Easter Sermon

Here is the sermon from Easter Day, March 31, 2013.

It was just a small little whiteboard that Kevin kept on his refrigerator.  He would keep lists on it of things he needed to buy, or things he needed to do that day or week.  He had bought it a few years back, and had made good use of it.  When he would finish the things on it, he would erase them and then start a new list.  And at first, it had worked great.  He could erase things as he did them, and then fill in the blank with the next thing to do.  It worked great.

But over time, Kevin noticed something about his whiteboard.  It didn’t come as clean as it had been after he had been using it for a while.  He would erase things, but you could still see their outlines.  He would try to scrub them out, but they just seemed to stay.  And after a few years, he noticed that he had a couple of places on the whiteboard that he really couldn’t use anymore.  The markers had written on those spots so many times that they just didn’t come clean anymore.  Sure, he had been faithful in erasing them, and not letting things stay on there too long.  Yes, he had used the right kind of markers, but it just seemed that, over time, a little bit of the stain of the markers was left, and it started to add up.

As Kevin stared at that whiteboard one day, a light bulb clicked on in his mind.  There were a lot of ways that his relationships were a lot like that whiteboard.  He had some friends that had been friends for a long time.  But he knew that there were things that they just didn’t talk about.  Over the years, little hurts had come up.  A word spoken in anger.  The time he forgot to do something he had promised.  That one time when his friend had dated that girl that wasn’t any good for him, and Kevin had said something.  Sure, Kevin and his friends had always seemed to “wipe the slate clean”.  But he realized that, over time, there just seemed to be a little residual left each time.  They might wipe the slate clean, but there were always some lingering hard feelings.  They might still be good friends, but there were just some things that they didn’t talk about.

Some of those times had been really tough to deal with.  In one or two cases, there had even been a time where they didn’t talk to each other.  And as he stood there looking at his slightly darkened whiteboard, Kevin had a sudden surge inside himself.  He found himself wishing that he would never do things that would stain the whiteboard of his friendships.  He knew that he could continue to wipe the slate clean time and time again, but a little marker always seemed to be left behind.  What would it take to really wipe the slate clean?

Kevin is not unique.  Kevin is not alone in this.  There are a good number of you here today, and I can confidently state that this same thing applies to every single one of you.  Maybe not so much the whiteboard, but the idea with the whiteboard.  As you live out your lives in relationship with others, things come up that leave a bit of a stain.  Anger enters in, and even though you may take steps to resolve the situation, there’s still a little bit of an outline left.  Hurtful words leave your lips, maybe even intentionally, and sure, you may take steps to recover from them after they have been said, but there’s still a little stain left over.  You wipe off the event, but it never goes completely away.

And the more you live in relationship, the more you spend time erasing.  Some things are worse than others, but sometimes the little ones sting just as much as the big ones.  And sure, you go in and erase, but the whiteboard never stays clean for long.  Your relationships are never perfect.  Things may be going well for a while, but before long, another something or other enters in, and you need to break out the eraser again.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just erase everything on it, and nothing would ever show up on the whiteboard again?  Just think if you could erase that angry word you said, and no angry word ever came between you and that person again.  How great would that be?  What if you could erase that time when you tarnished someone else’s reputation, and you could know with confidence that you would never do it again, intentionally or unintentionally?  Sounds kind of unreal, doesn’t it?  Our life experience tells us that we simply cannot do that.  Sure, we can work to erase the things that come between us, but they never fully go away, and we’re pretty sure that something else will sooner or later end up on the whiteboard.

This is the case for every single one of you here.  It’s going to happen in the context of your families, perhaps more frequently than anywhere else.  It’s going to happen in the context of your friendships.  It’s bound to happen in the context of your work and career.  And I have one other little piece of bad news for you.  It’s also going to happen in the context of your church.  Yes, ya’ll will all have things that will pop up on the whiteboard in your relationships, and even your family of faith is not immune to it.

So let me introduce you to Easter.  Today is a very special day for us as Christians.  In fact, when you add the events of this past Friday, where Jesus was crucified, died, and buried, and you add them to our celebration today, where Jesus rose from the dead, you have the foundation and center of everything that it means to be a Christian.  Jesus died on the cross, and in doing that, He took every single thing that ever pops up on your whiteboard with Him.  Every single thing, no matter how big or how small, was heaped on Jesus on the cross, and it died with Him as He gave up His life.

Jesus wiped your whiteboard clean in His death.  And you know what?  If that was all He had done, that would have been enough for us.  It’s good to have a clean whiteboard.  It’s nice and shiny, and when we look at it in the context of our connections to each other, it’s always good when nothing is getting in the way of our relationships.  We don’t like having to deal with anger, or hurt feelings, or sadness.  We don’t want to have to worry about how someone will take the words we say, or if they’ll be upset that we didn’t say hello to them, or if we admit that we don’t know their name.  We’d dearly love to have a clean whiteboard for the rest of our lives.

My friends, today we are here to celebrate because Jesus rose from the dead!  Jesus did not merely die to pay the price of your sin.  Jesus rose from the dead.  Jesus came to live a new life in His victorious resurrection.  Jesus rose to new life, and He now lives a life that will never come to an end.  Jesus lived a perfect life prior to His crucifixion, but St. Paul says that Jesus became sin for us.  As Jesus hung on the cross, He became your sin.  He took every single thing that could ever be written on your whiteboard, and He wrote it on His own whiteboard.

But that wasn’t the end of it.  Jesus then rose to new life, which is what we celebrate today.  And that new life isn’t one that He is content to keep to Himself.  Jesus wants to give away His new life, and remember, that’s not just any life.  It’s a life that is lived perfectly with God.  It’s a life that never ends.  It’s a life that is connected with God, and that never has to worry about the anger of God, or about God’s punishment.  It’s a perfect life, a life that has a full and intimate connection with God as a God who looks at you and sees the life of Jesus, and who then smiles at you.

And God gives that gift of that life to you.  How, you may ask?  In a very simple way.  In the splashing of a little water, and a powerful word of God spoken over you.  It’s what God has given in the cleansing water of baptism.  When the water touched your body, and you were brought into the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, God gave you the perfect gift of the perfect, eternal life of Jesus, resurrected from the dead for you.

That’s the kind of connection that God wants to have with every single one of you here today.  God wants to connect with you.  He doesn’t want to connect with you by looking at everything that He could keep a record of on the whiteboard.  He wants to connect with you as you are connected to the perfect life of Jesus.  God wants that connection with you, and He doesn’t want you to have to jump through a bunch of hoops to have it.  He wants to give it to you in as simple of a way as possible, and so He gives it through the splashing of water, and His holy name spoken on you.

God wants to connect with you.  And then, God wants you to be able to connect with each other.  He really wants you to have those connections with each other that are unmarked and clean.  He wants you to know that you have a connection with Him, and that you share that connection with many others who have received that same gift in baptism.  And God reminds us today that we’re connected to each other as we are connected to the perfect, eternal life of Jesus, who rose so that you may have that new life too.

God connects with you to bring you into a community.  Sure, you already have different kinds of communities, such as your family, your friends, your coworkers, and others.  But God wants to bring you into a community of those who share the life of Jesus with you.  That’s the community that you are surrounded by today.  As you turn to the left and to the right, and as you look in front of you and behind you, you see the community that God wants to connect you with, a community that finds its being in its connection with the new life of the resurrected Jesus.

It’s true, though.  Even in this community, the whiteboard will be needed.  We have that connection to the perfect life of Jesus, but it hasn’t completely taken over in our lives.  We still find those occasions cropping up where our whiteboards get covered.  And that’s where we find that Jesus brings us a great gift as He rose from the dead.

That gift is called forgiveness.  Jesus forgave you as He wiped your whiteboard clean.  He doesn’t hold anything that could ever be written on your board against you.  It’s gone, and Jesus isn’t going to remind you of that thing that was on there last year, or five years ago.  It’s gone.  The price was paid on the cross by Jesus, and He now connects you with His new life.  

And that same gift of forgiveness is a great one when it comes to our connections with each other, whether they are in our family, at work, or even here in our church.  Forgiveness is the single most powerful thing you can give, or that you can receive, when it comes to your whiteboard.  Forgiveness says that you acknowledge what happened.  It hurt.  It wasn’t supposed to be that way.  But forgiveness also says, let’s erase it, and let’s look at each other as if it was never written there to begin with.

Forgiveness wipes off the whiteboard of our sin.  Forgiveness connects us to one another, just as we have been connected to Jesus through His forgiveness to you.  That’s the assurance that you have through His resurrection.  Jesus has completely and fully forgiven you.  He proves that through the connection He created through your baptism, and if you realize that you don’t have that connection, but would really like it to be part of your life, come talk with me after we’re done today.  Jesus gives you that connection to His new life, which is what we celebrate today as we celebrate the resurrection.

That is your assurance.  It’s the assurance of one who died with everything written on your whiteboard.  It’s the assurance of one who connects you to His perfect life through the simple gift of water and God’s name.  You never have to doubt it because Jesus died, and then Jesus rose from the dead!

And that resurrection gives us a great deal of hope when it comes to our connections in life.  In fact, in the coming weeks, I’m going to be introducing us to a kind of “theme” to describe our life together here at Oak Road.  “Connecting Community and Christ.”  It’s the kind of theme that is full of resurrection.  Jesus connects with us, giving His perfect life, His everlasting life.  It speaks about our relationships, as people who were created to live in communities of different kinds.  And it speaks of the core and center of those communities and connections.  They are all centered in Christ.  Christ, who gave you life and who knew you, even before this world was made.  Christ, who took everything on your whiteboard on Himself into death on the cross.  Christ, who rose to connect you to His new, perfect, everlasting life, and who gives it as a gift.  Jesus is one whose work is connecting community and Christ.  And while we celebrate His resurrection and new life today, I invite you to continue to journey with us, to see the many ways He is connecting community and Christ.  Christ has risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia, and Amen!