Last night on Easter Sunday, my team (Zealous Love!) put on a program to end our last night in our two-month ministry in Valga, Estonia. The following was my closing message to our friends whom we have come to love fully and deeply:
The past two months, you guys have walked in and out of this café. Perhaps some of you have noticed that the name of this café is “Elutuba,” which translated in English means “The Living Room”. The owner of this café, Alari, named it based on the words of a poor Jewish carpenter from a small, run-down village two thousand years ago. This man named Jesus said, “The thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy. But I have come so that you may have life, and life to the fullest.” Then He declared perhaps the most incredible and astounding words ever uttered. He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”
We have had so many conversations with many of you. We have asked you about the ways, the paths, and the dreams you want to pursue, or are pursuing now. Not only that, but we’ve also talked about truth and purpose. We’ve asked questions and have been asked questions like, “What do you live for? What keeps you moving? What is the foundation of the world you walk in that determines how you walk in it?” And at the end of these two months, I see that we all have our own ways and our truths, and we can disagree in all of them. In fact, I believe that you can walk in whatever way and truth you want. But my question to you today is this: In your way and your truth, do you also have life? And not just life, but life to the fullest? Because what is the way and the truth without the life? What is the point of having all the direction and truth in the world, but have no life at the end of it?
In a few days we’re leaving this café and we don’t know if we’ll ever see you guys again. We don’t know anything. But the one thing we do know – the only thing that is certain for each and every one of us – is death. I find it so interesting that Jesus says He is the way, the truth, and the life. In the history of humanity, no other person makes this claim, and no other person CAN make this claim. Other people have said that they have the way, or they know the truth, but they don’t say they are the way and the truth. And I’ve never heard them also say, that they are the life. No one has the confidence to say that. You know why? Because nothing is more ridiculous than the guy who says, “I am the life” and then dies. Every mouth besides Jesus that has claimed to know the way or to have the truth, is now dead, or will eventually die. And the thing that set Jesus apart for me even more is that He doesn’t just say He is all these things. He actually proves it through death by crucifixion and then life through resurrection. No other way and truth cuts it for me, because no other person tells me that life is worth living to the fullest, and then dignifies this life by not letting death have the last word.
No matter what knowledge or proof or authority you have on this earth, you cannot tell me that life is worth living if you’re going to die, because everything about death tells me that life is not worth living. Death puts an end to life regardless of how meaningful it was. If you don’t believe in a life after death, then death has the victory, and death is what echoes in eternity despite what beautiful glimmer of life you’ve lived. But two thousand years ago, the tomb of Jesus was empty, and two thousand years later, it’s still empty. Jesus is alive! He is the only way and truth that ends not in death, but in life. I look at Jesus, and I can place my way and my truth and my hope not in death, but in the resurrection. Christianity tells me this life is worth living, and worth living to the fullest, because Christ didn’t just die like every single person in human history. He rose.
God didn’t intend for us to die. He intended for us to live. When we rejected this gift by rejecting Him, He didn’t abandon us. He sent His Son, Jesus to live, to die, and to live again. That’s what today is about. And author, Dale Fincher, paints it like this: “Jesus plunged into the icy water of death like a diver searching for lost treasure. And with Easter Sunday, Jesus returns into the bright warm sun, in all his glory, holding that treasure – the gold coin of our humanity.” Our life. And He says, “Because I live, you also will live.”
I have this vision of us running this café, this “Living Room”, in heaven on one of those beautiful, everlasting mornings. And we’re not running it because it’s our ministry on the World Race, or because we have souls to save, but because we want to see your familiar faces walk in. We want to laugh with you. To dance with you. To sit with you. To live with you – to live with you to the fullest, in the glory and light of the One who is life and has made life worth living.
