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strongly in acknowledging reality. So that's where I'm going to begin the components of the worship service this morning , The music detects the sermon. The great thanksgiving are all the ones for easter sunday, but we

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are two days after easter this day is known as bright went right Tuesday in the Orthodox tradition, Which treats the entire week after Easter as one long celebratory day. And in that tradition, each day of

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the week is right. So bright Tuesday is preceded by bright monday and followed by bright Wednesday and so on. But for pastors engaged in congregational ministry, the Tuesday after easter is the day that post easter

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depression really sets in. Yeah, now easter sunday afternoon and monday afterwards, you're just too tired to even bother with being depressed all you want to nap or two or three, but by Tuesday you've recovered

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enough to realize that it's all over. No matter how glorious easter sunday was glorious, being defined as having enough people attending that you have a parking problem . Next sunday is going to be different. You

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realize that the next parking problem you're likely to encounter will be on christmas Eve and in the meantime you are going to have to deal with the all too familiar issues of making the budget and fixing the air

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conditioning and recruiting bible school teachers and convincing enough of the out host to sing the tender line that you can have something of a full choir. Now, that's enough to make one gloomy. But there's worse

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on the Tuesday morning after easter first morning, you can make a fist. You finally get around to reading the morning paper or watching the news on television or just looking around you and you realize that not

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much has changed. It has now been 20 centuries since the resurrection. And so. Well, that's the point at the point when the apprentice demon who rides around on your shoulder, um, pastors don't

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get the senior demons, those are reserved for lawyers . Mhm And the occasional professor, at any rate , the demon begins to whisper, You knock yourself out for the last six weeks and nobody cares.

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No one even noticed you tried to be joyful christmas or easter morning and everybody looked bored. You shouted , christ has risen as if that were news and they mumbled, crisis isn't indeed, or maybe move

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over, you're hurting me. Yeah. And then you told him this story about jesus coming back to life and nobody believes anymore and you only have believe yourself and the telephone is just about to ring and

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it will be the church gossip who will say pastor . Normally I wouldn't bother you on your day off . That's a lie, but it is the ecclesiastical equivalent of open sesame. Normally I wouldn't bother you

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under day off, but I have a pastoral concern and then you'll have to listen to some long boring story about somebody called charlie and pretend that you give a rip. So why don't you get a real

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job? So, says the demon, and you begin to wish that the demon would go back to trying to tempt you with lust because that at least might be entertaining. But no, The demon is

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dangling the typical 21st century temptation in front of you , which is not lust. It is futility, It is meaninglessness. Demon whispers to you that you might as well give up because nothing you do or

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say will make any difference to anyone. And that kind of abject despair is the primary enticement of our current era. There's a photograph that's making the rounds of the internet every so often, it shows the

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Earth as seen from the planet Neptune. It was taken by the Voyager one spacecraft more than 25 years ago. And in that photograph the Earth is a tiny blue dot that you can scarcely see now.

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Usually there's an arrow superimposed on the picture that points to the tiny blue dot. It says you are here or something like that and otherwise you'll miss it . You will not see that doctor and the lesson

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that is incessantly drawn from the blue dot photo is that the universe is vague and you are not so you don't matter. And if that is not enough to convince you there's another picture, it's not a

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photograph, it's some kind of drawing but it's a drawing of the Milky Way. It looks like a photograph and it's got an arrow pointing to one of the outer arms, accompanied by the text. That

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says predictably you are here and the lesson is identical . You are infant testimony. You are a tiny dot on a tiny dot. Yeah. The universe is in comprehensively large and therefore you do not matter

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at all. And the demon writing on your shoulder joins the satanic chorus of all the other demons writing on all the other shoulders chanting. Look at that . See, you don't matter. You don't matter

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. You don't matter. You don't matter, You don't matter. And list. Disease has seeped into our bones. We are growing into an entire society that doubts that anything matters. And that is the

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essence post easter depression. It's exacerbated by feed and discouragement, fatigue and discouragement. It is fed by doubt and it's heart, there is the feeling that absolutely nothing matters. And the supposed proof of that

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is the view from the planet Neptune. Now, you could not have seen the birth of jesus from the planet Neptune, you couldn't have seen it from Jerusalem, you couldn't have seen it for most of

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the houses in Bethlehem and yet it happened and it matters. You cannot have seen jesus teaching the disciples from Neptune. You could not have seen a great number of people being fed by a minimal amount of

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food. You could not have seen people dying on a cross, and you could not have heard someone say, go into all the world and I will always be with people. You could not have seen

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what only a few people did see, a tomb that was supposed to be occupied was empty. And because you could not have seen that, you might conclude that nothing had happened. You might reasonably deduce

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that nothing of any importance was going on on that little blue dog when it matters. Now, one of the most astounding teachings of the bible is that the career of jesus of Nazareth, from birth to

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resurrection and beyond involves the entire universe Through him. Business Colossians, 120 through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself of things, whether on earth or in heaven making peace through the blood of his cross

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. Alternatively, the creation itself Will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the Children of God. That's Romans 8 21. The creation, It's so the

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resurrection of jesus of Nazareth was, in Karl Marx's phrase, the verdict of the father and that verdict is the true indication of what matters. It tells us what important what is important without any regard to

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side is our release from decay and futility. We now call it the Second law of thermodynamics, but it is in fact decay and futility tells us that the view from the planet Neptune is not the final

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authority on the significance of what we do. And the view from the planet Neptune is not the final judge of our work. It is the verdict of God, expressed through the life and ministry of jesus

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christ that lets us know that the voice that is chanting, you don't matter in our ear is demonic and the demons always lie. And so in the midst of the post easter depression, we can cling

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to this, we matter. We are not the prisoners of futility. The entire drama that was played out in Jerusalem so many years ago is the work of the love of God and the love of God

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even now embraces us, but not just us. The really malignant thing about the view from the planet Neptune is the feeling that if you don't matter, neither does anybody else. And if nobody else matters

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, poverty doesn't matter and justice doesn't matter. And compassion doesn't matter and the environment doesn't matter. And wars don't matter. You can't see wars from Neptune . You can't see suffering from Neptune. You can't

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see oppression from Neptune. There are some things you can only see from the earth. What you can see from the earth, from your window is the image of God in your neighbor. What you can

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see, and you can only see it from the earth is the face of the son of God. In the least of these, your brethren, in short, you can see the other guy and whatever

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your judgment about the other guy might be, and it is likely to be rather uncharitable. God's judgment . Is that the one you are looking at, The other guy is a child of God and is

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worth saving and that means that your work is worth doing. No matter how you feel on any particular day, you post these, their depression is gonna left Wednesday, or come, thursday will come,

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friday will come and you're weak will become a little brighter. And if you have any sense at all , you will have asked your pastoral associate to preach , Your doubts will be transformed into belief again and

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your energy will return along with your patients again and you will recover the sense that what you are doing is worth doing. And you will realize again that the view from Neptune is not the only view there

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is, you will learn again to ignore the chanting demons and finally you will return again to the understanding that your primary calling is not just to believe the resurrection or to proclaim the resurrection, or primary job

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is to be the resurrection and the other guy.