The two services on Easter Sunday

To begin with, our church will be having two services on Easter Sunday morning, yes that is true.

But there will also be two services at the same time as each of the services.  And you can't really help it.

You see, the funny thing about the Christian season of lent is that participation is entirely optional.  Because the fasting is not only optional, but even if it was mandatory it is unspecified.  That is, you ask people what they are going without for lent, and you'll get a wide variety of answers, ranging from nothing whatsoever, all the way to meat, eggs and dairy.  But involvement in this process is voluntary.  That's what spurs the question of 'what are you giving up for lent,' is that we don't know, and aren't standardized.  And many of us choose to give nothing up.

Not only do many of us choose to give nothing up for Lent, but many of use choose not to observe lent at all!  Now, this may be because we don't go to church except for Christmas and Easter, or it may be because we are part of a church that doesn't really observe the Christian seasons, or whatever.  It could be any of these reasons, and honestly the reason isn't important at all.  What matters is the lenten journey, and the Easter celebration at the end of it.

For you see, at the end of the time of Lent, I will be celebrating Easter Sunday. And the church, if I can put on my magic hat of prognostication, will be fairly full.  And it will be full of people who have not been on this lenten voyage with us.  They have skipped it, and have decided to go straight past the fasting right the way to the joy and the glory.

And they will get it.

You see, you can, in the Christian experience, dash all the way past the gall, past the whipping, past the burdens, past the crucifixion, and end up with the glory of Easter Sunday.  You can do that essentially right away, with no stops on the way.  Nothing is stopping you at all.  And you will be there for the exact same service as everyone else.  Same responses, same sermon, same music, same white banners, all that.  And if you can get all that, if you can skip the grim darkness of Good Friday, if you can skip the ghastly judicial murder of Maunday Thursday, why wouldn't you?  Why wouldn't you just go to church on Christmas and Easter for the high holy days and enjoy them?

And it's more than that.  If you know your stuff, if you know your Bible, even in the bare minimum, you will know that the Bible can be condensed down to John 3:16.  It is the notion that God so loved the world, that he gave his only son, so whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.  And if you know this, you know that all you need to do is believe in Jesus and then you'll go to heaven.  And that's enough.  It's absolutely enough.

If you want to find that out, look at the theif on the cross, who believe in Jesus, asked to be remembered in Jesus' kingdom, and was promised that he would go to paradise that day.  And we believe that Jesus did bring him to his kingdom.  And that was all he had to do, was a deathbed (or crossbound) confession, and then he could go to heaven, no problem.  And that's true!  So for those of you reading, those of you who want to go to heaven, you should know that if you want to get there, all you have to do is believe in Jesus, and you're all good.

So why bother with the rest of it?  Why bother with the whole church thing, the good works thing, why bother with the sacrifice, with the piety, with the fasting, with the prayer, with any of it?  Well, the best thing to do is to think about the story of Abram, which we heard in the worship service on Sunday.  He was told by God that he would have a child.  Good news so far.  And he was told that he would have a child past the age that his wife would be able to bear children naturally.  He was told this when he was 75.  He had the child when he was a hundred.  That's a 25 year age gap, as you well know.  And he managed to keep the faith for that time, and the late arrival of Isaac, the late fulfillment of the promise, it made it all the more poignant when he arrived.

So those of us, what do we do while we're here?  We're baptized, we've been promised salvation, we have a guarantee in the blood of Christ of our heavenward journey, so what do we do while we are here?  We learn and do what Jesus would have us do.

Sometimes it's not just about the destination, it's about the journey.  When the destination is locked up,

then the journey becomes important.  Or, to put it another way, you can take the greyhound if you just want to get somewhere, but you can take the train as an event.  They take almost the same time, you get to the same place, but in the one case, the journey is far far far superior.  You and I, as Christians, staring down the vast chasm of Lent, we may say to ourselves that we're not into the fasting and prayer and suffering, and Easter service will still roll around regardless, so what's the point?

It's about why Jesus came to earth in the first place.  He came so that you may have life and have it abundantly.  Does this mean you get to go to Heaven?  Yes, of course it does.  Does it also mean that your life here is supposed to be augmented, sharpened, intensified?  Yes it does.

I'm fond of saying that for a book that tells us ostensibly that nothing you do earns salvation, there sure are a lot of rules, which there are.  And they aren't there to be ignored.  In the same way as God made a promise to Abraham and then fulfilled it a quarter century later, he has made a promise of everlasting life to you, and is planning on fulfilling that too.  But what to do in the meantime?

There aren't two heavens.  There's only one.  You're not going to get into a better heaven by being a better Christian, in the same way as I'm not going to be leading two services simultaneously on Easter Sunday, one for good Christians, and the other for C&E Christians.  There's one service.  But by the time you've been through the fasting and penitence and piety of Lent, you ought to be absolutely thirsting for Easter Sunday.  You will have a hard time moving through the period of lent in its austerity, witnessing the judicial murder on Thursday and Friday of Holy Week, and not absolutely hungering and thirsting for the greatness of the Easter Sunday morning.

In other words, why will there be two different services?  Not because the service changes, but because the audience does.  Those participating are changed by the journey.  Not saved by the journey, but being part of the life and experience that God wants them to have.  If you are around for the services, if you're around for the fasting and the piety, if you're around for the dark times and the lean times, then rounding the corner makes Easter better, and heck, makes the whole rest of the church year better.

So why do you do these things?  Why keep the law, why keep the rituals, why keep the routine, why the fasting why the piety, why the charity?  For salvation?  Nope.  For God's happiness?  Nope.  For your own good?  Bingo.

Jesus came so that you may have life, and have it abundantly.  Not just after you die, but life while you're still alive.

Blessed lent, everyone.