Easter 2021

I love a good story. It doesn’t matter if it comes in the form of a book, movie, or just a good yarn, stories can lift your spirits, challenge your thinking, or help you understand a different point of view. Some of the best stories are those where you can identify with a character and their experiences. When we connect with the people or events in a story, that story has the capacity to make a profound and lasting change in us.

The story of Jesus’ betrayal, suffering, crucifixion, and resurrection has had a deep and enduring impact on our whole world. For centuries, as people have heard, read or told Jesus’ story, they have been able to identify with the people and events in the story in ways that have changed their lives. As we celebrate Easter this year, and as we hear Jesus’s story from his meal with his disciples, through the garden, his suffering and crucifixion, to the empty tomb, God invites us into the events of the weekend. We don’t just hear about things that happened a long time ago in a land far, far away. We walk with Jesus and participate in his suffering, death, and resurrection through the faith that he did all of that with and for us.

As we planned our Easter services this year, our goal was to help people connect with Jesus’ story so it becomes our story, and we can find the way into the future God promises us.

We begin in the Upper Room on Maundy Thursday when Jesus celebrated his  final Passover with his disciples. The first theme we are exploring is Service as Jesus washed his disciples’ feet and gave his new command (John 13:1-17,31b-35). While Jesus described his actions as an example for his disciples to follow (v15), it is important that we recognise that Jesus was primarily serving his disciples. Jesus washing the disciples’ feet points us to the way he makes us clean through his death and resurrection. Everything that follows in the Easter story can be seen through this event – Jesus serving us by giving his life for us to make us holy as forgiven and loved children of God.

The second theme we are looking at on Maundy Thursday is Fellowship. We can often think about fellowship as a social connection with others. However, when Paul talks about the gift of the Lord’s Supper in 1 Corinthians 11:23-26, he points us towards a deeper form of fellowship (see 1 Corinthians 12:12-27). The koinonia fellowship of the New Testament is a deep, meaningful relationship. It is a mutual giving to each other and reliance on each other as people who share in the body and blood of Jesus. Because Jesus physically gives himself in the meal he instituted, he lives in each of us, and we are connected with each other as the physical body of the risen Christ in the world. God gives us something good and valuable which we can give to and receive from each other, especially in the challenging times of life, such as a global pandemic. As the living body of Christ, we can live in deep, meaningful relationships as we share in our struggles, hopes, pains and joys with each other.

On Good Friday we hear the story of Jesus from his arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane to his burial the following afternoon (Mark 14:32-15:47). We are identifying seven words which connect with the different elements of the story and how they intersect with our lives. Jesus experienced aloneness in the Garden of Gethsemane when his disciples fell asleep while he prayed and deserted him when he was arrested (Mark 14:32-40), so Jesus knows what it is like for us to be alone and isolated. Jesus was betrayed by his friend (vv41-52), so he understands what it is like for us when our friends or others let us down. Jesus was accused by people who told lies about him (vv53-65), so he knows what it is like when people say things about us that aren’t true. Peter denied that he knew Jesus three times (vv66-72), so he understands the hurt that comes with being abandoned by people we thought we could trust. Jesus was condemned by Pilate, the Roman Governor (Mark 15:1-20), but through that he frees us from the voices both outside us and within us that try to condemn us. Jesus suffered physical pain when he was crucified (vv 21-32) which means that, when we suffer pain in our bodies, almighty God knows our suffering and meets us in our pain. When Jesus died (vv 33-47) he went ahead of us into death so when our time comes to leave this life, he is there to guide us to our heavenly home.

Through Jesus’ suffering and death, God enters our human experience of suffering and death, so we don’t have to try to ignore or escape it. However, God doesn’t meet us there to leave us there. Like Mary Magdalene, we can go to Jesus’ tomb (see John 20:1-18) to discover that he is risen! The good news of Jesus’ resurrection displays God’s power to create light in dark places, to bring goodness out of chaos, and to bring life out of death. Jesus’ empty tomb shows us that God can bring good out of the worst of circumstances.

Instead of aloneness, Jesus’ resurrection brings us into community with him and with others. Instead of betrayal, Jesus’ resurrection shows us that God is and always will be faithful to us. In the place of accusation, the risen Jesus speaks words of grace to us. If we deny him, Jesus will never deny us but will affirm us with his love. Instead of words of condemnation, our risen Lord tells us that we are forgiven. As the one who was crucified, Jesus gives us healing through his compassion and mercy. Jesus entered into death to free us from its power so we can have new life as God’s people in this world and forever.

The resurrection of Jesus opens the way to a new life for us in which we aren’t defined by the struggles, pain or uncertainties of this world, but we can look forward in hope to a better tomorrow. People in our congregation like to celebrate Jesus’ resurrection with a service outside at dawn on Easter morning because it helps us walk with Mary Magdalene and others who went to Jesus’ grace early that morning, and we can join them in the hope the resurrection gives. As the sun rises, it promises us that the new day can be better than the last. It is full of opportunities and possibilities. The start of a new day represents the hope we have that no matter how bad or broken the past might have been, Jesus’ resurrection means that light is stronger than darkness, life will always overcome death, and God’s new creation began when Jesus walked out of that tomb and will last forever.

When we hear the story of Jesus at Easter, we can enter into his story, so it becomes our story. This Easter, try to hear the story as though it was your first time. Listen with fresh ears for how Jesus identifies with you in your life, so you can find the presence of almighty God with you in Jesus through faith. As we share in Jesus’ his suffering, death, and resurrection, and as he is present with us in everything we experience, we can find the goodness of God that brings peace, comfort, joy, and hope in the good news that Jesus is risen from the dead!

More to think about & discuss:

• What are some of the stories you have read, watched, or heard that have made an impact on you in your life? Why do you think they have been able to do that?
• Those of us who have grown up in the church can become very familiar with the Easter story. If you were to hear it for the first time, what do you think might surprise you about it? Or challenge you? Or seem strange to you? Discuss or reflect on why that might be…
• There is a lot for us to think about and identify with in Jesus’ story from his Last Supper on Thursday evening, through his arrest, trial, suffering and crucifixion on Friday, to his resurrection on Sunday morning. What is one aspect of Jesus’ story that you identify with this year? Can you explain why that part of the story is more meaningful to you?
• As you listen to Jesus’ story, what are you hearing that is good news for you? How might this good news make a difference in your life if you could live like it is true in faith, hope, and love?
• How might one aspect of Jesus’ story at Easter be good news for someone you know? How might you be able to share the good news of Jesus with that person?

You can find a video version of this message at https://youtu.be/k7wwfbqqBuk

God give you hope through Jesus’ Easter story so you can live every day as his resurrected and holy child…

Called (Hebrews 5:1-10)

In the first week of October this year, delegates from Lutheran congregations across Australia and New Zealand met in Sydney to discuss and decide on proposals made by member churches. The biggest item on the agenda was whether women and men can be ordained as pastors in the Lutheran Church of Australia (LCA). We have been wrestling with this question for a long time and people on both sides feel very passionate about what they believe God wants for the LCA. Leading up towards convention, it seemed to me that whichever way the vote went, there would be people who will be hurt, disappointed and unhappy with the result.

A few weeks prior to convention, I was preparing the themes for my messages during October when I came to Hebrews 5:1-10, the Epistle reading for last Sunday. Verse 4 jumped out to me, which says that

no one can become a high priest simply because they want such an honour. They must be called by God for this work, just as Aaron was. (v4 alt)

As far as I understand, this text has played an important part in the Lutheran understanding of the role of pastors since the Reformation. In the Old Testament, people didn’t volunteer to be a high priest. They needed God to call them. Similarly, Jesus didn’t wake up one morning and decide that he wanted to be the saviour of the world. God called him to that (Hebrews 5:5ff). Following the example of Scripture, then, it has been the Lutheran position since the Reformation that ‘no one should teach publicly in the church or administer the sacraments unless properly called’ (Augsburg Confession Article XIV).

So how does God call people?

One way we can answer this question is to think of a ‘call’ having two elements. The first is an ‘internal’ call, something God places on our hearts that we feel called to do. The second is an ‘external’ call where God works through people and circumstances to open doors and bring us to where he’s leading us. For God to be calling us to something, both need to line up. Sometimes an internal call might come first, or it might be something from outside us that leads us in a certain way. What can be difficult is when an internal call and an external call don’t match up, and either we feel called in a direction where the doors are closed to us, or God opens doors for us that we really don’t want to go through.

I have known people over the years who have really struggled with a disconnect between these internal and external calls. For example, I know people who have felt called to be pastors, both men and women, but for a range of reasons they haven’t been ordained into the public ministry of the church. I have also known people who have had opportunities open to them which they really didn’t want to embrace. Personally, I have had times when I have felt called in certain directions but they didn’t work out, or I have thought that God was leading me in directions I really didn’t want to go. So to a degree I can understand the turmoil and anguish that people can experience when an internal call isn’t in synch with events and circumstances that are happening around us. To be honest, I don’t really have an answer to offer when that happens, other than to keep praying and seeking where God may be calling us.

However, there was something else in Sunday’s readings that I think can help us understand the nature of God’s call a little better. In Mark 10:43,44 Jesus says,

Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must be the slave of everyone else. (NLT)

Pastors are called to be servants, not to exercise power or control. We don’t decide to be pastors to find a sense of importance or value or identity. God calls people to serve communities of faith by shepherding them, watching over them, caring for them, and feeding them with the good news of Jesus’s death and resurrection for them. It’s not up to me to walk into a congregation as a new pastor and start telling people how things will or will not be done. Instead, pastors are called to be the servants of God’s people so they will encounter the love and grace of Jesus in us. That doesn’t mean always doing what the congregation wants, because sometimes what we want isn’t good for us. However, it might mean giving up our own rights, our preferences and sometimes even our opinions in order to serve the people God has placed in our care, in order to build them up in faith and love, and equip them to do the good God has planned for all of us to do.

One of the greatest legacies of the Reformation is the idea that God doesn’t just call people to serve him in overtly religious ways. Instead, God calls us to a variety of vocations so that we can serve each other, and so his goodness can grace can flow through us to the people around us. God might call us to be parents, children, grandparents or grandchildren. He might call us to be husbands, wives, or possibly even to serve him and others as a single person. The work we do in our places of employment, our homes, our churches or community organizations, both paid and unpaid, are all callings God places on our lives so we can be his salt and light in the world, and so other people can meet Jesus in us.

Paul’s discussion of the body of Christ in 1 Corinthians 12:12-31 reminds us that every part is needed for the whole body to function properly. One part isn’t more important or less important than any other. In the same way, the call to be a pastor is no more or less important to the body of Christ than a fulltime, stay at home parent, or the people on the toilet cleaning roster. We’re all vital parts of the body of Christ because we are all called to contribute to the mission of God in the world in different ways.

I honestly don’t know where the LCA will go from here as we continue to struggle with who we believe God is calling to be pastors in our church. I continue to pray that the Spirit of God will pour wisdom into the hearts and minds of our bishops and other leaders as they keep wrestling with this question.

What I do know, though, is what it’s like to struggle with where God may be calling us in our lives. Whatever we think God may be calling us to, and whether the doors are opening for us to follow those calls or not, we need to be listening to each other, praying for each other, and walking together with each other as the body of Christ. No matter where God might be calling us to serve him in our lives, one thing we all have in common is that God calls us his children whom he loves.

Duty (Luke 17:5-10)

For anyone who identifies their love language as affirmation, this story of Jesus could be a nightmare!

Put yourself in the story: you have spent all day in the paddocks, plowing the rain-soaked earth or trying to look after the cold, wet sheep. When you come in to the warm, dry house your boss tells you to get the dinner on and then wait until he has finished his before you can sit down to eat. And then, at the end of the long, hard day of work, instead of getting thanked for your effort, you’re supposed to say, ‘No worries boss – just doing my duty.’

If that was you, how long do you reckon you would last in that job?

We all like to recognized, affirmed or thanked for what we do. In fact, one of the things best things about helping others can sometimes be what we get out of it– those warm feelings that come with doing good and helping other people. In a culture that often encourages us to do good because of what we can get out of it, this story can be pretty confronting.

This can say something about our motivation to do good. When Jesus taught us to love God and love others, the kind of love that he talked about was all about looking to what was in the best interests of the other person, even if it comes at a cost to us. When look to get something out of the good things we do for others, are we doing them for their benefit or our own? I know that God blesses us when we help others, but if we are doing good to get thanks, affirmation or to feel good about ourselves, then we really need to ask whether we are actually acting in Christ-like love.

Maybe that’s why this story sits a little uncomfortably with us.

Instead, Jesus says that faithful servants, after they have done everything they have been told to do, will say, ‘We have only done our duty’ (v10 NIV). The word used here for ‘duty’ means something that is owed. In doing his duty, the servant in Jesus’ story is repaying a debt to his master. Often when we hear the word ‘duty’ we can think of obeying a set of rules because we have to. ‘Duty’ can imply unwilling compliance to someone else’s rules or expectations.

However, it is important for us as followers of Jesus to think about duty through the words of Romans 13:8 which says,

Owe nothing to anyone — except for your obligation to love one another. If you love your neighbour, you will fulfil the requirements of God’s law. (NLT)

The word Paul uses for ‘owe’ is the same word Jesus uses when he talks about ‘duty.’ In this sense, ‘duty’ means repaying someone for something that has already been given to us. Serving God and others without any thought of thanks or affirmation becomes our act of self-giving, Christ-like love for others to repay God for the grace he has already shown us through Jesus’ death on the cross. The Apostle Peter writes,

For you know that God paid a ransom to save you from the empty life you inherited from your ancestors. And it was not paid with mere gold or silver, which lose their value. It was the precious blood of Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God. (1 Peter 1:18,19 NLT)

Jesus paid the ultimate price to redeem us and make us God’s children – his own precious, priceless life. In the same way, our Father in heaven paid the greatest price we could imagine, the life of his own Son, in order to rescue us from the power of sin, death and the devil so we can live in his kingdom of righteousness, peace and joy. We can therefore understand the words of the dutiful servant from Luke 17 to mean that his life and service of the servant are his or her gift to the master out of thanks for what the master has already done for the servant. Instead of looking for thanks for what we do for God or for each other, ideally what we do to serve God and others in our lives will be done in thanks for the price God paid to make us his own.

This is a life of faith. Earlier in this reading, the disciples asked Jesus to increase their faith (v5). Faith is first and foremost about trusting in Jesus’ work for us on the cross, where he sacrificed his life to give us identity, value and purpose. Imagine having such as strong faith in Jesus and his love for us that we can find of our sense of identity, value and purpose in him, instead of looking for is in the thanks, praise or affirmation of other people. This is the kind of faith Jesus points to as God’s gift to us by the power of his Holy Spirit.

The idea of duty we find in this story is not about doing what we’re told or trying to live up to some set of rules or expectations. Remember: God want us to give cheerfully (2 Corinthians 9:7)! Instead, this sense of duty grows out of a deep and strong faith in the extreme love of God which he shows by sacrificing everything for us on the cross. When we trust in what Jesus has done for us to make his people, serving God and serving the people around us isn’t a chore. It becomes an act of love for the God who gave everything for us, and for others as we serve each other for Christ’s sake, whether they thank us for it or not.

More to think about:

• How do you understand the idea of ‘duty’? How might the idea of ‘duty’ being about giving back what we owe help you think of ‘duty’ differently?
• If you’re honest, what is your main motivation for doing good for others – the way it benefits them, or what you get out if it? How does your motivation fit with what Jesus seems to be saying in this story?
• This story comes out of Jesus’ disciples asking him to increase their faith (v5). How do you understand the connection between faith and duty?
• Do you think it is possible for a person to do good for others with no thought of what we get back in return? Why do you think that?
• Jesus seems to be contrasting the disciples’ request for a greater faith with the small, everyday things the servant was doing in the story. What do you think is more difficult to do – ‘big’ things for God? Or the ordinary, everyday ways in which he calls us to serve each other? How can this story give purpose and value to the little ways in which we can serve others every day?