Celebrating The World As We Find It

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This blog is a continuation of our series through the season of Easter. This is the third of four celebration services, and on Sunday we’ll celebrate the world as we find it. But before we do that…

Remember all the way back to March 12th, when I wrote a blog post titled “Lament For This Pandemic World,” which was followed by a church service on March 14th where we wrote and prayed a lament for the pandemic together? If you’ve got the time today, I’d encourage you to go back and read that blog post, and read that lament we prayed, prior to reading this post.

Two months ago, we lamented this pandemic world. Today, we’re celebrating the world as we find it.

And everyone can plainly see that the world is still pretty much the same two months ago as it is today. So why would we enter the same world in two different ways: once to lament it, and once to celebrate it?

In March we lamented the loss of life, relationships, freedoms, and sense of vocation. This week we get to celebrate the joy of life, relationships, freedoms, and sense of vocation. And it’s the same world, both times.

Our lives are held and sustained by the Holy Spirit: all day, every day.

So the source of our life, and thus the source of our celebration this coming Sunday, is not found in our circumstances. Even when our situation is hard, and this pandemic world is so hard that we dedicated an entire worship service to lamenting it, we can know that the Holy Spirit is still with us and still loves us.

We don’t celebrate as a way of ignoring, shrinking, or belittling our suffering in this pandemic world. We celebrate as a way to make sense of this world, because we know that this world is still God’s Kingdom, that the Holy Spirit is still with us, and that we still get to walk in the direction Jesus is walking in.

This creates an obvious tension, which is often called, “already but not yet.”

At Spring Church, we define “discipleship” as “walking in the direction Jesus is walking in.”

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Jesus modeled and demonstrated how this tension is something that we live with. Jesus lamented the death of friends, the affect of sin in our lives, and the way disease causes us pain. Jesus also celebrated so much, and so often, that his detractors accused him of being a drunk and a glutton!

The “already but not yet” is a part of our lives, when we walk in the direction Jesus is walking in.

We see this tension in The Big Idea for The Easter Season….

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This season is broken into two parts: Lent and Eastertide.

In Lent, we lament the “not yet” of life, and we lament the broken places. Lent isn’t a trip to the hospital, where we’re hoping somebody gets better; Lent is a trip to the grave, where we grieve things that are hopeless. But then Easter comes, and the grave is empty, the Kingdom of God has come, and Jesus has created new life! So in Eastertide we celebrate the “already!” We celebrate how the Kingdom of God is already here, how Jesus has already conquered death, and how the Holy Spirit invites us into this incredible life right now.

We also see this tension in the two scriptures which guide our ability to walk in the direction Jesus is walking in right now. Our ending point for the direction Jesus is walking is Revelation 7, which gives us the vision of Heaven coming down to earth. With this dramatic story we get a glimpse of everyone and everything living at peace. Does the world we live in look like this? Not yet, so we lamented this pandemic world together back in March:

Revelation 7:9-11
After that I looked, and check this out! A huge crowd, too big to even count em all, from every ethic group and tribe and poeple and language. There they were, standing before the Throne and the Lamb, all decked out in white, and palm branches were in their hand. And they were shouting at the top of their lungs:
Salvation!
Salvation to our God, who sits on the Throne,
And to the Lamb!
And all who were standing around the Throne - Angels, Elders, Animals - fell on their faces before the Throne and worshiped God, singing:
Amen!
The blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving,
The honor and power and strength,
To our God, forever and ever!
Amen!

But our starting point for the direction Jesus is walking in is the story of Pentecost, and Pentecost has already happened! The Holy Spirit has already come and invited us into this new life, we’re already a part of the Kingdom of God, and today we get to start living as though we are already in heaven. This life that happens in Pentecost is already here, all around us, right now:

Acts 2:1-11
And when the Fiftieth and final day marking the completion of Passover had arrived, everyone was together in the same place. And then, out of nowhere!, from the heavens a strong and heavy wind, full of possibility, filled the whole house and everyone who was sitting there. And the wind appeared to them like dancing tongues of fire, and it rested on each and every one of them. And all of them were filled by the Holy Spirit and they began to speak different languages as the Spirit gave them the ability to speak.
Now there was dwelling in Jerusalem some Jews, devout people from every nation everywhere. And at this sound a huge crowd assembled, because each and every one of them was hearing all the people of God speak in their own language. And this totally blew their minds, and they started saying, “Check this out! Aren’t all these people speaking Galileans? So how is it that we hear, each one of us, in our own native language?
Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene and religious pilgrims from Rome (both Jews and non-Jews learning their new Jewish faith), even Cretans and Arabs!, “They’re speaking my language and praising God’s amazing works!” And all were confused and completely stumped, and were saying to one another, “What's the meaning of all this?"

May 9th Worship Service