Easter Sunday — He Wants Your Heart

This is the Easter Sunday sermon from St. John's Fort Smith. Father Aaron preaches on what the empty tomb really means — not just as history, but as a living reality for the quiet emptiness inside you right now. The risen Christ doesn't want your belief. He wants your heart.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

In the name of Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Amen.

SPEAKER_01 0:12

Good evening, this is Northward, the word of the North, your week and daily podcast from St. John Sportsmith, in collaboration with the Anglican family. Today is Easter Sunday. Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. And this is the message everything has been building towards. This morning, I've preached on what the empty tomb actually means for our life right now. Not just a historical event, but a living reality. Here's my message. But we'll start somewhere else. I wanna I want you to have an image in your mind about addiction. We'll start with an alcoholic and his patterns in life. The explosive moods, the unreliability that is present, often the shame and the hiddenness, the deep sense of pain and longing pushed down, numbed and nourished by the bottom. So have that image in your mind, and now one day he gets free of his addiction, he gets free of the alcohol. He starts to show up to work on time. No longer has those morning fogs. You can talk to him in the morning, becomes more reliable, less explosive. And that's wonderful. But as you watch him, as you watch his patterns, somewhere, somehow, you notice the same behaviors are still present in his life. Somewhere, somehow, those patterns are still alive in him. And because of those patterns, eventually he falls back into his addiction. Now there's a term for that. In Alcoholics Anonymous, they call that a dry drunk. A person who has stopped drinking, but continues to exhibit the same dysfunctional behaviors, the same patterns as someone who drinks.

SPEAKER_00 2:33

And I bring that up this morning because that is us.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

That is us unless we fix our brokenness. It doesn't matter how many new philosophers, new systems, new religions we follow that claim to set us free, unless we fix our brokenness, we are like dry drugs. We may have stopped, uh, at least outwardly, hating the people that we don't like. Uh, we may have stopped believing negative things, or tried starting to love ourselves better, done positive affirmations in a mirror, or whatever was recommended by the latest trend. But simple action like that results in reaction or system reacting to it, but not in true transformation. Now, for many of us, the state of our life is not some great crisis. But if we look deep within ourselves, we'll recognize it is a quiet insecurity. We are just quietly unsure. Unsure why we are here, unsure why it matters, unsure why doing all the right things still leaves something unnamed and unfilled in our lives. And that is a definition of brokenness. That is a simple definition of brokenness, not a kit a catastrophe, just a quiet emptiness that no program, that no philosophy, that no app, that no self-improvement plan can ever save you from. That is brokenness in its pure essence, and all other brokenness, all other brokenness, from the simple uncontrolled temper to murder, all other brokenness starts with a quiet emptiness.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

And every person that has tried to show us a better way, a new way, a solution to the problem, every single one of those people have been compromised by the same thing they were trying to fix.

SPEAKER_01 4:58

And that doesn't matter if it's Christianity, another religion, another philosophy, it doesn't matter if it's Gandhi who had his failures, or the Pope who has his, or the Dalai Lama who has his, or Martin Luther who had his. Every philosopher, every prophet, every reformer, all of them are working with broken tools because they themselves suffer under the same brokenness that we suffer under. The philosopher, the self-help guru, they give you a program.

SPEAKER_00 5:37

A, B, and C. Do this, and you'll be better. Do A, do B, A, and do C.

SPEAKER_01 5:46

And maybe for a while it works. But the need is still there. The brokenness is still there. The program changes the reaction of your system, but it gives you no transformation. Because it is good. These programs are good, they are healing, they are the right step in the right direction, but they are all built with broken foundations. Jesus died on Good Friday. Jesus went up to the cross, the historical person of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, went up to a cross in Jerusalem. They put nails through his hands and his feet, and he suffocated on his own blood and died. And if that had been all, then Jesus would have left you a program. He would have been a piece of history no different than a philosopher or a great teacher. He would have given you a program to do, because that's what a program is. A program is something you do. But a relationship is someone reaching into your life to do something to you. And that is the difference, because that is what a risen Christ does. That is what a risen Jesus Christ does. He speaks to your heart. He doesn't ask you to follow a ritual or a work program. He says, I love you unconditionally. And there is absolutely nothing you can do that will make me stop loving you. There is nothing that you can do. He doesn't ask you to do it alone, to fix yourself by yourself, to be better, to work harder. He only asks you to begin the journey with him. And the journey begins by you seeing yourself with the same love that he sees you with. He loves you, and through his love, you can be changed. And that change is the change that changes the world.

SPEAKER_00 8:04

Saint Sarov, I think Saint Sarov said that find peace in your soul, and you will save 10,000 around you.

SPEAKER_01 8:19

Have this image in your in your mind. You know, imagine a day like this. You've just come out of a really unpleasant winter. It lasted and it lasted. They kept coming back. Surprise, it's minus 30 again. Surprise, there's more snow on a Sunday morning we've got a shovel. And surprise and surprise and surprise. And finally, you know, as I was going to the Easter sunrise service this morning, the birds were chirping. And the sun's coming up, and it's just beautiful. That image, standing in the sunshine, birds chirping, nature in perfect harmony, everything is just right.

SPEAKER_00 8:55

But somehow you feel uneasy. Somehow, you feel empty and without purpose.

SPEAKER_01 9:04

Or another image. I remember being up in Nunavut and going back home the first time. And we flew down to Winnipeg, and we were only in Winnipeg for a few minutes, and then we flew to Montreal, and we had a six-hour layover in Montreal. And we came out of the small fly-in-fly-out community. And we we get into a bus at the Montreal airport.

SPEAKER_00 9:26

And we get out at this main station. And I I I was frozen. I was paralyzed. The amount of people.

SPEAKER_01 9:35

And you're just standing there and you you feel kind of alone, overwhelmed by the world around you, but alone. Those feelings, that emptiness, whether it's in a room full of people or by yourself in nature, that emptiness, that feeling of being just so slightly off, it's not a malfunction or a failure of your system. It's the beloved looking for his love. It is the sign of the creator calling out to his creation. Jesus comes to bring us back into that harmony. Into that relationship with our creator. See, Jesus is the one human being in history who was not fixing the problem from inside the problem. He is the solution who enters into the problem. Every other teacher stood within that human condition and pointed back to the problem within its own condition. Jesus from outside steps into our condition and then breaks it open from within.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

Do good, and you will be rewarded with good.

SPEAKER_01 11:05

But Jesus does not say that. Jesus says something completely different. He says, I became you so that by grace you can become like me.

SPEAKER_00 11:19

Restored and transformed.

SPEAKER_01 11:24

And that emptiness is exactly where the empty tomb finds us. Jesus at the empty tomb, the risen Lord, is with us. He is with you in your insecurity in your darkest moment. He is not watching from a distance. He is not waiting for you to get it together. The empty tomb doesn't say it's okay right now, but it says it's going to be okay. We are people of hope. And hallelujah is our song. We may feel and we should feel the pain and the broken hurt of this world, but our calling is not to feel, our calling is to love, and we can love and we can hope because we know it's going to be okay. Because Jesus is not in the tomb, he is with you and he is with me. There's a moment, and I just want to leave you with this thought. There's a moment at the end of the Gospel of John, we read it on Good Friday, and Jesus comes up in front of Pilate, and they're having this conversation, and Pilate asks Jesus, Are you the King of the Jews? And Jesus answers, Are you saying this on your own or did others tell you about me? See, so often we see Jesus intellectually, we see Jesus historically, but we fail to make the step towards Jesus emotionally.

SPEAKER_00 13:03

We fail to let go of our minds and allow our hearts to speak. That's the question Jesus is asking all of us. Do you know me? Where did you learn Jesus from?

SPEAKER_01 13:20

Who taught you who Jesus is? Did you learn it from a book? Did you learn it reading it in an article? From what I said in the pulpit, God forbid? From what your mother told you? Or what Jesus spoke to your heart. Remember, we started with a dry drunk. He stopped drinking. He changed his behavior. He did all the right things. But nothing inside him actually changed. Because nothing from outside him could reach inside of him. That is the problem that most of us suffer from. We can talk about Jesus. We can come to church every Sunday and say all the right words. But if we never let him actually reach us, if we keep him at arm's length as a teacher, a program, a good idea, we are nothing but dry drunks. Better behaved maybe, but not transformed. The resurrection calls for us to change now. Because Jesus is not a program, he is a person, and he is alive. The risen Christ doesn't want your belief. The risen Christ wants your heart. His grace is enough. He wants you just the way you are today. I want you to ask yourself that question. How do I know Jesus? Because to find transformation, to find rebirth and new life, you need to know Jesus truly in your heart. Go and find Jesus because He is risen. Hallelujah. Christ is risen, he has risen indeed. This has been Northword, the Word of the North, your weekly daily podcast from St. John Sports Smith in collaboration with the Anglican family. We are an Easter people and Hallelujah is our song. Find us, follow us, and share us wherever you get your podcast. And until tomorrow morning, the gold.