grave

Still Rolls the Stone

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As you know, I am currently collecting old CCM vinyl. One of my favorite parts is discovering artists that I missed back in the day because they weren’t my style of music at the time. One of those is Bob Bennett, a singer-songwriter in the vein of James Taylor and Dan Fogelberg.

One of his songs that resonated deeply with me is the song Still Rolls the Stone, which speaks to Easter but also speaks to God’s ability to make any dead thing come alive and to turn those of us who were dead in our trespasses and sins into living sons and daughters of God.

Basically, the gist of the song is that because of an empty tomb on a Sunday morning, we can trust God to keep His promises and to finish what He started in each of us:

“Still rolls the stone
Still rolls the stone
Still rolls the stone from the grave

I tore off my grave clothes
And cried a pool of tears
For the voice of the Living One
Who spoke the stars and spheres
Has called me from my darkness
And led me to this place
Where the dead leap
And the blind see His face

Still rolls the stone
Still rolls the stone
Still rolls the stone from the grave

Still rolls the stone
Still rolls the stone
Still rolls the stone from the grave

Hearts aflame with mercy
Like the sun in midnight sky
While the doubter shrugs his shoulders
And the cynic wonders why
But as it is in Heaven
So now we proclaim
The Lord tells us here to do the same

Still rolls the stone
Still rolls the stone
(Rolls the stone away)
Still rolls the stone from the grave, oh…

Still rolls the stone
Still rolls the stone
(Rolls the stone away)
Still rolls the stone from the grave

In the still of a Sunday morning
A grave stands open wide
And a promise kept
While the world slept
Means that no one is inside

Still rolls the stone
Still rolls the stone
Still rolls the stone from the grave, oh…

Still rolls the stone
Still rolls the stone
(Rolls the stone away)
Still rolls the stone from the grave

Still rolls the stone
Still rolls the stone
Still rolls the stone from the grave” (Bob Bennett)

Being the Easter People

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Easter is over, according to all the stores and calendars. There are no more cute little bunny displays at your local Hallmark or Cadbury eggs or wicker baskets at the grocery store. Seemingly just about everybody has moved on to the next big holiday, which I believe is Mother’s Day in May.

But for those who celebrate Easter as Resurrection Day, the celebration goes on. We know that Jesus is still risen and alive. Plus, if you follow the Book of Common Prayer you know there is still Ascension Day and Pentecost to come.

I’m not against all the Easter bunnies and baskets and Easter egg hunts and all the candy. I’m especially not against the candy. But when you reduce Easter to these symbols and turn it into just one day, it cheapens the meaning.

Just as the birth of Jesus ushered in a new way of counting the years (as we moved from B.C. to A.D.), so Easter is equally a marker in history where everything changed. Many Old and New Testament prophecies came to pass on that day.

I hope that we won’t go back to business as usual next Sunday. I hope we will retain the message of Resurrection Day through all the weeks and months to come. The worst moment, the worst day, the worst part of your life is never the final defining moment in your life because Jesus is alive and the tomb is empty. Your hope is never in vain because Jesus conquered sin, death, hell, and everything else that will ever come against you to defeat you.

Easter isn’t just a day but a mindset. As Pope John Paul II said, “Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.”

It’s Friday But Sunday’s Comin’!

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I can’t remember a lot of what I’ve done in the last week or so, but I can still remember a sermon from Tony Campolo that I heard when I was a student at Union University way back in the early 90s. It was close to Easter that year, and I seem to remember we were getting ready to go on our spring break.

I remember the sermon was based on the text by an old black preacher named S. M. Lockridge with the refrain of “It’s Friday . . . but Sunday’s comin’!”

The gist is that Friday was when everything looked hopeless. Jesus was dead and buried. The Pharisees and other religious leaders were celebrating. The disciples were crushed and defeated. But Sunday and the empty tomb were just ahead, unbeknownst to those who were witnesses to the events on Friday.

Here’s the text from the original sermon that set my world on fire:

“It’s Friday. Jesus is arrested in the garden where He was praying. But Sunday’s coming.

It’s Friday. The disciples are hiding and Peter’s denying that he knows the Lord. But Sunday’s coming.

It’s Friday. Jesus is standing before the high priest of Israel, silent as a lamb before the slaughter. But Sunday’s coming.

It’s Friday. Jesus is beaten, mocked, and spit upon. But Sunday’s coming.

It’s Friday. Those Roman soldiers are flogging our Lord with a leather scourge that has bits of bones and glass and metal, tearing at his flesh. But Sunday’s coming.

It’s Friday. The Son of man stands firm as they press the crown of thorns down into his brow. But Sunday’s coming.

It’s Friday. See Him walking to Calvary, the blood dripping from His body. See the cross crashing down on His back as He stumbles beneath the load. It’s Friday; but Sunday’s a coming.

It’s Friday. See those Roman soldiers driving the nails into the feet and hands of my Lord. Hear my Jesus cry, “Father, forgive them.” It’s Friday; but Sunday’s coming.

It’s Friday. Jesus is hanging on the cross, bloody and dying. But Sunday’s coming.

It’s Friday. The sky grows dark, the earth begins to tremble, and He who knew no sin became sin for us. Holy God, who will not abide with sin, pours out His wrath on that perfect sacrificial lamb who cries out, “My God, My God. Why hast thou forsaken me?” What a horrible cry. But Sunday’s coming.

It’s Friday. And at the moment of Jesus’ death, the veil of the Temple that separates sinful man from Holy God was torn from the top to the bottom because Sunday’s coming.

It’s Friday. Jesus is hanging on the cross, heaven is weeping and hell is partying. But that’s because it’s Friday, and they don’t know it, but Sunday’s a coming.

And on that horrible day 2,000 years ago, Jesus the Christ, the Lord of glory, the only begotten Son of God, the only perfect man, died on the cross of Calvary. Satan thought that he had won the victory. Surely he had destroyed the Son of God. Finally he had disproved the prophecy God had uttered in the Garden and the one who was to crush his head had been destroyed. But that was Friday.

Now it’s Sunday. And just about dawn on that first day of the week, there was a great earthquake. But that wasn’t the only thing that was shaking, because now it’s Sunday.

And the angel of the Lord is coming down out of heaven and rolling the stone away from the door of the tomb.

Yes, it’s Sunday, and the angel of the Lord is sitting on that stone. And the guards posted at the tomb to keep the body from disappearing were shaking in their boots, because it’s Sunday. And the lamb that was silent before the slaughter is now the resurrected lion from the tribe of Judah, for He is not here, the angel says. He is risen indeed.

It’s Sunday, and the crucified and resurrected Christ has defeated death, hell, sin, and the grave. It’s Sunday. And now everything has changed. It’s the age of grace, God’s grace poured out on all who would look to that crucified lamb of Calvary. Grace freely given to all who would believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross of Calvary was buried and rose again. All because it’s Sunday.

It’s Friiidaaaay!

But Sunday’s coming!” (S. M. Lockridge, With Thanks to Dr. Michael G. Davis for the text version).

Two Weeks Before Easter

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Today is the fifth Sunday in Lent, a week before Palm Sunday, and two weeks before Easter. I found this prayer that reminds me of what Lent and Easter are all about:

“You whose eternal love for our weak and struggling race was most perfectly shown forth in the blessed life and death of Jesus Christ our Lord, enable me now so to meditate upon my Lord’s passion that, having fellowship with Him in His sorrow, I may also learn the secret of His strength and peace.

  • I remember Gethsemane
  • I remember how Judas betrayed Him
  • I remember how Peter denied Him
  • I remember how they all forsook Him and fled
  • I remember the scourging
  • I remember the crown of thorns
  • I remember how they spat upon Him
  • I remember how they smote Him on the head with a reed
  • I remember His pierced hands and feet
  • I remember His agony on the Cross
  • I remember His thirst
  • I remember how He cried, My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?

We may not know, we cannot tell,
What pains He had to bear;
But we believe it was for us
He hung and suffered there.

Grant, O most gracious God, that I who now kneel before You may be embraced in the great company of those to whom life and salvation have come through the Cross of Christ. Let the redeeming power that has flowed from His sufferings through so many generations flow now into my soul. Here let me find forgiveness of sin. Here let me learn to share with Christ the burden of the suffering of the world. Amen” (John Baillie, A Diary of Private Prayer, Sixteeth Day Evening, updated and revised by Susanna Wright).

I think remembering what Jesus went through on the road to Gethsemane is important. I don’t mean so much dwelling on the gory details, but remembering that He suffered more than anyone has ever or will ever suffer.

The why is important. It’s not that He was the victim of oppression and injustice. Actually, it’s way more than that. It’s that He willingly laid down His life for us, taking all that punishment that we deserved, paying the penalty for sins we committed. He became the ultimate passover lamb, sacrificed for the sins of the world.

When I by my sin tried to take the place of God, God Christ for my salvation took my place. The resurrection from the dead proves that He was no mere victim but a victor over sin, death, the grave, and hell. That’s my Jesus!

An Attitude of Gratitude

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I found out that a friend of the family is currently walking through his own valley of the shadow of death in dealing with incurable cancer. To hear the word “cancer” coming out of the mouth of a doctor is scary enough, but to hear it preceded by “terminal” has to be frightening to an almost paralyzing degree.

Yet this friend of mine has faced this diagnosis with dignity and peace and an unswerving faith in the God who is still in the miracle business. While the odds seem insurmountable, I’m reminded yet again that what seems impossible to us isn’t even remotely difficult for God. Just ask any of the blind or lame men that Jesus healed. Or the lepers. Or Lazarus.

My friend said that it all starts with an attitude of gratitude. I truly believe that. A positive mental outlook is half the battle when dealing with a grim medical diagnosis.

Yet it’s more than that. This attitude of gratitude comes from the same place that allowed the Apostle Paul to pen the words that to live is Christ and to die is gain. It’s literally a win-win with Jesus.

Either my friend gets healed here and becomes a witness of God’s healing power or he is resurrected and finds ultimate healing and stands in front of Jesus to hear the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

When you think about it, we’re all terminal. After sin entered the world, death followed close behind and that proverbial hourglass started on each one of us. Unless Jesus comes back soon, all of you reading this will come to the place where you breathe your last.

Thanks to Jesus death will not have the final word. The grave is only temporary. The resurrection truly does mean that the worst thing is never the last thing and Jesus will have the final word in your story.

I’m praying for my friend for healing here and now knowing that no matter what happens, God is always good and we are always loved and that grace still wins in the end.

 

Resurrecting Hope

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“Easter was when Hope in person surprised the whole world by coming forward from the future into the present” (N. T. Wright, Surprised by Hope).

That was the topic of today’s sermon at The Church at Avenue South– that after being crucified and buried, Jesus actually and physically rose from the grave.

The Apostle Paul says that if Jesus didn’t rise from the grave, then our faith is useless and futile and we are all still dead in our sins.

If there is no resurrection, then Jesus’ death was meaningless and He wasn’t who He claimed to be, but just another in a long line of those so-called “Messiahs” whose words were forgotten and whose followers immediately abandoned them after death to look for the newest “Messiah.”

But Jesus stepped out of the tomb on Easter Sunday morning, forever proving that He is the ultimate God-Man, Savior of the world, the true Messiah.

Our hope is in more than a great teacher who gave us some great ideals to live by before he died. It’s in more than Jesus being “resurrected” by keeping His memory alive in the hearts of His disciples.

Our hope is in the Jesus who made the ultimate sacrifice on our behalf and died on the cross, then bodily rose from the grave and appeared to the apostles as well as over 500 other witnesses.

Because Jesus lives, our hope is alive. Because He lives, we live and can face any tomorrow that comes. Because He lives, we know that there is nothing that comes up against us– illness, death, or the grave– that can separate us from the love He has for us.

“We could cope—the world could cope—with a Jesus who ultimately remains a wonderful idea inside his disciples’ minds and hearts. The world cannot cope with a Jesus who comes out of the tomb, who inaugurates God’s new creation right in the middle of the old one” (N. T. Wright, Surprised by Hope).

 

Easter Even

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“If Easter says anything to us today, it says this: You can put truth in a grave, but it won’t stay there. You can nail it to a cross, wrap it in winding sheets and shut it up in a tomb, but it will rise!” (Clarence W. Hall)

Sometimes Saturday can seem to take forever.

I don’t mean the Saturday where you get to sleep in a little later and take it a little easier.

I mean that day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. That day between utter despair and renewed hope.

For most of the time most of us live in a perpetual Saturday. If you look at the headlines, you will see almost nothing but tragedy and horror staring back at you from the front pages or the biggest bold print on the news website.

How do you cope with all that devastation without the reality of the resurrection? How do you even begin to process all the evil that goes on without the knowledge that Jesus will one day ultimately set all things right?

The only way I can get through the crucifixion part of the story is that I already know the rest of the story. I know that death and the grave are not the end. They don’t get the final word.

Those who are staring the imminent loss of loved ones in the face can look to Jesus who wept over His friend Lazarus but then proceeded to call Him out of His four-day old grave clothes and decay into life. The same Jesus who looked His own death in the face and stepped out of His own tomb on a bright and sunny Sunday morning.

Without that, those who cling to faith are the most pitiful and pathetic people. With it, they are the ones who have the most reason for joy.

It was Friday and it’s been a long Saturday, but Sunday’s comin’!

 

Busted Brackets

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I did my civic duty tonight. No, I didn’t vote. I filled out my NCAA basketball tournament brackets (nine in all).

Some of them I played straight. I picked all the #1 seeds to win. On some others, I just went plain crazy. I picked just about every game to be an upset.

It hit me as I was filling in these brackets. As you know, no 16 seed has ever beaten a 1 seed in the NCAA tournament. Ever.

There have been a few #15 seeds upset the #2 seeds and a few more #14 seeds pull a shocker over their 3 seed counterpart, but no 16 seed has ever beaten a 1 seed since the tournament expanded to 64 teams back in the 80’s.

What hit me was this: what God did for me in saving me was the equivalent of a #16 seed winning the whole enchilada. Or if you will, the 64th best team (think Austin Peay) winning the national championship.

I’m definitely not saying that God’s the underdog in this story. I am. On my own, I had absolutely no shot of making it out of the first round. I was the equivalent of a team of corpses.

But God made me alive in Christ. He raised me up with supernatural power. in Jesus, I have become more than a conqueror. My salvation story is akin to that Austin Peay team reaching the finals and beating those mighty Kansas Jayhawks in the national championship game.

A pipe dream? Maybe. But I know that in God what seems impossible to me and you is possible for God. In fact, it’s not even remotely difficult for God (thanks again to Pete Wilson for that one).

I have a feeling that most of my brackets will be busted and broken by the Sweet Sixteen. I know that spiritually speaking, my life in God will never ever be busted and broken because I serve a God who knows the way out of hell and the grave.

The end.

 

Unquenchable Hope

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Maybe what you’re looking at a week into the new year are the ashes and crumbs of what’s left of your hopes and dreams.

Maybe you’ve 99% given up on anything ever changing in your life.

Maybe you need to hear this right about now: your God is the God of the never impossible and the never hopeless and the never finished. There is no such thing as too difficult for this God.

Look at Golgotha. If any dream seemed dead and done for, it was what laid inside of that tomb for three days.

If Jesus could overcome that grave and that death and that hell, there is absolutely nothing in your life that you are facing right at this moment that He can’t and won’t overcome. Nothing.

Maybe what you need is an unquenchable hope built on  an undefeatable God.

It’s never too late to start hoping and dreaming again.

 

 

 

Absolutely Positively Definitely Maybe

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Definitely-Maybe-2008-movie-quote

“That’s why I don’t think there’s any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times. The created world itself can hardly wait for what’s coming next. Everything in creation is being more or less held back. God reins it in until both creation and all the creatures are ready and can be released at the same moment into the glorious times ahead. Meanwhile, the joyful anticipation deepens” (Romans 8:18-21, The Message).

Such a great moment in the movie. I’ve actually owned Definitely, Maybe for a while and just now got around to watching it (one of the few perks of being without a job).

I love that line because it reminds me so much of God and the Story He is writing. And I do so love stories, especially when they’re well-told and have happy endings.

I know that ultimately God’s Story is about God, as it should be, but one of the very happy side effects is you and me finding redemption and freedom and abundant life. Because of God’s Story, you and I have a Story that we get to share. Because of God’s Story, we know that our Story will always have a happy ending because God has written it already. I read the last page of the book and I know that it’s good.

It’s hard to remember that when the Story seems headed for tragedy or when the current chapter seems like it will never end and circumstances will never change or get better. It’s hard to see that happy ending when you’re wondering how you’ll pay the bills or make your struggling marriage work or find that job that makes you come alive.

As I’ve learned in reading books, you don’t put down the book when the characters run into hard times. You keep going with the hope that those struggles will lead to something better. As Corrie Ten Boom says, you don’t jump off the train when it goes through a dark tunnel. You trust the Engineer to get you through.

I don’t want to be that guy who says things like, “Hold on, it will get better” or “The darkest hour is just before the dawn.” When you’re feeling overwhelmed with anxiety or discouragement, bumper sticker quotes don’t really do the trick.

You need to know that God is still faithful to His promises. You need to know that the same Jesus who conquered death and the grave can conquer your circumstances. You need to know that He will finish what He started in you because He said He would.

That’s a happy ending.