1^st Sunday in April (John 19, 20 and Luke 22:7-23) 

Imagine inquisitive aliens visiting the planet this week, finishing out their March Break holidays. It will probably take them awhile to even recognize religion in the midst of our culture, but eventually they may wonder about the obsession we have with bunny rabbits, eggs, sugar coated candies, and childhood indulgences at this time of year. Imagine their surprise when you say that it all has something to do with the death of Jesus. Usually the origins of cultural traditions make some sense, but this is just too much! What has sugar to do with sin … or for salvation for that matter?

Team Meditation (Luke 22::7-23)

The earliest Christian believers understood that the “Last Supper” gave new meaning to the traditional Jewish Passover. It did not replace it, but it added to it. The sign or promise of salvation was revealed to the enslaved Israelites in Egypt when the first born sons of their persecutors were killed and their own children spared. Smearing the blood of a lamb upon the lintels of their doors as a sign of the faithful people inside, death passed them by. This sign gave them courage to flee Egypt for the Promised Land. The ancient Christians saw a deeper meaning through their relationship with Jesus Christ. Athanasius wrote in what he called is “Festal Letter”: “We [Christians] have the lintels of our hearts sealed with the blood of the new covenant.” The blood of Christ (the “Lamb of God”) marks the faith we have inside our hearts, and the miracle of being spared the death that we deserve gives us courage to follow Christ to an eternal “Promised Land”.

Worship Theme (John 19 and 20)

John 19:30  ³⁰ When Jesus had received the vinegar, he said, "It is finished"; and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

These days we are used to grit and gore in the intense realism of television and movies. Perhaps we are so appalled by the bloodiness of our world that we strive so hard to “sugar coat” our religion. Unfortunately, the realities of evil people and evil deeds and awful suffering and inevitable death … these will not go away just because we don’t want to face them. If religion is to have any real relevance, it has to be just as bloody and gory as real life, but guide us beyond despair and cynicism to hope. No pain, no gain; no hell, no heaven. This is why the story of Jesus gets so gory and bloody at the end, because, after all, it was never intended as a bedtime story to put our children to sleep. It has always been intended as “adult content”. We will never appreciate peace if we have never experienced violence; and we will never find real hope if we have never confronted real despair.

So what did Jesus mean when he said “It is finished”? What, exactly, is finished? He might have been acting in one of our violent movies, and meant simply “I’m a goner, a dead man, tell Mom I love her.” Yet from that very moment at the foot of the cross, with blood dripping all around, and wailing and despair filling the city, the earliest Christians (including Jesus’ Mom) believed he meant something more. He meant that the past was over, and a new future had begun. Not only was his dying over, but death itself was over. From now on, life would always win. This was a turning point in history, and a turning point in your personal living. Hopelessness is finished. Hope has begun. 

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2^nd Sunday in April (Luke 24:1-35 and Acts 13-14) 

Show of hands! How many people out there got up at dawn, and stood shivering in the cold and often very wet morning to praise God? Oops, not many, and those that did are often teens who don’t seem to sleep anyway (except at school) and their parents (anxious to support their children’s spirituality at least once after Christmas). Many of us slept in … because it was Sunday and the only rest in our multi-tasking week (and we needed all the rest we could get before the in-laws arrive this afternoon). And some of us were up early, but it was for soccer practice and there wasn’t a lot of praising the Lord going on. Yet on this day, all over the world, and particularly where people are the poorest and the most easily victimized, Christians got up at dawn to praise God. Gives you pause for thought, doesn’t it?

Team Meditation

Acts 13:29-33   ²⁹ And when they had fulfilled all that was written of him, they took him down from the tree, and laid him in a tomb.  ³⁰ But God raised him from the dead;  ³¹ and for many days he appeared to those who came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are now his witnesses to the people.  ³² And we bring you the good news that what God promised to the fathers,  ³³ this he has fulfilled to us their children by raising Jesus …

There is, indeed, a “great conspiracy” at the heart of Christianity. Today we are obsessed with “conspiracy theories”, usually suggesting that the church throughout history has deliberately sought to distort and hide facts in order to manipulate people. These conspiracy theories tend to break down, not because they don’t make sense, but because they can’t seem to offer any serious motivation. Why would the church labor on such an elaborate hoax, when corporations, lawyers, and politicians can demonstrate any number of easier ways to make money and gain power.

There is a “conspiracy” here, but it is God’s conspiracy. The church, like the bumbling butler in a mystery movie, is implicated in it but not the author of it. God has in fact been maneuvering people, shaping events, and developing an elaborate and often hidden strategic plan, the fruit of which is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. What would motivate God to such a complicated act? The redemption of the world, forgiveness of sinners, and reunion with His prodigal children.

Worship Theme (Luke 24:1-35)

That Jesus is a “slippery customer”. Nothing seems to hold him for long, and he slips beyond our grasp. He appears to unlikely people, at inopportune times, in oddly mundane or positively unsavory places. If someone were to tell us they saw Jesus, we would be prone to disbelieve it. Indeed, even if we chanced to see Jesus here or there, or out of the corner of our eye, or in the midst of our suffering, we would even then doubt it. The ancient Christians understood modern people. Augustine wrote (Sermon 236.2): “This hope, this gift, this promise, this tremendous grace … when Christ died his disciples lost it from their spirits, and on his death they fell away from hope. Here we see them receiving the news of his resurrection and the words of the messengers seem to them like an idle tale. Truth became like an idle tale. If ever the resurrection is proclaimed nowadays, and something is an idle tale, doesn’t everybody say he’s all twisted up? Doesn’t everybody loathe and detest what he says, turn away, close their ears and refuse to listen?”

What about you? Have you become so jaded, cynical, and pessimistic, that you are unable to see Jesus standing right in front of you, in your situation, in your sorrow, in your searching, and in your life? He is right before your eyes, and you cannot see him. Perhaps the problem is not that Jesus is invisible, but that we are really blind. Fortunately, Jesus is the Light of the World.

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3^rd Sunday in April (Ezekiel 34 and Luke 15:1-7) 

There are two basic questions left behind after Jesus’ resurrection … and they happen to be related to the two basic questions people ask in the depths of their hearts. Our first deep question is “How can enjoy life to the fullest?” Our second deep question is “Where can I get help to do it?” By the time we are teenagers, most of have decide we will never enjoy life to the fullest, no matter how hard we try, and there is no one who can help us do it (least of all religious people). Meanwhile, in the wake of Jesus’ resurrection, the early Christians realized there were suddenly answers to these questions. What Jesus did was to make possible forgiveness of sins and abundant life … and make himself eternally available to help anybody experience both.

Team Meditation (Luke 15:1-7)

Here is an early Christian Hymn, originally written by the Latin poet Prudentius about 400 CE (“Hymn for the Day 8.33-45). Try setting it to music and singing it together.

“When one ailing sheep lags behind the others

And loses itself in the sylvan mazes,

Tearing its white fleece on the thorns and briers,

Sharp in the brambles, 

Unwearied the Shepherd, that lost one seeking,

Drives away the wolves and on his strong shoulders

Brings it home again to the fold’s safekeeping,

Healed and unsullied. 

He brings it back to the green fields and meadows,

Where no thorn bush waves with its cruel prickles,

Where no shaggy thistle arms trembling branches

With its tough briars. 

But where palm trees grow in the open woodland,

Where the lush grass bends its green leaves and laurels

Shade the glassy streamlet of living water

Ceaselessly flowing.”

Worship Theme (Ezekiel 34)

Ezekiel 34:16-23  ¹⁶ I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the crippled, and I will strengthen the weak, and the fat and the strong I will watch over; I will feed them in justice.  … ²⁰ "Therefore, thus says the Lord GOD to them: Behold, I, I myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep …²³ And I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd.

Christians believe that Jesus is the “Good Shepherd”, and although we today don’t meet many “shepherds” we all have an idea what it means. “Shepherds” watch over sheep. They strengthen them when they are weak, heal them when they are hurt, and keep them safe. We don’t often realize that really good shepherds do more than this. They also evaluate the relative health and judge the everyday behavior of the sheep … culling the terminally ill or constantly uncooperative sheep from the flock … so that the entire flock is as healthy and harmonious as possible. All this requires an extraordinary Shepherd … someone beyond the touch of human ego and human selfishness … someone whose whole heart is dedicated to the abundant life of the sheep. I wonder who that might be?

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4^th Sunday in April (1 Corinthians 15 and Luke 20:27-40) 

There is a “bottom line” to Christian faith. Behind all the aesthetic beauty of sanctuaries and songs; and behind all the great friendships around coffee and hospital beds; and behind all the many service projects to improve the world; and behind all the charitable giving that makes us feel good; and behind all the sermons, pot luck suppers, and passionate quarrels over ideology and doctrine; there is a simple question to be answered. Is it true? Is Jesus Lord? Did he really conquer death, and therefore can he conquer sin? Is this hope real?

Team Meditation (Luke 20:27-40)

Leaders are often frustrated by the seeming obtuseness (indifference, insensitivity, or disinterest) of church members about the real grace of God. They hear about it, but just don’t seem able to take it into their hearts and celebrate it. The other side of the coin, of course, is that churchy people seem so indifferent to confront their own sin and separation from God. They confess in prayers that they don’t seem to really mean, and behave as if everything is just fine when it is not. We must trust that God’s grace does not depend on our human attention. God is working inside the Christian despite his or her very indifference. Philoxenus of Mabbug (440-523 CE) was an early Bishop of the Syrian Orthodox Church who agonized over this, but found comfort in the conviction for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit: “A sinner who has received baptism, although he may be dead toward his soul because he does not perceive his sin, he is alive to God because of the grace of baptism he possesses. This agrees with the words ‘God is not God of the dead, but of the living, for they are all living in him’.”

Worship Theme (1 Corinthians 15)

1 Corinthians 15:13-21   ¹³ But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised;  ¹⁴ if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.  ¹⁵ We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised.  ¹⁶ For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised.  ¹⁷ If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.   

The resurrection from the dead is one of those Christian beliefs that to contemporary scientific, rational people seems impossible, irrelevant, and out of date. Even think of the hope of eternal life more metaphorically or spiritually, and imagine that somehow (God being God for heaven’s sake!) could preserve everything about our identity including our good looks and crooked teeth in a miraculous way, it still doesn’t seem necessary for Jesus to actually, bodily, be raised from the dead. Yet the reason Paul is so adamant for the bodily resurrection of Jesus is that he is convinced God will leave nothing to chance convincing people that salvation is really real. If we list all of the obstacles that could hold us back from a perfect, abundant life of joy and fulfillment, the one thing on the list that cannot be eliminated by poetry, metaphor, or wishful thinking is the reality of our death. No matter how happy we might be … we will die. And apparently, there is nothing that is going to change that. If Jesus only survived death metaphorically, then we can only survive death metaphorically, which is to say, it really isn’t going to happen. So Paul says it really happened. 

The question is … is he right? Certainly he is logical. Real confidence in eternal life must rest on a real resurrection. But did it happen? No wonder doubting Thomas wanted to actually see and touch his wounds! We can do three things. We can take the Apostle’s word for it (credible spiritual leaders that they were). Or, we can taste and touch the body and blood of the risen Lord through the sacrament of Holy Communion. Or, we can actually meet Jesus.  

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5^th Sunday in April (Isaiah 55 and Acts 8:4-40) 

Today’s scriptures are for everyone who has avoided or deferred filing their tax returns … and feels that mixed burden guilt, anxiety, resentment, and fear that must first be removed before we feel any new life. We chronically underestimate the time and labor required to file our tax returns, which is why we rely more and more on experts to do them. And this leads to an interesting speculation: Can accountants know Christ? Can even a CPA know salvation? Could we encounter Christ at tax time? 

Team Meditation: (Acts 8:4-40) 

This week you will want to combine the two scriptures in the worship service. One of the great misconceptions church leaders have is that business people tend to be unspiritual. We associate seekers more with the social service, health care, or fine arts sectors … not with the corporate sector. That is a mistake. Business people are often driven by noble goals, tempted by much self-interest, and burdened by many mistakes. They may feel more alienated from grace than others, but more prepared to pay the cost of discipleship because they know the value of real grace when they see it.  

This Ethiopian treasurer is one such seeker. Chrysostom comments on his humility. “It speaks well of the eunuch that he paid no attention to outward appearance. He did not ask [of Phillip], ‘Who are you?’ He did not find faul with  him or make false pretenses; he did not claim to know but confessed his ignorance … So desirous was he of learning and so attentive to the teachings that they saying ‘He who seeks, finds,’ was fulfilled in him” (Homilies on the Acts of the Apostles 19). 

Worship Theme: (Isaiah 55) 

Time and again our daily living proves one of the oldest sayings in the Farmers Almanac: “You get what you pay for.” If it is inexpensive, it probably really is worthless. The search for the best sale in the mall is really a quest to squeeze more value out of less money … and we rarely succeed. We cannot help treat the Gospel with some skepticism. The most precious thing in the world … call it salvation, reunion with God, or abundant life … is absolutely free! Indeed, God’s wisdom reverses human wisdom, by revealing that the most valuable thing in the world MUST be free. If it weren’t free, it not be the MOST valuable thing in the world. It would be valuable … but something would always be more valuable, somewhere, somehow, some way.  

Why then, do we always want to pay for grace? It is not really because we feel some obligation. It is because in the sinful depths of our hearts we want to change absolute grace into some relative value. We want grace to be something we can own … and therefore something we can control, ignore or use, at our discretion. We do not own God’s grace. God’s grace owns us. And in that revelation we realize the depth and breadth of our sin. All this time we thought we “owned” objects of worth, when in fact those objects “own” us. They own our very souls. Here is a metaphor that should make sense to capitalistic people: God has bought you, at great price, buy paying out the most precious thing in the universe. Grace is free to you … but it has been very costly to God. Do not think that the slave can turn the tables on the Master, and pretend that the slave deserves his or her freedom, or that you have purchased it by your own labor or sacrifice. You had no hand in it at all! Only God paid the price; and the price was God himself; and that is how valuable you are in the eyes of God.