Was Easter Just in Those Plastic Eggs?
ACTS 9: 1-6
JOHN 20: 19-31
APRIL 27, 2025
My life’s journey … has been so special. God has allowed me to discover the rainbow of human existence. God has allowed me to witness palaces of great wealth and corners of the world’s worst poverty where I have faced children starving to death in their last moments when no one could save them. I have known the famous and the unknown … the powerful and the weak … individuals whose life examples I have tried to incorporate into my journey and others whose vile hatred of our fellow humans has turned my stomach even as I put my arm around them. I have known singers and dancers … actors and athletes … I have been to the mountains and the deserts and reflected along the still and the rushing streams but friends what I have always known is the reality of God’s love for all those people whose faces have streamed by me … God’s love for God’s Creation … and every once in a while I get reminded … reminded that we desperately need to rush to God … hold onto God … and then to treat God as God.
Yesterday morning I met Kevin … I was called to Inspira to visit two people in the morning hours before our service here at St. Paul’s. First a beautiful 92-year young woman named Ruth who couldn’t quite remember why she asked for a pastor, but we had a good conversation and then I crossed over to the other side on floor 5 to see Kevin. Kevin was born with a disabling condition … he is in his 30’s and he immediately reminded me of Megan … he had a broad smile on his face as I walked in. Kevin is unable to walk … never has taken a single step. His mom, and his aide were in the room with him. I pulled out photos of Megan to show the mom, the aide and Kevin. He could only communicate with a text to speech device. And, he said, “Can you say Our Father … can you sing How Great Thou Art … can you say Hail Mary?”
Friends it is in moments like yesterday’s when I realize God is there for me … God’s always here … each day has its potential for each of us no matter who we are or where we have been. So, I smiled and said, I am not one to lead in “Hail Mary Full of Grace” but I sang a little … yes, I know that my solo’s are not always the best yet Kevin broke out in a smile … and we prayed Our Father. Keven smiled … I hugged his mom and there’s a chance that some day soon that Kevin might roll into church here. That would be a special day for love … just like the day that Cameron Houghton rolled into church here.
When we reflect on God’s rainbow of humans … we should celebrate … when we remember God’s creation we should have joy. And, we need to treat each day as a connection to our God … special days of living life in faith because God loves us.
And, when I woke up this morning, I knew this was a special day, did you know that too? Well then again isn’t each day a truly special day when we can wake up and make decisions related to living through another day on the calendar. I am sure we each have our own unique rituals in the early morning hours; I mentioned last week on Easter the fact that I need that morning cup of coffee to really start my day and believe me I am hoping that the forecasts of higher coffee prices are not true. But to be safe I just purchased 48 Keurig pods of my favorite coffee, Tim Horton’s Dark Roast, at a sale price.
Yesterday was a special day that is now in the history books. For some of you it might have been a monumental day and for others just another day filled with simplicity. Here at St. Paul’s, we celebrated Janet Brown’s life of faith and her life-long connection to this church. A woman who last May made what for her was a difficult journey to be here in church on Mother’s Day even though her body was probably saying no NO STAY HOME … and she sat right there in PEW NUMBER TWO, which is usually empty because we Methodists like to sit in the back of the church not up close to the pastor and the choir.
That does bring up an interesting question about the sitting arrangements in church. I have tried to examine front pews in various churches to see what element of their structure causes folks to avoid them … I know front row seats at concerts are premium priced but these seats in most every church usually sit vacant.
Anyhow, I have been thinking a lot about that special Mother’s Day service for the last week or so. It was an awesome day at St. Paul’s because then 94-year-old Janet Brown took over the worship service as Debbie held the microphone for her. We all focused in on her as she read God’s Word … it was one more opportunity for Janet to allow her faith to be showcased out in the open for literally the world to see and hear.
Do you remember those words she read … from the first Psalm? Did you learn from them that day? Did you embrace them and make them part of your journey in life ever since. She read to us, “The truly HAPPY person does not follow wicked advice, doesn’t stand on the road of sinners, and does not sit with the disrespectful. Instead of doing those things these persons love the Lord’s instruction and they recite God’s Instruction day and night.”
So, on this Sunday after Easter … how did you start your day? What is your routine for getting through life? Coffee? Tea? God’s Word? Do you hurry to turn on the TV? Listen to something on the radio? Call a friend or family member or send a text? And, are you still remembering God’s Easter gift to us? Was God’s gift to you more than plastic … more than plastic eggs with chocolate or surprises inside?
Are you amongst the HAPPY people in this world whom the psalmist is referring to. You know living as part of the crowd adhering to God’s teaching… ready to feel joy all over when you consider God’s Easter loving gift to us through Jesus Christ… are you happy each day knowing the truth that the tomb did not hold Him and that Jesus Christ is Risen <He is Risen Indeed>>… Risen as evidence of God’s power and love and verification of our faith. A reality that those who believe … those who follow Jesus … those who believe in God’s existence hold deep in our hearts.
Janet also read from John’s Gospel and shared Jesus’ prayer to God when Jesus is quoted as he reminds the faithful, “I have revealed Your name to the people You gave me from this world. Now they know that everything that You have given me comes from You. This is because I gave them the words that You gave me.”
And so on this Sunday the week after Easter … are you embracing this day? When you woke up and made the decision to come to church was there a little extra energetic joy in our heart … when you woke up and decided to turn on our worship service rather than some TV show featuring talking heads was in to ensure that today because a truly special day for you? All of you were you singing with joy “I will enter His gates with thanksgiving in my hearts; I will enter His courts with praise. I will say this is the day that the Lord has made, I will rejoice for He has made me glad.”
Ah, yes … God has the power and the love and in God’s reality God can bring joy to our hearts … God can make us glad, and God can give us a peace that goes beyond human understanding. Each and every day can have a special reality when we make the decision to connect with God. When God’s blinding light shone on Paul while he was still known as Saul the hate-filled attacked of people of faith his response was “WHO ARE YOU LORD?” And the response was, “I am Jesus whom you are harassing … get up and you will discover when you must do.”
In this post-Easter season … in the days of our lives … have you regained your desire of your early days of faith to dig into God’s Word … to visit and revisit the history of Jesus and discover how much God loves each and every human being? Have you renewed your faith’s spirit lately by just pausing and pushing the world aside … or more importantly identified realities from the world that have been part of your life that run counter to God’s teaching … and made a decision to throw them out so that Jesus Christ becomes your priority … that is the EASTER LESSON … or are you harassing Jesus like Saul?
Jesus is not mean to pop out of these plastic eggs only to be abandoned so that humans align with as the psalmist declared “roads of sinners” or to put a priority on rushing to grab seats with “the disrespectful,” which includes hurrying to sit in front of TV sets to hear their disrespecting of others night after night or carrying the banners of those whose thrill and existence is based on disrespect because after all God teaches us to love all so that Psalm Janet read to us from PEW number TWO last Mother’s Day was basically the Easter lesson … the Easter truth … and we need to decide whether we are the plastic shells of Easter or the living people of faith aligned with God and Jesus Christ who take Jesus at His Words knowing that what Jesus taught came directly from God.
I started today’s worship service with my friend Mark Miller’s song, “I believe.” Every once in a while, I play the song to hear his beautiful melody but to lean on the words.
Mark’s opening line perhaps is reflective of what we know about DIDYMUS whom we call Thomas. I have never had the conversation with Mark about the words … “I believe in the sun, even when it’s not shining” but friends on dark rainy days like yesterday, we all knew that the sun was hidden behind the clouds … we all knew that the earth was still revolving around the sun … we knew that the solar system had not evaporated into oblivion … and we can all sing with Mark … I BELIEVE in the SUN even when we don’t see it.
Thomas did not believe that Jesus had fulfilled the promise of Easter when he was first told about what the women had seen. But when he finally discovered that the Easter story wasn’t plastic … wasn’t pretend … he declared, My Lord and my God!
So this morning … it is a special day … it’s my daughter Colleen’s birthday … it’s a day we are in church and it is an opportunity for each of us to decide what Easter truly means to us and to make the essential decision to live our lives knowing that we believe in God and that we have life through Jesus Christ or now. AMEN