age we live in now marked by entropy and decay and death and injustice and violence and an egg for God to return and put things to right. But then the age to come was in the future. It was on the horizon. When the Messiah would come, there would be a resurrection of the dead, the wicked, the righteous, everyone would stand before God and God would lead humanity into a new glorious future marked by peace and justice. Now this was the framework of Jesus and the writers of the old and the New Testaments. Jesus is this beautiful out of left field curveball because it's one resurrection right in the middle of history instead of resurrection for all at the end of history. And in doing so, Jesus dragged the future into the present. He dragged the age to come into this present age. He dragged life into the middle of death, hope into the middle of despair, justice into the middle of injustice. And he unleashed what he called the kingdom of God, this whole new reality. It would not be an Easter teaching from John Mark Comer and I'm sorry to talk about myself in the third person that is so Kanye. But without a quote from NT right and I love it, he writes this, "The resurrection of Jesus declared that Jesus was not the ordinary sort of political king, a rebel leader that some had supposed. He was the leader of a far larger, far more radical revolution than anyone had ever supposed. He was inaugurating a whole new world, a new creation, a new way of being human. He was forging away into a new cosmos, a new era, a new form or existence hinted at all along, but never before unveiled. Here it is, he was saying, this is the new creation you've been waiting for. It's open for business come and join in." Jesus' resurrection on the first Easter, it changed everything from the ground up. I mean, until recently, in the entire Western world, time itself was measured from before Jesus and after Jesus because he was the turning point in human history. And if you think that I overstate the case, I'm not alone. There's a growing number of historians of lay writing a lot about the roots of Western European culture. With globalization and now with technology, and we have eyes on tragedy across the world hours ago, we see it all in a moment. With that comes a growing awareness of the disparity between the West and the developing world, at an economic level, at a political level, at all sorts of at an equality level, all across the map, there's a growing disparity. It's getting worse, not getting better between the West and the developing world. And so more and more people are asking, man, what made the West so great? Not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. We live here, we know that. But really, this is a zenith, if not the zenith of human civilization yet today. And so more and more people are asking, why is that? And this is not ethnocentrism. Most of the historians and scholars asking the questions are non-Westerners. Writers like the Indian intellectual, Vashali Mangalwold, he has a brilliant book out, it's a great read, if you're up for it, called The Book That Made Your World, how the Bible created the soul of Western civilization. And the basic gist of his book is that we were all kind of fed when we grew up in the particular in the school system. We were fed this narrative that said, the West is the byproduct of the enlightenment, which all comes out of kind of ancient classical Greek philosophy and democracy. And his argument, and he's not alone, there's a ton of scholars that argue this, is that is a rewriting of history, and it does not make sense of the data at all. That our culture of the West is not the byproduct of ancient Greece or classical learning or even the enlightenment, it is the byproduct more than anything of the way of Jesus. That the enlightenment itself was the byproduct of the Protestant Reformation a few hundred years before it. And in particular, you can trace it to the translation of the Bible into English and to German into the language of the day. At one point in the book, he quotes a Chinese academic who was hired for a decades-long research project by the highest levels of the Chinese government to research what is it that made the West so great? And I love this quote from the academic on the team. He writes this, "We were asked to look into what accounted for the preeminence of the West all over the world. At first, we thought it was because you had more powerful guns than we had. America, right there." Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next, we focused on your economic system. But in the last 20 years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion, Christianity. That is why the West has been so powerful. The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life was what made possible the successful transition to democratic politics. We don't have any doubt about it. Keep in mind, this is a atheistic, communist, Chinese academic. Now whether you agree with this reading of Western history or not, my point is that as followers of Jesus, huge fans of the Enlightenment, but we think it was penultimate to the resurrection of Jesus. That Jesus was the turning point that everything good in our world, we can literally trace back to the first Easter. But that said, we all know that we live at a fascinating time in Western European history. One way of thinking about the West's history is through this lens, pre-Christian, Christian, and post-Christian. Give me five minutes for those of you that could care less. Just stay with me. I am going somewhere here. You could see some of you are like, I don't, you say that a lot and then I don't really know. But it's okay, have faith. All right? This is church, have faith. First off is pre-Christian. This was an age in Europe of gods and goddesses, a tribal, violent, divided society that was the norm all across Europe. It's easy to forget now in the time we live in that we're the newcomer on the scene, that Europe lag way behind for hundreds of years for millennia behind the Islamic world, in the Mediterranean, behind Northern Africa, behind Asia, behind basically everything we were. If you read kind of ancient history, we were the barbarians up in or ancestors were, where the barbarians up in the north, we lag way behind violent, tribal, kind of barbaric culture. But that pre-Christian age was followed by a Christian age as the gospel spread all through Europe. Now I say that Christian, I say that tongue in cheek because Europe was never Christian in the true sense of the word. But there was a time when Europe was in America was Christianized. When the way of Jesus spreads so far into the fabric of Western culture that it created what sociologists called Christendom, which is essentially a blend of kind of the way of Jesus and European culture. And it was never pure, it was always a mixed bag, it was always kind of off and not quite right, it was always a mixed bag. But for hundreds of years there was a blend where Judeo-Christian ethics were essentially the baseline for morality and culture where most people had some kind of a faith in God and even in Jesus. And where a lot of people actually were marked by the way of Jesus itself. And all of this historians argue is what gave rise to the Enlightenment, what gave rise to science and technology and medicine and democracy from monarchy and the arts and architecture and women's rights and equal opportunity for all. And all of this comes out of the worldview that we read all over the New Testament. Most of the hospital system, the education system, democratic government, most all of this was started by followers of Jesus if not by the church itself. There's a lot of re-writing history that goes on in particular the last few decades to turn the church into the villain. And at times we were, we don't have anything to brag about. But at other times it's absolutely stunning what followers of Jesus were on about in particular through the West, the foundation of hospitals, of justice, of technology, of urban planning, of democracy, of all sorts of things. But now we have clearly, we all know this, moved on. That was then, this is now, we're into a new age, into a post-Christian age. Clearly our society is not Christianized anymore. I'm not sure that Portland ever was. We're kind of like at the end of the Oregon Trail. Like people pray for a revival. I'm like, it's more like a Bible here. I don't think there's a re. I don't think there ever was one here back in the day. But Judeo-Christian ethics are actually under fire, not as no longer binding, but actually as not moral anymore, perhaps as immoral, in particular when it comes to the Judeo-Christian ideas around sexuality. More and more people mark the box, none, or atheistic, or agnostic. And 500 years ago, if you think about it, it was practically unthinkable to not believe in God. We've never read anything by Charles Taylor. He's a famous kind of sociologist. He has a thousand-page book that's up, don't read it. It's boring. But it's brilliant. Read like the internet, you know, one-page blog summary of it. It's really good. He asked the question, how in the world is it that 500 years ago was practically impossible to not believe in God and even in Jesus? And now 500 years later, we live in such an age of skepticism that even for the most ardent believer, for the pastor upon stage, for the leader in the church, for the seminary professor, we're racked by doubt because of the age of skepticism that we live in. So much has changed over the last few hundred years. Now, here's the thing, and this is what I'm getting to. Stay with me. Post-Christian, this is what you need to wrap your head around. Post-Christian is very different from pre-Christian. It's not like, hey, we were Christian, and now we just, you know, we went back to how it was before. No, we don't worship gods and goddesses. We're not tribal, like no, it's a very different reality. The cultural commentator, Mark Sayers writes this, and this is a little bit thick, so just pay attention. Post-Christianity is not pre-Christianity. Rather, post-Christianity attempts to move beyond Christianity while simultaneously feasting upon its fruit. Post-Christian culture attempts to retain the soulless of faith while it's gutting it of the cost, commitments, and restraints that the gospel places upon the individual will. Post-Christianity, in two-itedly yearns for the justice and shalom of the kingdom while it's defending the reign of the individual will. Post-Christianity is Christianity emptied of its content. What he's saying is that our society has moved on from its kind of sort of Christian-ish past, but, and here's the key insight, it still wants to hang on to the parts that it liked. What our society is after is in the language of Jesus, the kingdom of God, but without God, and without the king. The Garden of Eden, with everybody naked and unashamed and on a bike ride. But with no God in the middle of the garden to say, "Hey, this tree is okay, and that tree is not. This is good, and that is evil. I'm God, you're not. Let's be in relationship." No, we don't want that. We want the Garden of Eden. But we just don't want God to screw it up. We want, we ache for the reality of the kingdom of God, for the justice, the Shalom, that's a Hebrew word, meaning peace and deep, well-being and joy. We ache for that. For equality, for men and women and children, for every ethnicity, every sexuality, every stage of life. We ache for freedom from tyranny, for success and prosperity, for generosity and just, we ache for everything that Jesus had to say about the kingdom of God. But we don't want a king. I mean, come on, this is Portland, Oregon. This is like the future capital of Cascadia, right? Don't tell us what to do. We do our own thing. We're a democracy, and this is Portland. We just, we do our own thing. We don't want a king, but we still want the kingdom. So we're hard at work. Our city is essentially a giant project devoted to the pursuit of our creating our own little private utopia. You know, 20 years ago, the futurists were all kind of prophesying a dystopian urban future. If you think of, say, Blade Runner, which was, I think, 1982, anybody around back then? Yeah, not very many of you, but well done. And but you know the movie, right? So if you think of Blade Runner, it takes place in 2019, and Ridley Scott's vision of the future was of this kind of cyberpunk dystopian wasteland with flying cars. That was cool, but the city was a ghetto. That's it. Everybody was prophesying. If you think of Blade Runner, if you think of Back to the Future, if you think of Total Recall, if you think of the Fifth Element, I mean movie after movie from this time period in the 1980s, everybody at the time was moving out of the city to suburbia, to escape the ghetto, to like live the good life out with the lawn and up, you know, lawn mower, whatever you have out there, whatever. And the future of the city was bleak. Here's the thing, they were wrong. Here we are, 20, 30 years later, and first off, we don't have flying cars. How lame is that? Seriously, when I was a kid, everybody said that by now we would be flying to church. Like, we're still not flying to church. It's so lame. It's just what a disappointment. But the city's not a ghetto. Instead we actually all moved back into the city. And instead of becoming this urban wasteland, no, the city, it looks a lot more like Portland or New York City or San Francisco or the cool part of LA, not most of LA, the cool part of LA or Amsterdam or Copenhagen or Melbourne or Sydney or whatever your city of choice is the future. It ended up looking not like a dystopian wasteland. It ended up looking like a nice, wealthy, beautiful corner of heaven on earth. Think about Portland. This is such a great city, right? I mean, it really is fantastic. The food is off the charts and you can eat for like $20. It's absolutely amazing. The drink, the coffee in the morning, the beer in the afternoon, the wine at night. It's just like, this is the. Maybe that's just me. That's. Don't worry, only on my day off, not on a Sunday. You know, it's so good. The urban planning, we can ride our bike all over the place. You don't have to own a car. We live. There's architecture. There's fashion. There's design. There's beauty. I mean, this, the city is so great that it almost fools you into thinking that good food and good drink after you get off work and a nice place to live and a shiny new bicycle is enough out of life. It almost fools you into that narrative. My friend Mark calls it the beautiful world. We've created in the West, and Portland is a great example of this. We've created this outside world that is beautiful. Think of the coffee shop you go to. Tens of thousands of dollars of design and structure and wood and architecture and style. Think of that $4 donut you eat and that $7 latte with cashew, almond milk made in a beautiful handmade ceramic mug from the East. I guess just we've created our own private little utopia. And I never mind the dark underbelly that you have to be able to pay $2,000 in a month and rent to live here that poor people don't get to enjoy it. So we just don't want to talk about that. But as long as we pretend that's not a thing, we've created our own little utopia. But here's the problem. The outside world, if you think about it, in particular the urban core of Portland is beautiful. But the inside world is an ugly mess. Under the thin kind of veneer of the Portland persona, we all know that our society is just staggering under the pain, the weight of pain and suffering. So many people in our city are racked by anxiety, smart, educated, well-off, successful people racked on meds, don't know how to get out of it. Divorce runs rampant through our society, the breakdown of the family, and in spite of all the PR, where it's the modern family and whatever, we all know that children are collateral damage. A lot of you are collateral damage. You know it's propaganda and it's not true. Addiction is at an epidemic all-time high right now. Not only to drugs, but to alcohol, the alcoholism in our city is insane. If you don't believe me, just walk down your street on recycling day and look at the yellow bin, glass all the way to the top week after week after week. Addiction to sex, addiction to work, addiction to play, addiction to money and stuff, and more money and more stuff. Addiction to technology, our entire generation has a huge digital addiction and we're in denial. We're not even ready to talk about it yet. And then of course, a lot of people really have it together at one level. I think about a ton of people in my neighborhood, a ton of my friends that don't follow Jesus, really have it together, put well together, educated, doing well in life, a good marriage, or a good family, but there's no inner life. And so people just have to run and stay ahead with distraction after distraction. Let's go to this new bar, let's go to this new restaurant. Oh, it's open, let's go to this new museum, let's go to vacation here, let's move here, let's go to vacation here, go, go, go, go, people have to out run the void and the emptiness that is deep inside because there's nothing there. Because the mantra of our culture and the language of the ancient poem is let us eat and let us drink for tomorrow we die. And so our city is doing that, we're eating a lot. And we're drinking a lot. But we know that one day we die. And in the meantime, we just try to not think about it. It turns out that the beautiful world is a facade because it has no clue how to deal with suffering because a $4 down as fantastic as it is. I had one yesterday. It's just not enough to get you through a divorce. A $7 latte, I don't care how organic your cashew milk is. It's just not enough to get you through cancer. A really nice pair of $200 jeans. All raw, it's just not enough to get you through the highs and the lows, the suffering and the pain of life in the world that we call home. Again, sayers writes this, secularism offers the fruit of Shalom minus the tree of biblical faith that bore it. What is most striking about the secular's creed is its persistence in the face of the reality of human life. We all suffer. We yearn, we age, we sicken, and then we die. Yet Western culture clings tightly to its faith in the arrival of a godless utopia and the possibility of a human life untainted by suffering. For hard at work to create that. Man, if anything, we have optimism. We have optimism. We keep hoping against hope that the next president or the next technology or app on our smartphone or the next thing will save us and usher in this godless utopia. But it keeps not coming. Another election, another letdown. Another technology, another app, another letdown. Another thing, another relationship, another fiance, another husband, another wife, another home, another career, another city, another letdown. It's just not it. We're stuck in this reality where the outside world, the exterior environment that we live in, it's beautiful. But the inside world underneath the skin what really matters, the interior, it's an ugly mess. And we're stuck. And here's why. Listen, you can't have the kingdom without the king. You can't have the kingdom without the king. And why would you want to? Because the king's the best part of it. You can't have the justice and the shalom, the hope, and the equality, and the prosperity, and everything that you and I, the healing that you and I ache for, you can't have it. Look at Jesus, the king, right in the middle of it all. So that's the bad news. You can't have the kingdom without the kingdom. But the good news is that Jesus is the king. He's come. He's back from the dead. His kingdom is here. And every one of you is invited. That's it. That's the good news. Every one of you is invited to the kingdom of God. You are invited no matter what you've done or not done, no matter where you come from, or where you're going. You are invited to the kingdom of God. Jesus is calling you. And he's asking you to repent to believe, or three postures that Jesus is asking of you. If you read the gospels, and it's essentially to repent, to believe, and to follow. To repent, that's kind of like nasty language in our culture right now, right? But that was actually a beautiful life-giving word in Jesus' day. In Greek, the language of Jesus and his friends, the word was metanoia. And it essentially just means to turn around. So you're going one direction to repent is to turn around and go the exact opposite direction. You're going away from God to repent, turn away, and go towards God. But the word metanoia actually more literally means to think about the world in a whole new light, to change your mind, to change how you think, to rethink life and God and reality from the ground up all around the creed Jesus is Lord, all around the story of Jesus' death and burial and resurrection. To repent is to rethink reality around the story of Jesus and then to change the trajectory of your life away from God towards God, away from the way of Jesus towards the way of Jesus, to repent. Then to believe what? To believe that Jesus was a teacher for sure, of course, everybody knows that, but to believe that he was more, that he was the Messiah, not only of Israel, but of the world, and to believe that he was even more of that, that he was Lord, the embodiment of the God who made you, who made the universe, who made the world that you and I call home, who made it all, to believe that, to put your faith in that, to believe is to trust. To lean all of the weight of your life onto that reality, that there's more than eating and drinking and waiting for the day you die. There's more. There's more than this life, there's the life to come. There's more than this age, there's the age to come. There's more than your stuck, this is the way it is. It's healing and change and transformation and the power and the presence of Jesus with you, to believe that, to trust that, to lean the weight of your life and to base your life around that reality. So repent and believe, and then finally the invitation of Jesus was follow. "Hey, come follow me," Jesus would say, "On a regular basis." So this isn't just something that you believe in your head? Oh, Jesus is lower. Cool. And then you go back to your life. This is something Jesus had come follow me and what he meant by that was come be. He would say, "Come be my." Methodist was the word in Greek. Disciple or I think a better translation is my apprentice. Come apprentice under me. Come learn and relearn how to relate to God, how to relate to yourself, how to relate to your community and your city, how to be human in God's world. Come learn from me. Become my student and me your teacher. Come my apprentice, learn how to live in the new reality of the kingdom of God. Jesus is not looking for converts to Christianity. He is looking for apprentices to the kingdom. of God. And when you repent and you believe and you begin to follow an apprentice to Jesus, you become an apprentice of the teacher, the rabbi, the Messiah, the Lord, learning and re-learning from Jesus, what it means to be human. And Jesus is calling every last one of you. If you grew up in the church in a Christian home or if you grew up as an atheist, if you grew up religious or irreligious, Eastern or Western, cynic or believer, educated or not, wherever you come from, wherever you're going. Jesus is calling you by name. He sees you right where you're at, right where you're sitting, all of your pain, all of your past, all of your future, what you don't even see yet, he sees you, he sees all of it. And he is calling you repent, believe and follow me. And the way that you say yes to Jesus, the way you say, okay, I'm in, is through an ancient act that we call baptism. And baptism is an odd thing because it's not a part of our culture, right? It's not something we don't have, like this is the crystal ballroom, there's like 80s dance night on Wednesday or whatever, you guys go to that? You don't? I'm here, everyone's in eyes, here it's like, you know me, you know the way I roll. Like it's just not, there's not like baptism night every other Thursday at the crystal ball room, it's just not at all a part of our culture, but it's an ancient, evocative symbol of death, burial and resurrection. Think about it, baptism, death, you go under the water, burial, you stay there for a moment, resurrection, you come back out and you gasp for air and everything is new. Baptism is the way that you identify with Jesus, death, burial and resurrection. You say yes and you take that story as your story, that death, burial and resurrection, as your death, burial and resurrection and you become one within relationship with the Jesus that is Lord. Now, to end, I know that most of you have already been through the waters of baptism and out the other side into the kingdom of God. Most of you, you're here, you are an apprentice of Jesus. That's what your life is all about. Hey, just one closing thought for you. Today's a great day. And we live in a great city. Hopefully, at a good time with your family, friends this afternoon, you know, a little honey-baked ham, nothing says Jesus is back from the dead like pig, even though he was Jewish. That's weird, but that's a whole other teaching. Hopefully you had a great afternoon, a great day, a great night ahead of you or a week. I just want you to think about this tonight, tomorrow morning, the coming week. I want you to think about the reality that everything good in your life, so much of your life, your community, even your fat, the social fabric of your city, so much of it is the byproduct of the first Easter. And I want you to turn that awareness of, oh, yeah, Jesus was the turning point. And this is all because of Jesus. I want you to turn the awareness of that into gratitude. As followers of Jesus, every good and beautiful moment in life is an excuse to say thank you. Because we believe there's a creator and we live in the creation. There's a lot of evil here, but there's a lot of good and everything good is just an excuse to say, God, thank you. And so I want you to take all the beautiful stuff in your life and turn it into gratitude. But at the same time, I want you to take all of the ugly stuff in your life because we all live in the tension and now in the not yet between this age and the age to come, between Jesus first coming and a second coming, between Jesus' death and resurrection and our death and resurrection. We live in that tension in that middle time and that stretch and that elasticity and that pain and that weighting we live right there. And so there's beauty in our life and then there's ugly stuff in our life as well. And we turn that beauty into gratitude and we turn all that is ugly into a moment to connect with God. And I just want you to invite God into the pain of your life. Nobody here is immune, suffering is a part of life. No matter how much money you have, no matter how great your neighborhood or your city is, no matter how good your coffee is in the morning, suffering is a part of life. Some of you here tonight, life is fantastic. Others of you are here and it's not so great right now. Honestly, I'm coming out of two really rough weeks. Overall in life, everything's good. The last two weeks were just kind of hell on earth. It was two or three bad things went down and my wife and I have just been wrestling and dealing with it for the last few weeks. Just some stuff with people we know and just really hard, heavy stuff that's spring break and I'm good. I'm okay. I got a new blue shirt on. It's Easter. It's great. I'm okay. But man, coming out the last two weeks, I've just been really down. And yesterday it was my Sabbath and I was on a walk and I was with Jesus. And I'm telling you guys, Jesus is just the best thing on offer. The kingdom's great. The king is even better. I just life with Jesus. I'm with you always, even to the end of the age. He's with you every moment, every second of every day he's there. Anyway. I'm in a walk, beautiful afternoon. I'm in prayer and I'm just giving my pain to Jesus. And I just had this sense from Jesus, this one line, the story isn't over. Stories and over. I'm a reader. I'm a nerd. I love to read sci-fi, like weird stuff. I read like literary stuff to make myself feel, you know, smart. Like I read The New York Times in the morning. But then I read like young adult fiction a lot too, just because it's more fun. And so yesterday I'm reading this book for 14-year-olds, it was fantastic by the way. And I'm reading this book and I left off to go on my walk and I left off towards the end of the book and it was like a cliffhanger. You know, it's like, "All everybody's going to die." But it's not literary. It's a commercial fiction. It's the end of the old book. So you know like everybody's not going to die. They can't kill the kids 14. You can't kill them off, you know? And so like, but it's like it's scary. In that moment in the story, you're like, "Oh my gosh, it's so scary." But you know if you read that genre, you know like, "Hey, it's okay." And I just had the sense from the spiritual, I'm a hark like the story isn't over yet. And even if your life is rough right now, even if it's pain, even if there's suffering, you know the end of the story. The worst thing this world can throw at you is death. And death has been defeated along with all of his friends. So the message of Easter is not, you know, pretend. "Hey, pretend that everything's okay." Like, no, for a lot of you everything is not okay right now. The message of Easter is that you're not alone no matter what you're up against. Jesus is with you. There's healing in the here and now. And there is hope because Jesus is back from the dead. He won. He won. He won the war on evil. He defeated death on all of his friends and it's only a matter of time until you step into resurrection and you step into the world they knew. To matter what you are up against, you and I live with hope. In an age of skepticism, in a cynical city, in time and age, we are a community of hope because we believe that we live in a universe where dead messiahs come back from the grave. And if that's true, then anything is possible. Let's stand and pray. It's a profound reminder that Jesus won the war against evil. Such a wrap up today. Let's just have a quick moment of gratitude. Start by bringing your awareness to God's presence. And take in a few deep breaths to slow you down and enjoy the feeling of air in your lungs. And then ask the Holy Spirit to bring to mind a good thing in your life that you're grateful for. Whatever comes to mind, say thank you and really savour it with God. I'll give you a few seconds to do that and close with the prayer. [Music] Jesus, thank you for your resurrection. Thank you for how you defeated death and now we get to witness and participate in the in breaking of your kingdom in every area of our lives and our world. And so thank you for all these good things in our lives. And to receive them as first fruits of your rule and reign, infiltrating every aspect of our world and making all sad things become untrue. Amen. [Music] Thanks for listening. This podcast is from practice and the way. We develop resources to help churches and smart people. more groups are apprentice in the way of Jesus. Thanks the little thoughts for our show music. Work out funded nonprofits are everything we make is completely free because it's already been paid for by the circle, our community of monthly giveers. Special thanks today goes to Jason from Tape Towns at Africa, Brian from Campy Indiana, Ori from Edmund, Oklahoma, Cindy from Trebuco Canyon, California, and Colin from Golden Colorado. Thank you all very much to join these friends in the circle or learn more about our resources, visit practiceintheway.org. Until next time, may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. (upbeat music)