The Purpose of Exile (With Video)

All of the clues point to life.  

Mary said that the tomb was empty.

She said that she saw Jesus.

After all, the stone was rolled away.  

All of the clues point to life, but for whom?

Is it only for us?

Let us pray.

Friday night, my son and a crew of middle school boys ventured into The Amazing Escape Room in King of Prussia for a birthday party. In case you aren’t familiar, an escape room is a place where you go and pay to enter a real life detective mystery.  In our case, our mystery was that we were on a submarine that was sinking and we were about to be swallowed by a giant octopus.  In the rooms were clues hidden on every wall.  The clues would open up compartments and doors that would release more clues so we could move on and hopefully complete our task of saving the submarine before the clock ran out.   

As the boys entered the makeshift submarine, they knew several things:

1. Once they entered the room they would not be able to get out without solving the puzzles, riddles and challenges.  
2. All of the answers to the puzzles, riddles and challenges were in some way present in the room. 
3. The way to get out of the room was to work together, relying on each other, making mistakes together, and ultimately figuring out how to get free, using the knowledge that they would gain.  
4. If they desperately needed help or they felt scared or trapped they could do a dance and wave their hands to get a clue because there was someone watching who knew the answers.   

The only way out was solving the challenge

All of the answers they needed were already present

They needed each other to get out

There was always someone watching, ready to help.  

How do we get out of trapped spaces?

Just the talk of being locked in a room, even voluntarily, for many is terrifying.  Elevators, MRI Machines, airplanes, ferris wheel compartments gently swaying back and forth, stories above the ground, all of these scenarios induce panic in millions of people across the globe.  

But the fact is, we are all trapped at some point or another.  

Trapped in unhealthy relationships, trapped in financial distress, trapped in despair or depression, grief or loneliness.  

How do we get out of trapped spaces?

A group of believers were together in a room the Sunday evening after Jesus died, with the doors locked for fear of the Jews.  

While we don’t know exactly why they were afraid of the Jews, commentators surmise that they were afraid that they might have been accused of stealing Jesus’ body since it was not in the grave, fear that they would be accused of rolling away the stone, fear that they would be persecuted or crucified as well for following Jesus.  

Their fear must have also been mingled with the great grief and sadness and confusion of everything that had happened over the last week.  

After all, when they were gathered behind the locked door, they may have heard that Jesus wasn’t in the tomb, but they had not yet seen him for themselves.

They were still in the before moment.  The moment where being trapped causes you to gasp for air, the moment when you feel that you just don’t know what is next.  

Several times as we worked our way through the clues, the boys began to grow desperate.  They simply couldn’t figure out how to go on.

And so they begged and pleaded and danced and waved their hands.  Please, help us.  

And sometimes their cries were met with clues.  And sometimes their cries were not answered.  They simply had to keep searching.  

They found themselves doing the same things over and over again and not getting different results.  And as they grew more and more frustrated, they realized that they had to try new things and look in new places and ask each other for help.  

When I think about the resurrection story, I have this image in my mind of everyone running joyfully from the tomb, somehow glowing, sunbeams radiating from the sky, Jesus among them smiling his perfectly white toothed glistening smile,  I have this sense that they felt complete and full. That they had direction and that they understood.  

John 20 paints a different picture.  Just a few days after the horrid crucifixion, just hours after Mary saw Jesus at the tomb, the disciples were huddled together in fear.  And the doors were locked.  

They had been given all the clues…

Jesus said to them before he died, as we read in John 16

You will have peace

The Spirit will come

you will not see me for a little and then you will see me again for a little while.  

And here we are, a little while after the crucifixion and Jesus comes to the disciples in their fear, in their locked room and he is with them after he was not with them for a little while

he offers them a sign of peace

and he gives them the gift of the holy spirit

and the disciples realized that the clues, the promises that they had been given were becoming a reality for them. 

All around them and within them, it all began to make sense.  

Jesus had done and was doing what he said he would do.  

But the message that Jesus gave was not simply — See, I told you so!  I’m back!

The message was not.. you have walked with me, you have grieved, we have been through tough things together and now the world is full of easter lilies and tulips.  

Jesus says As God has sent me to be with you behind all of the locked doors of your life, now go, go to those who have not yet heard, not yet felt.  Go to those who are grieving.  Go to those who are lost.  Go to those who are suffering with addiction and loneliness and pain and fear.  I know you know people who are in the trenches.  You can sit right now in this moment and make a list ten people deep..  The resurrection of Jesus is about so much more than Easter brass and pastel dresses.  It is about a  journey with Jesus and by the words of  the gospel, Jesus has given you instructions.  

As the Father has sent me, so I send you. 

Sent.

We are sent.

At the empty tomb, Jesus sends Mary to go and tell the disciples.  In joyful moments of aha, Jesus tells us to go and share the goodness of God. 

In the locked room, Jesus sends the disciples to go and tell the world.  

If you have ever felt the presence of God in a place where you felt scared or trapped or fearful, , if you ever noticed that in the darkest times God showed up for you, if you have ever felt that you would never breathe again, never be truly alive again and God was present,  then this message is for you.  

You are sent. 

Evangelism is a tricky topic for mainline Christians.  The practice of populating a church in the 1950s was simply to go to church, marry someone who went to church and have children who would go to the church.  In this model, the church would self populate with out anyone really doing anything that required much.  But as our family structures have changed and our communities have changed, children have moved all over the country and all over the world.  And often, because our faith is sometimes routine and often very private, we have wrongfully expected that the church would naturally self populate without our proclamation of the gospel.  

Due to all of these cultural norms shifting, many churches have found themselves in new, uncharted territory, scrambling to figure out where generations have gone.  Often there is a lot of blame.  We blame soccer. I mean seriously, do we believe that God is not bigger than Sunday morning soccer? We blame the pastors, we blame the parents, we place a lot of blame on why people aren’t rushing into church doors.  

But as I try to continually keep the scripture in my mind, I can’t help but think there are logs in our eyes as we point out the twigs in other’s eyes.   Jesus gave this message of evangelism to the believers to carry out.  We are the believers.  

I have a tricky religious upbringing.  I was baptized as a child but my parents don’t really go to church.  I never understood why my parents made those baptismal promises.  If it was cultural or family expectations.  But my church who also made promises kept them.  I am extremely grateful that my church kept their baptismal promises and never let me go, and honestly still hasn’t let me go.  

But I share this with you because it became more relevant to me this Easter.  You see, all of these years, I have been the religious one in the family.  People don’t quite understand why I chose this profession.  At some family gatherings they jokingly call me the nun.  And so I have maintained my place as the religious one among those who do not practice their faith or any faith. 

This year, at our Easter gathering, everyone was bustling about filling their plates, some people were seated and eating already.  Some people were still arguing in the kitchen, as is practice at our gatherings.   And my dad, who has never said Grace at a meal in my life, called everyone to gather around the table.  And he asked me to pray.  

And I balked at him.  Perhaps I was in my own locked room filled with some fear of again being labeled the religious cook.  Praying before meals has not been the practice of any of our gatherings in my life.  In my house, yes, but not in family gatherings.  And so people looked around reluctantly and put down their things to gather around the table, to hold hands, and receive a blessing.

If you feel reluctant to go and share the gospel.  If you feel that standing on a street corner holding up signs about the end of the world isn’t your thing, I hear you! if you feel that evangelism isn’t for presbyterians and you weren’t raised or taught how to tell people about Jesus, I understand.  

But Jesus is speaking to us.  Jesus is speaking to me.  Jesus is speaking to you. He says:  As the Father has sent me, so I send you. 

We are sent. 

And I have to tell you, that just in that small circle at Easter, there has been recent death and terminal diagnoses and job loss and loneliness and financial despair and depression.  

And as I drove home that day, reflecting on my reluctance to risk making them uncomfortable, 

I heard Jesus whisper to me The people to whom I have sent you are right in front of you.  

And so I invite you this day,  to first think of a time when your faith made a difference in your life.  A moment when you can confidently say, this is when God showed up.  And then, next, I want you to think of who God is sending you to so that you might be the one to help them in their moment of fear, in their trapped room.  I want you to write down the names of one or two of the people and commit to praying for them daily.  Pray for God to reveal the right moment to share with them that your faith got you through.  Pray for the right words to speak so you don’t sound like a religious cook… so that you might be heard.  Pray for the right moment to invite them along into a community that shows up, a community that points you to Jesus, a community that enters into your darkest places and helps you out.  

If you look around, you will see that everything around you, every one around you is a message from God.  There are clues for the journey.  There are cries for help in your midst.  There are signs of life bursting up all around you.  God is speaking to you in the locked rooms of your life.  

And if you have ever made it out of any trapped place with the help of God,  you have the key for those who desperately need to know that the promises of God are true.  And it would be tragic for you to leave them in a locked place without a message of hope.  

The boys solved 19 of the 20 clues when the buzzer went off.  This meant that they were eaten by a giant octopus and they failed to escape the room in time.  

Every single thing in that room gave a clue to the next step on the journey. And so it is with us, Jesus has already given us what we need to be evangelists.  And all that we need is our own story and our own faith and a belief that walking with Jesus matters.   

All of the clues point to life.  

Mary said that the tomb was empty.

She said that she saw Jesus.

After all, the stone was rolled away.  

All of the clues point to life, but for whom?

Is it only for us?

As the Father has sent me, So, I send you.