I take my thoughts this morning from Matthew chapter 27, starting in verse 45. Did you stand for reading from God's Word? Now, from the sixth hour, there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice saying, ilai, ilai, lema sabakhtani, that is my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And some of the bystanders hearing it said, this man is calling Elijah and one of them at once ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink. But the other said, wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him. And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit and behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom and the earth shook and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened in many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep, raised and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection. They went into the holy city and appeared to many when the centurion and those who were with them keeping watch over Jesus saw the earthquake and what took place. They were filled with awe and said, truly this was the Son of God. This is the Word of the Lord. Maybe seated. I am not a political pundit nor am I a prognosticator of how the outcome will be. But I am almost certain that you will never hear this speech ever given by any political candidate running for office, ready? My fellow Americans, I want to thank you thus far for your support in my campaign. I'd like to thank especially those moneyed interests with deep pockets without whose support I'd be given this speech on the back of a pickup truck and eating two tacos from Jack in the box. I want to thank you especially for always smiling as you would insinuate your expectations of political reciprocity later. And thanks also to your legal teams and your public relations officers who, when you start acting in untoward ways, do their best to shield me from association with you. Thanks for that. Thank you also for your support of me in the issues, issues which I really don't know much about and I really don't have much conviction for issues that are full of statistics. I love statistics because my handlers will drill them to me just before I go on stage. I can remember them more easily that way, statistics that really don't have much meaning and not that you'd ever want to look them up or verify them anyway. I want to give a shout out to my wife who has been relentless in her willingness to maintain the illusion that I'm as wonderful as my haircut and my dental work suggest and only by me promising you to keep you well dressed and well-coffed and giving you just the very possibility of being to hobnob soon with influential exotic people. Love you babe, thanks. Mostly I just want to thank you, the little people, for your personal support because look, while I have a deep interest in you and in the country, really this campaign is mostly about me. I want to win. I need to win. I need to feel good about myself. I need this. The greatest good and really I'm in good company because most of you are the same. Your greater good is no greater than your own good. We're made for each other. So let me conclude by saying a couple words that don't mean anything to you or to me. God bless you and God bless the United States of America. You'll never hear that speech. Anybody that gives that speech, their campaign's over. The hall goes quiet, the men's but the olives back into the martini glasses and the campaign director is on the floor in need of smelling salts. It's a cynical view of politics, I know, but there's a reason for that. There's someone that even commented this week that November 2012 will be the greatest auction of our generation. It's cynical, but there may be more truth to it than I admit. Or we'd care to admit it. The Lord Jesus was no politician. He did not grease palms. He did not take kickbacks. He did not tell people what they wanted to hear in order to curry their favor. But on the cross, he gave his most transparent speech. To the extent that some who listened might have been almost embarrassed by what he said. Scandalized at his great transparency in light of all that he'd said already, hitherto about God's greatness and his goodness and his loving kindness. How could he say such agonizing laments about his father? And yet, brothers and sisters, I would say to you that in that transparency, he speaks to the very center of our being by addressing two issues that could be more fundamental to our existence. In his speech, he speaks to us about fear and he speaks to us about glory. He teaches us about fear. He knows fear. He understands fear. He experienced fear for many times in his ministry. He spoke with a foreboding tone, anticipating the day when he would be delivered into the hands of sinful men and executed for unsubstantiated crimes. And as that moment approached, the foreboding shifts to whole complex of emotions that include fear. He is sorrowful, the text says, when he invites some of his disciples to Terry with him in the garden while he prayed. He is wistful that there might be just some other way that God might accomplish his will. He is so anguished that his tears are like blood. Brothers and sisters, we have all tasted those emotions at one time in our lives. And isn't it not true that when we drink the cup of those emotions there is not an undertone of fear that accompanies it? He knows fear. He was faced with the temptation to fear. But when he spoke from across, he taught us this about fear. He taught us what we must most fear. We must most fear abandonment and rejection from God. His words of agony, surely, were coming from his physical pain. They surely were coming from his relational pain and having been abandoned and having been denied and having been betrayed. But he chooses words to summarize his fear by crying out, my God, where are you? And in doing so he expresses to us what we must most fear. The cry of dereliction of believing ourselves abandoned and rejected by God. That's our greatest fear or at least it must be. On its own terms, that lesson is beneficial in its own right. It is both helpful and beneficial to know what is the greater of two dangers. If I am playing baseball in the front yard with my son and I hit him up hot fly and he begins to run backwards and begins to strain and tense up tracking the arc of the ball and holding out an outstretched hand to catch the earth-bound object. He is fearful about dropping the ball but if at that same moment if the path takes him into the middle of the street and I don't warn him about an uncommon car with a driver that is distracted by his cell phone, then he will devote disproportionate attention to the lesser of two fears. It is of great benefit to know what you must most fear in any given moment and Jesus from the cross is specifying the greater danger. And he is echoing what he said before in a simpler day. It was disciples of Matthew 10 when he says, do not fear about those who may kill the body but do fear he who can kill both the body and the soul and hell. That's what we must most fear and that's what he teaches us but brothers and sisters in teaching us what we must most fear. Jesus is not inviting us to live in fear for it's what proceeds from his most transparent speech that speaks to what he did about that greatest fear for us. And here is what he teaches us about glory for in the wake of his last breath glorious things happen. The temple curtain is ripped torn into the earth shakes men and women come from their tombs and signifies significant things for us all. When that temple is torn it means many things but we know at least it means this that with Jesus's death everything changes. But there is an end to a kind of separation that exists between God and man by virtue of his spilled blood never again when we have to spill the blood of goats and bulls. His blood would be enough from that point forward our access to the father in heaven would be unlike it had ever been before by his spirit that's what his death signified that's the glorious thing. And when those who are dead walked again the glorious thing that happens is it tells us that death will no longer have a stranglehold on humanity that it has had forever those are glorious things. And when those glorious things happen Jesus if you will teaches us where to find our greatest glory. Glory that is in the favor of God signified the ripping signified by the ripping of the temple curtain and glory that rests in freedom from the fear of death signified by the rising of men and women to new life that is where we find our greatest glory. Jesus celebrated in the innocence of children he celebrated real faith and real love he passed us all to celebrate new healing but those glorious things that happen in the wake of his final breath is meant to tell us that's where we have to find our greatest satisfaction that's where we have to find our greatest hope that's where we have to find our most glorious joy. He means to teach us about fear and about glory doesn't just teach us about fear and about glory he means to transform them in us because brothers and sisters I think we would all admit that how much of our lives consists of managing our fears and pursuing our glories. They're distinct but they're inseparable linked and by Jesus's transparent speech he comes to transform them by inviting us to filter all our fears all our glories through his cross so that they might no longer be all consuming but instead God endearing what do I mean. We all fear we fear whether we're going to have enough money when we can no longer work we fear about what our children will be like when they grow up we fear what will it be like to die itself we all fear we all go through that light but what happens if fear is left to itself it is consuming. And we forget about our God and we turn into innumerable things irrational maniacal ridiculous things to console our souls that's what we do I know that because that's what I do that's what you do Jesus transforms our fears by inviting us to filter our fears what what filters do filters take something and you run something through it and it allows some of it to remain but it it pulls back. It's something that is no longer needed it's not as if Jesus is teaching us to be stoics and not to be afraid of anything but he is teaching us to see our fears in the context of our greatest fear and then to realize that he has solved our greatest fear by his dying when we place our fears against our greatest fear and we see how he has resolved that greatest fear in his death and we are both convicted and consoled about our other fears. And convicted because then we realize that looked be honest most of our abiding fears come from the fact that we really don't believe he solved our greatest fear and as we're convicted we're then consoled because we realize if he can solve that then why wouldn't he be able and willing to help us face whatever other fears we have with peace he transforms our fears by asking us to filter them through his cross. He does the same with our glories we all glory in many things we glory in our achievements we glory in our talents we find great satisfaction and gratification in what our kids do or choose not to do in a given moment we glory in that and there is certainly no harm and no foul in glory and taking great gratification in any number of those things but it's the same way with our fears if left to themselves something changes because we change them. It's our instinct to take all of the things that were satisfied with and we try to replicate them throughout our lives just to preserve the feeling just to preserve the satisfaction we do everything we can and then we let them define us we let them tell us who we are and what we're worth to the extent that when they fade we fade with them. And our lives devolve either into a delusion or into nostalgia and either way we're lost and Jesus says come unto me. Filter your glories through the glory that I have given you at the foot of my cross take whatever else you might find satisfaction in and give praise to God. Give thanks to God for whatever you might glory in us on this earth not because Jesus wants to chide us for taking satisfaction in what we might have done or what promotion we might have gotten or what we might be proud of but so that so that we don't let it define us so much that when they're gone we're gone. He's not trying to diminish our joy in what we experience. He's just teaching us to put our glories in context so that we don't forget that the God who is is the God who gives us our glories and in remembering that we are more endeared to him at each moment. Brothers and sisters you see how fears and glories are inseparably linked unless we're filtering our fears and glories through his cross. It will be fear that fuels the pursuit of your glories unless it is Jesus who filters our fears and our glories through the cross. It will be the frustration we find in seeking our glories that will create fear in us so what does it mean to observe this day. With every holy day the essence of that holy day is often lost in its trappings. What this day what this cross what this Jesus who spoke transparently to you is asking of you is that you would consider again what is your greatest fear and how he solved it and how all your other fears are secondary to that one that he solved. It is an invitation to filter them all through what he's done. There are some of you in this room this morning who have no idea why you're here except for some indefinable urge to perhaps consider Jesus again and it is to you that I say would you allow his transparent speech to be his message unto you that if you will trust in his blood then he will keep your fears from becoming so distorted as to consume you and will allow you to take great glory in what you do have but keep you from glorying in the wrong things because you are far too easily pleased and to the rest in this room who have yielded to Jesus but who are either beset with abiding fears or who are dulled to the glory of God by everything else that you're satisfied with. I invite you this day to cultivate a new habit of filtering both your fears placing them against his cross filtering your glories placing them against his greater glory for you that you might learn to finally observe Easter as more than a day off. But as a day that sets a precedent for the rest of your days brothers and sisters it is unlikely we will ever have a holy transparent politician but we will always have a holy transparent Lord who sees through you and died for you anyway that's love that's glory that's our joy in the name of the Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit.