What Now? – Introducing our Eastertide Preaching Series
A week and a half ago, we celebrated Easter Sunday, the day Christians throughout history and across the world today have set aside to remember and celebrate Jesus’s resurrection from the dead in history. But historically, Christians have celebrated Easter not just as a single day on the calendar, but as a SEASON of 50 days, beginning on Easter Sunday and ending on Pentecost. The duration is significant: in Lent we observed 40 days of fasting, penitence, and prayer. But because Jesus has been raised from the dead, the FEAST is always GREATER than the fast! We continue to celebrate the resurrection and lean into these celebratory themes of Easter for the full 50 days. Pastorally, we encourage you to consider, how might you PRACTICE celebration in these days, with the same intentionality you practiced fasting, penitence, and prayer in Lent?
As one of the ways we will press into the season of Eastertide at The Mission, we will journey through a preaching series entitled “What Now? How the Resurrection is Changing Everything.”
As our preaching team was thinking about this season, we recognized that over the past 100 or so years, American Christianity has done a great job explaining how Jesus’s crucifixion and atonement make a practical difference in our lives today. But we don’t think the church has always done as good a job at explaining how Jesus’s resurrection from the dead 2,000 years ago matters for us in our lives today. For most of my life, when I’ve heard pastors and Christians talk about “preaching the Gospel,” what they’ve meant is really preaching the CROSS: how Jesus died on the cross in payment for human sinfulness so that we could be restored into right relationship with God. And certainly the cross and atonement are an essential and important PART of the Gospel, but what about RESURRECTION? Why does it matter that Jesus rose from the dead other than that’s cool? Does the resurrection actually have practical implications for our lives as Christ followers today? And if so, what are they?
Over the next 6 weeks, we will be addressing exactly these questions through our Sunday sermons. Through the Gospel and New Testament lessons assigned as each week’s lectionary passages, we’ll look at how Jesus’s resurrection made a difference in people’s lives 2,000 years ago, AND how it STILL makes a difference in our lives today. Specifically, we’ll look at how the Gospel transforms doubters, the Bible, relationships, the Church’s mission, power & authority, and culture. We hope that by the end of these 6 weeks, you will have a deepened understanding of why the resurrection of Jesus in history matters, and how it’s a key part of the Good News message of Christ today! We look forward to sharing this journey with you!