He is not here, for He has risen

Pastor Max Lyons opens Resurrection Sunday by reading Matthew 28, the angel's announcement at the empty tomb. God Himself came to earth, was murdered for claiming to be God, and three days later was bodily resurrected. Elan does not worship a dead God but a living Jesus who knows you by name and specializes in bringing dead things back to life. If God can resurrect Jesus, He can resurrect your marriage, family, health, faith, and finances. Deion Sanders, the flashy Cowboys star, later said parties and wealth left only emptiness until he found Christ.

A fresh take on Easter

For Christians, every Sunday is Resurrection Sunday, so Pastor Max deliberately goes off the beaten path. He recalls a former roommate who only came on Easter and complained it was always the same message. Instead, this Easter looks at what Charles Dickens called the greatest short story ever told: Jesus' parable of the lost son in Luke 15, a story about a son who was dead and made alive again.

Sinners draw near, Pharisees grumble

Luke 15 begins with tax collectors and sinners drawing near to Jesus, the last people anyone would expect to want God. Pastor Max tells of a drunk man in London who mocked his faith and later gave his life to Jesus. The Pharisees grumbled that Jesus eats with sinners, and modern-day Pharisees are the same: sour-faced, comparing, unable to celebrate others. Following Jesus and legalism are incompatible, because God rejoices with everyone who comes home. Jesus answers with three parables of lost things found, each ending in celebration, revealing a God of joy, feasts, and fun. Zephaniah 3:17 says the Lord rejoices over you with shouts of joy. One follower offers grace, the other enforces rules; "One carries a cross, the other carries a clipboard."

The younger son and the shamed father

Pastor Max suggests a better name for the parable: the extravagantly loving father. He urges hearers to read the story within first-century shame-and-honor culture. The younger son's demand for his share uses a word for mere physical stuff, essentially saying he wants his father's stuff, not his father. The Pharisees expected a slap and a flogging; instead the father divides the property. The son squanders everything, a famine strikes, and he ends up longing for pig food, the worst-case scenario imaginable. That is the point: if grace finds this son, no one is beyond reach. Some need to hit rock bottom before they change, but you do not have to.

Welcomed home as a son

When the son comes to himself and heads home, culture dictated public scorn and, at best, years of day labor before any reconciliation. Instead the father, who had been watching, runs, a shameful act for a Middle Eastern nobleman, and embraces and kisses him before the son can even ask to be a servant. The best robe meant honor, the ring meant authority, sandals meant sonship, and the fattened calf fed the whole village. Jesus is telling the Pharisees that if this is not your picture of God, you do not know God.

The older brother and the missing stanza

The older son hears music, refuses to go in, and speaks to his father with spite, revealing that he served begrudgingly, ungrateful and jealous. It is possible to work for God and be far from His heart. The father comes out to both sons, but the older one rejects grace and stays outside. Pastor Max notes that ancient storytelling used parallel stanzas; the younger son gets eight, the older only seven, and Jesus stops. The Pharisees are the older brother, and the open ending says, "Your move." In reality, the older brother did not repent; he betrayed the father with a kiss and nailed him to a cross.

What will you write in the eighth stanza?

To repent is to change your mind and admit that God's way is better than yours. God will let you stay in the pig pen or stay outside bitter, but He comes out to welcome every one of us home. Pastor Max closes with the Idaho farmers who burn their fields each year so the soil can produce a better crop: only by letting go of what has been can you grab hold of what could be. When you give God your life, He gives you His, and His life is so much better.