Easter Sunday

WELCOME
Pastor Chris Paavola:
I’m not kidding. I got to the church very early this morning at like 5:30 and there was an Amazon delivery being dropped off. Amazon beat me to church on Sunday. That’s how much we use Amazon around here. Anyway, good morning. Good morning. Good to be with you guys again. My name is Chris Pavila, senior pastor here, and it’s great to be with you guys and great to be with you guys online as well. This is my favorite day of the year. It is. I think it’s the most important day in history and it doesn’t have all of the trappings associated with it. We just get together, we celebrate the day and then we hang out with family and eat good food and whatnot. So yeah, I love this day. Thank you guys for being here. And for some of you, it’s like Christmas. Without a Christmas tree, if I don’t at some point in my sermon say he has risen.

Response: He is risen indeed, halleluiah!

Pastor Chris Paavola:
Yeah. So there you go. Check. All right, we did it. No, actually the reason we do that though, the reason we put that on your lips, like he has risen is that’s part of the account on that Easter morning. The angels say he is risen. He has risen indeed in Matthew’s account. And what we’re trying to do is to bring you into the story. And really that’s the reason I recited the John’s account of the resurrection a little bit earlier is to try to put you as much as possible in the story. And the reason we do that is we’re trying to connect the dots. On our Monday, Thursday and Good Friday services, we sang a hymn that talked about go to dark Gethsemane and follow to the judgment hall and Calvary’s mournful mountain climb. And then here we are on Easter Sunday, we’re trying to do the same thing of hasten to the tomb.
We’re trying to bring you into the story as much as possible. So we tell you to say things that are said that morning and we recite a story for you because we want to, again, connect the dots between the resurrection and your life. Ultimately, that’s what we’re trying to do. This is not like just a paragraph in a history book that is like something you take off a shelf and you look and you put away again. We want to, as much as possible, have your life changed by the resurrection like those who first experienced it. We want to connect the dots and see your life changed. And you think about the Easter morning and then the days and weeks that followed, they were changed by the same story you heard me say. I mean, that gives me hope. It’s exciting. They were changed by a story, either by those who saw it or those who heard about it.
And it’s not a stretch of the imagination to say that this conversation happened in marketplaces and in homes and synagogues all over Jerusalem and eventually the world of people going, “Hey, did you hear what happened?” “No. What? “”Well, Jesus from Nazareth, the guy who was crucified on Friday.” “Yeah, him. Did you hear what happened? “”No.” Well, some of his followers say that he rose from the dead.
They say, “What?” They say that he rose from the dead. Well, I mean, what do they say happened? And then they go into the story. Early on the morning, in the morning, on the first day of the week while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance and so on and so forth. The story goes and they tell the story. And I guarantee you, every person listening to the story didn’t go, “He’s risen indeed. Hallelujah.” What they did, it was what you do when someone’s telling you something spectacular. You ask questions and you would say things like, “Well, what if they were hallucinating?
What if he didn’t die? What if somebody stole his body? What if they’re lying?” And those are great questions. Those are natural questions. And if you’re asking those questions, I’m restraining myself quite a bit. In Easter 2025 and Easter 2024, I preached on those things very specifically. I encourage you to go back and listen to those sermons if you have those kind of questions. But those questions are good and they’re questions you should ask, but they don’t change your life. The kind of question that changes your life is a different question. And that’s the question I want to ask this morning.

WHEN ROSA PARKS INTERVIEWED THE INTERVIEWER
So, in 1955, Rosa Parks famously refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, right? We’ve all heard the story in history class. And then it became this catalyzing event for the entire civil rights movement, famous story, right? Well, there was this alternative theory that developed that she was just tired, and that’s why she didn’t give up her seat.
She was just tired. She wasn’t trying to start a revolution. And so in 1956, a reporter asked her, “Is it true that you were just tired and you didn’t want to stand up?” And she said, very quickly, she quipped, “Well, I was tired of giving in. ” And then she flipped the script, how the turn tables, and she asked the reporter a question. So the interviewed became the interviewer, and she asked the reporter, “You tell me, have you ever been told you can’t sit somewhere because of the color of your skin?” And the reporter was caught off guard. He’s like, “I mean, no.” And Rosa Parks responded, “When you’re asking the wrong questions.” I love that. And when you are asking questions about how the resurrection happened and all that kind of stuff, you’re asking good questions. Again, questions that should be talked about that are necessary for you to come to faith.
Absolutely. But again, they’re not the questions that are going to change your life. They’re going to give you a yes or no answer on a fill in the blank. Did Jesus rise from the dead? And the resurrection changes your life. And to get there, we need to ask a different question. It’s not a question I have. It’s a question Jesus asked that first morning. It was in the account that you heard a little bit earlier.

QUESTIONS FROM THE TOMB
He says to Mary, “Why are you crying?” Now, if you go to a graveyard and you see someone crying, you know what you don’t ask them? ” Why are you crying? It’s obvious why they’re crying.

WHY ARE YOU CRYING?
It’s a strange question unless maybe just maybe Jesus is trying to teach us something. And the reason I think that and kind of get there is because this is Jesus’s teaching style. It’s a rabbinical teaching method that rabbis would do with their students all the time. Instead of just giving people answers like spoon feeding you, here you go, here’s the answer, memorize it, and then you kind of memorize it and forget it five minutes later. What rabbis would do is give you questions to wrestle with. They would prod you and unsettle your thinking with questions. And then when you would process them, you would eventually internalize the answer a little bit deeper and hopefully remember it a little bit longer. And so he would say things like he would tell stories of two servants and he’d go, ” Well, which one was the faithful servant? “Or he would tell a story of two sons and he’d be like, ” Which one was the wise son?
“Or I’d tell a story of a good Samaritan. And he would say,” Who was a neighbor to the wounded man? “There’s one time where they were asking him questions about politics and taxes and he grabbed a coin with Caesar’s image on it and he says,” Whose image is on this coin? “And he would teach with these questions. And once you see it or once you start looking for it, you can’t not see it. It’s everywhere in his biographies, Matthew Mark, Luke and John. And so it shouldn’t surprise us on this Easter morning that Jesus goes,” Why are you crying? “Because the resurrection changes our tears.
GRIEVING WITH HOPE
Earlier this year, we were going through a series as a church through a book in the Bible called First Thessalonians. And during that, we got to chapter four where we came across these words and I thought to myself as we were going through this together, I thought,” I think this might be Easter. I think this might be what I’m going to talk about in Easter. And lo and behold, it is. “It’s these words that Paul writes from one Thessalonians chapter four, verse 13.

….we do not grieve like those who have no hope, for we believe that Christ is risen from the dead.
1 Thessalonians 4:13

He says, “We do not grieve like those who have no hope”. I’ve been to funerals and I’ve done funerals of people who don’t believe in Jesus and people who do, and the difference is hope. There’s a different kind of grief, and that’s what Paul is saying. If you’re a follower of Jesus, you do not grieve like those who have no hope, for we believe that Jesus died and rose again.
The way I memorized it when I was a kid in another translation is we do not grieve as those who have no hope, for we believe that Jesus died and rose again. “Powerful words, powerful words. And what Paul is saying is that the resurrection changes how we grieve. It does. The resurrection changes how you grieve. You grieve, your pain is valid. Your heartache is absolutely worthwhile. Your pain is valid, but it changed because the tomb is empty. And so you grieve, but you do not grieve like those who have no hope. So for a Christian who believes in Jesus, if we believe or we believe that if another believer dies, we grieve, but it’s not goodbye. It’s see you later. And our tears are different. They’re filled with hope, but it’s not just like the loss of life. It’s any loss, any grief.

WHY ARE YOU CRYING?
So, all right, if you lose your job, you grieve, but you do not grieve as those who happen to hope for you believe that Jesus died and rose again.
And so this job, I wanted it, but it’s not my identity. It’s just something I did. My identity is found in Jesus so much greater and beyond what I do and how much money I make. And I’m not worried about whether I’m going to have enough money to eat because the man who promised that he would provide for me, the God who promised that he would provide for me proved that he could do it by rising from the grave.
Or let’s say you lose health, you have some type of diagnosis or you lose mobility, you grieve, but you do not grieve as those who have no hope because you believe Jesus died and rose again. And so this body is not all I will ever have. I believe that someday I will have a new body and it will be a glorious body, baby. It will be good and I will be in a new heaven and a new earth. Or let’s say you have a broken relationship, a lost relationship, and you grieve it. Forgiveness is this thing that says to somebody, “I don’t need anything else from you. ” That’s forgiveness.
And so the tomb changes even that. You grieve the lost relationship, but you do not grieve as those who have no hope, for you believe that Jesus died and rose again. And now you can look at somebody who has wronged you and offer them forgiveness. I don’t need anything from you. I could be reconciled because Jesus died and paid for all of the penalties of all sin. So there’s nothing you can do for me that can make this up. I forgive you. The resurrection changes how you grieve because now you grieve with hope. Y’all, listen, okay, listen, I know on Monday morning, Mary was not worried about her mortgage.
I know on Tuesday Peter did not get in an argument about politics because the resurrection changes everything. It changes your outlook and your perspective on everything. This is not all there is. If this were all there is, yeah, you’re going to feel angst and anxious and worried and you’re going to fight and scratch and claw and manipulate and coerce trying to get your way because this is all there is. You have no hope that there’s something more. But if you have hope, man, you have love, you have a joy, a peace, a patience, a kindness, a goodness, a faithfulness, a self-control to everything, which kind of brings me to you this morning.
Why are you crying? Some of you here this morning are asking and you hear that question and it sounds so different than it did in 2025 or 2024. And that’s who I want to end this message. Kids, I’m almost done. Hang in there. Okay. That’s who I want to end this message talking to, if that’s you. If you experience some kind of loss in 2025, 2026, and when you hear those words, it stings a little bit deeper. If that’s you, listen, okay? Your pain is valid. And Jesus sees your tears. That’s why he asks you why you’re crying. But he asks you why you’re crying to remind you that you grieve, but you do not grieve as those who have no hope, for you believe he is risen.

Response: He is risen indeed, halleluiah!

PRAYER
Pastor Chris Paavola:
Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, pray forever person who can hear the sound of my voice, whether watching online, listening later on, or you’re in the room. I pray that the reality of the resurrection, you would make the reality of the resurrection and help them connect the dots of how it changes their lives, how they interact with people, how they spend money, how they spend their time, everything. God, show them how it changes everything, including the way they grieve. Impress on their souls deep in their spirit this truth that we grieve, but we do not grieve as those who have no hope because Christ rose from the grave.
And that will be enough, Lord. And we pray now together the words our risen savior taught us to pray as we say together. Our Father who arts in heaven, Hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen. Please stand as we sing our closing hymn.