What happened after Jesus’ resurrection wasn’t a huge display of power and importance – He appeared intimately to His followers, encouraging them, preparing them for what came next… the excitement of Acts, but also their own suffering and death.
The Bible does talk about a spectacle after Jesus’ resurrection - but not the kind we think. Paul says we are the spectacle… not in strength, but in weakness - so that when people look at our lives, they don’t see how impressive we are, they see how powerful Jesus is.
1 Cor. 4:9, “I sometimes think God has put us apostles on display, like prisoners of war at the end of a victor’s parade, condemned to die. We have become a spectacle to the entire world—to people and angels alike.”
Jesus prepares us, ordinary people, to carry His resurrection life into everyday places to lay our lives down for Him. You don’t need a platform. You don’t need incredible insight or wisdom. You don’t need flashy displays. You just need to be with Jesus, so that you can become more like Him, so that you can love people like He did…
The resurrection of Jesus is the promise that we too will be restored. It’s the best news that we could ever experience. And Jesus doesn’t want us to be quiet about it… He wants our celebration to reflect the celebration that is happening in heaven.
We’ve entitled this service, “The Shadow of the Cross”, and it is based loosely on a Tenebrae service, or service of shadows or darkness. Tenebrae services are generally pretty simple and fairly experiential - there won’t be a sermon, but there will be four sections for us to reflect on. And is meant to illustrate how Jesus’ life progressively became darker as He approached His death. The four sections are as follows:
The Shadow of Betrayal - Jesus’ experience of relational abandonment
The Shadow of Accusation - Jesus’ experience of injustice, false judgement.
The Shadow of Crucifixion - Jesus’ experience of suffering and sacrifice.
The Shadow of Death - Jesus’ experience of death and separation from His Father.
Palm Sunday reminds us that there are two ways to live:
The way of power, or the way of humility.
The way of control, or the way of surrender.
The way of selfish ambition, or the way of the cross.
It’s not about which one we believe in, it’s about which one are we living?
Because you can cheer for Jesus and still live like Pilate…
Jesus didn’t just come to be admired as a King He came to be followed.
Jesus came to demonstrate what His Kingdom is all about, and to show how those who would follow Him should live…
Todd Lester, the incoming Executive Director of Be In Christ Church of Canada, came to share a message with Elmvale Community Church
No matter what temptation you are dealing with, it falls into one of these three categories:
- Lust of the flesh - desire for physical pleasure (sex, food, drink, comfort)
- Lust of the eyes is our desire for possessions and wealth,
- The pride of life is our desire for prominence through power and position.
No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind… these three things are what you are tempted with, what I am tempted with, what the first humans in the Garden were tempted with, and what Jesus was tempted with…
If being lost means the world has grown larger than your knowledge of it, then getting lost is a spiritual necessity. We will never experience growth in our personal life or experience true faith without stepping into unfamiliar territory.
The Bible is full of stories where God does His best work with people who are lost. In fact, God often calls people out of the status quo into the
wilderness both figuratively and literally…
Saint Augustine wrote, “The essence of sin is disordered love.”
Disordered loves means that we often love less-important things more, and more-important things less than we ought to, and this wrong prioritization leads to unhappiness and disorder in our lives. Here’s the question that bears repeating this morning: What do I possess that actually possesses me?
I want to challenge you to do something specific: Ask Jesus the question, “What thing in my life, aside from you, do I look to for comfort, identity, and protection?”
And when He brings something to mind, I challenge you to symbolically lay something down until Easter, as a desire to reorder your life’s loves…
Go and I will show you… We are asked to leave what’s safe and familiar and after we leave, THEN God shows us where we are going…
But that’s not how I want things to work… Before I go, I need the address. And then I’m given several different route options that I can choose that will lead to my destination… After I do all of that, I decide if I want to go…
I want to be in control. It’s my life… But the only way out of barrenness is to listen and obey. This is the only way out of a fruitless, bleak, drab existence. Go and I will show you is talking about the life of faith. A life lived in trust in God and obedience to God's word and God's way.
It’s a trade of the life I have that I’ve built for myself in exchange for the life that God imagines for me. But giving up control is scary, and it is hard, and it will cost us, and lead to uncertainty and it may lead to suffering…