Easter Sermon: From a Crown of Thorns to a Kingly Crown
A lot can happen in three days. A LOT can happen in 3 days. Many of us in this room could speak of a time in our lives when a great shift occurred, a great change that forever altered their entire lives.
Sometimes that change included a lengthy period leading up to it, and then a flurry of activity over a short period of time.5
Sometimes that change was not anticipated, you didn't see it coming. Sometimes the change was good, sometimes the change was bad.
Change usually results in significant loss or great gain.
I have now lost my brother, my father, and my mother. As with most of my family, I was with each one, Craig, Lewis and Eleanor, as they entered their last weeks, last days, last hours, last minutes.
The loss of each Family member brought about significant change in my life and my family's life. This was unwelcome change, this was painful change, this was life-altering change. Sometimes change is completely unwelcome.
September 26, 1987. That was a day that brought huge change. Barbara and I were married on that day, and our joining together of our lives altered our futures.
That joining together held within it a promise that was at that point only a promise: a life together, a life lived in the grace of God, a life of giving and receiving.
And of course that promise contained the promise of the life of our son, Jared, now 25, and our daughter Elia, now 23.
Completely unbeknownst to the Dodson family, that day also contained the promise of a future wedding day and the future wife for their son Stephen, to whom Elia is now married.
Sometimes change is completely welcome.
You will have your own story of change, your own dates that are significant and that resonate for you, and possibly ones that you at least think of as they pass in the calendar year.
This weekend marks another time that a lot happened in three days. If you were here this past Friday, in this room, we gathered for a service that is unlike any other worship service we hold at Church at the Mission, Yonge Street Mission.
It's a service that some of us don't really enjoy very much at all. In fact, it's a service that is not intended to be enjoyed. No more than one word "enjoy" a funeral.
The service marks Good Friday, the day on which Jesus was falsely accused, tried, mocked with a hastily crafted crown of thorns.
Good Friday feels empty because it marks the absence of Jesus, the death of truth and goodness and beauty Himself.
Despite the mournful music we sing, there is a kind of deafening silence as we remember Jesus plead : “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”.
Even in the throws of death, Jesus pleads for the forgiveness of His murderers.
It’s a lot to take in. It’s a lot to take in.
And what’s with the “Good” in “Good Friday”. How does that make sense?
John piper said: "God wrote "good" on the single worst day in the history of the world.
And there is not one day-or week, month, year, or lifetime of suffering-not one trauma, not one loss, not one pain, momentary or chronic, over which God cannot write "good" for you in Christ Jesus.
Satan and sinful man meant that Friday for evil, but God meant it for good, and so we call it Good Friday".
So there's a good reason that we don't really enjoy that service. And there is actually a good reason that some of us do not attend that service. It is a painful gathering.
The flavour of the service does not equate with all of the rest of our worship gatherings throughout the year. The flavour of our Good Friday service does not taste much like most of our lives.
Most of our lives are lived in the light of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Many of us have embraced the resurrection of Jesus and even followed Jesus journey from death to life symbolically as we were baptized.
We descended into the water, representing burial with Him. Then we emerge from the water, representing new life, the fact that we have been born again.
We are new people living in the new promise of a new hope.
The trajectory of our life has changed, and we are filled with hope at the promise that we now live our lives in the light of God’s loving care, God’s loving providence.
His Holy Spirit actually dwelling inside of us, changing us from the inside out to resemble more and more our gracious Saviour, Jesus.
We are an Easter people, people who live in hope, people who live with a deep joy that is ever growing in that resides in our hearts.
So, a lot can change in three days.
The mocked savior, the humiliated and violated Prince of Peace, the wrongly-crowned, brutally slaughtered Lamb of God, Jesus, did indeed rise from the grave.
His resurrection was witnessed by a just a few women to begin with, then by a number of men, then by at least 500 people who saw Jesus who they had witnessed being slain, walking among them.
And with His resurrection, Jesus changed everything. He changed the potential of everything.
But…one thing that's obvious is that everything didn't change. And the change that came, came slowly. How can that be?
How can the Biblical record so strongly declare that the universe changed when Jesus rose from the dead?
And then how can so many people on this planet carry with them the testimony of God's revolutionary change and transformation in their lives, but not everything changed?
The reason for that is entirely the result of the fact that God created humans with free will - with the will to love Him or not;
to follow Jesus or not; to live as Christ followers after we have accepted Him into our lives...or not.
So while Jesus continues to be actively reconciling all things to Himself, and while the Spirit of God continues to draw all people to Jesus, there is, for our part, a decision to be made.
I’ve spoken of potential that is still being realized, even as the Kingdom of God slowly and surely advances on this planet.
This leads me to a question. A question for everyone in this room. I hope you are listening. It's a question for all of us.
What would happen in your life if you let the hope of this day, resurrection of Christ…into your life? If you let Christ rule in your heart?
What change would come? What transformation would you experience? How would you or your world change?
When it comes to specifics, I haven't got a clue. It is different, it will be or would be different for each of us. God works in the details of our lives to express His goodness.
He shows you in unique and wonderful ways how He is especially fond of you.
But there are some big-picture ways that our lives experience change when we say 'yes' to God, 'yes to His gift of salvation through the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus.
You would never again need to struggle with wondering what the meaning of life is.
If you don't believe in God, as I was raised to not believe in God, then you must accept that most everything you experience and everything that is is to some extent random and meaningless.
I spoke recently with a person who identifies as atheist and they agreed that that is basically true. Life is, at its core, futile, but, hey, you make the best of it.
I know that way of thinking. I was raised in that mindset. I lived that mindset.
But when you come to Jesus you come to realize that your life is precious. It is precious because you are beloved by God.
He is especially fond of you, to quote the author of the film "The Shack".
When you come to Jesus you do so because - despite the odds, and in my case the odds were absolutely not in my favour - despite the odds...
You come to realize that Jesus went through what he went through on this Easter weekend 2000 years ago so that you would live your life knowing you are loved. Truly loved.
So that you would live with a deep assurance that you belong to God, and with God's promise that when you depart from this earth, you will be with Him forever.
So you would never need to wonder if your life matters. You would never again have to think: "if there's a heaven, I have no idea if I'm going there".
You would never again have to struggle with the question: Is all this really worth the hardship, the pain, the sorrow.
The trajectory, the path of your life would forever change. That is the promise of Easter, that is the promise of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that is the promise birthed this day 2000 years ago.
And for all people who have received this promise and then actually followed the way of Jesus, as a follower and not merely as a fan or observer, the promise of Easter is the promise of a new life.
It is the promise of a different life, with a new and better trajectory. That is the promise of God for each person here today.
I've said often and I'll say it again now, every good thing in my life...my wife, my children, my ministry, the gift of music, the joy that I live with every day...it's the direct result of Jesus revealing Himself by the Holy Spirit in my life.
That is why, to me, life is absolutely beautiful. Despite even the ugliness of the world as it is now, despite human suffering, despite my own suffering and loss, life is beautiful because Jesus has me in the palm of His hand.
And all I ever did, prompted and inspired by the Holy Spirit, was to respond, when Jesus called me, with: ‘Yes Lord. I will follow You’.
The gospel of Matthew records in chapter 27 that:
28 They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, 29 and then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on his head. They put a staff in his right hand. Then they knelt in front of him and mocked him. “Hail, king of the Jews!” they said.
30 They spit on him, and took the staff and struck him on the head again and again. 31 After they had mocked him, they took off the robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him away to crucify him.
A lot can happen in 3 days. Jesus’ crown of suffering, of loss, of sorrow became a crown of glory.
He who was spitted upon and reviled by soldiers who feigned to kneel in front of him in worship, this Jesus is the One before Whom every knee will bow.
Paul, in the letter to the Philippians says:
Therefore God exalted (Jesus) to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name,
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
This Jesus Who has won for us true and lasting freedom.
May each of us here today choose to live in gratitude for the gift of freedom that Jesus has won for us.
May each person here today - whether you already trust in Jesus and follow the Way of Jesus, or if you are, as I once was, a suspicious and doubtful skeptic,
may each of us take a step forward and not backward, forward toward Jesus, forward to new life, forward toward a transformed life, forward toward the life God intends for us to live in true and lasting freedom.
It is Easter. It is Resurrection Sunday. Hope has beaten despair. Light has beaten darkness. Life has beaten death forever. All because Christ is risen.
Amen? Amen.
