On the statement is simultaneously an announcement about what she saw and a statement of belief in her promise of a future life with Jesus and God.
I, too AWE OF GRACE
Colossians 3:1-4
3:1 So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.
3:2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth,
3:3 for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
3:4 When Christ, who is your life, is revealed, you will also be revealed with him in glory.
Every day is a holy day if you live into the truth of the ever-present God.
Colossians 3:1-2 The Message (He Is Your Life)
3 1-2 So if you’re serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don’t shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is happening around Christ—that’s where the action is. See things from his perspective.
Easter Prayer Lets Pray,
In Awe, We shout for joy, surprise, and new life!
The stone, the builders, rejected
Has become the cornerstone.
God has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes.
God has done it this very day;
Let us rejoice in Grace and be glad! Amen
Sermon: Every moment is a moment rich with possibility and hope; every relationship is a potential insight into the activity of the Holy Spirit and God’s Grace; every conversation is a moment to announce God's Good News.
Yet some times and seasons seem even more holy. Some moments reverberate with the living presence of the living God, and our only proper response is to fall to our knees in awe of grace. We are this Easter Sunday in Awe of Grace.
Awe a very small word, but it’s a powerful term that I don’t really recall using the word much. But it’s what this Easter Season is really about seeing the Awe of Resurrection and Announcing Risen living Jesus the Christ.
The Dictionary defines Awe as an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, fear, etc., produced by that which is grand, sublime, extremely powerful, or the like and we know Grace is God's favor toward the unworthy.
If Holy Saturday is a day of quiet contemplation, a hush in our busy lives.
Then Easter is a shout of jubilation that shakes the foundation of our presuppositions about what makes a good life.
Then Easter is about the Awe of Jesus, about the Awe of Christ, about the Awe of Grace.
All Last week, All Holy Week, all we could think of was death. His death, and ours. He carried us with him when he went. When he breathed his last, he took the air out of our lungs. And now we lie, gasping for life, like the fish we caught that day when he found us and sent us out into the deep water.
But on Easter Moring when the disciples See Jesus, they realize that it is time to stop looking down at the grown and look up at Jesus.
You know, my favorite part of the easter story is the first appearance of the resurrected Jesus is to Mary Magdalene.
Mary assumes that Jesus is the gardener because this occurs in a garden. It is not until Jesus calls Mary by name that her recognition comes.
Jesus calls Mary by name, and that is the moment of recognition.
Mary is the first person to whom Jesus appears, and she is the first person to realize that it is him, the good shepherd, her teacher.
Mary’s announcement to the disciples is significant for this Gospel and preaching.
She does not offer the disciples a third-person, impersonal, doctrinal statement about Jesus’ resurrection, much like our liturgical responses at Easter, “Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!”
Rather for Mary, it is a first-person sermon, a testimony, a witness to what she has experienced.
She gives voice again to that which is so critical for this Gospel, one’s own experience and encounter with Jesus so as to recognize who Jesus is.
Mary’s proclamation is not only an announcement of her encounter with the resurrected Jesus but also an interpretation of it.
She Makes a Sermonic Announcement of Life Beyond Death.
She realizes that for Jesus to be raised from the dead is also an assertion about her resurrection, her own future.
The first pers want to make this announcement.
Today We all Need to make this announcement.
This morning, before daybreak, God raised from the dead Jesus of Nazareth. That’s my whole sermon, to make the announcement.
I know it’s difficult to hear. Announcements are always difficult to hear. Nobody pays attention to announcements. The announcements about the church come midweek when you get a phone call, they are printed on the back of the worship bulletin on Sunday, and they are read to you as though you couldn’t read by the worship leader or minister. And then included in the benediction, and still, half the church doesn’t hear the message.
It’s never been easy to hear this announcement. You know the Gospel lesson. The women ran from the tomb when they got the announcement.
They ran, afraid, traumatized, in Awe, in total silence because they were terrified and said nothing to anyone. Who can hear this kind of announcement that The Tomb is empty?
It’s not easy.
And John says that one of the people closest to Jesus said, “I won’t believe it, not until I touch his side, not until I touch his hands, not until I touch his feet. I will not believe it.” It’s never been easy to hear an announcement of someone else’s Grace and Good News.
But I want you to know that I won’t make it easy for you.
I’m not going to trivialize it by just speaking of eggs and flowers and daffodils and things. No, no.
There’s a cross in this Resurrection Grace here. I’m not just going to fill the air with good cheer and let Easter evaporate into a vague cloud of good feelings.
I can’t do that.
My job is to make the announcement. And the announcement is this: Sometime this morning before first light, God raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead.
I can’t, and I can’t shrink it by giving you a few minutes of explanation as to what resurrection means.
I’m not going to shrink it by trying to give you some scientific parallels to help you're believing. No, no, no, no.
I will tell you that for many people, it is very, very important that by Grace, we are saved, and Death is over.
And then I remembered the other announcement, and he said, “Death is swallowed up in victory. Death is dead, and all her daughters are dead.
• Cynicism,
• Criticism,
• Fear,
• Despair,
• Discouragement,
they’re all dead.”
But you also will have to make the announcement when you will. I can’t tell you. I was just given the assignment to make the announcement That You will have to tell It Also.
You don’t have to be in a hurry to make this something important in your life. Easter lasts fifty days, you remember.
We think of today as Easter Sunday.
Whoopee, here we go. Here today, gone tomorrow!
But Easter, according to the church, lasts fifty days. Easter ends May 28th, so don’t be in a hurry. Take the afternoon, take the evening, take next week. You have fifty days. For some people, it takes longer.
But You have to tell the Good News: Sometime this morning before the first light, God raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead.
I can personally witness to you that the supreme importance of the announcement to me is not just for the resurrection from the dead but the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
Who raised Jesus from the dead?
Not King Herod, who tried to stab that baby while it was still in the cradle,
Not Pontius Pilate, who, as the governor, screamed in the face of Jesus and said, “Don’t you know I have the power to kill you in this minute? I can do it; I can do it!”
Not Tiberius Caesar, who sat like a marble statue in Rome and said, “I have nothing really to do with peasants, especially Jewish peasants. What was his name again? Jesus? Never heard of him.”
Who raised Jesus from the dead? GOD!
Do you know what that means? That God did it!
It means God lifted Jesus and said, “This is the one I’ve vindicated.
• This is the one I affirm.
• This is the one I confirm.
• This is the one I exonerate.
This is the one that tells you what I had in mind when I created you in my image.
Look at him, totally without violence.
ou could walk among the people of his land and say, ‘Can anybody here raise a hand if Jesus ever spoke ill of you?
Criticized you?
Put you down?
Laid hands against you?
Betrayed you?
Lied to you?
Can anyone?’ No, no, no.”
Do you see how it’s important that it was Jesus of Nazareth God raised from the dead and said, “Now this is what I have in mind for the world"?
You know that. In fact, in every church I’ve visited, a few are sitting there who started in the ministry. A few who went a year or two, I think, maybe four or five. “I never thought it would be like this.
I don’t like to row upstream.
I don’t like to be the only one who shows up.
I don’t like to live in a shoebox on half a salary.
I entered the ministry and found myself at Golgotha, and I said to myself, ‘Who needs this?'”
Practically everywhere I go, I meet somebody who started out on the path of generosity like Jesus. Do you see that woman over there putting in two coins? Yeah, yeah, yeah. She’s given more than everybody else in the house and is still rich.
Really? Oh, that’d make good preaching. I can preach that. Hey, that’s a good sermon. But after a while, I can’t do that; I can’t do that.
Everybody around me going for profit and for preference, and I’m preaching about two pennies and a widow?
No, no, no, no.
I talked to a man recently who just built, I think, one of the biggest houses in North Georgia. He’s got to have room, you see; there’s his wife, there are two of them. Oh, it’s a beauty and dazzling, and he said to me, “Did you know that I started out in the ministry?” I said, “I didn’t know that.”
And he said, “Now look at me.” And I said, “Why would you do this?” Why Would You Give up on God's Announcement?
I want to tell you that God raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead.
But today. Also want you to tell the story tell others that God raised Jesus from the Dead.
In Colossians 3, Paul addresses a way of thinking rooted in the good news of Jesus Christ. Christ in this letter is not just another divine intermediary by which one can attain union with the divine. For so many people still today, Jesus is a means to heaven.
We have died with Christ. We now live in and with Christ. This is the basis for the meaning of life. The clear imperatives in these verses concern where the believers are to set their focus: “Seek things that are above…set your minds on things that are above” (3:1–2).
When Paul says that our life is “hidden with Christ in God,” he gives the reason for seeking things above. That is to say, we seek life according to Christ’s lordship, not as a means to get closer to God, but because now the identity of the believer’s life is in Grace.
"The only bird that dares to peck the eagle is the crow. It sits on its back and bites its neck. However, the eagle doesn't respond, nor does it fight with the crow; it doesn't waste any time or effort on it, it just opens its wings and begins to climb up to the highest place in the sky. The higher the flight, the harder it is for the crow to breathe, and then the crow falls due to lack of oxygen. Stop wasting time with crows. With dangerous people who only approach your life to try to destabilize you to project their storm on you. Just take them to your heights and they will disappear on their own".
To live in awe of grace is not to be stunned into inaction by the crosses or the crows, but to live each day alive with possibility and hope, with love and peace and longing for the Grace of the kin-dom of God that brings justice and community and wholeness. Happy Easter.
