Inside Out: Praying Our Sadness

INSIDE OUT: SADNESS

(Sing)

They call it stormy Monday, but Tuesday's just as bad
They call it stormy Monday, but Tuesday's just as bad
Wednesday's worse, and Thursday's also sad

Yes the eagle flies on Friday, and Saturday I go out to play
Eagle flies on Friday, and Saturday I go out to play
Sunday I go to church, then I kneel down and pray

Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy on me
Lord have mercy, my heart's in misery

The Blues. Born of a fusion of European folk songs and slave work songs that had its roots in African call and response rhythms that are also evident in African-American worship (even preaching!) to this day. Uniquely American, in part due to this fusion, the blues has its roots in deep south. The flatter notes and the cadence of the music allows for the expression of pain, tears, crying out, and sometimes whining, and sometimes lighthearted complaining of the artist.

They call it Stormy Monday is a classic blues song. It is a song of complaint, yet it is not without humor. It speaks to the pain as well as the rhythms of everyday life. A pained week, a raucous Saturday night, and a cry for help and forgiveness come Sunday until the whole pattern starts again on Monday.

Of course the blues have evolved, and infused much of contemporary music. The blues are powerful, because our pain and our heartache, our suffering and our hardship, it all needs to be acknowledged.

As Prince, who is a musical artist that died this week, opined in the introduction to his song, “Let’s God Crazy”, “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here to get through this things called LIFE.”

In the Psalms, there are these blues notes as well. Jesus prayed one of these songs, Psalm 22, as he died on the cross when he cried out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me.”

The Psalms teach us how to pray our joy, as we discussed last week. They also help us to pray our sadness.

We are looking at Psalm 42 this morning, which is a psalm of lament. As we will see in a few minutes it asks questions, it expresses heartache and doubt, and through the Psalms we are instructed to do the same.

In the movie Inside Out, as we discussed last week, we observe, in a smart, witty, and humorous way, the internal life of a 11-year old girl named Riley who is forced to move with her parents from Minnesota to the city of San Francisco, CA. Inside Out begins movie begins with the emotion Joy, personified by a spritely blue haired yellow girl, pretty much taking control of everything. But slowly, as a series of life circumstances make life much more difficult, Sadness begins to awkwardly interfere, moving into Riley’s “control panel” and awkwardly even messing with her “core memories”.  Sadness is seen as a burden, a problem to be solved, and thus the other emotions attempt to deny her any influence, and seek to give her little if any acknowledgment. The movie, in many ways, is about Riley, the young girl, and her ability to process an increasing sense of sadness and loss.

As the movie shows, and as we have seen, there are many unhealthy ways of dealing with our sadness. Addictions can often be born as a way of coping with sadness. Sadness can lead us to isolate ourselves, harm others, and even harm ourselves.

Yet, if you look at the spirituality of the Bible, especially centered on the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, what we do not see is a denial of the pain of sadness, but a transformation of it. Other Easter Religions, such as Buddhism for instance, seek to avoid and deny heartache. The Scripture speaks of sadness redeemed and transformed.  “Every tear will be wiped away” the Bible says, He will turn your mourning into dancing, God’s Word teaches.

And so, Scripture shows us, through the presence of psalms of lament, that we are to bring our pain, our hurt, our sadness and place it at the feet of Jesus. He told us to “come unto me all you who are weary and heavy laden”.

Psalm 42 is one such Psalm of Lament. It expresses a longing for the presence of God when it says, “My soul pants for you my God. My soul thirsts for you, the living God”. It says three times says, “Why my soul are you so downcast? Why are you so disturbed within me?”

The Psalmist is facing difficulty in his personal relationships. Specifically, it appears that he has enemies that are getting the upper hand. Verse 9 says he is mourning. Verse 9 also says that people are attacking him. Verse 10 says that his enemies are mocking him. Furthermore, his friends are mocking his faith.

Earlier in the Psalm he remembers times when things were more joyful, more happy, When he soul felt watered and refreshed. Now even the waters that come near him feel like a storm that he must survive.

Yet, like many Psalms of Lament, songs of sadness, even when he is praying to God, pouring his heart out, he is still doings so from a perspective of trust and faith. Even in the difficult dark moments of his life, he says, “Put your hope in God, for yet I will praise him, my Savior and my God.”

Two of our hymns are statements like these, statements of hope out of a painful time in the song writer’s life. Most of you know the story of “It is Well”, but it bears repeating. Horatio Spafford was a businessman, heavily invested in real estate in Chicago. When the Great Chicago Fire happened, he lost a significant amount of his personal wealth. His two year old son died. In order to get a break from the difficulties and pain, the family planned a trip to England by boat. Spafford was delayed, but his wife and daughters went ahead. There was a boat collision, and as his wife made it to England she sent a telegram, “Saved alone.” Spafford then made his way to his wife, and when he came to the place where the ship sunk he penned the hymn that begins, “When peace like a river attendeth my way, and sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot he has taught me to say it is well, it is well with my soul.”

Precious Lord, Take My Hand was penned by an African American gentleman named Thomas Dorsey, who began his musical career as a guy who played in the clubs, and then after coming to Christ began to write, play and perform sacred music.

Lets listen to his story. PLAY RECORDING.

These are beautiful statements of faith, these hymns. But we do not have to The willingness to come to God in prayer, vulnerable, wounded, full of questions about why God seems so far away and distant and uninvolved in rescuing him from his suffering—all of this is an expression of faith as well.

Sometimes our tendency, as people, is to run away from God when hardship comes our way. We try and handle our problems ourselves and blame ourselves. Our we become angry with God and for some reason believe that we can avoid God. Or we deny God’s existence because we don’t want to deal with God anymore.

Praying prayers of lament, of sadness, shows that we have the faith to have difficult conversations with God. It shows that we are not afraid to bring to him our more difficult emotions, and to trust him to help us with them, to heal us, to be with us, despite our struggle with the moment that we are in.

When I read the Psalms, and pray through them, I find praying the sad Psalms especially helpful.

I read through the Psalm the first time, then I pray through it again, sometimes in my head, and sometimes aloud. I slow down. I read it sentence by sentence. I then use the concept in each line as a prompt to then make that prayer my own, expanding on the psalms words with my own words. Or sometimes I just pray the prayer by reading the Psalm, and I just let my mind bring situations I am dealing with before the Lord, with or without words, and I place those hurts and difficulties in his hands.

The Psalms show us to be brutally, straightforwardly honest in prayer.

The other things that can be healing about praying the Psalms, especially Psalms of Sadness, is that as we pray these psalms, especially if we are in that place in our life at that moment, we feel heard and affirmed in our journey.

Charles Spurgeon, the prince of preachers, was a brilliant student of the Psalms. One of the reason he preached and taught them so well is that he both struggled with what we would call depression, and debilitating depression at that, and found healing in the Psalms, and because at times encountered what we would call the “dark night of the soul” and had the Psalms to sustain him in those moments.

There is so much in our world that tries to put on a plastic, chipper face, and pretend to be overjoyed with every moment.

The truth is that we can be both joyful and sad, and we can find a deep abiding joy, even in our sadness.

Last year, I went to a continuing education event in Loveland. It was on the Future of the Church, and there was so much to absorb. I plan on sharing some of it with you in the near future.

In the process of being there, they challenged us with some unique worship experiences. One of those unique worship experiences had us go to a station, and read a Psalm that corresponded to our age, and then sit with that for a while, reflecting on what it meant to you in that moment.

I am 42. I got this Psalm, Psalm 42. It corresponded to right where I was at. Frustrated. Discouraged. Feeling like nothing was going right, even though I was trying to do everything I was supposed to do, and everything I was called to do. I read through the Psalm and I found a sense of peace. I can’t get into all of it right now, but I had the Spirit give me a sense of peace that it was ok to be where I was right then. It was not weird. I was not wrong for feeling the way this Psalm expressed. I was not abnormal. I was in fact, in good company. So I prayed through the Psalm, and even though the words were rather sad, they gave me a sense of joy and hope. I was known. I was heard. I was who I was. Right where I should be. And that was ok. And I was able to accept the discouragement I was feeling instead of fighting against it. And that sense of praying it and accepting it, and experiencing God’s acceptance, helped me and is helping me find my way through the difficult and dark places in my life with an abiding peace and joy in the midst of the storms. Can’t explain it all to you. Just know that by praying this Psalm, I sensed that I was heard and acknowledged. And I know that this is part of the blessing of praying through sadness and pain.

Because, when you pray your sadness through praying the Psalms of Lament, you can gain many things. But perhaps the most meaningful thing that can come out of this kind of prayer is that by speaking your heartache, and praying it in conjunction with the saints throughout the ages, you learn that you are not alone. Not alone because many souls have prayed the prayer you are praying while carrying similar burdens and having similar questions. Not alone, because even as you come sensing God as being somewhat distant, as you pray with the Psalms there can be a sense of being heard by God, and a new realization that for those that place their hope in Christ, they are never alone.

You Are What You Love

YOU ARE WHAT YOU LOVE

I don’t often try to spend my time in venues like the Breeze doing book reports, but there is a particular book that has caught my attention lately, because its thesis, which is stated in the title, has caused me to stop and think. That book is entitled You Are What You Love and it is written by James K.A. Smith at Calvin Theological Seminary. I have not finished the book, but the concepts of the book have been marinating in the back of my mind like the chicken tenderloins are marinating in Italian dressing or garlic parmesan sauce until I put them on the grill this evening.

The thesis of the book is that our lives are defined less by our ideas and our stated values, and informed more by what captures our heart. That is why the Proverbs tell us to “guard your heart, because everything else flows from it” (Proverbs 4:23). It is why Jesus invites some of his disciples to follow him in the gospel of John by asking them, “What do you want?” (John 1:38). It is also why when Jesus seeks to reinstate Peter as an apostle after his betrayal of Christ before his crucifixion he does not ask Peter if he has figured out what he has done wrong, he asks Peter three times, “Do you love me?”

James Smith puts it this way, “discipleship is more a matter of hungering and thirsting than of knowing and believing” (p. 2).

Of course, discipleship is a matter of both loving God with our whole hearts and our whole minds, but we can often forget the primacy of the heart. We can describe conversion and the life of faith in a way that speaks more to what we intellectually assent to that what we give our lives to. And when we reduce faith in Jesus to agreeing to a good idea, we miss the message of faith. Because, as was stated earlier, we are what we love.

The author then goes on to say that our loves, wants and affections are formed and informed by our habits. In other words, we can say all sorts of things, but our life’s habits reflect what we really love and what we really worship. Furthermore, a large part of apprenticing ourselves to Jesus is taking upon ourselves habits that, as they are practiced and become integrated in our lives, begin to re-form our hearts and lives, and reorient ourselves toward seeking God, his kingdom, and his righteousness.

A big part of the reason why we gather for worship on Sunday mornings is that we are forming the habit of worship, which in turn orients our hearts toward reflecting our professed love of Christ. We sing in worship because singing engages the body and the emotions. Our radios are full of love songs to romantic interests. Our worship is full of love songs to a Savior who loved us enough to die for us in order to set us free from sin and death, and make us alive to serve and love Christ for eternity.

Last week, as we dialogued about the direction of our church at the Board of Trustees meeting. We discussed that we had an adequate mission—making fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ—but we had yet to set objectives and to gain enough specificity in the nuts and bolts of how to fully implement that mission. In other words, we have a lot of good ideas about where we are going, but we have yet to form intention and habits on how we are going to specifically work together to get where we need to be as a church. We need to continue form habits as a congregation that are going to empower us to be more hospitable and invitational, more passionate about knowing and living the good news, and more oriented toward seeking the good of our community. We have got some good starts in this direction, but we must keep pressing on until our mission and vision become our second nature—our habit.

Inside Out: Praying Our Joy Sermon

INSIDE OUT: JOY!

As you can see from the insert in your bulletins, as well as the cover of your bulletins, we are making a little turn in our teaching for the next few weeks here at United Churches. For the next five weeks we will be looking at the Psalms through the lens of the movie Inside Out.

The Psalms are the prayer book and the hymn book of the Bible. It exists to provide models of how to communicate with God.

The Psalms are also unique in that as one reads through them, a vast array of emotions are present. One cannot read through the Psalms without coming the conclusion that the Psalmists bring their whole heart before God, and as they pray through verse, through song, through written prayer, that they lay themselves bare before God. In the Psalmists beauty and brokenness, their victories and with their vices, they hide nothing, and let God minister to them as they are, in their own uniqueness.

As theologian Walter Brueggemann says in the title of his recent book, the Psalms show us that Psalms are prayed to one “from whom nothing is hid.” The Psalms teach us to pray in a way that we pray as we are, not as we should be. They teach us that we don’t have to hide, to play a game, to manipulate, but rather we come as we are to God in prayer, and we allow God to mold, transform, reprove, and grow us as we pray.

So, I have been thinking about this thing for a long time—this thing about the raw honesty and the transformation of our emotional health that is available through praying through the Psalms. And then my kids started wanting to watch this movie that was somewhat related.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to watch the movie Inside Out when I first saw the previews. The movie is based on the struggle of a girl in late grade school that has left the idyllic home of her childhood in Minnesota to move to San Francisco with her family, and it throws this little girl into an emotional crisis.

The action of the movie then moves into her mind, where her emotions are personified by characters. The lead character is Joy, who has controlled everything in the little girl’s life up to that point, but who begins to be losing control, especially to another character, who is Sadness. Before long, every character in coming to the forefront. Anger, Despair, Fear. The move has created emotional upheaval.

And, (spoiler alert), one of the things that is learned is that the young girl functions best when each of the emotions are allowed to be acknowledged and accepted as part of who the little girl is.

So, we are going to look a little bit at the Psalms, and ask God how we can be changed from the Inside Out by praying our whole selves, mind and emotions, positive and difficult emotions, and letting God form our emotions in a way that makes us more faithful instead of being either completely out of control or completely bottled up.

Now, there are lots of ways to pray through the Psalms, and I am sure several of you do this without thinking, but I think this phrase, “Praying the Psalms” might be helpful to unpack for some of us who are not used to praying or praying the Psalms.

We pray the Psalms by reciting or reading through them, and making the prayers that are written in that Psalm our prayer. We relate what is said to our circumstances as we read slowly through that. We borrow the words that are in the Psalm, and we speak them from our heart. And we use the Psalms as a springboard to speak to God in our words.

I suspect many of you have done similar things with songs, Christian or secular, that you have sang. You hear the song enough you memorize it. You allow it to speak to you. Although the singer of the song and you may have different stories, you find a way of relating that song that you love to your life. More about that in weeks to come.

The first emotion we are going to talk about praying through is Joy. Joy is often demonstrated in the Psalms. It comes to us through prayers of thanks—acknowledging God for what he has done for us, and it comes to us through prayers of praise—giving God appreciation for who he is. And, much like the movie, joy is often born out of the experience of other emotions.

C.S. Lewis says, “Joy is the serious business of heaven”. And he is right. Joy is central in the life of the believer. And central in the emotional life of healthy persons. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin says, “Joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God.”

So let us look at Psalm 33. Psalm 33 is Psalm that teaches us some things about what it means to pray joyfully, and to learn joy through prayer. The first verse of this Psalm encourages us to sing joyfully. In verse 21 our hearts rejoice.

As we look at Psalm 33, the first thing we see is that when we pray our joy through the Psalms we find PERSPECTIVE

True joy, the Psalms teach us, as we pray them, is a gift from God. It is based on God’s provision, his goodness, and his grace. Through prayers of praise for the Creator, and thanks for God’s gifts, we find perspective about our life and circumstances. And that perspective brings joy.

Psalm 33:5 tells us, after exhorting us to express joy, that “The Lord loves righteousness and justice, the earth is full of his unfailing love.” The rest of the Psalm bears this out. As we learn to pray our joy, we learn where our joy comes from. It comes from a sense of awe and gratitude in how blessed we are to know God, and to be taken care of by him.

We discover joy, not through anything we do, but when we become radically aware of just how much of our life is truly a gift. When we become aware that we are a part of something that God is doing that is bigger than us, then we experience joy.

When we remember that God is in control, we can begin to put our worries behind us. When we remember that God’s justice and love is ruling the world, we can live with an attitude of trust instead of fear.

We learn this perspective as we pray and remember the vastness and the beauty of creation. We experience this sense of awe and joy in being connected to our Creator through simply observing the creation around us.

Have you ever been filled with joy watching a sunset? Have you ever been overwhelmed with joy holding a baby in your arms? When you think of all that there is, and how you have been blessed, you can’t help but experience joy.

I can have the worst day ever, and I can be walking up to the house as the wife and the kids pull up to the driveway, and suddenly I gain perspective as Karis and Mattea jump out of the car, demand a run hug from their daddy, and wanted to be lifted into my arms. Because I know that I have been blessed, and I can let go, at least for a bit, of the joy-robbing stuff in my day.

It is interesting here that political leaders are mentioned. Ultimately we have joy even in the most discouraging and trying political situations, because the control is not in the voters hands, it is not in the hands of the politicians, ultimately we are to trust not in men or women, but in God’s unfailing love. Yes, even in an election year we can live with the joy that comes from an eternal perspective.

This is because no matter what our foundation of our joy is in the love and goodness of God, and celebrating that.

Another thing that we notice as we pray through Psalm 33 is that we are not meant to pray our joy alone, but to allow our joy to overflow into our lives together and our everyday live

As we pray the Psalms we learn to PROCLAIM our joy

We are called by this Scripture to sing joyfully together. To play instruments to express our joy. To speak and testify to our blessed-ness.

We are meant to share our joy that we learn in prayer with those around us.

That is why we share praises every Sunday in prayer. This is why we read Psalms in our calls to worship.

Sometimes we have this picture of simply praying the Psalms with our coffee in a quiet corner of our house with our coffee. And, indeed, the Psalms can be read and prayed as they are read in moments like these. But we are called to express our joy with one another as we are gathered together.

Robert Louis Stevenson says, “Find out where joy resides and give it a voice far beyond singing.” We start with singing, but our joy is proclaimed in our words and our attitudes as we live our lives.

As we praise God together, and share the things we are thankful for, we help others experience God’s gift of joy. Think about how you are encouraged as you hear how God has answered others prayer, how God has blessed others during the week. We pray our joy together, and watch our joy multiplied. This is true through the words we speak, as well as the songs we sing.

Eddie Izzard, a British comedian, tells the story of African American worship experiences he has had in comparison to the Anglican worship that he was born and raised in. He shares the historic plight of African American persons. Slavery. No civil rights. Sharecropping. Segregation. Poverty. And yet, he says, enter a black church and you will be overcome with the celebratory, joyful nature of the singing and the worship. He then describes the folks where he came from. Some of the wealthiest, most blessed people in the world. Very little to complain about. Yet, when they sing, “How Great Thou Art!” it is drab and passionless, like they are sleep worshipping (demonstrate). Let it not be so with us, let us not only have a joyful perspective. Let our joyful attitude be shared with those around us at worship, in the workplace, and even in our homes. As we give word to our joy, our joy is multiplied.

When we experience and live joy, it exudes from us. And often we gain that overflowing joy by praying the psalms and praying our joy together.

Finally, though, praying our Joy gives us POWER to deal with difficult circumstances and other difficult emotions.

In the movie Inside Out, Joy begins by trying to overpower the other emotions in the little girls mind by taking over everything. But the joy that the girl was experiencing with shallow and immature. In the end of the movie, the character of Joy learns that she can have experiences and memories that combine sadness or fear with joy, instead of denying other emotions and denying difficulties, we can find joy even through the difficult moments.

Verse 19 talks about finding joy in the fearful circumstances of possible death or possible famine.

When we gain perspective we realize our circumstances of the moment need not define our attitude. We find that even as we face hard times, that we can at the same time experience the goodness of God. We find unexpected graces in undesirable circumstances. And that brings enduring joy, as we stay connected to the Savior, and he sees us through.

Joy is deeper than happiness. It is an attitude that knows that we can live with a hopeful confidence that all things will be well because we serve a good God who works all things together for those who love him and are called according to his purpose. It is a positive grace that endures even through the bad times, and being honest about the bad times, because we know whose we are, and we know that in the end, and even now, we have victory through the power of the resurrection of Christ.

So live joyfully my friends. And pray with joy as you pray through the Psalms, because as the old hymn goes, you know who holds the future, and you know who holds your hand. Amen.

God is Writing Your Story

God wants to write your story (and include you in his)

God is the bestselling author the world has ever known. It is true. If you believe that the Scripture is God’s Word, no one book has sold more copies that the Bible. And although the Word of God was penned by many different people over a period of centuries, the truth is it was God who spoke to, inspired, and led those authors to pen his Words for the world.

The Scripture is complete, but that does not mean that God’s work as an author is finished. He wants to write your story, and include you in his. He wants to make your life completely and powerfully unique, and yet part of a story that is bigger than you and I. A story, that is God-sized and God-saturated.

Recently, I began to ponder how God had written himself into the lives of two persons in Scripture. One was Peter. The other was Paul. In each case, he writes himself into a crisis point in their lives, and begins to write his narrative of beauty, grace, and hope into their lives.

Peter was a failure by the time we get to the end of the Gospel of John. He had insisted he would not deny Jesus. He denied him three times. Jesus was killed. He died. Then he rose again in victory. But Peter was still unclear what it meant and if he mattered. So he went back to the one thing he thought he could do well. He went fishing. He fished all night, and he got skunked. Early in the morning, he was told to cast his net on the other side, much like he was when Jesus began to call him into ministry. Peter did what he was told, and he had a huge catch. He swam to shore, had breakfast with Jesus and the other disciples. As they were spending time together, Jesus asked Peter if he loved him. Peter replied that he did. Then Jesus told Peter to feed his sheep. This happened three times so that Peter would have the opportunity to state his love three times after denying Jesus three times. Jesus telling him to feed his sheep is Jesus’ way of restoring him to ministry. Peter feels broken. Jesus gives him forgiveness and a second chance. Jesus sets Peter’s life story in a new direction, and he leads the church, preaching the sermon that brought thousands to Christ on the day of Pentecost.

Paul was on the fast-track. He had the best education. He was moving up the ladder in Hebrew leadership by persecuting Christians. He had a stellar reputation among those who mattered. Yet for all his accomplishments his life rang hollow and untrue. One day, he was making a trip to persecute Christians in Damascus, and as he was doing so, he encountered Jesus. He was thrown to the ground, blinded by a bright light, and heard the audible voice of Jesus Christ call him to a new life surrendered to following and serving him. Because of this encounter, Paul led the Christian church in taking the good news of Jesus to the Gentile world through the missionary ventures God called him to lead.

For each of them, their lives were transformed through an encounter with Jesus. Christ wrote himself into their story, and their relationship with him defines that narrative.

God wants to write himself into your story in all sorts of unique ways as well. Will you let him?

New Beginnings: Weekly YouTube contribution

Wise Words from around the World Wide Web

From retired pastor Bill Wolfe on being a "salty person"

From Associate Pastor Rocky in Chicago on putting yourself out there.

Why "Youth are not the future of your church" from Dennis Bickers. whose book we are reading on the Board of Trustees this year.

Are pastor's leaving ministry in droves, or are the rumors exaggerated?

Therefore, Run: An Easter Sermon

Therefore, Run

When Jennifer and I were dating, there would be moments, when she was wanting me to hurry up or stop being distracted in the office supply section in the store, where she would urge me to hurry up and move along. And, at some point, putting on my best Forrest Gump voice, I would yell at her from down the aisle, in an embarrassingly loud voice, “I am running Jenny” and then I would awkwardly run to catch up with her. I have made a habit of doing this kind of thing as we have went along in our marriage, even when I was training for my 5k last year and the year before. Why not? Making a fool of myself is one of my most endearing qualities.

The act of running has an interesting story in Biblical history. I did a word study on the concept this week. For the average Jewish person, running was not behavior that was engaged in for sport or to maintain or build physical health. Sometimes running was done to flee temptation (Joseph), and was often engaged in with military conflict. Running was often used metaphorically for something that was done in haste.

One of my favorite Scriptures says that young men will be able to “run and no be weary”. (Isaiah 40)

Yet, there was a sense, especially by the time of Jesus, that running was often considered undignified. You see, you would be wearing a robe, and in order to run and not trip you would have to pull up your robe and expose your legs, which was considered a little shameful, a little embarrassing. This is one of the things that makes the parable of the Prodigal Son so powerful. At that point in history, if a son was discovered to have squandered his inheritance among the Gentiles, he would be drug in front of the leaders of the community, they would grab a bowl, break it, and tell the young man that he was now cut off from his people for his shameful behavior. Public humiliation. Yet, with the Father’s running to the prodigal, the Father short circuits the shaming of the Son by taking the shame upon himself.

In Christ, God has come running to us. Stooping to us. Taking our shame upon himself, so that we can have a new life, a renewed hope, through placing our faith in him, trusting him with our lives by surrendering our lives to his authority.

Anyway, all of this is helpful to know when we get to resurrection accounts in the Gospel of John. Why? Because everyone is running with the accounts of the resurrection. John 20:2 says that Mary Madgalene runs from the empty tomb to find Peter and John. She tells the men about the empty tomb, and they run as well. John tells us that he got there first, but tells us that Simon Peter goes barreling into the tomb as soon as he gets to the scene. Then they leave. The grave clothes are there, but the body is not? What are they to make of this?

We are left to wonder that too. And part of what we are to make of this event has to do with the response of those first three witnesses of the resurrection: Mary, Peter, and John. When they hear of the open tomb, they cannot help but run. They run from the grave, and they run to it.

Are we to believe that this running would have been shameful? I don’t know. I think what we are to hear is that they simply did not care. This news that Jesus’s tomb was empty, that he may have been risen from the dead, that God has turned the world rightside-up through raising Christ from the dead, this was worth running to, even if they looked goofy, embarrassed or shamed themselves.

Two thousand years from that first Resurrection morning, to empty tomb, my friends, is still worth running to. It is the pivot point in history. The message of new life, of hope, of life after death, of the victory of our conquering King Jesus is still urgent for you, for me, for our friends and our family, and for our world. It still has the power to set prisoners free, to make the broken whole, to reconcile enemies and to bring joy from ashes, and hope from despair. The empty tomb still has the power to change lives. I know, as imperfect as I am, it has and is changing my life.

During Lent, we have been studying Hebrews to immerse ourselves in understand the greatness of Jesus Christ. We have learned over and over again, our need for the Jesus who loved us enough to come to us in human form, to live a perfect life, to die on a cross, to rise again in victory, and to ascend to sit at the right hand of God.

We have contemplated all of this, and now on Easter morning, we are confronted with Hebrews 12, and the “now what?” in light of the resurrection. Jesus has died and risen. He has suffered for us. He has offered us new life. Now what?

The author of Hebrews invites us to get running!

Now, Hebrews is written to Hellenistic Jews. Jews that were not native to all of the national history and customs of the Land of Israel, but folks who had tried to follow the Scriptures in exile spread out all around the ancient world. In the Greek world, athletic competition was common. And one of those competitions had to do with running. Running competitions has ties to military in ancient Greece and Rome.

Marathon, for example, was a messenger who ran from the battle field to announce the victory of the Athenians over the Persians. He came bringing good news. There were no phones or television then of course, so news of battle news was passed on through messengers that relayed the news, running from place to place. These messengers were called evangels when they had positive reports. Thus to be an evangelist is a person relaying good news about a victory that has been won. And evangelical is one who is a person who believes in the good news of victory in Christ, and lives in faith about that good news.

He compares the story of faith among God’s people to a relay race run in full view of all of the people of history. In Hebrews 11, as we looked at last week, the preacher who preached the content of the book of Hebrews gets on a roll. He begins to recount the history of the people of God. They have followed God in faith. Seth. Moses. Abraham. Noah. Isaiah. David. The prophets. The judges. Each ran the race. The lived by faith. Like relay racers, they passed the baton to the next generation. And each generation, one way or another, lived carried on that faith and passed it on to the next generation. Sometimes better. Sometimes worse.

And now, having the benefit of knowing about the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the baton is passed to us. And all of the saints that have come before us make up a cloud of witnesses. And that cloud of witnesses shouts to us, in light of the good news we have to live and to share about Jesus Christ, they shout RUN!

RUN!

How are we to run?

The author of Hebrews gives us some very helpful advice of how we are to live, of how we are to run the race, in light of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

1.    Fix our eyes on Jesus

The resurrection reminds us that our faith is not in religion, or an organization, it is in the leadership of our Lord Jesus Christ. In light of the resurrection we run to him! We fix our eyes upon who Jesus is. We say, because Jesus died for me, I am going to live for him. Our life becomes about loving the way Jesus loved, being strong and bold for truth the way Jesus was, and remembering that Jesus is the standard that we hold everything against. His resurrection proves he is greater than anyone. His resurrection shows that he has power over sin, death, and the evil one. So our focus should be on what he wants us to do, and where he wants us to go. Get focused on Jesus and what is going on around him.

2.   Throw off sin

Jesus died so that you can be victorious. Not so that you could wallow around in sin, and have it tie you up and tie you down. If we have faith that Jesus is risen, that trust then spurs us on to living with a trust that God’s way is better than our way, and that the wisdom of the Word is greater than the wisdom of the world.

If you truly trust, believe in, and love Jesus, your life will be marked by eliminating the self-centered, destructive, sinful life you have left behind. You will begin to trust that God knows what is best for you better than you think you do, and you will begin to eliminate from your life those things that stand in opposition to Christ and your soul.

3.    Throw off anything that gets in the way

In the movie UP!, there is this endearing dog that is devoted to the main characters in the story. Unfortunately, what happens is that the dog is easily distracted. He is puttering along, doing good things, and then he sees a squirrel. And he goes chasing after that squirrel and gets distracted from the things he is meant to do.

In light of the resurrection of Christ, your life is about one thing. Sometimes sin gets in the way. Both other times we are just so easily distracted with a million different things that we are impeded from being the transforming, world-changing, neighbor-reaching, community building people Christ has called us to be. We can be like the dog, that lets the squirrels around us get in the way of truly living a victorious life in Christ.

We get stuck doing things in our lives that keep us from private devotion or worship, or public worship here. We get distracted from the needs of our neighbors with our own business and our cell phones. Sin is always gets in our way of running the race well. But there are good things that can steal our focus too.

4.   Persevere

A life lived trusting God means that we need to persevere. There are times when walking with Christ is just difficult. Maybe we experience a dark night of the soul. Or maybe circumstances steal our motivation to stay faithful to Christ. Remember, at this point, that we are running a race. There are moments that we may want to quit. It is imperitive we don’t. We have a great cloud of witnesses cheering for us. We know through the resurrection that victory is ours. Let us not abandon trusting the Way of Jesus because of temporary discomfort. Persevere!

5.    Endure opposition and hardship

Both from the evil one, and from others around us, running the race of faith is difficult. You will be attacked for doing what Jesus tells you to do. They attacked him too, the author of Hebrews says here, but stand strong. You will endure suffering for doing the right thing. Your kindness will not always be returned. You will be pushed aside. Keep pushing. Keep running. If you are doing anything important, there will be people who will oppose you, who will stand against you, who will seek to drag you down. RUN. KEEP RUNNING.

6.   Consider who you are running to

Run to Jesus. Consider what he went through to win you, and how little you endure in comparison. Consider what Christ did for you, and how much loved you. And then remain faithful, remain loyal to him by believing, trusting, and living for him, under his authority, in obedience to him

7.    Run!

Run to Jesus. Easter shows us the war is won. We still face battles, obstacles, and challenges. But Jesus is our champion. Run with him. Run to him. Run for him. Run to Jesus and live victoriously.

Amen.

Lost and Found: A Poem

It is in the confusion
of a lost moment
where your habits
are stripped
like threads from a screw
that you might find the new you
that went missing
in the chaos
of the human zoo

It is in the dark room
of fumbling confusion
where the beautiful
glimmers of light
begin to form a picture
that can shape
the rest of your life
reborn in the
everyday world
of light

Despise not the dark
or the lost times
that may
bring you home
or beyond home
to that place
you are determined
destined to go
a mystery made
for you to abide in