Easter: Daring to Hope | Matt Shetler

The disciples had given up everything to follow Jesus. They watched him die. When the women came back saying he'd risen, they couldn't go there. Not again. The risk of hoping one more time—and being wrong again—felt too high.

If you've been there, this Easter message is for you. Pastor Matt explores what it looks like to open the door to hope when everything in you says it's too dangerous. We'll dig into the real reasons the disciples doubted, why Peter chose to wonder, and what it means that Jesus meets us in our fear, our shame, and our hesitation.

Transcript

unknown 0:12

There we go. Cool.

SPEAKER_01 0:14

Awesome. We haven't had a chance to meet. My name is Matt Shetler, one of the pastors here at Lakewood Vineyard. It's so good to be together on this Easter Sunday. And I'm glad that you're here today. And I know for some of you, getting here this morning took more than just getting out the door. Though that was for some of us a challenge, right? Getting out the door, you have small children or just yourself, maybe, uh, getting ready. But for some of us today, coming in these doors wasn't something you were sure that you wanted to do or that it was maybe worth it. Maybe for you being around church and like things like Easter, maybe at some point hope just kind of began to kind of drain out a little bit of like expectation of what God might want to do, or does God even want to meet you? Maybe you found yourself going through rhythms and a rhythm like today of coming to Easter. Maybe something happened and you prayed a prayer, and you prayed prayer and hoped things would turn out a different way, and they and they didn't. And somewhere along the way, kind of spiritual things, religious things, they began to just kind of like fade away. Maybe you didn't stop doing them, but sort of like you just go, I don't know. I don't know if I can really give myself to hope again. Here's the thing is that whatever feelings you're coming in today on Easter, whether it's like you felt like you had hoped and your expectations were dashed, or maybe you're coming in and you're excited. There's all kinds of different feelings we're coming into this morning. But whatever the feelings are, at the story of Easter, those feelings are actually found in that story. So here's what happens in the story of Easter. Imagine this, it's early Sunday morning. It's still dark outside, and a group of women are going to a tomb. They're not going because they expect anything special to happen. They're going to finish burying their dead teacher. And they get there, and this stone that had been rolled in front of this tomb was all of a sudden rolled away. This massive stone that guards had rolled in the place was gone. And so, like anyone would, they go to look inside the tomb and find out that it's empty. It's sort of like if there was someone that you dearly loved, and you went to go see them and you saw that the casket was empty. Of course, they're at a loss for words. They're anxious, they're confused. I would be too. And then in the story, suddenly there are these two men, and and they have like radiant clothing, this bright shining clothing. And they say, Jesus isn't here, which by that point they're kind of like, Thank you. Uh, I've been seeing the empty tomb. That's not new news to me at this point. Uh, I'm sure they weren't sarcastic like me. They were probably a little more in awe like most of us would be if we saw angels. But she says, Jesus isn't here, he's risen from the dead. Now, here's the thing. I don't know, you kind of know, think about the Bible and history, but this would not have been a possibility on their list for the women. It wasn't like multiple choice and go, hey, when we go to this tomb, one of the choices might be, he won't be there. Like he's risen from the dead. This is great. No, it's not even on the list. And so they run back and tell the other disciples uh what had happened. And here's what it said they get to these other disciples uh who were men. So the women, they see this, they come to tell the story of what happened, the angels. And in verse 11, Luke 24, uh, the men said this, but the story sounded like nonsense to the men, so they didn't believe it. Men were not showing up well in this story so far. And by the way, if someone were making this story up, if someone were making the story up and kind of writing it in, like let's say that it didn't really happen. Here's the thing you wouldn't write if you're trying to convince people in the first century. You wouldn't have used women as the first witnesses. Because in that culture, women weren't even allowed to testify in a court of law. They were thought to not be reliable. And so if you were gonna make up a story and try to convince people by a made-up story, you wouldn't say, and the women were the first one to see it, you wouldn't say that. Nowadays, you would be like, absolutely we would. But then that's not the case. It's one reason why historians take this account very seriously. But the disciples' reaction, it's not only skepticism, I think it's also self-protection. Because these men had given up everything to follow Jesus. The women, too. But they had given up jobs. Maybe some of you kind of know some of the Bible, and it's like there's fishermen, they left their jobs, other people left their jobs as well, too. They left families, extended family, parents, siblings, they left security, all of it. Because they believed this teacher, Jesus, who walked by them one day or they heard teaching one day, they believed that he was more than just a man, more than just a regular teacher. They believed that he somehow was the king that God had promised. This is what they believed, and then they watched him die. I mean, can you imagine? You leave all of this and go, this guy, he's gonna do it. He's gonna do it. Maybe you've voted for a politician before, and you're like, this guy, this woman, when they're elected, everything's gonna change. And you like put all of your energy and they don't get elected. It's clearly more than that. He dies. They thought he was gonna change the world. But it's worse than that. It's not that their hopes were abandoned, they actually abandoned him. These guys who said, I'm never gonna leave you. Jesus, you're worth everything, all these statements, they abandoned Jesus when it mattered most. Peter, kind of the leader of the disciples, the apostles, he actually told three strangers he had never ever even met Jesus to protect himself. One of them was a young girl. So they weren't just grieving, they were ashamed too. They were ashamed of the way they responded. So when the women come back to them and say, He's alive, it's like they can't even go there for lots of reasons. They can't go again, not again. They had already believed one time, had their hopes dashed, and now again you're asking me to hope again, essentially. Saying hope again. Maybe this time, maybe this time it'll stick. Because the cost this time felt like it was too much for them to be wrong again, to open the door to hope. It was just too risky. Because they've been down the road of hoping for the impossible. Have you ever been down that road of hoping for something so much? You like really think it's gonna happen, and then it doesn't. And for some of us, we're still affected by that hope that didn't come through. We're still affected by it. We go, I believed, or maybe it is in a spiritual context, and you prayed a prayer, and you're like, I think this is gonna happen this way, and it didn't, and you're like, now I'm gun shy to hope. The disciples are gun shy to hope again. But Peter, who usually makes the biggest mistakes if you read the Bible, but also makes some of the biggest like declarations. Maybe that's you as a person. You're like, hey, when I hit the ball, it actually is a home run, but when I miss, I miss big. Uh some of you guys are steady folks, uh, which is great. We need you. But Peter is not a steady guy. He is like home run or strikeout. So of all the disciples sitting there, Peter's the only one who goes, I'll bite. And so he gets up and he goes. Peter opens the door to hope. At least to wondering. Maybe they're right. Maybe the women aren't making this up, and asking, what if? What if this story of Jesus dying and rising from the dead what if it's true? What if? So Peter got up and ran to the tomb and saw the clothes that Jesus had been wrapped in. That's it, that's all there is. There's just these clothes, these strips of cloth that he had been in. But that was enough to make him wonder because he's going, okay, this is strange. Like, he's been unwrapped. I I don't know exactly what's happened, but I wonder. What does this mean?

unknown 8:31

Right?

SPEAKER_01 8:31

Like, if it's true, what does this actually mean? He can't explain it, but he also can't dismiss it. Have you been there? Well, you can't explain something, but you also can't dismiss it. Maybe that for you is spiritual things. Maybe it's things like the Christian faith or who Jesus is. You're like, I can't explain it, I don't really understand it, but I also can't dismiss it. So Peter doesn't leave this moment with answers, he's just left wondering. And again, here's the thing: it wasn't just a lack of faith that would have caused Peter and the other disciples to wonder. In the first century, there was no context of which one person would rise from the dead. Maybe we think like, oh, that's 2,000 years ago. And so they had this kind of like mythological belief that, like, you know, the Jewish people that one day, like, yeah, this like person would come and he would raise from the dead. They didn't have any context of one person rising from the dead. They didn't have that context. And so there wouldn't, again, been a multiple choice answer for them. So later that day, after all this is happening, the disciples are all together in Jerusalem. That's the uh the center of everything that's happening in Israel uh religiously, and they're still processing all this. What did it mean? What happened? And honestly, they're hiding as well, too. Because they don't know what's gonna happen to them. That's why that's why Peter lied. He's like, I don't know if I'm gonna be crucified, too. They didn't know what was next, they didn't know how to face what they had done. And suddenly Jesus appears in the room, and it says this. And just as they were telling about it, Jesus himself was suddenly standing there among them and he says, Peace be with you. He doesn't open the door and silently slip in. He wasn't there, and then suddenly he was. And he says, Peace be with you. But the thing is funny because oftentimes in the Bible, when angels show up or crazy things are gonna happen, it's like they say, Peace be with you. It's like, it's kind of like when uh I walk into a room unannounced, oftentimes, no matter how much I try, I often startle my wife. It's like I can creep in, I can give loudly, I can send a text, whatever it is, like there's a startle effect. It's like every time, see, so Jesus comes into the room, and he probably didn't think this, but this is how I think. He's like, All right, what can I do to not freak these guys out? And he's just like, I'm just gonna show up and go, peace be with you guys. Like, yeah, I'm sure that really helped. I'm sure they were very much calmed after that. So it says, the disciples were startled and frightened. Uh anybody, anybody have a strong startle reflex? But there was Jesus showing up in the middle of their doubts, showing up in the middle of their shame, honestly, showing up in the middle of their fear, showing up in the middle of the spaces of going, can we hope? I don't really want to hope. I don't know. I have these questions. What does it mean if he really did rise from the dead? And Jesus comes and says, in the middle of all of the stirring, I'm sure it was like high emotion. If I was in the room, I probably would have made sure that it was high emotion. It's like, oh my gosh, what does this mean? I don't know. What should we do? I don't know. And Jesus says, peace. Peace be with you. Have you ever been in that place? We have these questions, these doubts, struggling with hope. And just to hear the words of like, peace be with you. And all of a sudden, everything changed for all of them. Everything changed for all of them. And this is my story too. This is my story too, because all my life I've been around church and Christianity hearing about Jesus. My mom's here, she took me to church every time. Literally the doors were open, and I loved it, by the way. But I had lots of seasons where I would pray and hope for God to do things in me and around me, that I would experience some of the things that other people talked about they experienced in their spiritual journey, their spiritual life. But honestly, I got to a place where for me it was just like maybe this just isn't for me. I didn't mean Christian faith or Christianity, I just meant whatever when everyone else is experiencing it, maybe it's just not for me. It was like I kind of gave up hope a little bit that I could know God at a deep level. So even though I said I believed, I really struggled to hold on to hope that God really loved me. And if he did, I think I just kind of settled into it's probably a generic kind of love. I wouldn't have told you this, but experientially it was like, yeah, of course he loves me, because he loves everybody. I wouldn't have ever said that I didn't believe in God, but the reality is that I didn't experience it as it actually helping me. Like I wasn't actually, I didn't feel like I was actually changed by it. I could say the right things at church. I led stuff in ministry, and could still feel completely empty inside. But I remember this one day, this one day, I remember it was in my late 20s, and I was sitting on the front porch in Worcester, Ohio, on the College of Worcester campus, and I was reading this book called The Good News About Injustice by Gary Hogan. It's this book about where is God when the world is broken. And I literally had no expectation of anything being different that day. Nothing. I had no expectation. I wasn't like, today's the day. And then suddenly it was like God showed up on this front porch. It was like Jesus walked onto the porch and said, Peace be with you. And the reality of a very real God came so close to me. To me. Like to me, who had like, at that point, I had had an undergrad degree in being a pastor. I had led ministries in church. I'd been around church. I had an amazing mom who modeled for me what it looked like to know Jesus. But all of a sudden, the reality came so close to me that I couldn't explain it away. Love and hope and forgiveness of being known and seen by someone who knew everything about me and yet didn't turn away from me. In the story of Easter, where he he saw all the good parts and the bad parts, and he decided to die for me in my place. He saw everything about me. Every broken thing, every good thing. And here's the thing Jesus dying for me. It wasn't him losing, it was him winning, actually. Because he didn't stay dead. Jesus saw my brokenness, but he wasn't buried by my brokenness. He defeated it. Jesus wasn't buried by all the stuff that I'm ashamed of that I carried, and the weight and the hopelessness and the places where I had doubt. He wasn't buried by it, he defeated all of it. The question of Easter isn't just whether any of this happened, and I think there's great historical evidence that it did, by the way. But it's why it matters. Why does it matter if it did happen? It matters because if Jesus walked out of the grave, then death doesn't get the last word. Not over him and not over you. Not over the things in your life that feel like they're dead right now. The Apostle Paul he wrote that just as Jesus was raised from the dead, we too can walk in a completely new life. Today we're gonna do baptisms. If you've been wondering why there's a horse trough in the front of our church, uh it's because we're gonna do baptisms today. In baptisms, we're gonna have adults and kids standing up and saying that there's a new thing that's happened in them. And they're gonna go under the water as a symbol of dying with Jesus and then coming out of the water new, something new is happened. And can I just ask this question to you? What would it look like if you let the door of hope open again? Like to let yourself hope. To hope that what if this is true? What if what if all that's being said there actually is hope in life? There actually is a real God who knows you and loves you, and not just because the excited man on stage is saying so, but because it's actually real. Because it actually has changed people's lives for 2,000 years. And this morning you can turn towards Jesus, right where you're sitting, and you can say yes to him. You can say yes to him, not having all the answers like Peter, not having all the answers like I did sitting on that front porch. But you can just say yes to him. I want to invite you, if that's you this morning, I'm gonna have there's a prayer that I we can just kind of all close our eyes, and there's just a way, if you're not a praying person, you're like, I don't really know what I believe, just use it as a moment for some deep breaths to relax. But if you say, I want to take that step of opening up the door of hope, of saying, God, I think I believe this. I think I believe this actually happened, then you can pray this um out loud or quietly. But I'm gonna pray this out loud here. It's just a simple prayer to Jesus. Jesus, I don't have it all together, but I believe you're real. I believe you died for me and that you defeated death. I want to know you. I'm saying yes to you today.

SPEAKER_00 18:30

Amen. Thank you for listening to the Lakewood Vineyard Podcast. If you'd like to know more, you can visit Lakewoodvineyard.com.