Today, on Resurrection Sunday, I want to talk about how can we live like Christ is Risen in our lives in our jobs, our families, our churches, and communities, and what it takes to do so. Belief is not our problem. On Easter Sunday, the first thing most if not all believers do is proclaim “Christ is Risen! He is Risen indeed!” Every church in the world will say that statement of faith in their churches. All of us, with no exceptions, will walk into worship, and not only proclaim Christ is Risen, but will sing it, give to the church so we can participate in what the risen Jesus is doing in our church today, etc, and will be considered one of the greatest days as followers of Jesus, and with good reason. Jesus, fully God, and fully man, died, and rose again from the dead! We come here to be reminded, this event happened, and should celebrate it! However, when we leave worship today, living like Christ is risen from the dead is a much harder challenge to consider. Church stats in America remind us the following Sunday after Easter is called “Easter hangover”, and is one of the lowest attended worship services in America. How can we live with an Easter faith in Christ with a joy that I clearly feel in the building today, long after Easter is over? Before we get to that, let me tell you a quick story about why living like something happened is so important.

One of my favorite trips that Rhiannon and I took after getting married and before Evan and Brooklyn was to San Antonio Texas. If you ask Rhiannon, the only reason to go to that area in the summer time is to the waterpark in San Marcos, otherwise known as Schlitterbahn. Yet for me, I was pumped to be there, because I had a chance to set foot in the Alamo. The Battle of the Alamo became a defining moment in the Texas Revolution, where a small group of Texan defenders held out against a much larger Mexican army, symbolizing courage and sacrifice. Though it ended in defeat, it rallied support for Texas independence and inspired the rallying cry “Remember the Alamo,” which helped lead to eventual victory. When I first walked in to the Alamo as a kid, friends, It was hot, like 7th circle of hell, cook a hamburger on the sidewalk and it will come out well done hot. If you have been down there in the summer, you know what I am talking about. When you walk in, a sign is above the door that says “Gentleman, take off your hats”, almost making the Alamo museum a place that is sacred in light of the defeat we just mentioned. I had been there before as a kid, and I have to tell you, every time I walk in to the place, I get the feeling “this really happened.” The Alamo changed my life, and had a huge impact on my career path before ministry (I was a teacher for 11 years before ministry), and even influenced my actions and how I taught history each week. Friends, it is so important to view the resurrection of Jesus as a historical event that really happened. Having just returned from Israel, I have been reflecting on this statement in my journal for weeks now. “The life,’death, and Resurrection of Jesus really happened. I have believed He rose from the dead for a long time, but to see it!! To see and be in the same area that Jesus came and lived and died and defeated death through His literal resurrection from the dead should change how I think and live long after I get back home to Texas. Today, I want to talk about how we can live a daily Easter faith in Christ, long after Easter Sunday is over.

 To live with an Easter faith in the Risen Christ: Change how you live: “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.”-Colossians‬ ‭3‬:‭1‬. I find it really interesting that Paul teaches the Colossian church to be like the ressurected Jesus, whose ressurection required no explanation. Our time today had produced some of the greatest defenders of the ressurection: minds including Lee Strobel, C.S Lewis, William Lane Craig, etc. While I have read all of those authors, I and many followers of Jesus have profited from their work. Yet, for Christians in Colosse, no explanation for the Ressurection of Jesus was needed! The Easter joy we feel today is a historic event for us, and for them!!They knew the body of Jesus really was wrapped, and put in the tomb, which were the graves of the time period, and that the same Jesus, walked out of His own grave! 

Here is the thing, for the Colossian church, belief in the risen Christ was not the problem, the problem was how to think and live after receiving the news that Christ died and rose again from the dead. Paul, cuts right to the chase: “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. Crucify what is earthly in you”-Colossians‬ ‭3‬:‭1‬-‭3‬, ‭5‬. That may not be an Easter message by today’s standards. But friends, that was the question of the ancient world and the early church. How do we respond to the Ressurection of Jesus from the dead? A biblical response to  the risen Christ should change how you think, live and act. Notice, Paul didn’t tell them to get in church on Sunday since they were raised with Jesus. I love the fact our building is full for Easter, but a majority of our life as followers of Jesus is 6 other days of this week, not just Sunday! At the same time, Paul didn’t tell the church to live for Jesus every day and not come to worship next week. You can be justified by the risen Jesus on Sunday, but you can’t grow as a follower of the risen Christ on Sunday alone. You can encounter the Risen Christ during the week, but you can’t honor the cost Jesus paid to redeem you if you aren’t in weekly worship on Sunday, and that was Paul’s point. Don’t get me wrong, some of us are in a hard season right now and we are sitting in either one or both of these extremes. The promise of Easter is not to neglect the hard season, but change how you live in spite of them, or to use Paul’s imagery, “crucify what is earthly in you.”

Jesus, taught the primary pathway to changing how we live in light of His Resurrection: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”-John‬ ‭13‬:‭34‬-‭35. The command is new, not because they weren’t supposed to love God and neighbor before as the 1st and 2nd commandments reveal. It is a new command because Jesus raises the bar: Love like He loved us. Change how you live! As Jd Walt put it so well: “The secret to following the Risen Christ is this, die before you die.” When circumstances aren’t going our way, or when you are in your community and in a great moment, can you and I let go of who we are, love like Jesus, and live like Jesus rose from the dead? It is an urgent question to consider, especially because of what Jesus went through for your sake and mine. Jesus left willingly one of the most beautiful places in the world in Galilee. He lost His earthly Home in Nazareth in Luke 4, He let it all go, for you and me. He gave up His throne, became flesh, and died, so we might have a relationship with Him, today! Romans 5:8 takes on a new meaning when we realize Jesus let good things go “By this we know the love of God, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” To live with an Easter faith in the Risen Christ: Change how you live. 

For George Whitefield, changing how he lived for the Risen Christ began in the early 1730s, while he was a student at University of Oxford. There, through the influence of the “Holy Club” led by John Wesley and Charles Wesley, Whitefield moved from outward religion to a deep, personal conviction about the new birth in Christ. For George, Jesus Christ was not just a topic on Easter, He was an urgent matter that needed to be addressed, can the Risen Christ, whom he believed rose from the dead, change his life or not? George later described this period as when he truly came to understand salvation—not just what he believed, but how Christ can change His life. By 1736–1737, there was no denying that George Whitfield was a changed man. He was ordained in 1736, and immediatley began preaching with strong emphasis on the new birth and the risen Christ. His message sparked what would become part of the Great Awakening, a religious of religious revival in England, and really took off in America. He began the American portion of his preaching the risen Christ in Boston in 1740. To sometimes thousands of people, he would seek to make the Risen Christ not just important, but he would also confront them with the reality that even in the colonies, the Risen Jesus is Lord, all other goals in life are sought in light of His Lordship. He was often fond of praying “Lord Jesus, tear down the name of Whitfield, if only that means your name will remain!”He would preach these urgent sermons asking this question to kick off many of his sermons: “What do you think of the risen Christ?” This kind of urgency and devotion to Christ fascinated one of the founding Father’s of the nation, Benjamin Franklin. Though he never became a full believer in Christ, Ben admired George and even offered to publish his sermons, along with donating money to Whitfield’s orphanage he had built for colonists in Georgia. Though Ben Franklin went on to help draft the Declaration of Independence and George Whitfield continued a different track of preaching the Gospel, the urgency in Whitfield’s preaching to consider the Risen Christ had an impact on Ben Franklin. After deciding to give nothing to a charity collection, Franklin felt his resolve melt under Whitefield’s preaching until “I empty’d my pocket wholly into the collector’s dish, gold and all”

This resurrection season, change how you live for Jesus. What would it take for you to do that? What do you need to tear down so the name of Jesus remains? Is it your ambition, your goals, your plans, your preferences? The challenge of resurrection Sunday is this: We don’t have life figured out, but the Risen Jesus does! Remember 1 John 1:8-9? If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we repent of our sin, Christ is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us of all from all unrighteousness.” Friends, that was written to a church full of Christians who like in Colossians, were raised with Christ! All of us could always live in a better way for the Risen Jesus. What would it take to change how you live? Start with grace. The promise of Easter is we don’t deserve Christ’s love, but got it anyway. By grace, Christ isn’t satisfied with us staying just as we are, and if you ask Him in prayer, He will help you change how you live: “But God, because of the great love for which He loved us, made us alive in Christ, by grace you have been saved.”- Ephesians 2:4-5. I love what I heard at Soup and Sermon last week: “You don’t accept the Risen Jesus, the Risen Jesus makes you acceptable to Him.” Acceptance loves you the way you are, the grace of the Risen Jesus wants to transform you into what you will become.

May the grace of the Risen Christ give you all you need to live a holy life, so you can once again say with joy and power, “Christ is Risen, He is Risen indeed!” In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.