Easter Sunday | Green-Thumbed God | John 19 & 20

Welcome to our celebration of the resurrection.  My name's Ryan.  We get to celebrate the reason for hope today.  That's why we gather.  A few weeks ago, my friend, who's also a pastor in the area, Nirup, sent me a text message.  It said: What's your morning look like MC? {Because people call me MC.  Just kidding, they don't.  I don't know why he said that?}  Have you ever read a text message, got the words right, but the intent wrong?  I wrote back to my buddy Nirup and said this:  I get up at 5:45 and go on a run (treadmill in the basement).  Then read scripture and pray.  Then wake the kids up and get them ready to go on the bus.  On late start days, which is Wednesday, I have time for additional reading. You?  He responded to me:  That was very descriptive.  I more meant yo dawg my meeting canceled.  You bored and wanna grab coffee later.   He's right, I was descriptive.  I broke it down on days.  I gave timestamps.  Wow!   I had the words right, but I had the meaning wrong.

I think when we hear resurrection, we have the words right, but we might get the meaning wrong.  I think a lot of us, we hear the word resurrection, and we think, this is the good news, we get to go to heaven when we die.  That's a part of the story, but it's a really small part of the story of resurrection.  That's getting the text message just a little bit wrong.  What I'd like to do this morning is look at John's gospel; if you have your Bible, you can open it to John 19.  We're going to let John, one of Jesus's good friends, sort of reframe that word resurrection for us.  Maybe build it out a little bit.  Maybe we can get the text message right...