Easter Year C, 2010

Acts 10:34-43; Ps. 118:1-2,14-24; 1 Cor. 15:19-26; Luke 24:1-12

Easter is the happiest kind of holiday and celebration.

It involves our Christian faith so we don’t have to feel guilty that it’s just a Hallmark holiday.

It’s got good food and lots of candy.

But for most people…I know there are exceptions…

It doesn’t involve all the stress of presents and decorations like Christmas.

It’s win, win.

Here we all are gathered into one big, beautiful group of people to sing and wear nice clothes and share communion.

We know that some of you have been dragged here by family.

And some of you are making your once or twice a year church appearance.

So the pressure is on the preacher to make this sermon a good one.

This is our big chance to tell the good news about Jesus.

To get people excited about the hope of being Christian.

We go through phases with buzz words and there are a few that we hear all the time currently.

Sustainable is a biggee.

Foods, manufacturing methods, business practices.

We’re all being asked if something is sustainable.

Relevant is another one.

Especially in churchy talk.

How do we make church, Sunday school, sermons, programs, whatever it is…relevant.

So I’ve been wondering about Jesus being relevant.

Or how to make him seem relevant, I guess.

Is Jesus relevant to you?

Usually the churchy talk about relevance comes down to rules.

The church relevance rules.

Can church be relevant with padded chairs?

Can it be relevant with wooden pews?

Can church be relevant with 16^th century organ music?

Can it be relevant with praise music?

The relevance rules seem to include things like what people should wear to church, what preachers should talk about in sermons…

Whether or not the Sunday school classrooms and programs are cool and interesting.

Did you all read about the church in Rocklin that spent $400,000 to make super cool Sunday school rooms with pirate themes and video games and other cool stuff like flat screen TVs?

The interviewed people said that church has to be relevant or people won’t come and have a chance to hear the good news.

Here’s the problem.

What’s culturally relevant to one person isn’t culturally relevant to another.

The music, the clothes, the liturgy, the lack of liturgy, video games for kids.

That kind of relevance is changeable, is subject to people’s stage of life, their tastes, their backgrounds.

The relevance of Jesus is unchangeable.

And the relevance of Jesus is for anyone and everyone no matter your age, how high or low your jeans hit, or whether you like Bach or the Black Eyed Peas.

All this talk about relevance is drawing our attention away from what matters.

We are human beings living in a world filled with hurt and struggle and brokenness.

Jesus is the most relevant answer to all of that.

We are overwhelmed with options and information and expectations for good and happy lives.

Our days are filled with thousands of decisions about what to do, where to go, what to buy, what to watch, what to listen to, and who to text.

Our minds are flooded with breaking news about murders, robberies, wars, political shenanigans, broken families, and heartbreaking stories of greed, violence and misuse of power.

We are constantly expecting to have more money, better stuff, a happier marriage, better health, fewer demands on our time, and fewer problems with aging parents or troubled adult children or troubled families in general.

And in all of this we continually find ourselves disappointed and discouraged and struggling to find lasting meaning and importance in our lives.

Maybe this doesn’t apply to you.

But I’m telling you it most likely applies to the person sitting next to you because I hear your stories.

In the middle of the relative safety and abundance of our lives, of my life…

We find ourselves stressed out, overwhelmed, and confused about what really matters in life.

What is relevant?

Jesus gives us the answer.

Not because Jesus magically makes our lives rich and healthy and easy.

The answer is in Jesus because God’s love is the only lasting answer to any of this stuff in life.

And Jesus is the love of God come to us.

Jesus is the God who is willing to offer up his dignity and his very life in order to be the love that changes everything for us.

Jesus wasn’t simply a great teacher or a loving man or a great example of how to live life.

Jesus is the sacrifice of love that changes everything.

Death loses its power over life because Jesus offered his life up to the cross and then rose from the dead.

The brokenness of humanity loses its power over all of our lives because Jesus sacrificed his life out of pure love for us.

All of those horrible things that we do and say to each other all over this planet will not win in the end because Jesus is our hope.

Jesus is our mercy, our grace, our forgiveness.

Jesus is waiting to come to us wherever we are in life.

Not to be a magician who makes our problems disappear.

Not to be our cosmic butler to do what we want God to do.

Jesus is waiting to be with us in the middle of our struggles, in the middle of our messiness.

To be the presence of unchangeable love, of unending mercy, of the peace that passes all understanding.

Jesus is waiting to be the force that begins to transform us from whatever state we’re in…

Stressed, unhappy, angry, bitter, depressed, self-centered, overwhelmed, sinful…

You describe for yourself what makes it hard to get through your days and nights, what robs you of peace and contentment.

Jesus is relevant to that, whatever it is for you.

Jesus will not be packaged by us in order to be relevant.

The relevant Jesus isn’t a style of music or building or preaching.

Jesus is simply relevant.

Whatever our struggle in life is…whether it’s math homework or maxed out credit cards or cancer.

Jesus is the most relevant page in the book.

What does Jesus have to offer you?

Pure love…to be cherished and treasured simply because you were created.

Pure mercy…forgiveness offered whenever you simply confess your failings in humility.

Pure grace…the chance to leave behind any fear of dying and to live a life that matters for eternity.

In this moment here today we can each offer up our pain and brokenness to the God who chose to die on a cross and we can be transformed forever.

We can confess our sin and we can be saved.

I can think of nothing more relevant, more hopeful than that.

Barbara Brown Taylor, and author and preacher tells this story about being in a store looking for a gift for a recently widowed friend.

Wanting to offer a token of hope

She finds a glass bowl filled with small, smooth pebbles with a single word etched on each of them.

The ones with hope and love written on them catch her eye and she begins to fish around tin the bowl looking for just the right pebbles to give her grieving friend.

She pulls one out that says tears, then one with loss on it and thinks her friend has enough of those already.

So she fishes around some more and finds that there are lots of pebbles left with tears and loss on them but only a few with hope or love.

And she found only one left in the bowl with forgiveness written on it.

So she knew which words people wanted to buy, ones like hope and forgiveness.

And which ones people wanted to leave behind, ones like tears and loss.

So she picked out one that said, tears, one with loss, one with hope on it, one with love.

And she retrieved the one that said forgiveness and she even found one that said gratitude.

And she laid them all out on the counter, all six of them, and bought them for her friend.

Tears, loss, hope, love, forgiveness, gratitude.

She was hesitant to give them to her grieving friend but then she saw how much more they meant when they were with each other.

Tears and love, loss and hope, forgiveness and gratitude.

And her friend held them all in her palm and knew that they all belonged together, too.

All of it is part of us and part of our lives.

Jesus is not waiting for us to be perfect, to be happy, to have it all figured out.

Jesus offers us love even though our lives are messy and we’re not even close to perfect.

Jesus died on the cross and was raised from the dead because of his love not because we are good enough.

This part is simple.

There is nothing that will change our lives more than praying for Jesus to forgive us and then opening up our hearts to let that love and forgiveness in.

There is nothing you have done or said or thought that will stop Jesus from saying yes, if you do that.

And that is what the party is all about today.

Jesus is alive and Jesus loves you.

Jesus is our hope.

And there is nothing more relevant than Jesus…now and forevermore.