Recently, I was reminded of a Far Side cartoon.

It was a picture of a guy sitting on a cloud, obviously in heaven. His legs are dangling, and no one else is around. The caption has his words: “I wish I’d brought a magazine!”

That would be a poor excuse for heaven, wouldn’t it? Sometimes we have that fear that life with God will be boring, whether here and now or in the next life. What we long for, though, is for a life with God that really makes a difference in our lives. And the great news of Easter is that life now can be lived in freedom and power. So what causes a cartoon like that to be drawn?

Too many times–and Easter can become one of those times–too many times we bundle up and package the message of Jesus so carefully and properly that we miss out on the messy, out of the box, life changing power that came into our world in Jesus Christ.

When the message of Jesus becomes too neat and tidy, two very bad things happen.

Some people think the message isn’t for them, because they aren’t neat and tidy people. They think Jesus isn’t for them because they’re a little rough around the edges. That’s the first bad thing. The second is that even the ones who believe and follow the good news of Jesus can miss out on its power…the power of God to literally erupt right in the middle of a mundane Monday and explode with energy and healing and joy!

This morning, on Easter Sunday, we are celebrating an untidy God! We are worshipping the God who knows no boundaries, who plays no favorites, who places no limits on whom he will love. We are joyfully reminding each other that the power to raise Jesus from the dead is not stuck somewhere back in Palestine 2000 years ago, but it is literally ready to explode right here in this room, or right in the middle of your dinner next Wednesday.

Easter is a day to remind ourselves that our neat and tidy boxes are like a tomb with a stone ready to be rolled away. Easter is a day to remind ourselves that we are not like the Pharisees, people of the white washed tombs; we are Jesus people, people of the empty tomb!

The rules of life…the deadening, confining, nay-saying, depressing way “the world works”…it was destroyed and cast aside and new life was forever breathed into our world when God breathed life back into Jesus.

This is the good news of Easter!

This is our message of hope. Turn with me, if you will, to Acts chapter 10, and let’s hear Peter talk about the unrestrained gift and power God brings. You’ll find it on page 1067 in the bibles in front of you, Acts 10: 34. [READ 10:34-35]

That’s the good news Peter brings, but let’s back up just a little bit.

I like to remind myself that even though Peter seems so together here, he’s not a bland, safe, perfect guy.

Peter’s the one who, when Jesus went to wash his feet, said “No way! Not MY feet.” Peter’s the one who said he’d never deny he knew Jesus, and then did it three times the night before Jesus was crucified.

And Peter doesn’t stay perfect after this powerful sermon, either. Paul says in Galatians that he had to oppose Peter to his face, because Peter was doing things that made the Gentiles feel they were unaccepted by God, even AFTER Peter makes this great speech about how God doesn’t show favoritism.

Here is a flawed human being who is able to speak the truth about God, who is able to participate powerfully with God in changing the course of human history.

Just before Peter says what we’re looking at today in Acts 10, he had his world rocked.

Peter had always been a good Jew, always kept himself separate from the God-forsaken outsiders, the Gentiles, always eaten only the proper, kosher food that God intended for good Jews to eat.

But it’s God who leads him to break those boundaries, God who gives a vision encouraging him to eat anything, God who leads Peter to go to the “outsiders”…it’s God himself who destroys the very neat and tidy boxes that Peter thought God himself had created!

Going to the house of a Roman soldier named Cornelius, and seeing that God had been speaking to this “outsider” just like he had been speaking to Peter, this is what makes Peter say, “Now…I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism.”

No favoritism! It’s not for good people only! There are no boundaries to God’s love!

Peter speaks what is absolutely and completely true of God. Nothing and no one in all of creation is left out, set aside, too far away from experiencing the love and forgiveness of God. In a moment of crystal-clear thinking after everything he once knew had been turned on its head, Peter speaks the best and truest words about Easter. The good news of Easter is so radically topsy-turvy that no one is kept away from it.

On the first Easter long ago, God rolled back the immovable stone of death. Because of that, today no one is locked and buried away from the love of God through Jesus Christ!

But somehow people are still getting the impression that they aren’t good enough for Jesus.

Even Peter made some think that.

After this powerful experience of eating with Cornelius the gentile and speaking truth with such power, there came the time Paul spoke about so critically in Galatians, the time when Peter, fearful of what others would think, stopped sharing a table with the non-Jews.

And somehow, we manage to still do this, too. We make people think church and religion are about the clothes you wear and the language you use, drawing a line between “us” and “them”. Rightly or wrongly, one of the biggest barriers for new people to join the Jesus movement is the perception that they aren’t welcome, that they don’t measure up, that they don’t belong.

So Easter and Peter’s words are a perfect reminder to us that we have to fight the human tendency to limit and box up and parcel out access to God. God’s love will not be contained!

It is for everyone, everywhere, any time, any place. We all belong, we were all created, to be welcomed into God’s family, ushered in by Jesus, the one called “the firstborn of all creation.” We all have our place made for us because of Jesus, every one of us. No exceptions!

The first good news of Easter is that it’s for everyone!

Maybe this morning you are here, simply because it’s Easter and it seems like church is a good place to be on Easter. We’re glad you’re here! But as you look around at perhaps an unfamiliar building filled with unfamiliar people who look like they have it all together, you might be tempted to think that this just isn’t for you.

You might think you don’t deserve this, or you don’t belong, or you aren’t welcome. You might think that, because of what some people who claim to follow Jesus have said or done to you in the past. And if that’s true, I want to apologize. We don’t always get it right.

We aren’t selling a religion or controlling access to some kind of special club. We are people, at our best, who have been changed by God and who want everyone to know they are welcome to follow Jesus right into a right relationship with the Creator God.

It may be this morning that all you need to hear are Peter’s words: “God does not show favoritism.” It may be this morning that all you need is to say back to God, “I’m sorry I’ve run away from you, I’m sorry I’ve believed lies about you. I want to be accepted by you. Will you forgive me and accept me?”

My hope and my prayer is that some of you today will say that to God for the first time, and begin your journey into God’s family! If you do make that decision this morning, will you tell someone? Tell the person you came with, or someone you know already follows Jesus, or tell me. Let us celebrate that you’ve accepted that Jesus is for you!

The good news of Easter doesn’t end with accepting God’s love and forgiveness.

For us who’ve been a part of church for a good part of our lives, for us who’ve believed the right things about Jesus for a long time, there is earth-shattering good news as well.

The power of God to forgive, to heal, to break the power of evil in the world, is available to us. The power of God’s Holy Spirit is waiting to surprise and upend us!

Let’s look further at Peter’s words, beginning in verse 36. Peter wants to make sure to remind everyone (us included) about Jesus, the flesh and blood Jesus who walked and breathed and sweated and loved on the same earth you and I live in. [read 10:36-38]

“Because God was with him.”

Jesus lived with the Holy Spirit and power. What did this mean? He turned the regular rules of life upside down.

Because of the Holy Spirit, Jesus did good things. He never failed to heal those he tried to heal, because the power of God is greater than any disease or evil in the world. Evil and sickness and death were conquered by the Holy Spirit through Jesus long before the first Easter. The Holy Spirit is the power of God to break all the confining rules we believe are unbreakable in our world.

You’d think that the death of a man who brought such Holy Spirit power would be the end. But Peter reminds us that was NOT the end. [READ 10:39-41]

Who were the ones who killed Jesus?

The people who didn’t accept that Jesus was from God, the people who wanted to make boundaries and say, “NO, this man doesn’t belong in our religious circles”; those were the people who killed Jesus.

But boundaries and evil and sin are not the end of God’s power…they’re just an opportunity for God to show his ultimate authority, power, and love.

God raised Jesus from the dead. Jesus was seen by his friends, and his friends were invited to accept forgiveness and live in the power of God’s Holy Spirit.

Way too often, we in the church stop at the forgiveness. Because it is such a good thing! It is such a powerful thing to be forgiven for what we have done wrong. It is such a powerful, needed, amazing thing to be forgiven by God that too often we stop there.

But God pushes forward, as Lecia talked about so beautifully last week. There is the hope of ALL of Jesus living through ALL of who I am, the hope that the Holy Spirit can live in me, doing good and healing others and breaking the oppression in our world.

Could it really be true that the Jesus kind of Holy Spirit power is available to everyone?

Yes, it really is true! Our good, decent, tidy lives really can explode with the life-changing power of God’s Holy Spirit. It’s not confined to certain holy people. It’s not confined to something long ago.

We see this in the bible, right after Peter spoke. The Holy Spirit was poured out on the “outsiders” right in front of everyone’s eyes. [READ 10: 44-46] The same Holy Spirit that gave Jesus such power came into the lives of those “outsiders” who listened and believed what Peter said about Jesus.

My hope and prayer for those of us this morning who already name Christ as our Savior is this: that we would stop giving ourselves all the reasons for why the power of God no longer works in our world today like it used to, that we would stop telling ourselves that forgiveness is all there is to the good news of Easter.

My hope and prayer is that as we believe that no boundary exists to God’s love and power, we learn to wait expectantly for God’s power to turn our mundane world upside down! My hope and prayer is for each and every one of us to let God’s Holy Spirit breath new life into us.

May none of us be content with the boundaries we currently have for our life with God. May we see in our lives and our church the limitless love and power of God alive and at work. And may God’s continually new works in our lives draw others to come and follow the risen, Jesus Christ!