Our scripture today is Matthew chapter 28 verses one through
10. After the Sabbath, at dawn on
the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary
went to look at the tomb. There was a violent earthquake,
for an Angel of the Lord came down from heaven and going to
the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it.
His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were
white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him
that they shook and became like dead men.
The Angel said to the women, Do not be afraid, for I know that
you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified.
He is not here. He has risen just as he said.
Come and see the place where he lay.
Then go quickly and tell his disciples, He has risen from the
dead, and is going ahead of you into Galilee.
There you will see him now I have told you so.
The women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with
joy, and ran to tell his disciples.
Suddenly Jesus met them. Greetings, He said.
They came to him, clasped his feet, and worshipped him.
Then Jesus said to them, Do not be afraid.
Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee.
There they will see me. May the Lord add his blessing to
the reading and hearing of his Word.
Boy, the resurrection in green is a very different vibe than
the resurrection in the bright yellow of a sunrise.
Yeah, it's, it's, is what it is. We're talking today about the
resurrection. And at the resurrection, God did
an extraordinary thing. He turned the world upside down.
And and we're going to look at that in a lot of different ways
as as we go along this morning. But I want to begin with with a
story that's one of my favorite stories, and I don't think I've
told it here before. And I'm going to tell you a
shortened version of it, because the full version is much too
long to do as part of a sermon. Has anyone ever heard the story
of the greatest cornflake? Anyone ever heard that?
Oh, good, good. Nobody's heard the story of the
greatest cornflake. The the greatest corn flake also
happened to be the first corn flake.
And, and as the corn flake was coming down the chute after
having been made to be put inside the very first box of
corn flakes, he, that corn flake, found himself on the
bottom of the box and all the corn flakes piled on top.
And so he pushed and he shoved and he shoved and he pushed and
he pushed and he shoved and he pushed until he got to the top
of the box. Being the great little cornflake
that he was. That box went down the conveyor
belt and it got to the end of the conveyor belt and there was
a big bin there at the end of the conveyor belt that would
take the box to the place where it would be crated.
And that box went off the end of the conveyor belt down into that
bin and landed upside down. And so the cornflake found
himself back on the bottom of the box.
So he pushed and he shoved and he shoved and he pushed and he
pushed and he pushed till he got to the top of the box, being the
great little corn flake that he was.
Well, that bin was wheeled around through the through the
factory until he got to place where it was put in the crate to
be put on the truck. And as that was lifted out of
the bin and put onto the crate, they turn the box right side up.
And so the corn flake found himself back on the bottom of
the box. So we pushed and he shoved and
he shoved and he pushed and he pushed and he pushed till he got
to the top of the box, being the great little corn flake that he
was. Now, when they when they the
forklift picked up that set of crates to carry it to the truck,
you know, it was late Friday afternoon and the forklift
driver was a little tired. He was paying attention and, and
he, he, he dumped it and, and everything spilled down on the
ground and that big, the box ended up upside down again.
And so the corn flake was back on the bottom of the box and he
pushed and he shoved it. He shoved and he pushed, he
pushed and he shoved and he pushed till he got to the top of
the box, being the great little corn flake that he was.
Of course, they gathered everything back up and righted
it and got it right side back up and put it back on the forklift.
And so the corn flake was back on the bottom of the box.
So he pushed and he shoved and he shoved it.
He pushed and he pushed and he shoved and he pushed till he got
to the top of the box being the great little corn flake that he
was. Now I'm going to stop the story
here because this story, the way this story works is I keep
telling it and telling it and telling it and telling it until,
you know, my longest, I had a very polite couple of friends
that we were on a road trip together, 3 1/2 hours.
I told this story. So I've got to find out.
Think of a lot of different ways for a box to get turned upside
down in 3 1/2 hours. They were way too polite, very
nice people. But I keep telling the story
until someone says something like, is this story ever going
to end? And then I say no, it never
ends. It's a serial.
Thank you, thank you very much. That's how the story goes.
It's a silly story. One of my favorite stories.
I love telling that story, particularly to polite people.
The shortest I've ever had. I got like 3 times in and a kid
said is this story ever going to be done?
As I go get that was quick, that little stork cornflake.
And that story reminds me a lot of of the message that we have
for Easter here today, which is that at Easter God turned the
world upside down and the things that were on top are now on the
bottom and the things that were on the bottom are now on the
top. That is what Easter was, God
turning the world upside down. And if we're going to live the
Easter life as Easter people, we need to we need to wrap our
brains around that and live like we are in a world that is turned
upside down. Systems of this world might be
stacked against you. You know, we're not wealthy,
powerful, political, industrial people in this room.
We're just folks. The systems of the world might
at times feel and seem and really be stacked against us.
But at Easter, God has turned the world on its head and it no
longer ultimately matters to us if the systems of this world are
stacked against us. We see this in the story of
Easter. He is not.
He is not here. He has risen just as he said.
The message that the Angel gave to those women that came to
visit the tomb where Jesus been buried, He's not here.
They expected one thing. They expected to find the dead
body of the person they had thought was their savior.
And instead they found an empty tomb.
Their world was turned upside down.
And that was part of the plan from the beginning, all the way
back at the beginning when Mary was pregnant with Jesus and she
went to a visit her relative Elizabeth and and by the
inspiration of the Holy Spirit, she spoke these words.
He that is God has brought down rulers from their Thrones, but
he has lifted up the humble in the birth of Jesus, in the
incarnation of Jesus, in his life, death and resurrection,
God was was taking those that were up high and putting them
down low and those who were down low and putting them up high,
turning the world upside down. After Jesus's birth, when they
took him to the temple to be circumcised, they met a couple
of prophets there and one of them, Simeon said this of Jesus.
This child is destined to cause the right, the falling and
rising of many. Jesus will turn the world upside
down. That those are on the bottom
will be on the top. We need to remember, because
this is just as true and just as important, though not just as
pleasant to think about sometimes, that those on the top
will be on the bottom. God's not right raising everyone
to the top. God is raising those who were on
the bottom to the top, and those who are on the top are now going
to be on the bottom. That's the work that God is
doing in this world. We see this at Easter in a
number of different ways. First of all, the crucified
slave triumphs over the Roman Empire, the local authorities
and the religious elite. The Roman Empire crucified lots
of people. They crucified thousands and
thousands of people. They almost exclusively
crucified slaves. Now, occasionally there was
someone who was a Roman citizen, maybe even a powerful person in
the Roman Empire, a senator or someone else of a person of
importance that that they decided needed to be crucified.
And so before they crucified them, they stripped them of
their titles, they stripped them of their position, they stripped
them of their citizenship, and they made them a slave.
And then they crucified them. The point being, before Rome,
you are a slave. You belong to us.
You live at our pleasure and at our will, and we can take your
life whenever we want to. The message of the crucifixion
of Jesus, when Pontius Pilate wrote the King of the Jews over
the at the top of the cross where Jesus was being crucified
was that this is what Rome thinks of your king.
You call him a king, we call him a slave.
You say he's powerful, We kill him on a cross.
The purpose of crucifixion was to put and keep people in their
place, and that place was at the bottom.
But on Easter Sunday, the crucified slave rose again.
The crucified slave triumphed over the Roman Empire.
All the power of Rome could not keep Jesus dead.
All the power of the of the religious elite in Israel could
not keep Jesus dead. He rose again and the world was
turned on its head. We see it in the fact that
instead of life ending in death, death ends in life after the
resurrection. Anyone here like clowns?
Raise your hand if you like clowns.
We you like clowns. Raise your hand if you're afraid
of clowns. We got people that are people.
Clowns have a bad reputation these days.
So I got some news for you about clowns.
You can take it as good news or bad news however you like, but
you might not know that clowns started in the church.
Did you know that the very first clowns were in the church way
back in the Middle Ages? Now, shockingly, and I know this
is shocking, there were times when pastors were boring during
the sermon. Now it's true.
It it, it happened, it happened. They would preach really long,
really boring sermons and the job of the clown was to come out
of a door behind the pastor, come out in front of everyone
through mime. They didn't do any speaking
through mime. They would do something, wake
people up and get their attention back on what the
pastor was saying. They weren't just a distract.
They're they're to refocus, get people back paying attention
again to the message because the pastor gotten too boring and,
and the makeup they wore was part of their identity, their
Christian identity. They put white makeup on their
face and then brightly colored makeup on top of the white
makeup. In ancient traditions, many,
many, many, many ancient traditions, death was symbolized
as white, that when someone died, people would wear white as
part of their mourning. When they wanted to represent or
symbolize death, they would wear a white face.
White symbolize death. And so when the cloud, so you
put, you know, we all have color pigment in our skin and to talk
about death, we would color the pigment, the coloring of our
skin. We would color with cover with
white, but the clowns covered with white and then put color on
top of the color covers, put color.
Oh my goodness, this was not that hard when I was doing it in
my head, put color on top of the white cover and they were saying
we're not going from death to life.
We are going from said it backwards, boy, I am really
messing myself. We are not going from life to
death. We are going from death to life.
That's the whole reason why clowns look the way they look.
So the next time you're watching it, think of Jesus.
Bit of a stretch sometimes with some of the clowns that we have
today, but but that's the idea of clowns to remind us the color
goes on top of the white that life doesn't end to death.
Death ends in life. I got a thought on this whole
thing too. I had a professor in, in
seminary that I argued with him about this when I was in
seminary because I was younger and Dumber than and, and I'm
still not like smart, but I'm not as dumb as I was.
And, and, and he talked about in in Genesis, when, when God told
Adam and Eve don't eat from the fruit of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil. If you do, you will surely die.
And then they ate from it. And then the way I've always
heard it taught, and I've taught it myself.
I've taught it myself and, and still say this way sometimes is
they ate, but they didn't die. And my professor said that's
really a very arrogant way to read that scripture because it
assumes that we know what death is and that we know what life
is. What if they really did die?
And what if everything that we have called life since is really
death? And we don't even really know
what true life is until the resurrection of Jesus and his
disciples encountered someone for the first time, truly and
completely and fully alive. And that's the life that awaits
us, the same life that Jesus has now, a life that we don't even
have the right words to describe, Paul said.
We just know we're going to be like Jesus because we're going
to see him as he is. Beyond that, it's really hard to
say, but the world has been turned upside down.
Our life doesn't end in death. Death ends in life.
The other thing here, turning the world upside down.
Women are made the first apostles and evangelists of the
good news of Jesus Christ. Rick talked about this for
several weeks with the kids in the children's message.
I hope you were listening along too.
It was good stuff, important stuff.
It's children's messages, always are, but the women if, if, if
this whole resurrection of Jesus thing is a made-up lie so that
the people that made it up could be important religious leaders
or something like that. It's a really bad lie for a
number of different reasons. And one of the reasons it was a
really bad lie was in that day, women were not considered
credible witnesses. Their testimony didn't count or
count as much in court. They were not considered
reliable, credible witnesses. And so if you're making up a
story, you wouldn't make up a story in which women were the
first witnesses of the resurrection.
It would have been men. Jesus knew that.
Jesus sent his Angel to the women.
Jesus himself appeared to the women, and he made them
apostles. That word apostle in the New
Testament just means one who is sent out.
Jesus sent them out, and he sent them out with the good news of
Jesus's resurrection, which also made them evangelists.
The very first apostles. The very first evangelists were
women. God, Jesus turning the world on
its head, elevating those who have been at the bottom and
placing them at the top, sending them out.
We see that. We see that there in Matthew the
Angel said to the women, go quickly and tell his disciples,
he has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into
Galilee. There you will see him.
And then Jesus himself commissioned them.
Jesus said to them, do not be afraid.
Go, tell my brothers to go to Galilee.
There you will. There they will see me.
Finally, we see at Easter that the strategies of the powerful
are powerless to stop the tactics of the crucified slave.
Rome did not do crucifixions by accident.
Rome did not do crucifixions in a reactionary way.
Rome did crucifixions as part of their strategic plan for
governing a very large empire of very diverse peoples.
And, and they knew that the poor people and the powerless people
vastly outnumbered the rich and the powerful people.
And so part of the strategy is we need to do things to make
sure that large majority of people knows their place and
they're afraid of us. And so we crucify people.
We do it publicly, we show it how painful, humiliating,
disgraceful it is. Typically when people were
crucified, Jesus died very quickly on the cross.
Typically people hung on the cross for days before they died.
And, and I won't get into all of the details of what that was
like, but it was awful. And here was Jesus crucified by
the powerful Roman Empire in collaboration with the religious
elite in Israel. And now the crucified slave has
risen again. The power of the Roman Empire,
the power of the religious elite was powerless against Jesus's
tactics of love and mercy and grace and forgiveness.
You see what the Roman Empire wanted people to think of
themselves as, as everyone was a potential victim before the
Roman Empire. And Jesus said, you cannot make
me a victim. I willingly give my life.
I dare you to crucify me. Frankly, that's what I've had in
mind the whole time. You go ahead, execute your
strategies. I will continue my tactic of
loving the powerless, of touching the lepers, of
elevating the women, of embracing the outcasts.
I will continue to do those things.
You crucify me and let's see how all of that works out.
Because Jesus was never a victim of the Roman Empire.
Jesus willingly and voluntarily gave his life so that the people
on the bottom could live and be lifted up.
The strategies the powerful were powerless to stop the the
tactics of the crucified slave. See, God brings and restores
order to what sin has disordered.
As we think about the world turning upside down, it's it's
easy to imagine that of God taking what has been ordered and
then disordering it. God's getting things out of
order. But that's the exact opposite.
God is taking something that is out of order, the systems of
this world, and putting them in order, the proper order, the
right order. I'm reminded of a story that
Dallas Willard has told in one of his books, True story, tragic
story about Air Force pilots that were in training and
fighter jets and as part of their training, they were flying
on instruments. So and it was night.
They couldn't see. They were just flying on the
readings of their instruments. And I'm not a pilot.
I got to think that's really, really hard to do and to do
well. And they got a signal and, and,
and they were told to pull up and, and one of those, one of
those pilots pulled up and flew right into the ground.
She had her plane upside down, but she didn't know it.
And she thought up was down and down was up.
And so when she tried to go up, she went down and she died.
This is how our world has been since then, entered the world.
We have been upside down. And Jesus at the resurrection is
finally putting things right side up, putting things in the
right order with the right people on the top and the right
people on the bottom. Not the powerful people, not the
wealthy, the humble, the poor. Those are the ones that God says
are on the top. Those are the ones that I am
elevating now. Even death, even death I should
have gotten. I'm realizing now I should have
put these two slides in different order because anyone
here a fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe?
OK, I'll forgive you. OK, I used to be a fan of the
Marvel Cinematic Universe. I believe that the Marvel
Cinematic Universe has a a real problem now, and it has at least
at the very least caused me to get bored with the Marvel
Cinematic Universe. And the problem with the Marvel
Cinematic Universe is the multiverse.
If you don't know what the multiverse is, the multiverse in
in, in the MCU is based on, on, loosely based on scientific
theory, very, very speculative that there are an infinite
number of universes out there in which everything that can happen
does happen. And so anytime someone in a
Marvel movie dies, we know they're never really dead
because there's another one out there in another universe that
will come back and take their place.
And we're getting that there's another Avengers movie coming
back. Iron Man's going to be back.
Captain America is going to be back.
All these folks that supposedly died or coming back.
And, and to me, that makes for boring storytelling because
there's no tension if, if I grow to love a character in a movie
and I see them die, that that's, that that means something.
You feel that. But if you see them die and now,
yeah, 2 movies down the road, they'll be back.
It's like, who cares? They died.
So what makes for, I believe, really boring storytelling?
If you still love the MCU, that's OK.
There's a place in heaven for you, too.
There really is Just, you know, we'll be watching TV together,
that's all. The curse of the MCU is the
blessing of the Easter life because we know the end and we
know everyone who is a follower of Jesus gets their life back.
So there's no tension. Death has lost its power.
Death has lost its sting because there is no more tension.
When someone dies in Christ, we know they will get their life
back. Yes, there is still pain, there
is still heartache. That is real and powerful when
we lose someone that we love. But in the end, knowing that
their life will come back in the end, as we face death ourselves,
knowing that our life is coming back, that we will be like Jesus
because we will see him as he is, it removes that, that
ultimate bite and ultimate sting of death.
And, and what makes for boring storytelling makes for wonderful
Easter living, Living with that reality, living with that hope
that our lives do not end in death, but that our death will
end in life and that God has turned things around and set the
world right. There's still pain and there's
still death, but there is a sequel, a sequel better even
than Avengers End Game, which was a very good movie, I have to
confess. Very good movie.
There is a sequel, and that sequel is the Kingdom of God and
the Kingdom of heaven. And we know the ending when
Jesus returns and the dead in Christ rise and we meet him and
see him as he is and we become like he is in the resurrection
in that life. Now I say this and I, I've said
it intentionally and, and, and, and I hope clearly that the
promise we have and the hope that we have for resurrection is
for those who die in faith in Christ that have given their
lives to Jesus, that have accepted him not just as Savior,
as Savior, but not just a Savior, also as Lord, as the
King, the one in charge of their life.
And then we have that hope of resurrection.
I'm just going to say today, if you have not taken care of that
part of your relationship with God, today is a good day to do
that. I'm not going to do.
And every head bowed, every eye closed.
I got a lot of that kind of preaching when I was growing up.
It aggravated me. I got saved like 14 times
growing up. But it matters our standing with
Jesus and our relationship with Jesus.
And if you have not accepted Jesus's invitation to be part of
his Kingdom and be part of his family, this is the best day to
do that. Now, the best day was, you know,
a few years ago, but you can't go back in time.
So today is the second best day. So if you haven't done that,
take care of that today. Now I got.
Let's see that. Look at that.
Look at that.
Yeah. All right, it doesn't take much
for me to impress myself. My very first gift I've ever
made. Right there.
First one. Thank you.
Very, very first one.
Made a cornflake box turn upside down.
All right, it's all right. Now, here's the thing.
I love the cornflake story. One of my favorite stories.
But we are not the greatest little cornflake because the
greatest little corn flake. He had to push and shove and
shove and push to get to the top of the box.
He had to get himself to the top of the box and to get to the top
of the box he had to push others down and stand on their
shoulders. We have it so much better.
Jesus just turns the box over. He just turns the box over so
that those were on the bottom are now on the top.
Now here's the thing. That means the Easter life, the
Christian life, is not a race to the top.
It's not a race for power. It's not a race for prestige.
It's not a struggle for glory. It's not a struggle for wealth.
It's a race to the bottom. How low can I go to serve others
and minister to them and care for them and lift them up and
build them up? Because I know that if I die at
the bottom of the box, that box gets turned over and I'll be on
the top. And that's the calling that we
have not to struggle and strive our whole lives to become the
greatest and the best and to be over and above other people.
But the struggle to get down on our knees and serve and love and
compassion and mercy and grace and trust that Jesus will turn
the box over in the end because he already did it in a real
sense, in the resurrection. We might not see it all yet, but
it's happened. It's happened.
And that's the Easter life. That's the Easter life in a
world turned upside down as we can be.
We can be happy on the bottom with the world stacked against
us, just loving and serving like Jesus, loved and served until
the day we die and our death ends in life and we live with
Jesus forever, as the scripture says, reigning with Jesus
forever and the Kingdom of God. Amen.