Why Are We Here?

I gave this sermon at the Appleton Ranch, on Resurrection Sunday, April 20, 2025.

Let’s begin by reminding ourselves that we are here. Breathe in, and feel your lungs inflate. Breathe out, and feel the distinct collection of molecules exit your body. Wiggle your fingers. Stomp your feet. And accept that you are here.

“I am here.”

Yes, you are here. In Colton, California, on April 20, 2025, waiting for the sun to rise at some godforsaken hour because your church told you that your participation might bring you some kind of spiritual fulfillment.

“I am here.”

And as you went to bed last night, you probably thought, “Am I really going to wake up early for this sunrise service?” And when the alarm clock went off this morning you may have even thought,“How about Paradox Church teaches me to see and embrace sleep?!?!?!” But you silenced your alarm and drove with your body and your attitude to this place.

“I am here.”

But why?

Why are you here?

Why are we here?

If you take that question to its extreme limit, then we quickly run into answers, discussions, and musings about the existence of God and random chance, about unbridled chaos and meticulous order, and about the meaning of life. And while I could never answer the question of “Why?” completely, I want to give you three reasons that might help you make sense of why we are here.

First, we are here at this early hour to honor the legacy of the founding mothers of our religion: Mary Magdalene, Mary the Mother of James, Salome, Joanna, and the other unnamed women in the Gospel of Luke. On Friday, after the execution of Jesus, some of these women pushed through their grief and rushed to prepare the body of Jesus for burial before the last hours of daylight from Friday faded away

and the day of rest, Sabbath, officially began. These women did the best they could

but they felt like there was more to do. So they waited patiently for the Sabbath to pass. And then these women woke up at the crack of dawn to travel together at first light to care for the body of Jesus.

And then everything changed.

According to Luke, they discovered an empty tomb, two angels told them Christ conquered the grave, and then these women became the first human beings ever to tell the world the good news of Christ’s resurrection.

And while many rush on to the next chapter of the story, an astute student will stop here and say, “Why were these women the first to bear witness to the resurrection?”

The answer is because they held an uncontainable love for the man knowns as Jesus of Nazareth.

Consider for a moment the gruesome nature of preparing a loved one’s body for burial; particularly when your friend has been maimed and executed. To prepare Jesus’ body for burial, each of these women would have had to, quite literally, come face to face with the worst cruelty humanity can offer. But these women were willing to face the brutality Jesus suffered simply because they wanted to honor the life of Jesus with a proper burial.

As a church, we discuss frequently how we can become more loving people. And when I consider the love of these women, I am inspired as I whisper to myself, “I want to live with that kind of love.”

Resurrection, at its core, is about the courage of love in the face of cruelty.

Every year, we wake up at sunrise to walk in solidarity with these women, the mothers of our faith, so that we might love as courageously as they once loved.

“This is why we are here.”

Second, we are here at this location because we are the recipients of a gift. Thirty-three years ago, I became friends with Carl Appleton in the second grade, and, along with Corey Fuller and Eric Peterson, the four of us became best friends. Carl frequently invited us over to his place, which means my childhood brims with memories of the Appleton Ranch. The four of us played flashlight tag, basketball, surfed the pasture, dared each other to do tricks on the tree swing, hiked up Blue Mountain and jumped all the way down before we realized that our knees didn’t come with lifetime guarantees.

The four of us grew from elementary school to high school from high school to college and then college to grad school. And through all of the changes, we continued to be friends.

After dental school, Carl moved to Maryland with his wife Lisa. And a few years after Carl and Lisa moved, the Christian denomination I worked for showed me the door. Without a lot of options, a handful of people and I decided to start Paradox Church.

Now I don’t know if you know this, but when you start a church, people will tell you what they think, whether you ask for their opinion or not. We heard a lot of criticism from a lot of people inside the denomination. And people I once considered friends, said things that made it difficult for our friendship to continue.

But through all of the criticism and chatter, about a week after Paradox launched,

Stan Appleton, Carl’s dad, attended a gathering with Eric Peterson, and he said to Eric, “So, you guys are starting a church huh?”

“Yeah,” Eric said, “We’ll see how it goes,”

And Stan said, “If your church ever wants to hold any event up at our ranch you are always welcome to bring your church here.”

A few weeks later, Eric, called Stand and asked, “Hey Stan… can we take you up on that offer? Can we hold an Easter Sunrise service at the ranch?”

Without hesitation, Stan said, “Yes.”

Our longest standing tradition at Paradox, more than any meeting location or practice, is our Resurrection sunrise service at the Appleton Ranch. If we include the live streamed service form this location in 2020, today marks the tenth time our church has gathered on this hilltop to celebrate the resurrection.

And while our tenth time together is cause for celebration, there is also an undertone of sadness in this milestone.

Because Stan passed away last year and this is the first time we are holding this event without Stan.

While most of you never met Stan, I need to tell you that Stan LOVED this event and he LOVED hosting it for all of us. No matter what time of year I saw him, Stan would always want to talk to me about Easter sunrise. He loved it so much he even suggested Paradox should do a New Year’s Day Sunrise service. Thankfully, his wife, Carol, talked him off the ledge from that one.

I point all of this out because there is a kind of love that exists as long as the person receiving the love meets certain conditions: As long as they are on the same team as you, or as long as they run at a high production level, or as long as they are part of the same denomination as you, then you can continue to love them, but if they stop any one of those things…

….well the love stops at the same time.

But Stan and Carol both loved me from a very young age until now with a kind of love that transcends religious denominations.

And while they could have questioned our motives or asked us more specifically what we truly believed, or expressed caution at our steps to start church, instead they both said, “Would you like to come over to our place? Why don’t you bring your whole church with you?”

Resurrection, at its core, is about unconditional love. Love that even rises above death.

So if you are wondering why you are here in Colton for the first time, the fifth time, or the tenth time, the reason why is because we are the recipients of an unconditional love from both Stan and Carol Appleton. Carol, who is loving us and hosting us in the here and now and Stan who is loving us from beyond the grave.

“This is why we are here.”

Third, we are here because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The singer/songwriter Ryan O’Neal recently wrote two songs. The first song he named, “Doubt” and the second he named, “Belief.” When he talked about writing the song, “Belief,” O’Neal said that he intentionally wrote the song with really difficult chords on the guitar which require the player to put their hands in uncomfortable and  compromised positions.

He chose to write this song as a metaphor because Ryan O’Neal has found its much harder to believe than it is to doubt.

Believing the man Jesus of Nazareth literally and historically rose from the dead and appeared to a small number of people and no one else can be a difficult thing to believe at times. And for millenniums now, Christian churches used this difficult belief as a litmus test for who is in and who is out.

But shouldn’t the resurrection mean something more than a litmus test?

Growing up, I used to be obsessed with the question, “Is life possible after death? But now, at the age of forty-one, I am obsessed with a different question,“Is life possible before death?”

I believe the answer is, “Yes,” and this is why I follow Jesus Christ.

However, the whole concept of resurrection pushes this question about life before death to the forefront when we encounter the impossible experience of the death of a loved one:

When we bury someone we truly love, the question becomes, “Is life after my loved one’s death still possible?

I believe the answer is, “Yes,”and this is why I follow Jesus Christ.

Resurrection, at its core, is about finding life in the face of death. Weather its your own death, or the death of one you love.

So if you are wondering why we still talk about resurrection, 2000 years after the resurrection supposedly occurred, the reason why is because we are stubbornly holding onto the hope that life is possible before death, life is possible after death, and life is possible, even in death.

“This is why we are here.”

My friends,

May we experience the courageous love of the mothers of our faith, the wonder of unconditional love from people like Stan and Carol Appleton, and life before death, life during death, and life after death.

This is why we are here.

Amen.