Easter – SKK 09
Easter – SKK 09
What is there to say about Easter?
1. You have to die to what is before you can receive the new. We don’t like this, we don’t like dying, but it’s true from here to there. We have to die to “living with clutter” before we can “live in a clean house.” We have to die to “we’ve always done it this way” before we can “live responding to God.” We have to die to what has been, over and over. We don’t like this. Unfortunately, a seed cannot become a plant, unless the seed “dies.” What have you been wanting in your life? Not the things, they are side effects. What have you really been wanting? Peace? Calmness? Lack of fear? Joy? You can have any of them just as soon as you are willing to “die” to the things that are keeping them away from you. Do you want peace and calmness? You must be willing to let the spirit of anger die. Lack of fear? What would happen if you let the spirit of fear simply die? You might feel joy! But how? How do we let these spirits die? We have to quit feeding them.
There is an old story about the old man who tells his grandson about the two wolves inside him. One is a bad wolf that hurts people. The other is a good wolf that takes care of others. The grandson listens carefully, and then asks his grandfather how to deal with these two wolves. The grandfather says, take care as to which one you feed.
If you worry, you are feeding the worry wolf, and it gets stronger. You can choose not to worry, it is a choice we get to make every day, perhaps every hour! Instead of feeding the worry wolf, you can address this wolf, and tell it to go talk to Jesus, you have other things to take care of right now. We can choose to do this with any wolf that does not work for good.
2. We know the end of the story. We know that evil does not win. On the day of the crucifixion, it did not look like that, but we know the end of the story. Even death is not the end of the story. Life is the end of the story. But here’s the question: do we know the real end of the story? The real end of the story is not Easter. It is Pentecost. When Jesus was walking around on earth telling his stories, he kept upsetting things. He never did things without bringing life into the situation, which of course changed things. Even in death, he changed things. He didn’t stay nice and safe in the tomb, and he didn’t stay on the cross. When we see this empty cross, we have to remember that Jesus blasted through all of our ideas of how things are and how they should be, especially death. But it gets worse. He came back, and gave his power to his followers, and told them they would do greater things than he ever did, and then said: get going!
3. What do we learn from Easter? First we have to look at how we learn. How do you learn? There are three basic ways of learning: visual, auditory and kinesthetic. That is, some of us learn best by seeing something or reading about it, some learn best by hearing someone talk about it, and some learn best by doing it physically. All of us have a primary and secondary way of learning. Jesus came to teach us how to live, and how to die, and to live again. He didn’t write things down, he did things, and he talked, a lot. His followers wrote down what he said from what they remembered, so those of us who are visual learners can read about Jesus. Even if we are auditory learners that learn best by hearing, we can listen to the words of Jesus. That’s why we have both written and spoken lessons. But it is the doing that is the most solid, don’t you think? When we think about what Jesus did, and what he calls us to do, we really “get” it. We all know that our children pay a lot more attention to what we do than to what we tell them to do, right?
So what did Jesus do? He did a lot of things, but here are the two things I hope you remember tomorrow: he had compassion and he was not afraid. These are the qualities our children will remember when we are gone. Did we have compassion? Did we love in ways that could be felt? Did we pay more attention to the love than to things? And, did we act out of fear or conviction? Were we quiet when we could have spoken? Did we go along or protest? When we look at the cross, let us remember Easter, let us remember compassion, and forget to be afraid because of that love.