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Commencing with an introduction to the Heaven Earth Church, Pastor Ross Stackhouse articulates the church's mission to create an inclusive community for those who feel disconnected from traditional religious institutions. He emphasizes the importance of understanding individual narratives, positing that every person’s story is inherently linked to a divine narrative. This foundational concept sets the stage for a deeper exploration of the Easter message, which serves as the focal point of the episode. Stackhouse delves into the significance of the resurrection, inviting listeners to consider its implications not only as a historical event but as a transformative experience relevant to contemporary believers. He reflects on the story of Thomas, the disciple renowned for his skepticism, highlighting how doubt often precedes genuine belief. This narrative serves as a mirror for many who grapple with their faith, illustrating that the journey of belief is fraught with questions and uncertainties. The speaker’s insights suggest that the resurrection empowers believers to confront their doubts and challenges, offering a path towards renewal and hope. Throughout the episode, Stackhouse intertwines personal anecdotes and theological reflections, creating a rich tapestry that resonates with the audience. He concludes with a compelling invitation to embrace the invitation of the resurrection, encouraging listeners to view their own struggles through the lens of hope. This episode encapsulates the essence of the Easter message, reinforcing the idea that faith is a dynamic journey, one that is enriched by both doubt and belief.

Takeaways:

• Heaven Earth Church is dedicated to creating a welcoming environment for individuals who feel disconnected from traditional religious institutions.
• The podcast emphasizes the importance of personal stories, illustrating that every human narrative reflects a part of God's overarching story.
• The theme of resurrection is central to the message of Easter, symbolizing hope and the promise of renewal for believers.
• The experiences of the church members demonstrate that genuine faith often emerges from moments of doubt and questioning.
• The founding pastor, Ross Stackhouse, highlights the transformative power of faith, suggesting that true belief is rooted in profound personal experience rather than mere understanding.
• The podcast aims to inspire listeners to explore their own faith journeys and recognize the ongoing invitation to participate in a greater narrative of love and hope.

Welcome to Heaven Earth Church.

My name is Ross Stackhouse.

I'm the founding pastor of Heaven Earth Church.

From the beginning, our heart was to be a church for people who don't fit neatly into church.

Our heart is to meet people where they are, to learn their stories, to honor their stories.

Because in every human story is God's story.

In this podcast, you'll hear more about the people who now call Heaven Earth Church home.

Their stories, in many cases of misfits who are discovering or rediscovering faith.

If you want to know more about us, you can go to heavenorthchurch.org Otherwise, we invite you now into the story.

Hello, good people.

Brad Miller here, the producer of the Heaven Earth Church podcast.

One of the main benefits of being a part of the Heaven Earth Church community is our Sunday morning conversations taught by founding pastor Ross Stackhouse.

You can watch and participate in the Sunday morning conversation this Sunday morning, 9:30am Eastern time at YouTube.com heavenearthchurch.

Pastor Ross Stackhouse.

Lord, I pray that you open our eyes, our ears, our hearts to what you want to show us today about this mystery of Jesus, his life, his death, his resurrection.

Help us to embrace this mystery, to embrace your power, your love, and to become a part of this mission into which you invite us in Jesus name, Amen.

All right, we're going to do a little song trivia.

Okay?

If you win, you get a prize.

We'll give you one egg.

We'll steal an egg from one of the children and give it to you.

Yes.

I did.

I put a Jesus in the yes bucket.

If you don't know that, we have a question back there.

Have you ever stolen candy from a kid's Easter basket?

I've done it many times.

Many times.

You did it this morning.

Good for you.

All right, if you get this right, you get an egg from one of the children in the back.

Here's the song lyric first hand that shoots up.

I'm calling on you.

Here we go.

13 Month old baby broke the looking glass.

Nobody gets a prize.

Nobody.

Who said that?

Jen Rice gets a prize.

What's the song, Jen?

Oh, okay, so we'll give you half a prize.

Superstition.

Let's go.

Cooper gets a prize.

We get two prizes now, Cooper, you actually have to go back and steal the egg, though.

Okay?

I'm not doing that, man.

I'm not doing it.

Yeah, in a minute, I'm gonna disagree with Stevie a little bit.

I think I have it there.

He says, when you believe in things you don't understand, then you suffer.

I'm going to disagree with that in just a minute.

I love Stevie and I love that song, and I get what he's trying to say, but I am.

I think about these first followers of Jesus.

It's this time of year where I think about this movement in whose legacy we now sit.

Anybody got an idea of the fella with that sweet purple robe or whatever it is?

Anybody know who that is?

You can also steal an egg from a child.

Okay, never mind.

Nobody gets an egg on that one.

If.

If I were allowed to be amongst the first followers.

Big if on that one, I'd be that guy.

As I've said before, he's known as Doubting Thomas.

And my middle name is Thomas because my father knew this guy's gonna be a doubter.

Now, that's not why he did it.

No, no.

He's named after my Uncle Bob.

What?

His name is Robert Thomas.

Sorry.

Thank you.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

If you don't know how it works here at Heaven Earth, this is a conversation you can interrupt me at any time.

I don't talk at you.

I'm just a dude.

So anyways, I'd be that fella.

Because I'm a skeptic at heart.

I don't have the gift of faith.

And some would say, aren't you in the wrong job?

Maybe.

Could be.

But in this story, if you don't know it comes from the Gospel of John.

Four accounts of Jesus life.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, John.

In John, Jesus appears to the disciples after he has died.

Many of them, I should say most of them.

And they're like, thomas, we just saw him alive.

And Thomas is like, that's great for you.

Good for you.

But until I can put my fingers in the holes in his hands and my hand in the wounds in his side, I'm not going to believe.

That's me.

And then Thomas does it.

Jesus shows up and says, peace be with you.

And then he says, basically, go for it.

And then Thomas has the highest confession of faith that we have recorded in the New Testament.

He says, my Lord, my God.

So he goes from big skeptic to big believer.

That's me.

And Jesus says, you've believed because you have seen.

Blessed are those who believe without seeing.

Well, that's the rest of us, isn't it?

And that's what makes it so hard.

You've believed because you've seen.

Blessed are those who believe without seeing.

That's what makes it so hard.

But I'm going to speak to the rational person in the room today, because I am you.

You need some evidence.

I'm with you.

I think about these first followers.

How improbable their conviction is, how improbable that their conviction that this story lasted.

Here's why.

Many people would.

Would hang on to a superstition like many of us, if it would make our lives better and make some of the lives of the people we love better.

We'd tell a story and we'd live in it.

Right?

Maybe you would not hang on to a superstition.

If you were threatened by brutal death, maybe a couple people would you be like, yeah, we.

We got stories of that all the time, Ross.

People drinking the Kool Aid.

Literally.

But when we think about people drinking the Kool Aid and Jim Jones, if you don't know who he was, I think he was a Methodist, too.

Was he Disciples of Christ?

Okay.

We kicked him out.

Okay.

I'm never going to ask you to drink any Kool Aid.

Okay?

But with that, we only reflect on that.

Because of its weirdness, this story has lasted such that billions of people claim it.

And in the first days of it, it's so unlikely that they would hang on to it.

Here's why.

Because the most powerful empire in the history of the world sought more than once to extinguish this movement.

I've told you this recently.

Some of you, like Ross, you keep saying this story, but it haunts me.

The very first time it happened when there was an imperial ordered persecution of the Christians was by the Emperor nero in the 60s.

He started a fire in Rome because he wasn't getting what he was wanting.

And so, like a spoiled little child, he said, you know what?

I'm burning it all down.

And then who did he blame for it?

Those.

Those pesky little followers of Jesus.

And that was the first time they started killing Christians.

In the 60s, 30 years after Jesus was on the earth.

We have a letter.

Think about this.

We have a letter from a guy named Pliny the Younger to the emperor of Rome, Trajan, in sometime like 111 to 113, saying, like, hey, there's this weird group of folks who, like, get together once a week and they worship this guy like he's a God.

And they eat together.

My Practice has been that I tell them I beat them up.

I asked them to recant their faith.

If they do, I churn them back out.

If they don't, I kill them.

Trajan, what do you think?

And Trajan writes back, we have these letters.

Trajan, the Emperor of Rome writes back and says, good job, my boy.

Golden star.

That's not exactly what it was, but it was about like that.

Emperor Decius did it.

The worst of all was the Diocletian persecution.

And this movement went from 120 to 100,000 to 10 million.

Because here's what I'm convinced of.

Skeptic Ross is convinced of it.

Those very first followers really saw something.

They actually saw something.

They experienced something so powerful, so life altering that no one could take it from them.

No one.

Even when they said, hey, either recant your faith or we're going to give you over to that lion.

Recant your faith or we're going to crucify you like your stupid Lord.

Recant your faith or we're going to turn you into a human torch.

And they said, no.

They saw something, they experienced something, and it changed their lives in the most powerful way.

And that's what I want to talk to you about.

When I.

When I read this story to you in a minute, I wanted.

That was all a setup.

That's not the sermon.

It's 10.

10.

Are you still with me?

We haven't even.

That was like the prologue.

Are you still with me?

Okay.

Do you need some chocolate?

Okay, maybe later.

Go steal it from the children.

Go steal it from the children afterwards.

The children aren't going to have a good time here.

Don't steal it from them.

Okay, I forgot to say something.

Sidebar.

Our kids volunteers worked so hard to prepare a safe, fun learning environment for those kids today.

And I want to give them a round of applause for that.

We work so hard to like.

We want kids to feel like church is a safe, wonderful place to belong and grow.

And our staff and our volunteers work on that very hard.

We have so many volunteers to do that every week.

Angie Eisenthal and Jill Bevins work to just make this just a place of beauty and glory today.

And I'm just thankful for them.

So round of applause for them too, to all of our volunteers.

Okay, we're back on track.

Are you with me?

Okay.

If you're new to us, I struggle with rabbit trails.

All right.

For them, the story we're about to Read was not just a story.

It wasn't a fairy tale.

It was not just superstition.

It was not.

It was real.

It was life altering.

It was the truth.

And it was about this how like this story that we're going to look at today.

It's this glorious surprise that defines what Jesus and Christianity are all about.

The, the, like the center of gravity for, for the Jesus movement is Easter.

Easter, or Christianity, is all about resurrection.

It's the promise.

As Jesus says in Revelation, behold, I am making things new.

The good news of Christianity is that the whole earth is going to be restored, every person, a new creation in the whole earth, a new creation.

And Jesus says, step into it with me now.

Become a new creation now.

Help me build the new creation now.

It's the best thing that you could be a part of.

And Jesus proves in his resurrection that nothing will stop the power of my love.

Nothing will stop this new creation.

No power of evil, no power of death, no sin.

I will be victorious.

This is good news.

It's the best surprise.

The glorious surprise of Easter is that what seems so bleak about life will be brighter than we can imagine.

What seems so final about evil and death will be reversed.

And though God may seem so far from our suffering, God's love, power and glory are nearer than we believe.

And they will make all things new.

Praise be to God.

And last thing I'm going to get to that this is when you'll know that we're at the end of the sermon today.

Okay.

One thing we're not used to, having to fight against the empire for our faith in these days.

We hear about stories of persecution in our time.

They're really not persecution.

It's pretty easy to be a follower of Jesus in America.

In fact, what we're a little bit used to in our time is that people in the highest places with the most power will exploit Christianity to get more power.

What, Ross, would people do such a thing?

They sure would.

But it's all the same today that if we trust Jesus and stand up for what Jesus actually said and did and died for, then we're going to get into some trouble.

Good trouble.

You will get in the good trouble of Jesus, the best kind of trouble.

If you are filled with the same love, power and glory that was in his risen life, you will gain life and you will build people up and be a part of something so much greater than yourself.

So I want to walk you through this story today.

To me, the best story that's ever been told, because it's Real were in Matthew, the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 28.

And I want to tell you that the way that the trajectory of the story goes in all of the Bible, for that matter, and all of life, it goes from like, bleak, darkness, it seems really bleak.

And then there are people sitting in the darkness for a while, waiting, and then a glimmer of hope and then a breakthrough.

Bleakness, waiting, glimmer of hope, breakthrough.

All right, here we go.

After the Sabbath, the Jewish Sabbath was from Friday evening to Saturday evening.

Jesus died at about 3 o' clock in the afternoon on a Friday, sometime in the afternoon.

That's what we call Good Friday, after the Sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning.

What's the first day of the week?

Sunday, in their time.

I thought Jesus rose three days later.

Ross.

Well, no, he rose on the third day.

Friday's day one, Saturday's day two.

Sunday's the third day after the Sabbath.

As the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb.

Here's the point.

They had been waiting for roughly 40 hours, something like that, about 40 hours.

The number 40 in the Bible is always a period of trial, of wilderness and waiting.

Jesus, before he launches his public ministry, spends 40 days in the wilderness, not eating or drinking, and he is tempted by the accuser, the devil.

The Israelites in the book of Exodus are in the wilderness, the desert, for 40 years.

These women, it ain't been that bad, but they've been sitting in this brutal fact of Jesus's death for 40 hours.

And they're waiting.

And I wonder if that's how it is for you right now.

You've been sitting in a crisis.

You've been sitting in sadness or doubt or confusion, the unknown.

And you're waiting and hoping and praying for a sign for a breakthrough.

They were too.

Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to the tomb.

It's that time of year.

Every time we say it in every story, the women saw Jesus first.

If it weren't for the women, we wouldn't know.

All right, Every year, women, you get a.

Get a plug for that.

And suddenly there was a great.

Do we need to do some jumping jacks?

And suddenly there was a great.

All right, you're with me.

For an angel of the Lord descending from Haman, Heaven came and rolled back the stone and sat on it.

That's a guy from another story, not this one.

That's for another day.

An angel of the Lord descending from heaven.

Haman came back, came and rolled Back the stone and sat on it.

This is almost the symbol of.

This is.

It's hard for us to receive this, but this is almost like a mic drop moment from God.

This is a very heavy stone.

Heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy.

Rolled in front of the tomb.

And the angel is just sitting on it and chilling.

Like, yeah, I made quick work of that.

That's easy for me.

And it's kind of.

It's that first glimmer of hope, that sign, like, what is going on here?

And that's kind of like the beginning of like the glory that's breaking in in this story.

So like I said, the story goes from bleakness and darkness and waiting to a sign of hope to the glory breaking in for fear of him.

The guard shook and became like dead men.

This is a theme throughout the scriptures from the moment Jesus is born until he is raised.

After he is raised, when people encounter God's glory, they're terrified in a good sort of way.

So let's go back to Christmas.

Let's have Christmas in April for a minute.

Back when the shepherds who were in the field.

Go back to Charlie Brown, Linus.

The shepherds were keeping their flock by night.

And the angel of the Lord appeared and they were what?

They were so afraid.

Right back then, the shepherds in that story, that's Luke 2, I believe, they encounter the angels, the glory of God, and it's like, whoa, what's happening?

It's a good kind of terror.

And it happens here, too.

The angel said to the women, the women are afraid too.

Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus who is crucified.

He is not here, for he has been raised as he said.

Come see the place where he lay.

Then go quickly and tell his disciples he's been raised from the dead.

And indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee.

There you will see him.

This is my message for you.

I want to play back some the elements of the good news here.

Okay, let's go back.

Number one, something about this good news is right off the bat, the angels acknowledges, acknowledge that suffering is a part of our reality on earth, that things are not as they should be.

God doesn't skip over how hard our life here is.

I know the angel says that you are looking for Jesus crucified.

You went through that.

I know that's what you're stuck in right now.

It's hard.

The suffering seems like the reality.

I know that's where you're stuck.

And then part two of the good news, well, it's that the transformation has broken in.

A new creation has started.

I know that you're stuck over here, that life has been hard, that suffering's a part of your reality.

But a new creation has begun.

Come and see it.

Glory has broken in like you've never seen before.

And I want you to come and see it.

A new creation has begun.

Something like you can't imagine.

And then this is one of my favorite parts.

He is going ahead of you.

Part three of the Good News.

Right now in our lives, it does not matter what death is ahead of us, what darkness is ahead of us, what sin that is keeping us down from the past.

Jesus is ahead of us in the battle.

He is always ahead of us, shepherding us, leading us on to glory.

In this case, he's saying, hey, go to the schmucks who left me for dead, my followers, and tell them I'm still with them.

That's part four of the Good News.

Every single one of those dudes who left me for dead, I'm not going to leave them for dead.

And he will not leave you for dead.

Nothing stands between us now but love.

Go there and you'll see him.

And then the best surprise comes.

So they left the tomb quickly.

Look at that.

With fear and great joy.

Those things don't go together, do they?

Right?

This is a good fear.

Like you've encountered this brilliant glory that has made you realize how small you are, how your reality has been very small.

And things are a lot bigger, bigger and scarier and more wonderful than you ever dreamed.

So it's terrifying and it's joyful, and they run to go tell those fellas who left him for dead.

And then suddenly the goat shows up.

No, not Tom Brady or Michael Jordan.

Sorry, Colts fans.

It's true, he is.

But anyways, Jesus met them and said, it's your turn now.

Suddenly Jesus met them and said, that's a lot more powerful Hallmark card than any of us is going to get.

Suddenly Jesus met them and said, My favorite part of this story, the Christmas story in this one, the thing throughout the whole Bible is that God is so much nearer than we can see, feel or imagine.

They think they've gotten the good news so far.

They think that they've heard something really good.

And then they got an even bigger surprise.

Jesus is near.

He has always been with them.

He'll always be with them.

He says at the end of this gospel, behold, I will be with you until the end of the age.

And they came and took hold of his feet and worshiped him.

Then Jesus said to them again, don't be afraid.

Go and tell my brothers and sisters to go to Galilee.

There they will see me.

There they will see me.

This is the good news.

This is the story that sparked a movement, because it's not just a story for them.

It was real.

They encountered something that was so real, so life altering that no threat of death could get them to give it up.

And we're sitting here talking about it today because it was so real, so powerful, so life altering.

They had a peace in their lives that surpassed understanding, as the Gospels say.

So I have two more things to tell you, and then I'm done.

Okay?

Are you still with me?

Okay.

I have to tell you about someone named Muriel Rose.

I was a chaplain at St Vincent Hospital, and when someone is about to die as a chaplain, you will get called there to sit with them and help them walk through this moment.

And when I got to Muriel, she had a couple of days to live.

And when I got to her, I was already surprised at the lightness in her spirit, the sort of radiance in her face.

A lot of times when you get to folks when they're in this moment, it's not like that.

There's a heaviness about them and a great fear.

She spoke in a very soft spoken way to me and just.

But she said, ross, I'm very afraid.

I'm very afraid.

And so I just sat with her.

We call it the Ministry of Presence.

I'm going to let you in on a little secret that might be disappointing, okay?

I have no more answers about what happens after we die than the next person.

I know what I believe, but I can't go like, hey, this is exactly what happens next.

Chill out.

It's going to be all right.

I just let her with me, dig down into her soul to rediscover the things she knew and experienced and believed throughout her whole life.

I let her just dig down for the anchor for her soul that she had going into that moment.

And she started talking about it.

And then as she kept talking about it, I realized for her, it wasn't just superstition.

It wasn't just like, don't walk under the ladder.

Or else.

She didn't just have some belief that comforted her for the bad things.

She actually experienced something.

She believed something.

And when she discovered that, I'm telling you guys, there was a peace, there was a lightness that washed completely over again.

The scriptures say it's a peace that surpasses understanding.

I Got called back to her the next day because she had asked for the Eucharist.

She was a Catholic lady.

She had.

She experienced the Eucharist, which is communion, and she was smiling.

She was joyful, light as a feather.

And she died that day.

And her daughter sent me a card the next week, thanking me.

Can you imagine thanking me?

I want to thank her.

I'm talking about her today because she taught me again, like, the power of this story, the power of belief.

Superstition will not give you the peace she had in that moment.

It will not.

It will not.

And this is why I disagree with Stevie.

You know, we're towards the end now, folks.

This is why I disagree with you, Stevie.

I think it's the opposite.

I think if you believe only in things you understand, then you will suffer.

I think if you believe in only things you understand, you will suffer.

I tell you right now, I do not understand gravity.

I believe in it.

I do not understand the Big Bang.

I think that's probably how it happened.

Maybe when God said, let there be light, the Big Bang happened.

Boom.

In this universe that we're now a small, teeny, tiny little speck in started racing into expansion.

I do not understand astrophysics.

I promise you that.

I got a C in Chemistry 115 at Purdue.

That was a sign.

Time to stop with the sciences.

I don't understand that, but I believe it.

And I'll tell you this.

I do not understand fullness, the mystery of Jesus.

But this skeptic.

This skeptic believes it so deeply, I wonder about you.

Do you believe it today?

I did not ask if you understand it.

I did not ask if you understand it.

Do you believe it?

Yes.

There's the evidence.

I gave you my rational argument for Christianity.

I needed that at one time.

I really did, because I'm a skeptic.

God, thank you for loving me still.

But now I've experienced it.

I've seen the Holy Spirit at work through people like Muriel.

I've seen the Holy Spirit at work through you.

I've seen improbable things happen.

God has taught me how to do irrational things, like love my enemies, pray for people who are mean to me.

And it's changed my heart, made me actually love them deep down.

It's made me a pastor.

I didn't want to be a pastor.

No way.

Sometimes I still don't.

Did I say the quiet part out loud?

Shoot.

I can't quit it.

I won't.

If this isn't my job, I'll keep doing it.

Because there's only one reality to me.

Him.

There's only one hope to me.

His resurrection.

There's only one mission that's worth being a part of his and being a part of it every day has been my greatest joy.

Loving his people is my greatest joy.

Being a part of his resurrection story is my greatest joy.

And I want to tell you today that you have received the invitation to be a part of it all over again.

I'm not inviting you.

He is.

Blessed are those who will believe without seeing.

This invitation is coming to you all the time, my friends.

All the time.

The God invitation.

Sometimes it comes to you through the sunrise.

If you're looking, if you're not doing this, which I do it too.

I did it too.

Man.

I really tried to work on my social media stuff for Easter.

It didn't change.

This morning I got up first thing and I was like, I gotta see what's on the Instagram.

If you, if you're looking up and noticing there's an invitation in the sunrise and the sunset, if you're listening, the kindness of your neighbors is an invitation.

Even the darkness sometimes, sometimes Mary Oliver says, like something like, I found the darkness was a gift too.

There's sometimes an invitation in the dark.

It's Jesus whispering, come, follow me.

Come follow me.

And he will show you the greatest mysteries, the greatest purpose.

Happy Easter.

Let's pray.

Lord, we believe.

Help our unbelief.

Help us to understand what is ours to understand.

Expand our knowledge, our wisdom, but what is not ours to understand.

Give us faith, give us perseverance, give us hope and help us to be your Easter people.

Not just today, but Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday alongside our neighbors, our co workers in the places where we live, work, learn and play.

Fill us with your love, the love of the heavens, so that it may pour out for a new creation.

Amen.

Thank you for participating in the conversation happening at Heaven Earth Church.

Your next opportunity to do so live is this Sunday morning, 9:30am Eastern Time, either at the main campus at 309 East Main in Whiteland, Indiana, or online at YouTube Live.

That's@YouTube.com HeavenEarth Church.

The audio podcast is always available at Apple Podcast and on Spotify.

You can help others find out about the Heaven Earth Church podcast by going to Apple Podcasts and or Spotify and leaving a five star rating and your review instructions on how to do just that and links are in the show notes.

You can always find out more by going to the church website heavenearthchurch.org we.

Want to thank you for spending time with us today.

My name is Ross Stackhouse, the pastor to Heaven Earth Church.

And you may think out there that your story is over, but in fact, your faith story may just be beginning.

If you want more information about our church or you're interested in the next step, you can go to heavenorthchurch.org Otherwise,.

We look forward now with the message for Easter Sunday.