Called by Name: Resurrection, New Life, and Peace

It's not Jesus dying that matters. It's not that at all. What matters? That's not the headline y'all. We buried the lead. It's not Jesus died for me. It's Jesus rose for me. It's I just became Southern Baptist y'all. But that's the headline. Resurrection is the headline. Resurrection is the thing that matters. Resurrection is the point. Yes. It's not Jesus died for me. It's Jesus lives for me. And you, all of you, exactly the same. [00:43:34] (55 seconds)  #ResurrectionHeadline

So the question for you this Easter isn't, do you believe in resurrection? The question is, where is god bringing new life in you right now? Where are you allowing the seeds to grow? Where are you germinating something new? Where is god calling you by name? Where is god inviting you into something new? Because what feel buried, what feels buried, quite possibly is just something that's planted. What feels like the end may actually be the beginning of something that you haven't seen yet. [00:52:01] (47 seconds)  #NewLifeWithin

And she gets there and the stone is is moved. It's rolled away. And she looks inside and the tomb is empty. And what does she do? What does Mary do? She runs not with good news but with fear, with angst. They've taken him. Somebody stole Jesus's body. Somebody took it. What What are we going to do? They've taken his body. What are we going to do? Because you see, when you're standing in the dark, even resurrection looks like loss. [00:38:28] (42 seconds)  #ResurrectionLooksLikeLoss

Jesus rose for us so that love would have the final word in our lives and not fear, not death, not despair. In this story, the empire, the powers that be, thought they had sealed the story. They thought violence had won. But god raised Jesus not just as a miracle. Although it was a miracle. But it's not just a miracle. It's a message to us. It's a message to us to bring life out of death, to call people by name, to make all things new, that everything can be made new. [00:48:20] (55 seconds)  #ResurrectionIsAMessage

Jesus rose for us, for you, for me, for the world, and even in the darkest soil, life can still grow so that peace can take root so that we can stand even now in this crazy world in which we live and say resurrection is real Resurrection is still happening. Love is growing. Love is taking root. Peace is growing. Peace is taking root. Hallelujah. Amen. [00:52:48] (54 seconds)  #LoveAndPeaceTakeRoot

And how often in our lives do we get to the point where we think, I don't know what's coming next. I don't know what I can do next. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. And it feels like the end. It feels like I can't do anything else, and I can't move anything forward. And yet, this isn't the end, y'all. Throughout Lent, we've been talking about becoming good dirt. What does it mean to be good dirt? How the soil holds both what has died and what is yet to grow. [00:45:34] (32 seconds)  #BecomingGoodDirt

And here it is right here in the resurrection story. The garden, the ground, the place of burial becoming the place of new life. God doesn't avoid the dirt. God uses it. God transforms it. God brings life out of it. And we all get to experience that. We get to compost the crap in our life. We get to compost the wrong decisions, the bad things that happen to us, the craziness of life, and maybe even the craziness of this world. [00:46:06] (38 seconds)  #CompostForNewLife

And that's one of the most honest things about this story, I think, is that resurrection doesn't arrive with instant clarity. It shows up slowly. It unfolds slowly, Personally, right in the middle of all of that confusion, resurrection shows up. And Mary stays. You know, the others come and and they all leave. They come. They they look in. They see it. And they're like, well, that's too bad. I don't know what to do. And they leave. [00:39:11] (35 seconds)  #ResurrectionUnfoldsSlowly