[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: Welcome to the collective table, where we celebrate the intersections of Jesus, justice, and joy. This podcast is brought to you by Oceanside Sanctuary Church. Each week, we bring our listeners a recording of our weekly Sunday teaching at Oceanside Sanctuary, which ties scripture into the larger conversations happening in our community, congregation, and even the podcast. So we're glad you're here, and thanks for listening.
[00:00:40] Speaker A: Hi, good morning.
Claire just asked if I wanted to go with the toddlers.
I'm trying not to take that as a personal, like, slight, but, yeah, absolutely.
I spent most of my free time these days with a toddler. Some of you guys know this, but I'm a new. Janelle and I are new grandparents, relatively speaking. Our first grandchild is Otis. Otis is two and a half years old now, which means he's really starting to, like, become a lot of fun. Like, he's very engaging. He's starting to develop his little interests and obsessions. And one of his interests is music. He loves music. He loves listening to music. And one of the things Janelle loves to do, as you know, his grandmother, is introduce him to, like, different songs and that sort of thing. Mattie, could I just get, like, a little less heat on this microphone? That would be great. And then one of the things that I've noticed is Otis, he is learning how to dance right now, dancing is an interesting term for what Otis does.
Like, for example, if you saw me dancing, attempt to dance, you wouldn't call it dancing. And the reason I don't dance is not because of me. I'm doing the rest of the world a favor by not dancing. I'm a terrible dancer. I'm the worst possible dancer. And even the idea of dancing, like, I see myself from the outside, and I'm like, oh, God, no, I can't do that. But Otis, he's the exact opposite. He dances with, like, reckless abandon, right? Like, he. He's exploring new ways to move his body all the time. Like, he stretches his arms out, he bends down, he balances himself on the floor, he puts his leg out. He does everything his body just, like, tells him to do in the middle of music. And then he's discovered recently that dancing should be, like, a social activity. So now he's started to say, poppy, dance with me. I'm poppy, right? Poppy, dance with me. And my ego was dying a slow death because you can't say no to your two and a half year old grandson who's inviting you to dance. I can say no to my wife whenever she's like, let's dance. At this party. No, absolutely not. I do not dance. Right. But Otis. No, I have to, like, get involved in the weirdness that is Otis. Like non choreographed dancing. This is one of the things I've learned about being a grandparent is it's very cliche that, like, grandparents talk about nothing about their grandkids or being grandparents. But what. What's happening, it seems like to me, at least, what's happening to me is that I'm becoming this strange person, like this other person. Like, I'm entering a new stage of life, and I'm discovering who I am on the other side of that new season of life. And that person is a person who was much less concerned about how he looks when he's dancing with his grandson.
And that is a kind of death to the person that I was before.
And it's funny, because when I began to approach the idea of being a grandparent, when our oldest daughter Savannah announced that she was pregnant, we were so excited and we were like, we're too young to be grandparents.
And so, you know, you do this thing where you're like, what do we want to be called? Because. Because the idea of being a grandparent is a kind of fear, right? Like, there's a fearfulness to it. Like, I'm getting old, right? Like, you're reminded that you're getting closer to death.
And what's really interesting to me about it is as I get closer to death and experience this new thing on the other side of becoming a grandparent, in order to really fully experience that, I have to embrace a kind of death.
Like a death to the idea that I was still young.
A death to the idea that I wasn't.
Whatever it is that I'm becoming now that I'm Otis's poppy.
And I know that's just, like, disgustingly sentimental, but this is also the person I'm becoming, and that's kind of fun.
So I want to read this passage to you. So some of you guys were here on Good Friday. Some of you guys weren't here on Good Friday.
For those of you who were here on Good Friday, I just want to ask your sort of patience for a moment, because I'm just going to very briefly recap what we talked about on Friday night in order to make sense of what we're going to read here today. And what we're going to read is Matthew, chapter 28, verses 1 through 10. So let's read that together. And I want to share with you some of what I'm noticing on this easter Sunday, Matthew 28, starting in verse one, says this. After Sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And suddenly there was a great earthquake. For an angel of the Lord descended from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. And his appearance was like lightning and his clothing white as snow. For fear of him, the guards shook and. And became like dead men.
But the angel said to the women, do not be afraid. I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He's not here, for he has been raised. As he said, come see the place where he lay, and then go quickly and tell his disciples he has been raised from the dead. And indeed he's going ahead of you to Galilee, and there you will see him. This is my message for you.
So they left the tomb quickly, with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. And suddenly Jesus met them and he said, greetings. And they came to him and took hold of his feet and they worshiped him. And then Jesus said to them, do not be afraid.
Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me.
Just pray with me for a moment. God, we thank you for today and for this opportunity for us to celebrate Easter, to celebrate resurrection, to awaken to a new sense of who we are and who you are and how we are called to be as followers of Christ in light of the resurrection.
Pray that you would open our hearts and our minds to this transformation, to the discovery of something new on the other side of all the fear that's associated with our hurt and woundedness and inability to control the outcomes of everything around us, we pray that you'd be with us in grace, in Jesus name. Amen.
Okay, so for those of you who weren't here on Friday, what I said on Good Friday is that something really interesting and amazing and unusual happened on Good Friday. And that was that Jesus, when confronted in the garden of Gethsemane with this betrayal, right? The betrayal that represented one of his closest friends and allies and disciples, the betrayal of that person who turned him over to the authorities. That Jesus, I said at that moment, had a choice. That Jesus, real testing, his real temptation was not in the wilderness. From Matthew chapter four, from before he started his ministry, I said to you that was sort of a trial run, a practice run. That Jesus, real temptation, his real testing happened in the garden, when he sat in the garden and prayed. And he knew that his betrayal was coming. He knew that his arrest and his crucifixion was coming and he was afraid. He was. He was anxious about what was to come. And he prayed to God and he said, if it's at all possible for you to take this cup from me, then please do, but your will be done. And I said in that moment, Jesus had a choice. He could have accepted this cup, this calling, this vocation of sacrifice, to be killed, to be crushed, as Claire said, by the power of the empire, or he really could have chosen instead to call upon this massive following that he had collected to rise up and fight against the soldiers who came. He could have done that. That power was available to him.
Jesus was anticipated to be the Messiah that saved Israel from its enemies from Rome, and they were ready to fight, which of course we see when Peter draws his sword.
Jesus could have taken that route. He could have chosen another insurrection, another armed rebellion.
But I said he didn't.
He didn't make that choice. Instead he chose to take the consequences of the power of the empire and the betrayal of the religious leaders in Israel. He took all those consequences on himself.
He took all the punishments that the angry mob had to give on his own body. And in doing that, he averted another bloodbath, another slaughter.
And I said on Friday that that is a kind of good news. That at the very least what Jesus did in that moment was model for us what love looks like.
That instead of giving into the temptation of power as we think of it in this world, instead of giving into that, he chose to sacrifice himself for his family, for his friends, for his people, and to take all the consequences of power.
And I said that was a noble thing, a good thing, a loving thing, that Jesus modeled love for us. And that is a kind of good news. If that was the end of it, that would be worthy of following, that would be an example worthy of emulating.
But that's not the whole gospel of Christianity.
The whole gospel of Christianity is not just that love involves a kind of self sacrifice, that it involves this move where we reject the temptation of power and choose instead the power of love. And we know that because the story didn't end there. The story continues here with Jesus's resurrection.
There is a new thing happening on the other side of this sacrifice. The, the drama of Jesus's story comes full circle.
The story doesn't end in death.
It ends with a complete and utter transformation of Jesus self on the other side of that death.
The key here, I think, for understanding at least one part of this story of resurrection is this repeated phrase that we find here in Matthew 28, verses 1 through 10, do not be afraid.
And what I love about this phrase is that it works on multiple levels, right? So, for example, verse three is talking about this angel that's accompanied by an earthquake, right? The followers of Jesus who happen to be women, you know, the followers of Jesus who, like, had the strength and the courage to not be scattered and run away, right? The women who followed him are attending to his body, and they show up to attend to the body of Jesus, and they discover instead this angel who's accompanied by an earthquake and the stone is rolled away. And it says in verse three, his appearance was like lightning and his clothing white as snow. And for fear of him, the guards shook and became like dead men.
And later even Jesus himself, when they are running out of the garden to go and tell the disciples what has happened, they run into Jesus and he says, greetings.
And it says that they were both fearful and joyful.
So there is a kind of fear at the heart of this story of resurrection. So much so that twice both the angel and Jesus say to these women, be not afraid. I prefer, like the old fashioned version of this, be not afraid.
Fewer words, more poetic.
Be not afraid. And this, of course, is not the first time we hear the phrase be not afraid in Scripture.
There is a pattern of being told to not be afraid in Scripture. And this is our first clue that the admonition to not be afraid operates a little bit deeper than just the surface level, right? The, the literal reading of this passage is that the, the disciples and the guards, they're afraid because the ang.
Terrifying, right? That's like the literal reading of the passage. And Jesus, of course, is terrifying. Like if you had a dear loved one who died, and then you had a funeral and then you buried them, and a couple days later they showed up and were like, greetings. You would be afraid too.
It would challenge all of your constructs about how life and the world actually work.
And so there is fear on that level, that surface level, but there is a deeper level where fear somehow is associated with the story of the Gospel. In Genesis chapter 15:1, which we visited just a few weeks ago, God says to Abram as he goes out from his tent and he looks up into the stars and he's wondering if he has any kind of future for himself because he has no children and God's promises haven't come true. And so he is afraid of the lack of a future for him and his family. God says, be not afraid.
In Genesis 46, God says the same Thing to Jacob, who is on his way to Egypt because he has been sold into slavery. Jacob, who was the favorite son of the family, Jacob, who was the promise of all good things for the future of his people. Jacob is sold, betrayed by his own brothers, into slavery and is on his way to Egypt, the local corrupt empire.
And God says to him, be not afraid.
Both of these characters are facing a kind of existential death, an existential crisis in their lives.
Abram wonders if there's any future for him and his family. Jacob wonders if there's any future for him.
God says to both of them, be not afraid.
Isaiah 41. The Prophet Isaiah is writing an oracle to the people of Israel who have already experienced that death. They have been carried off into exile. And Isaiah speaks these words from God to be not afraid.
Even though you're experiencing death, even though you have been carried away and enslaved, there is a future for you. God is here for you.
Amen. So my guess is that you already know this.
If you allowed yourself to think about it just for a moment, if you allowed yourself to sort of like, think about God and your faith differently than whatever narrative of guilt or shame you were given when you grew up in church, that if you looked at your life, you would probably find similar experiences. You would see rhythms of life and death and resurrection. You would see patterns in your own life where you face difficult existential crises and you pressed in, and you, in spite of the fear, had courage and persevered and believed that there was something good on the other side of it. And on the other side of it, you experienced something new. You were transformed, you were changed.
The fear that this passage is speaking about is, of course, fear of an angel and fear of a resurrected friend. But it's also the deeper reality of life, that life involves one cycle of death and resurrection after another. If we have the courage to face it, if we're willing to look death in the face and embrace the death of our ego, embrace the death of our dysfunction, embrace the death of all the little things that we've been holding on to that aren't good for us because they provide us with comfort and security, that is a deeper reality, spiritual life.
And my guess is, whatever your journey of faith, whatever your theological constructs, you've probably experienced that maybe you didn't know that it was a death and a resurrection. But that's what this narrative is beckoning us to understand.
And the message at the heart of this is that we don't have to be afraid.
We don't have to Be afraid.
The fear that we experience every time we're facing some kind of death, whatever that looks like, can look a million different ways. It can be the fear of giving up those things that provide us with comfort and security, even though we know they're not good for us. It can be the fear of failure if we recognize that the other side of this challenge, the other side of this difficulty, is something better, but we're just afraid that we're going to fail.
Or it might be that we're afraid we're going to succeed.
It might be that your story is a little bit like Jonah's. You recognize that there is something good that you are called to. You recognize that God has asked you to fulfill some higher purpose in your life. And you look at that, you glimpse at that future, and you are afraid of that. And so you run and you're swallowed in the belly of a beast for three days until you come to terms with your death. And then you're coughed up.
And then you walk into that newness, and then you're angry about it.
When God does what God says God's going to do, this is the Jonah complex.
Sometimes what we're most afraid of isn't failure. Sometimes what we're most afraid of isn't death, it's love.
Because we know on the other side of this battle, on the other side of this struggle, is a calling to something more difficult, something more costly, something more intimate, and we're afraid of that.
These stories work on so many levels.
And I know some of you really were raised to believe that Jesus, death and resurrection is just all about Jesus being, like, tortured and hammered for your sins. And if that's helpful, great.
That's just not the whole story. It's not the whole Gospel.
The point of this passage is we don't have to be afraid.
We are.
And that's normal, that's human.
But we don't have to be. I love the way that Paul addresses this concern. In Romans, Chapter six, he says, you don't have to be afraid because you have already been baptized into Christ's death and raised with him in his resurrection. When you believe in the Gospel of Christ, when you believe in the story of Jesus, when you center your existence on that narrative of death and resurrection, he says, it's like you have been buried with him and raised again.
So you don't have to be afraid of death because you have experienced it with Christ.
And you don't have to be afraid of resurrection because you've experienced that too. We just have to remember that.
It's easy to forget. It's easy to go back to old ways of being and knowing and wrestling with our guilt and our shame and our old habits.
But remember your baptism.
Remember your resurrection. This is my only message for you today.
Don't be afraid.
Do not be afraid.
Be not afraid of your own personal failings and sins. You have them. I have them.
You have your unhealthy habits and patterns and dysfunctions.
You have your own challenges, your own turmoil, your own difficulties. You do not have to be afraid of them because death and resurrection is available to every one of us.
Don't be afraid of your family's dysfunctions. They're there. They're difficult. They're toxic, they're annoying. And they ruin Thanksgiving every single year. You don't have to be afraid of them.
I know Thanksgiving feels like a death, but you have already died.
Don't be afraid of your doubts.
Don't be afraid of your faith crises. Don't be afraid of your deconstruction. That is just another opportunity for your ego, your constructs of self indulgence, to be crucified on the cross so that you can experience something new and fresh and life giving on the other side of those constructs that might have worked for you when you were 8 or 9 or 10 or 12 or 22 in church, but don't work anymore. There is a transformation on the other side of you letting go of your toxic theological hardwiring. You can let it go.
You don't have to be afraid.
Don't be afraid of society's biggest problems. Don't be afraid of white supremacy. Don't be afraid of bigotry. Don't be afraid of homophobia. Don't be afraid of the rising movement of fascism that's happening not just in the United States, but all over the world. Don't be afraid of the fascist who's in the White House. He's not the first and he won't be the last. Do not be afraid of these things. Attend to these things.
Resist these things, speak health and life and truth to these things.
Work hard to repair these things, but don't be afraid of them.
The worst that can happen is that you die and you've already died.
Die again and again and again until you're good at it and be resurrected again and again.
Just remember, you have already been crucified. You have already been resurrected.
The only thing that's waiting for you on the other side of that is love.
Christ went first, but you went with him.
So place your faith in that and be not afraid. Amen. Would you pray with me? God, we thank you for today.
Thank you for the goodness of these words and the depth and the breadth of these stories that call us into a life that is challenging and courageous and liberating.
We ask that you would liberate us as followers of Christ, that we would move beyond the fear of the things that intimidate us, whether that's in ourselves or in our family systems or in our society. We pray that you would remind us that the story of faith that you've called us to live in helps us to rise above those fears, to be a part of the solutions, to not be afraid of the crushing power that bears down on us and tries to play on our fears. We pray that you would teach us to choose love instead and to walk with you in the resurrection that comes with it. We pray this in Jesus name.
[00:27:29] Speaker B: Thank you for joining us for this Sunday teaching, no matter when or where you're tuning in. To learn more about our community or to support the work we do, Visit
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