Easter Reflections
I'm not sure if it was the service itself this year, or the state of my heart that made this the best Easter to date. I may be 26 years old, but I'm only now undergoing my biggest growth spurt, and it's been an all-year happening... spiritual blessings and moldings springing forth in leaps and bounds month after month. There's a story here but not the one I want to share today.
Today, after I've just finished picking up cracked plastic eggs from around our house and trashing many foil wrappers, after reading the blogs of friends and reflecting on our own Sunday, I feel the gratitude and joy of yesterday's worship wash over me again...
Our pastor's sermon was powerful and Spirit-filled, focusing on 2 Corinthians 5: 21- "God made Him in who had no sin to be sin for us so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God." He spoke of the canyon climber you may have heard of- Aron Ralston- who cut off his own arm (trapped under a 900 lb boulder) with a pocket knife to be separated from the death-trap of his dying arm so that he could rise and live.
I can't imagine cutting through the skin, muscle, nerves, and arteries of my own arm, bit by bit. I can't imagine using my weight and the rock to snap my radius and ulna in half. I can't imagine wanting to live that badly... having that sort of will. Our pastor called it "man's will."
He asked the congregation what we felt trapped by, pinned-in by; finances, a relationship, addictions, circumstances- his examples of these traps were more piercingly specific than I can recall and distinctly Spirit-led. He spoke of Christ's work and achievement on the cross, on how the cross separates us from that death trap of our dead appendage (= our sin.) Just as what Aron did demonstrated the strength of man's will, what Christ did on the cross demonstrated God's will toward man. He separated us from the wages of death through the power of the cross in the way Aron separated himself from his arm- Aron was pinned by a rock and we're pinned by our sin. Praise Him who rolled away the stone, and with it our sin!
In closing, our pastor explained that because of this, we are given the opportunity to rise and live... why would we dwell in the death-tomb of our sin any longer? It would be the same as cutting our arm off and sitting there by it afterwards, to die in the canyon when we are free to rise and walk. We've been freed from the guilt, so why tarry in the tomb of materialism or pornography or jealously, he asked us. Why sit next to our dead appendage when there's life and the fullness of joy awaiting? When we could be walking with One Who loves and frees us and experiencing the fullness of joy, receiving the desires of our heart that can be met in Him alone?
I could go on, but it would be ridiculous as I can do such a message very little justice in these few paragraphs... but if you're interested in hearing the sermon yourself, visit here and click the top sermon choice. I'd (obviously) highly recommend it.
When he finished the sermon, the first words out of our music minister's mouth were, "Why do you look for the living among the dead," quoting Luke 24: 5, followed by Keith Green's amazing and moving Easter Song.
On the rest of the music- it was equally as powerful and Spirit-filled through the entirety of the service. We also sang Christ the Lord is Risen today, Did You Feel the Mountains Tremble, The Day of Resurrection, and In Christ Alone (with Apostles Creed.)
We sang Did You Feel the Mountains Tremble before the sermon and I must've sung that song hundreds of times in perhaps a dozen different locations of worship, and yet it hit me with a freshness I can't describe... though you know me, and I'll try anyway-
Did you feel the mountains tremble?
Did you hear the oceans roar?
When the people rose to sing of
Jesus Christ the risen one
Did you feel the people tremble?
Did you hear the singers roar?
When the lost began to sing of
Jesus Christ the risen one
And we can see that God you're moving
A mighty river through the nations
And young and old will turn to Jesus
Fling wide your heavenly gates
Prepare the way of the risen Lord
As we were singing these familiar words and I looked around and saw the shared joy and like-minded belief that He has risen indeed, and it occurred to me- was seared into my mind- an image, sense of reality of what it must have been like to live there in Jerusalem on that day. To be part of a body of his followers mourning his death and begin to hear the rumors come in- He is alive, just as plainly as if it had happened right there amongst our own body...
To have been there and trembled along with creation at this, the climax of history, of all past and present- and for it to have been as real as it was to stand there and sing it all these years later... no, I was right- I can't explain it as it was for me yesterday...
Open up the doors and let the music play
Let the streets resound with singing
Songs that bring your hope
Songs that bring your peace
Dancers who dance upon injustice
And then this, that gave me chills up my spine and made me want to break out in dance:
Did you feel the darkness tremble?
When all the saints join in one song
And all the streams flow as one river
To wash away our brokenness
Oh, praise Him!
For the benediction we repeated thrice, as we often do, "Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ will come again." And the third time we said it, that third sentence hit me with another piercing reality, like a nail in the palm of my hand- "Christ will come again."
As surely as He lived and died and rose from the depths of hell, He's coming back. Alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia!!
