I
t has been a really wonderful weekend. Good Friday and Saturday our church had our annual downtown Santa Cruz art display of the story of the arrest, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. The city allows us to set up pretty large creative displays of the various "stations" of the passion week. Each artist has the freedom to create an interpretive display of the narrative beginning in the garden of Gethsemane and Jesus' prayer of agony to the resurrection.
We have specific a numbered display by each art piece which indicates what Scripture the art piece is based from and the artist's description to explain the piece. Cheryl Isaacson and a team of artists and others who help put it all together, do a wonderful job with it. It is amazing to go down there, and see hundreds of people downtown walk through it reading the story of the resurrection and pondering it all through the art. 
These photos really don't capture the essence of it and I only posted a couple of the art pieces here - you can click on each one to see it larger. 
The tomb is always interesting to see how it will be portrayed and this year Shannon Marie, who became a Christian about 2 years ago put together a large white room with 8 foot high walls and assembled it right on the sidewalk. She explained that the white represented purity, the empty bed (instead of a rock slab) represented peace and safety and it was fascinating to see people walk within it.
Then today, we had 3 worship gatherings all in the morning 8:30, 10:00 and 11:30. Being a fairly new church, a little over 3 years old, we aren't yet sure what to expect attendance-wise on Easter, but a lot more people came than we expected, we ran out bulletins and it was pretty packed out. The choir was great and helped lead us in worship, the whole thing felt so resurrection-centered in every aspect. We brought the tomb (I should say "they" brought the tomb) back to the church building and reassembled it as the centerpiece on the stage area. We started a new teaching series which is going to walk through seven of the "I am" statements of Jesus from the book of John. This week, we taught from John 11 and focused on Jesus saying "I am the resurrection and the life". I tried to explain the incredible statement He was making, not that He raised Lazarus from the dead, which was amazing in itself, but the fact that Jesus said He is the resurrection. I talked about the reality of death, the reality of sin, and that it is Jesus and what happened at the cross and resurrection which brings eternal life as we "believe".
We had given people nails as they walked in and after the teaching, people came forward up to the "tomb" where they left the nail (which symbolized the crucifixion and death) and laid it on the bed which had the Scripture verses from John 11 and also the "He is risen, He is not here" passage. They then took a marigold yellow flower which we had all arounf the outside entry of the "tomb", which I had explained represented the eternal life Jesus was talking about and new life through faith in the resurrected Jesus and the gospel.
After the 3 worship gatherings, we went to Becky's dad's grave site (just Becky, myself, Katie and Claire). It would have been his birthday yesterday, so we wanted to go out there. I had mentioned him in the teaching on the resurrection as an example of someone who had put faith in Jesus and followed Him and how he died 3 years ago. We had planned to go visit his gravesite today, and I shared how we will be standing near or above where his body is buried, but he is not there. He is in the presence of Jesus because he had believed and followed Jesus. 
When we got there, it turned out that Becky's mom had been there earlier that day and left a little note on a 3 x 5 card on the memorial marker that said it all. It quoted the passage about Jesus where it said "He is risen, He is not here." and a "PTL".
"Jesus said to her 'I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in Me will never die." - John 11:25-26
