March 27, 2005 Easter Sunday

First Presbyterian Church Carson City

Pastor Bruce Kochsmeier

It’s Easter! It is the most significant day in human history let alone the central theme of the Christian faith because it proclaims that God has reached into our collective human story and ended any claim that darkness and fear could ever have for anyone. And the reason it is so profound is because it is so literal. God didn’t send an email. He didn’t do skywriting, though the sky turning black when Jesus died was spectacular. He didn’t invoke a philosophy. He came instead in human form to show us how to live and to die and then he overcame our greatest fear, death itself. In all this he offered what we might in contemporary language call “an extreme makeover”.

But it isn’t a nose job, tummy-tuck makeover. God knows that’s way too superficial. What God did at Easter was far more extreme. He reached into EVERY life across time and offered a whole new way of living.

That first Easter Mary Magdalene and Peter and John, all of whom had received such literal makeovers from Jesus, were devastated. The ONE in whom they had put their hope had been murdered and then when they go to at least say good bye to his body, it is GONE.

But here is where it gets very exciting. John tells us that when Mary and then John and Peter got to the tomb something really extreme had taken place. In Middle Eastern tombs there is a groove for a LARGE round stone to roll in to seal the tomb. That morning the stone wasn’t just rolled away from the opening, it was out of the groove completely. That’s like moving a full-size pick-up truck. The guards likely COULDN’T have done it and likely WOULDN’T have done it since the penalty for the body being removed was death. Something more extreme than grave robbing had taken place.

Now, I don’t watch much TV but for the last few months on Sunday nights I’ve become hooked on extreme home makeover. If you’ve been to my Lenten film series you’ll know why. I see a tremendous statement of the Gospel in what is taking place. And it has MUCH more to do with the spirit of what is happening than with the material blessing that is given. What happens is a needy family gets a new home because their existing home is shot. I love the radical approach the makeover team takes. I love that they build an entire home in a week, that they personalize it, that it is a slice of the kingdom of God in that there is huge compassion, and that on some level people’s lives are truly changed. I’m hooked because it grabs viewers and says, “Hey, take care of one another. Look out for the specific needs in someone’s life.”

Most of all I’m hooked because extreme home makeover speaks of the need for a ground up start from the beginning. If you haven’t seen it that’s what happens. People’s homes are flattened, eliminated, GONE. Sometimes it’s because there is mold; sometimes it’s because it’s because the family has a disability that can only be cared for by a new place. Sometimes it’s because it is because there isn’t ENOUGH that could be done with the old house. But most of all it is because there is an extreme desire to give the family MORE than they could have dreamed of.

It is a pale reflection of what God does for us in Jesus Christ but it is a reflection because when Jesus gets done with us we are CHANGED. The old house just doesn’t EVEN look the same, but it is OUR house because Jesus built us what we really need. In his resurrection Jesus built us something that we yearn for but can’t get. Dr. James Edwards of Whitworth College describes this so well in a brilliant article called “Homesick for A Place I’ve Never Been”. He speaks of what Jesus did for us on Easter in the words of C.S. Lewis, “Apparently then, our lifelong nostalgia, [belief that life can never be as good as it once was] our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fancy, but the truest index of our real situation. And to be at last summoned inside would be both glory and honor beyond all our merit and also the healing of the old ache.”

This is the extreme home makeover of Easter to which Jesus invites us. We’ve been on the outside looking in. Knowing that we need to be somewhere else, but also knowing it is somewhere we cannot get ourselves.

Let’s look at this passage and the first Easter morning from the perspective of an extreme home makeover. John tells us, “On the first day of the week, while it was still dark”…the light had not yet come on. As far as Mary and you and I are concerned it is still dark until we discover what God has done. Mary is weeping because “her house” is gone. Is this us? Are we crying because the “house” we thought we needed has been demolished? Are we saying, “But I want to keep part of the old me”? Mary could not recognize Jesus for two reasons, Wm. Barclay points out, first, she was blinded by her tears and second, she was staring at the tomb. Jesus comes looking for a lost world and the same is often true of us. We can’t see him because we are crying so hard about what we consider the loss to be that all we can do is stare at the loss and dwell on it.

And here is where I think a lot of us miss seeing Jesus. He brings hope by dying in order to rise again to a new life. He calls us to see hope that leads to a new life, but all we can do is either say, “No don’t bulldoze my house”, (life), or “Why did you have to do it that way?” We get very stuck because we say to God, “I like my life the way it is. I just want you to remodel it or leave it alone, but don’t tell me to get out and go on vacation so you can level it.” But that’s exactly what Jesus does. It’s what he did for Mary and Peter and John. It’s what he has done for us. He hasn’t remodeled, he has resurrected; he has done an extreme home makeover. And it calls us to live a whole, new way of hope.

As I’ve watched extreme home makeover I’ve been interested in the reaction of families as project manager Ty Pennington calls them and sends them streaming video of their homes being leveled. My sister is a close friend of one of the families whose house was leveled so I know this stuff isn’t made up. And as I have watched them I’ve seen laughter, cheers, incredulity at what is happening, sorrow over what led up to the need for the demolition, but never a reaction that said, “No, don’t do that.” You know why not? Because they knew they needed a new life. We do too. Jesus invites us to get beyond being comfortable with the old. That’s what he is doing with Mary and it is what he is doing with you and me.

Here’s where the resurrection and the TV program come together. When my sister’s friends, the Woffords were selected to have an extreme home makeover the crew said, “We’d like to meet your friends.” Do you know where the family took them? To their church. Usually the crew has to go out into the community to find volunteers to do the makeover but when Ty told the congregation what was happening all the volunteer spots were filled before the service was over. And that crew said, “We’ve never seen love like this!” Now that’s an extreme makeover.

When the house is made over each room is personalized for the person who will live there. Jesus Christ wants to personalize your new home. He wants to call you by name as he did Mary and he wants you to know every day how he is customizing his love to shape you and me so that we will know the power and reality of his presence for us.

Because Jesus literally arose it has HUGE implications for us. It means that our hope is literal. As Paul says in I Corinthians 15, “For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.” (16-17) A literal change will happen for us when we place our confidence in this. We will find ourselves living in a new house.

It will look like knowing what really matters in this short life, it will look like meaningful marriages, knowing how to grow up, values that don’t follow worldly trends, freedom to use of time for God’s plans, lack of anxiety. In lives that are open the to the power of Jesus’ resurrection there will be no mold in our new house, no asbestos, no cracks in the foundation, no leaking roof.

The most powerful words on extreme home makeover, as anyone who watches will tell you are, “Bus driver move that bus.” When the family arrives back at where their old home had been, a huge bus is blocking the view. When Ty tells the family to give the command the bus drives away and exposes a complete new home. The family is astounded.

With his resurrection Jesus says to move the bus so that we can see the new life he has created for us. He says to Mary and to us, “Yes, I’ve really defeated death, but don’t try to hold on to the physical me just now because I’m going beyond all this life for you. You need more than just this. Turn your eyes away from the tomb. Look at what I am doing for you.”

Today let this Easter be your extreme home makeover. Let Jesus level your old life so he can build the new place for you to live. Let him equip you and me to be people who invite others to experience the same extreme love so that together we can say, “Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Amen.