Beware of Hasty Conclusions

Dear friends in Christ, grace to you and peace, from God our Father, and His Son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Well Happy Easter to you! On behalf of Pastor Linda and all the staff of Our Savior’s Lutheran Church, I extend to you a joyous and happy Easter day. Whomever you are, for whatever reason you’ve come, and wherever you go when you leave this place today; you are present to hear the story that has changed the world forever. May it also change you; that is my prayer for you today…that the story of Easter would take root in your heart and change you. Welcome to worship on this Easter Day.

I begin this morning by telling you that we should beware of making hasty conclusions. Mildred was the church gossip. Every church has got a Mildred; that self-appointed monitor of the church's morals, who keeps sticking her nose into other people's business. The members don’t approve of her rumors and half-truths, but they fear her – fear that they may be the next target of her whispers, so they maintain their silence.

Well, one day Mildred made a mistake when she accused Frank, a new member, of being a drunk. She saw his old pickup parked in front of the town tavern one afternoon and emphatically told Frank and several others that she knew what he was doing in that bar.

Frank was a man of few words. When she accused him, he stared at her for a moment and then just walked away. He didn't explain, or defend, or deny. In fact, he said nothing. What he did do later that evening is quietly park his bright blue pickup truck in front of Mildred 's house, and there he left it parked all night. Funny; Mildred never spread anymore gossip about Frank. Beware of hasty conclusions.

A famous but unnamed 90 year old sportswriter of a Twin Cities newspaper was once the keynote speaker at a banquet. He arrived to the dinner late, and sitting at the head table, he began slurping his tomato soup that sat in the bowl before him. Turns out, it was French dressing. Beware of hasty conclusions. That’s the important lesson for this Easter Day.

On Good Friday afternoon, hours after Jesus had died on the cross, his friends took his body down and brought it to a tomb owned by Joseph of Arimethia. They did this with haste because the Jewish Passover was about to begin and they couldn’t leave him up there, but they didn’t have time to finish the task of burial either, so they laid him in a cave and rolled a large stone in front of it’s opening. On Sunday morning early, Mary Magdalene made her way to Jesus’ grave. She probably carried spices and a burial shroud so she could respectfully embalm his body, but when she arrived, she was astonished to find that the stone had already been rolled away.

Immediately, she jumped to a conclusion: grave robbers! Grave robbers! She sprinted back to the place where his disciples were hiding, for fear that they might be the next to die, and she reported her assumption. Peter and John raced to the tomb and even saw the grave clothes of Jesus, but they still didn’t understand. And later that morning, when Mary returned to the grave, just to weep for her dead friend, she saw a man whom she assumed was the gardener; surely he would know who did this. “Sir, do you know where they’ve taken Jesus?” She was speaking to Jesus, but she didn’t recognize him.

But then Jesus spoke her name. “Mary!” That’s all Jesus said, “Mary!” Suddenly, she recognized his voice. How many times had she heard him call her name over the years? That certain inflection, that term of endearment: “Mary!” And now she knew that her conclusions were false; very false! Jesus was alive! Upon Jesus’ instructions, she didn’t hug him, but was told to go and report this fact…not an assumption or a hasty conclusion now, but this FACT: that Jesus had risen from the dead. And this time, she sprinted with joy to the gathered disciples and told them of the resurrection.

Let me take a moment right here and tell you the implications of that resurrection story:

Jesus once told the Pharisees “Tear down this temple and I will rebuild it in three days.” Silly Pharisees; they thought he was referring to the synagogue but he was, in fact, referring to the temple of his body. And now has done that.
He once told his disciples that he was going to prepare a place for them in heaven, and when he had prepared that place, he would return. And now he has done that.
Three times, Jesus told his friends that he would go to Jerusalem and suffer and die there, but that he would rise up on the third day; three times the disciples didn’t buy it. And now he has done that.

The point of that little detour is that, if Jesus made good on his promise to rise again from the dead, then what other promises are now to be trusted?

That our sins have been forgiven, just like he said they would?
That we are the daughters and sons of God, just like he said we would be?
That we, too, will be raised to life after we die an earthly death?

People, we cannot cherry-pick the promises of Jesus. If the greatest promise is true, then all the rest of them must be considered true. Jesus has conquered death; not just for himself but for us as well. He has endured the punishment for our sins so that we won’t have to. He has become for us a bridge to God, and all we have to do is walk across that bridge by faith. And therein lies the problem, because now we begin making our hasty conclusions.

“Well, if Jesus knew the depth of MY sin, he wouldn’t forgive me. I mean, I’ve done…things. I’ve said things. The way I have lived my life, the people I’ve hurt, the times I have just messed up…nope, Jesus can’t forgive me.”

Or maybe your hasty conclusion is that you’ll be called on to live a perfect life once you accept God’s forgiveness, and you don’t think you can do that. You assume you’ll have to love everybody, and start being all religious, and quoting bible verses, and heaven forbid, stop drinking beer! Can’t have that, so you reject God’s gift of forgiveness.

Or perhaps the truth of the matter is, you can’t accept God’s forgiveness because it means that you would have to forgive yourself for something you did or didn’t do years ago. You have grown so accustomed to beating yourself up for your sin, you have become comfortable living in your shame, and you don’t know any other way to live.

And all the while, Jesus is calling out YOUR name, like he called out Mary’s name, and you choose to ignore it. I stand before you today as proof that God can crack the hardest heart, God can love the most stubborn child, God can smooth the roughest edges in a person’s life. He will call your name today, but he will not make you come. You can hide behind the hasty conclusions if you want to, or you can accept the gift of grace that Jesus offers. It’s your choice.

Ironically, every one of us will come to a conclusion about Jesus Christ today; maybe you already have. Did he really rise from the dead, or were more than 500 eyewitnesses to the resurrection all delusional? Did he prepare a place for me in the Kingdom, or just for the most religious people of every generation? And perhaps most importantly, can he really love a person like me? He can, and he does. May you come to a conclusion that brings your life joy, and peace, and hope for the future. Happy Easter, friends. Happy Easter, indeed. Amen.

©2010 Steven Molin