Easter Lemonade

Today was chores day. I am detailed to do the gardening. I have to cut the hedge and the grass. That’s a four hour job! Lisa in detailed to clean the house. Before I start the chores I have to write up my notes for the Easter Day talk and finish writing the epic poem I will deliver in the service tomorrow. I’m in “the office” when I hear strange noises coming from downstairs where Lisa is rumoured to be cleaning. Cries of “Ahhh!” and “Nooo!” can be heard floating up the stairs. Worried Lisa might be in difficulty with a mop and a bucket, I run downstairs to see what’s happening. Lisa is drenched! There’s liquid everywhere: on the floor on the ceiling and on the windows. “what’s happened?” I ask. “It’s lemonade!” Lisa replies. Lemonade? How is there lemonade everywhere? It turns out Lisa had decided to clear the passage way of the half full bottles of lemonade that have been sitting there for ages. And when she took the top off one bottle it exploded - literally. It exploded over the floor the ceiling and the windows! It was a mess. A real mess. And Lisa was covered in lemonade! So Lisa’s job new job, was to clean up the mess. Reminds me of Easter. When there’s a mess someone has to clean it up. And there was a mess. A huge mess. Adam and Eve did not choose the way of love and the mess began. But the mess deepened. That’s the nature of evil: it takes what is good and twists it. And everything got twisted. Some messes you have to sort out yourself. But some messes are way too big for that. And we couldn’t sort out the mess we had created. No amount of cleaning up was going to do it. So God did it. His love is so big and so deep and so wide that he chose to clean up the mess we had created. Jesus chose the way of love. Jesus chose to leave heaven, to live between the dreaming and the coming true with us, here on earth. He chose to go to the cross. He chose to feel the pain, feel the hurt. To hear the insults, to take the beating. He chose to be in the mess to clean up the mess. For in that act of going to the cross that’s what he did. He came to us in the mess that we might be free of the mess. We have to dwell in the mess for now, but one day, one fine day, there will be no mess. No mess at all. Between the dreaming and the coming true, the one who came to us in the mess, comes to us still. May you know him come to you this Easter time.