What to Do with This Story
”But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed. “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him.
Mark 16:1-6 (NIV)
They went to the tomb to make sure that the final part of Jesus’s story ended well, to offer and steward respect for His life, respect for His dying, respect for their customs, and devotion to their God. What they discovered is that the story they were motivated to help end right was really a story that was still ongoing.
It’s as if the angel were saying to them, “I know you came to put appropriate punctuation on a powerful life, but this story isn’t over. The story continues.” In fact, this belief that the story did not end at the tomb is what faith in Jesus is all about.
It’s the hope that restores, renews, reinvigorates, refreshes, and revises each and every one of us every day. And its message is this: no matter how close to the worst you can get, in Jesus Christ what looks like a story ending is always a story continuing.
There will be seasons and circumstances in our lives that hit us in ways we could never have imagined. Sometimes, we will turn corners on paths in life that we thought were stretching out before us with enormous possibilities. When we’re finally starting to believe that we can embrace joy, a sudden unexpected blow can hit us in places so deep that we don’t know if it represents the final negative punctuation to our stories. I’m talking about sicknesses, setbacks, mistakes, and regrets that we can’t wrap our brains around.
But here’s the lesson of this passage: do not give up on the rest of your story. Because if you believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, your story is not over. It is still continuing.
The One Constant
The next day the great crowd that had come for the festival heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting, “Hosanna!”
“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”
“Blessed is the king of Israel!”
John 12:12-13 (NIV)
The cries of Hosanna that day signaled not a symbolic celebration of victory. It was not just the prelude to feast and festival and all that is attached to a holiday. That day, the people were laying down palm branches and waving them in the air because Jesus was the arrival of a long-awaited victory. Jesus represented the answer to their collective prayers and Jesus was the reward of their spiritual discipline on the day He entered the city. The cries of Hosanna were stretched now in both directions: back to celebrate the Passover, and forward to celebrate the coming of the kingdom of God.
John is precisely descriptive when he says that there are two crowds. When Jesus enters the city, one crowd is simply described by John as a “great crowd.” They are there because they’re joining others to celebrate the Passover. They were initially there for historical observation. But then there was another crowd. This other crowd is populated by those who followed Jesus into the city because they decided they needed to be near Jesus after watching Him raise Lazarus from the dead. That miracle of raising Lazarus from the dead was the confirming proof for many that Jesus was the Messiah. They had been long anticipating Him.
One crowd is there holding palm branches based on what they have heard about Jesus. The other is there based on what they have seen Jesus do.
So, what’s the point? The point is this: there is and there always will be variability in the reception of Jesus Christ. It will vary like this consistently until the Lord returns.
Both crowds are singing and saying and celebrating the same thing: Jesus is my king. The one constant—what remains consistent from generation to generation—is the variability in the reception of Jesus.
The Church and Its Head
And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.
Ephesians 1:22-23 (NIV)
Many people think the priority of the church is to be the body of Christ. This highlights the interconnectedness of believers. The idea is that each member has a unique role to play in fulfilling God’s purposes. Each person has a function. Each person is critical to the church’s ability to fulfill its mission. Each person is responsible for the care and the wellbeing of others in the assembly.
The perspective on how the church ought to focus itself and operate, however, can vary a great deal. Some people have an image of the church and prioritize it as an institution. For them, the church is measured by its structure, its doctrines, its traditions, and its governance. People who lean heavily toward this kind of view place priority on leadership, governance, and doctrinal fidelity. Now that has a temptation associated with it: you can get stuck in the view of the church as an organization, which can mean you forget its priority to care for the people who assemble inside of it.
Some image the church as a missional community and emphasize its role in mission and outreach, both locally and globally. Some may have priority for the mission and forget the care we owe one another.
Many people view the church where the priority is as a worshiping community. For people who make this the primary function of the church, they emphasize worship, prayer, and sacraments (like communion, baptism, and weddings). The person who prioritizes the church based upon its worship will have a preoccupation with the performance and may not place any priority on the mission.
Because of all these possibilities, Paul reminds us that what brings us together, regardless of our prioritized distinctions, is the commonality of Christ.
People have all kinds of views and expectations of the church. So the question is, what was God’s original purpose? What are you a part of? You’re part of what gathers to represent Christ in the world, to carry out Christ’s mission. You are called out, summoned to gather with others who believe in Jesus. And if we meet in the common belief in Jesus, differences evaporate in His being the head over everything.
A Fall from the Upstairs Window
Seated in a window was a young man named Eutychus, who was sinking into a deep sleep as Paul talked on and on. When he was sound asleep, he fell to the ground from the third story and was picked up dead. Paul went down, threw himself on the young man and put his arms around him. “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “He’s alive!”
Acts 20:9-10 (NIV)
What if, instead of making your pain, your struggle, your anger, or your fear a bully, you allowed it to highlight your weaknesses and your vulnerabilities? What if you consecrated these things and made them like a holy offering to God?
Stop blaming Satan for every slippage. Don’t feel less than a Christian because you have questions, doubts, and suspicions. In fact, don’t demonize your struggle. Make it sacred. Consecrate your struggles.
This is how we grow through our experiences. We don’t abandon or negate them; we consecrate them and make them sacred so we can imagine them as ways that God wants to bless us. The one conviction we must carry is this: there is no second of any day and no circumstance where God is not in control.
And if God is in control, that means you may not have chosen the struggle, but God is not ignorant to the struggle; He is working it together for your good. He’s ordering your steps. You’re living according to His providence. He has plans for you and He’s leading and guiding you. Don’t make your struggle a satanic attack; make it sacred and decide you’re going to be great for God even in the midst of it. Make it holy.
In fact, surrender it to God so that you learn to thank God that He has graced you to see His goodness in a new way. This is how God originally intended for us to think about these hard falls.
Eutychus’s fall was not to demonstrate the power of death. His fall was to teach us the power of life and that God can bring us back from anything, even if it stretches all the way to the reality of death. Now, if God can do that, He can also turn your pain around. He can turn a distraught emotionality around. He can bring you back from slippage. He can satisfy curiosity. But you have to make your thoughts sacred and consecrate them and make them holy.
Let Me Introduce You
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Genesis 1:1 (NIV)
This earth is a supernatural testimony. It's an irrefutable sign that there is but one God. The size, position, and angle of the earth is a scientific phenomenon. Even to this day, if we were but a few degrees closer to the sun, we would disintegrate and if we were a few degrees farther from the sun, we would freeze. The axis of the Earth is tilted at a perfect 23 degree angle. It's no mistake that it is, it allows equal global distribution to the ray of the sun making it possible for the entirety of the food chain on the earth to exist. What about the combination of nitrogen and oxygen in the atmosphere we breathe every day? Think about it for a moment. Every single day of your life, God makes sure that nitrogen and oxygen are mixed in the exact perfect combination. It doesn't happen on any other planet that way, but this one.
The moon controls the tides. It's like the hotel maid that cleans the oceans! Even the waves don't crash to the shore in vanity - the tides crashing to the shore drag impurities into the depths of the sea. It's almost like nature's constant recycling program!
It simply boggles the human mind to think that the stars will rotate with such exact precision. But it is true. It's as if we are all operating by an atomic clock that moves silently around the orbit.
The sun, the moon, the stars, all of these are like celestial evangelists above. They, in fact, circle the earth every 24 hours shouting in every language that there is a God. The heavens declare the glory of God and the earth shows forth his handiwork (Psalm 19:1). It's an eternal God who created heaven and earth, flung the stars in space and breathed into a handful of dirt until it became a human being. It's God who sits on the circle of the earth and measures the mountains in a scale and holds all seven seas in the palm of his hand. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”
This is what it means: there was nothing before God. There was no one before God. The writers of the Book of Genesis wanted the Israelites who were fighting to emerge from simply being a nomadic tribal community until they could become a nation state society. The writers wanted them to understand the very foundation, the bedrock, the platform of their identity and their existence, and it was this: Israel - you didn't get here on your own. You were created by God.
Get this wrong and everything else is wrong. God needs not to prove anything to us. We are the direct result of the creative expression of God. And here's what it means: our lives in terms of significance, impact, worth and value is based upon the trust and confidence of our faith.
