8:30 Easter Celebration | Mt. Olive Lutheran Worship

It's when we turn to coping mechanisms to try to numb the pain or to numb whatever's going on, and yet we still find ourselves wondering, standing as God's people, knowing that he's alive and yet not living like it. And so for the disciples and sometimes for us, they walked away from the garden that morning and they just went back to their ordinary lives. But Mary doesn't leave. Mary stays, and she weeps, and it's in her staying and in her weeping that Jesus comes. [00:30:50] (37 seconds)  #StayAndFindJesus

And with that, coming back to this emptiness idea is that we get to walk simultaneously in the emptiness of life and the pain and the difficulties that we navigate as God's people, but we also get to do so carrying the joy of the resurrection because we know how the story ends. And we get to carry that story, our story, to the people that God places in our lives. And we just get to simply say, I have seen the Lord and here's what that looks like in my life. [00:38:20] (35 seconds)  #CarryResurrectionJoy

Now for us, this is not just an instance of Jesus performing a miracle, but rather it's a picture of our human experience. Each one of us knows what it's like to have that good thing in life run dry. Maybe it was the celebration that didn't sustain, the relationship that kind of fell apart, the hope or the strength that you kind of just felt yourself just pouring out over the last string of difficulties and challenges in life. In some way or another, we all know what it's like to look in the jars and see them empty, to feel empty inside. [00:26:23] (46 seconds)  #WhenJarsAreEmpty

And to help us understand the meaning, we need to go all the way back to Genesis in which God creates Adam and Eve and he puts them where? In a garden. And he gives them the responsibility to tend to, and care for, and and help multiply, and make the the land be fruitful. This is how God intended things. And and part of that was God walking with them in the cool of the evening, physically walking with Adam and Eve in the garden. [00:33:06] (33 seconds)  #GardenPurpose

It's how God intended life was flourishing, life was good. But then the reason we had to celebrate Good Friday, the reason Jesus had to come and die for us was because Adam and Eve thought they knew better than God. And so they took and ate from the tree that God had forbidden them to eat from. And in that moment, sin, death entered into the world, and the life that God had intended for us was kind of broken. [00:33:39] (31 seconds)  #SinEnteredTheWorld

And so to boil it down, here's what the resurrection means for us today. It means that you are no longer a stranger in the garden, That the access that Adam lost for us has been given back to us through Jesus. Not because we've earned it or deserve it, but because the gardener walked out of the tomb and has called you by name. [00:37:58] (23 seconds)  #AccessRestored

Because Jesus, as we look at him and his life, he saved the best for last. He saved it for the third day. He saved it for a garden where a woman wept and then everything changed when she heard her name spoken by someone she thought was dead. The best is not behind you. The best is not what you had before the thing ran out, but the best is yet to come. [00:40:30] (28 seconds)  #BestIsYetToCome

And so for us today, as we think about this, it's this reminder for us that the resurrection is this restoration, this new life that we have because of Jesus, but that also comes with the commissioning to go and share the story that we have, the transformation that we've experienced because of Jesus. [00:37:36] (21 seconds)  #CommissionedToShare