A few years ago, the band Switchfoot released a song called Meant to Live.  I am not a huge fan of contemporary Christian music, but this song and the whole album spoke to me.  It apparently spoke to a lot of other people too because it was both the top selling Christian album of the year and one of top albums in mainstream music.  The song speaks of a man struggling with the world.  Struggling with “failed attempts to fly.”  Hoping that he is meant for something more.  As the song progresses he starts to believe that maybe “we’ve been living with eyes half opened.”  Maybe there is more that this world has to offer.  “We were meant to live.”  I believe that there are times and places where music speaks to our souls.  Where they point to some truth, some deep longing of our hearts.  And I think this song spoke to that place in a lot of  people.  It spoke to a place inside all of us that believes there is something more.  Something more than jobs and money and bills and high gas prices.  Something we find in those moments when we are silent enough to hear the longings of our souls.  The song ends with the line “and everything screams for second life.  We were meant to live.”

          We are here this Sunday to celebrate second life.  A second life that Jesus gave to us by dying and then rising from the dead.  We are here to celebrate that there is something more.  That because of Christ the world has fundamentally changed.  And not changed in a way that is incidental to our lives, but changed the world in a way that is relevant to every day and every moment of our lives.  That fills our lives with hope and meaning in a world that is all too often these days hopeless and meaningless.  There is more that this world has to offer and more that the world to come has to offer as well.

           For all of that to happen though, something had to change.  As Bill read this morning, something amazing happened that morning that the two Marys went to visit Jesus’ grave.  Something unexpected and that unexpected thing changed everything.  Unless you are in middle of some horror movie, when you go to a grave you expect to find a dead body.  In fact, the very thing that makes horror movies so horrifying is the unexpectedness of seeing the dead walking around.  The natural order of things is upset.  And that is what this moment is about.  In the empty tomb and Jesus’ resurrection the natural order of the world is upset and changed, changed forever.  This is obviously evident as the recently dead Jesus appears to the two Marys, that is out of the ordinary, but is also evident in two other significant ways we might miss.  Two ways that symbolize the gravity of the change. An earthquake occurs in our story.  Now earthquakes are common in this area of the middle east, but the fact that they are so common make them all the more unusual to be written about here.  Actually, Matthew is the only one of the gospel writers to pay particular attention to the earthquakes.  Throughout his gospel, earthquakes mark times where the events on the earth disturb the order of the earth.  The other significant event symbolizing the change that has taken place is the angel.  We may think of angels as being all over the place in the bible and while this might be true for the Old Testament, angels are relatively rare in the gospels: they are only there at the beginning and the end.  Angels serve as the messengers of God to announce Jesus is coming. The Son of God coming into the world is a big change. And the angel in our reading, announces that Jesus has risen and has gone out ahead.  An equally important message.

          There are two parts to this angel’s announcement: first, that Jesus has been raised and second, that he has gone ahead to Galilee.  ‘Gone ahead’ such a wonderfully insignificant phrase.  In this case, it points that Jesus is already on his way to Galilee.  But it also has a greater meaning, because Jesus is the first.  He has gone ahead as the leader.  He is the trailblazer.  He has not just been raised from the dead, but he is the first to be raised from the dead.  You see, the angel’s message is also for us: that Jesus has been raised and he has gone ahead before you.  He is on his way to a better place, a better life, a new and changed life and if you choose you can go down that path, as well.  Christ has gone ahead of you to show you the way that you need to go.

          He went ahead to show you that if death can be overcome, then anything can be overcome.  Broken homes, broken marriages, broken finances, a broken world, if God can raise Jesus Christ from the dead, then any problem, any problem we have can be overcome.  Not just because God has power, but because God has power and love for us.  The angels message to the two Marys is a loving invitation to follow.  Go follow the one who loves you and has already been through all of this.  There is an old story that you may have heard before but it is a good one.  A man falls down a hole.  A doctor walks by so he shouts up from the hole, “hey, bud can you help me out?”  He writes a prescription and throws it down.  A priest walks by, so he shouts up from the hole, “hey, bud can you help me out?”  He throws down a prayer.  Finally, a friend walks by, so he says, “hey Charlie, I fell in this hole can you help me out?”  So Charlie, jumps down in the hole with him. “What are you doing now we are both stuck down in here?” “No I have been down here before and I know the way out.”  Christ knows the way out.  He has gone ahead of us in everyway to show us the way we should go.  From overcoming death, to overcoming sin, to overcoming every barrier that would work to separate us from one another and from God.

          That is a message this world needs.  And that is why I love Easter that is why I love Sundays.  On Easter, I get to stand in this pulpit and tell all who will listen, that there is hope.  There is so much hope.  That regardless of what happens out there beyond the doors of this church that Jesus has gone ahead of us to change the world and to show us how we can be changed. That though we might expect to find the dead body in the grave the unexpected is happening all around us.  That if you expect bankruptcy and divorce and angry teenagers and a slow decline towards death, in Christ the unexpected is happening every day.  Jesus has gone ahead to show us the world is changed.  Your life, your life can be changed.

          On May 25, 1961, President John Kennedy laid before a joint session of Congress and the American people a staggering challenge.  He went out ahead.He said, “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.”  He also said during that speech, “I believe we possess all the resources and talents necessary. But the facts of the matter are that we have never made the national decisions or marshalled the national resources required for such leadership. We have never specified long-range goals on an urgent time schedule, or managed our resources and our time so as to insure their fulfillment.”  In 1961, the United States had barely sent a man into space.  And here in his State of the Union address, Kennedy, pledged to send a man to the moon.  Talking about going out ahead.  He approached this plan with a sense of national destiny.  There was urgency in his voice and action, not out of desperation, but out of sense of call.  Call to action. Call to defeat the forces evil. He had gone out ahead of the people to call them to a future they could barely imagine and to a reality they could hardly hope.

          Christ has not just gone ahead of us as individuals but as a congregation.  Christ is calling us into a new future as well.  Going out calling all of us, members and visitors, alike.  We have been inspired to hope over the last few months of a future where our small church is connected more fully with the community around us. We have been inspired that as our community transforms and revitalizes, so too our church.  We have hoped and dreamed big dreams.  Today we endeavor to make them a reality.  To that end, I believe that we should commit ourselves over the next year to bringing twenty people in our community to a new faith or a renewed faith in Jesus Christ.  This too would be unexpected.  But as Christ has gone ahead of us we should be expecting the unexpected.  Further, I believe we have been blessed by God with the resources and the talents and the people to attain that goal.  I believe it is the place that Christ is calling us to.  Not because numerical growth is necessarily God’s will, but because it is a sign of our willingness and effectiveness to reach out to our community in Christ name.  To proclaim to our community that Christ has gone out ahead of us, that Christ is risen from the dead, that the world has been changed dramatically, that the world is still being changed dramatically, and that your world too can be changed if you join with us as we follow Christ together.  This Easter I urge you to pray for our church, this community, and one another as we follow Christ who has gone out before us.  I urge you to commit or renew your commitment to the hopeful and transformed future of this church.  I urge you believe once again and again and again, in the resurrected life of Jesus Christ and that the new life and changed life he has gone into, is for us as well, for our church and for our community.