Want to tell you one of my favorite stories this morning.
I have to do a condensed version of it because it's too long to
tell. When I start the story.
Amy might actually get up and leave, but you'll understand by
the time I get to the end of the story.
Why, it's the story of a corn flake who was, who was actually
the greatest little corn flake in the world.
Has anyone ever heard the story of the greatest little corn
flake? Amy's heard it so many times
it's painful for her. So the greatest little corn
flake, you know, he, he, he, he was born in the corn flake
factory and he was the first corn flake out of the chute into
the box. And so he was at the bottom of
the box, and all those corn flakes were piled up on top of
him. 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 corn flake that he was. Now that box went down the
conveyor belt and it came to the end of the conveyor belt.
And when it went to the end of the bin after that, it fell off
the end of the conveyor belt and it landed upside down in the
bin. And so the corn flake was back
at the bottom of the box. So we pushed and he shoved and
he shoved and he pushed and he pushed and he pushed and he
pushed till he got to the top of the box, being the great little
cornflake that he was. If you feel like you're learning
a rhythm, feel free to join in. As he was riding in that cart
through the warehouse, he was taking the place where they were
going to be the crated up to be placed on the truck.
And as they were lifted out of the bin and placed in the crate,
the person turned it back over again and said, little 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 shoved and he pushed till he got to the top of
the box, being the great little cornflake that he was placed in
the back of the big truck he was driving down the road.
And it was bouncing and banging and bouncing and banging and
bouncing and banging. And and as he shook up and down,
he settled all the way down to the bottom of the box.
And so he pushed and he shoved and he shoved and he pushed and
he pushed and he pushed and he pushed until he got to the top
of the box, being the great little cornflake that he was.
Now at this point, I'm going to cut the story short because
might I tell the story? I typically tell it until
someone says, is this story ever going to end?
My longest to date was 3 1/2 hours.
So, you know, very polite friends of mine many years ago
on a car trip, 3 1/2 hours until someone says, is this story ever
going to end? And then I say, no, it never
ends. It's a cereal I see there.
That's how it goes. But the great little cornflake,
the great little cornflake is in some respects a good image for
us of what Jesus has done at the resurrection, because Jesus
turned the whole world upside down at the resurrection.
And everything that was on top is now on the bottom, and
everything that was on the bottom is now on the top.
Jesus, after the resurrection has turned our whole world
upside down. We've been talking all through
Lent about how do we, how do we live faithfully?
How can we be faithful in systems that are stacked against
us? And we do live in systems that
are stacked against us. But at Easter, God has turned
the world on its head. The fact that systems have been
stacked against us ultimately does not matter because God up
ends all of those systems just to breeze through a few
different ways He did that. And some of this we already read
Hunter red for us this morning. He's not here.
He is risen. Just as well.
Actually, Brandon read that one. Just as he said, Jesus was
supposed to be dead. He was supposed to be in the
tomb. He was supposed to have been
killed. And he was killed by the mighty
and powerful Roman Empire, which was the strongest force anywhere
in the world in that day. And they executed Jesus as a
slave. They humiliated him publicly.
They mockingly wrote the charge above his head.
Here's your king of the Jews. We're killing him on the cross.
This is how much power your king has.
But the woman arrived at the tomb and the tomb was empty, and
Jesus wasn't there. And the Angel said he's not
here. He has risen just as he said.
The world turned upside down. The world turned upside down.
Back in Luke, that hunter read, he's brought down rulers from
their Thrones, but has lifted up the humble.
This was a prophecy that Mary spoke when she met her, her,
her, her kinswoman Elizabeth. And they were both miraculously
pregnant at the time. And this is one of the things
the Spirit revealed to Mary about Jesus, who she was
bearing, that he's brought down rulers from their throne and
lifted up the humble. Jesus came from the very
beginning to turn the world upside down.
After Jesus's birth, Simeon told his parents, this child is
destined to cause the falling and the rising of many.
Jesus is turning the world upside down.
People that are on the bottom in these systems, in the world that
are stacked against them, they're going to find themselves
in Christ and in the Kingdom of God on the top.
And, and we cannot miss the reality here that the people
that are on the top are going to find themselves on the bottom.
That's just as important. It's not, it really isn't just
that everyone get raised, gets raised to the top.
The people on the top are now at the bottom.
The people on the bottom are now at the top.
God has turned the world upside down at Easter.
We see that in a number of different ways.
The crucified slave triumphs over the Roman Empire and the
local authorities and the religious elite in Roman, in the
Roman Empire, they crucified thousands of people.
It was the punishment for slaves.
It was the way the Roman Empire said you are the lowest of the
low, the the least powerful of the least powerful, that we can
strip you naked, beat you near to death and hang you on a cross
to spend days dying for all the world to see just how weak you
are. Now occasionally there were
people that were Roman citizens that needed to be crucified
according to the authorities, but before they could crucify
them, they stripped them of their citizenship and made them
slaves. Jesus hanging on the cross was a
display from the Roman Empire saying Jesus of Nazareth is not
the King of the Jews. Jesus of Nazareth is not the
Messiah. Jesus of Nazareth is not the Son
of God. Jesus of Nazareth is a slave.
He's our slave and we have destroyed him.
But the crucified slave one, the crucified slave, rose from the
dead. The crucified slave would not
stay dead. The crucified slave was not a
victim of the mighty Roman Empire.
The crucified slave was a willing voluntary sacrifice to
restore people to God and God to people.
The world turned upside down. Instead of life ending and
death, death ends in life. Anyone here hate clowns?
Got one or two people that hate clowns used to be so much fun.
I don't know whether it was Stephen King, but someone has
really ruined clowns for the entire world Now.
If you hate clowns, I've got good news and bad news for you.
Do you have do you know where clowns started?
In the church? How about that?
If you hate clowns, there's another reason to hate church.
You know, if you love clowns, it's another reason to love
church. The clown started in the church.
Believe it or not, there were times back in the Middle Ages
when preachers preached too long and were boring.
No, seriously, it, it happened. It's hard to believe, but it
happened. And, and I'm telling you, this
is God's honest truth. The people were designated as
clowns and they would come out from a doorway in the back of
the, you know, the narthics at the front of the church.
They would come out and do something in mime.
They didn't speak. They were silent.
Do something in mime to wake the people up, to draw their
attention back to what the pastor was saying.
And and they, the white face that they wore, they put on,
they put on white face and then covered the white face with
bright colors. And that was an intentional
symbol because from very ancient times on people to acknowledge a
death and to acknowledge their mortality, we acknowledge they
were in mourning, would take ash or other things and paint their
faces white as a symbol of death.
And by putting on the white and then putting on the color on top
of that, those Christian clowns were saying we're not moving in
this world from life to death. We're moving from death to life.
So the next time you watch it, remember Jesus.
Remember Jesus. It's hard sometimes, I know.
But even in it, we're not moving from life to death.
We're moving from death to life. We're moving from death to life.
The world has been turned upside down.
Another big thing that happened here is that in Jesus's day and
in much of the ancient world and much of the world today, women
are considered second class citizens.
If the resurrection of Jesus is a lie that was told by his
followers after his death in order to try to continue
something after that and, and start a movement, you know, on,
on the shoulders of a dead guy. It was a bad lie for a number of
different reasons, but one of the reasons it was a bad lie, if
it was a lie, is that if you're making it up, no one would have
ever made women the first witnesses of Jesus's
resurrection. Women's testimony was not
considered credible and valid in courts of law or anywhere else.
We see that in other gospels where the women go back and tell
the disciples they're like, yeah, I know you're crazy.
We'll go look for ourselves. The women were right.
Yes, the women were right. We should remember that.
That should be a mantra. The women were right.
Jesus turned the world on its head.
The first evangelists, the first apostles, the first human being
sent out to share the good news of the resurrection of Jesus
were not the men who had followed Jesus for all those
years. It was the women who had
followed Jesus for all those years, sent out.
The world turned upside down. The Angel said to the women, Go
quickly and tell his disciples, he has risen from the dead.
He's going ahead of you to Galilee.
There you will see him. They were sent to tell the
disciples the good news. The disciples heard the gospel
first from the women. A beautiful thing, a beautiful
reversal. Jesus said to them, do not be
afraid. Go tell my brothers, go to
Galilee. There they will see me Jesus
himself. We didn't read that part.
We just stopped at the Angel. But a few verses later Jesus
himself appeared to the women. Jesus himself renewed their
their calling and status as apostles and evangelists and
said that's what the word apostle means is sent one who's
been sent out and sent them out to be the first sharers and
bearers of the good news in human history.
Jesus turning the world upside down.
In Jesus resurrection, we see that the strategies of the
powerful are powerless to stop the tactics of the crucified.
Slave strategy is for the for folks in power, for folks that
can look down the road and make accurate predictions or
reasonably accurate predictions about what circumstances and
what actions will produce what results and to make decisions
based on those predictions that will yield the best results for
them. That's how corporations work.
That's how governments work. That's how you know, that's how
many churches operate with strategic thinking.
That's the thinking of the powerful.
Jesus came among us as one who had no power.
He was a nobody from a nobody family in a nothing town in a
nothing part of the world. Even other Israelites didn't
think anything of Nazareth. It was a proverb that nothing
good comes out of Nazareth. Think if you're, you know,
Michigan, right? Sorry.
Sorry, Steven, but what else can I do?
Easy target. Jesus didn't come into this
world with strategy. He came in with tactics.
He came in with tactics and his tactics were this love Those who
have been cast out, reach out a hand to the people that are on
the bottom. Share a meal with anyone who
invites you over. Invite them into your life.
You enter into their lives and when when the authorities come,
when the people with powerful the people have a strategy.
We've got this prophet. He's causing trouble.
He's preaching things that undermine our power and our
authority and make us look bad. We will conspire together to
have him crucified to show everyone that he is nothing and
we are everything. And Jesus said, I'll take that
bet, Crucify me. Do your best.
It's part of the plan. The whole time it was part of
the plan, and Jesus allowed himself to be crucified and
turned the world upside down. And the crucified slave showed
himself to be beyond the power and control of the mightiest
government, the mightiest leaders in the entire world.
Jesus turned the world upside down.
One way to think about it is though it sometimes it feels
when God does these things that God is creating chaos, that God
is is bringing disorder in the world.
But the simple fact is that when Jesus turns the world upside
down, he's restoring order to what sin has disordered.
Those systems that are stacked against the regular folks, the
common folks, the poor folks, the folks that are just, you
know, just not the wealthy, not the powerful, not the ones on
top, and not the ones in charge. That kind of system which puts a
few people on top and in charge and everyone else at their
mercy, that is a world that's out of order.
It's a system that's disordered and it's been disordered by sin,
by things like pride and greed and arrogance and a desire for
control and, and an obsessive pursuit of comfort and health
and, and all of these kinds of things that creates a world
that's out of order. And Jesus said we're putting
things back in order, turning it back right side up.
It's not really upside down. You've been upside down all of
these years. I'm going to turn it back right
side up. There's a great story that it's
not a great story. Cancel that.
It's a sad story, sorry. Dallas Willard tells in one of
his books. I believe it's a true story.
So I don't want to, I don't want to mock it, but it was, it was
Air Force pilots. They were training in jets,
fighter jets and, and they were flying at night and they were
practicing flying on instruments.
And a pilot received a message to pull up and she pulled up.
Problem was her plane was upside down and she didn't realize it,
and when she pulled up, she flew into the ground and died.
This is how human society has been for countless generations,
upside down. We don't know it.
We think the way up is up when it's actually down, and we think
that going down is going down when it's actually going up.
And Jesus has come to put the world back in order to restore
the order that God intended for this world, to bring the things
that were a bottom back to the top.
This is my theological take and my cinematic take as well.
Hate me if you will. The Marvel Cinematic Universe's
curse is Easter's blessing. I used to love the Marvel
Cinematic Universe until they introduce the multiverse, right?
And now that the multiverse is here, who cares if anyone dies?
You know they're coming back, right?
It's ruined it. And we know it's coming because
they're doing the whole new movie and Iron Man's coming
back, and Captain Eric is coming back.
All these dead people are coming back because of the multiverse.
There's no tension anymore in the Marvel Cinematic Universe
because no one ever really dies. That's Easter for us.
There's no tension. It's a curse for entertainment.
Makes a really boring movie in my opinion.
I think that's my phone vibrating up here.
Oh, it is. Oh, I really wish it said God on
there. That would have been.
And I got a doctor's appointment next week.
It's good that I get the calls because I forgot to go to the
last one. So Marvel Cinematic Universe is
cursed for entertainment. The last thing you want to do is
ruin the tension that if you love someone you want to, you
hope and hope and hope and hope and hope that they don't die,
because if they die, they're gone.
They're out of the story. But the blessing of Easter is
this death does not remove anyone from the story.
No one who is a follower of Christ is taken out of the story
by death, because death isn't the end.
We're not going from life to death.
We are going from death to life. Here's an interesting thing I
think one of my seminary professors said to me.
I argued with him about it at the time because I thought he
was stupid. I was young then and Dumber than
I am now. I'm still not smart, but I was
Dumber even then. And, and, and, and he said, he
said we really mess up. He was very good at saying we,
we don't know what we think we know.
And he was talking about the Garden of Eden story and how God
promised Adam and Eve. If you eat of the tree of
knowledge of good and evil, you will surely die.
And then they ate and they didn't die.
At least that's what I've always they didn't actually die.
God had mercy on them so that they didn't die.
And then my professor said, you know what?
We say that like we know what death is and like we know what
life is. But what if God wasn't lying?
And what if everything that we think of in this world as life
is really death? And it's not until we die that
we will get to experience real and true and genuine life.
That the world really has been turned upside down such that we
cannot even tell with any degree of certainty the difference
between life and death. But the only hope that we have
is that in and through Jesus we see that even when we die, life
is ahead of us and it's a new life.
It's a better life. It's a life in glory with Jesus
forever. It's a life free of manipulation
and corruption and death. It's a life free of, of the
heartache caused by the abuse of one person over another or one
group over another. It's a life free of greed.
It's a life free of, of the brokenness that causes so much
pain and suffering and heartache at an individual, family, and
worldwide level that as we pass through death, we will for the
first time experience true and full and complete life.
And Jesus's resurrection is the picture of that for all of us.
The MCU's curse is Easter's blessing now.
There's still pain and death. But there's a sequel, there's a
sequel, and we know the ending. The ending is resurrection.
There is a time coming. There is a day coming when Jesus
will return just the way he left, and all those who are dead
in Christ will rise again. Not as Casper the Friendly
Ghost, but with bodies like Jesus's body.
Bodies that might be scarred from the pains of this world,
but bodies that have a new and eternal life that they can share
with God and with each other forever and ever and ever.
A life where every tear is wiped away, where every heartache is
healed, where every wound is healed.
And the scars remind us less of the pain and more of the healing
and the joy that we have in Jesus himself.
Now, if you don't know the ending of your story, if you
don't know the why not take care of that today?
Why not offer yourself to Jesus and say, you know what?
I've heard about this before, all of this business of life in
you forever. I if you're not sure about that,
I'm not going to do. We're not going to do in every
head bowed, every eye closed. I got that a lot when I was a
kid. It drove me nuts.
I got saved like 12 times. But there there is a decision
that we all need to make to surrender our lives to Jesus, to
be willing to live as he called us to live, not striving to get
to the top, but doing like Jesus did and taking up our cross,
denying ourselves, following him.
And if we're taking up a cross, we are a slave, but we're not a
slave to the people in power down here.
We're a slave to God, who has promised us that even death ends
in life if we follow Jesus. If we follow Jesus, this takes
us back to the it's my first gift I've ever made.
If you pronounce it jiff, you're wrong.
First gift. That's harsh, I know, but it's,
you know, I got to preach the truth.
I was proud of that. It doesn't take much to impress
myself. The good news is our situation
is so much better than the corn flake.
The corn flake, every time that box was turned upside down, he
had to push and shove and shove and push and push and shove and
push so we could get to the top of the box, being the great
little corn flake that he was. Jesus says the world's turned
upside down. It's been turned upside down and
disordered by sin. If you're on the bottom, chill,
relax. I'll turn it back over.
I'll put you on the top. I'll put you on the top.
You don't have to struggle for it.
You don't have to strive for it. You don't have to step on anyone
else or push them down to get to the top.
Just settle at the bottom and let me turn things over.
Let me turn things around. This is living the Easter life.
Living the Easter life is remembering that God has and
will mate. He already has.
In the rection, resurrection turned the world right side up
where it's been upside down. And in our resurrection we'll
see the reality of that with our own eyes in Jesus name.
Let's live that way today. Amen.
Let's stand and sing together.
Majesty #176 We're going to sing it two times.
Majesty, worship His Majesty unto Jesus, be your glory, honor
and praise Majesty. Kingdom authority flow from his
throne unto his own. His anthem rays so exalt.
Lift up on high the name of Jesus, magnify, come, glorify
Christ Jesus the King. Majesty, worship His Majesty,
Jesus who died now glorify King of all kings.
Majesty, worship His Majesty, unto Jesus be all glory, honor
and pray. Majesty, Kingdom authority flow
from His throne unto his own. His anthem raise so we exalt,
lift up on high the neck of Jesus, magnify, come glorify
Christ Jesus the King. Majesty, worship His Majesty
Jesus, who died now glorified King of all kings.
The thing to remember is that the crucified slave is the one
with the majesty, the one hanging on the cross naked is
the one with the glory. The one who whose life was taken
by the powers that were stacked against him is the one who is
the King of all kings. And our call is not to pursue a
life of struggling to get to the top of the box.
Our call is to follow Jesus to the bottom.
And we forgot to turn everything upside down.
In Jesus name, Amen. Amen.