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Resurrecting New York City’s Soul on Easter Sunday 3-31-24 · OneLegUpAlex Media

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  Sure love day for me change a little sidewalk profits to start our Easter morning
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  here on the Alex Garrett podcast Network. And as we sit here on March
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  thirty first, twenty twenty four, tons of thoughts ruminating through my soul,
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  through my brain today, and one of them is first and foremost that Christ
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  did not die in vain megachurches. Aside, there are good people every day
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  who do God's work, whether it be here in America, whether it be
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  overseas. And I think one of those people, unfortunately got killed the same
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  week of Good Friday, which Cardinal Dolan put points out in his New York
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  Post column op ed for Holy Weekend, for Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday.
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  I'm gonna post that in the description below because it's a very very powerful,
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  powerful article on the life of Jonathan Dillar and how he is. Death on
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  the week of Good Friday. And I'm opinionating here too is to me symbolic
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  of someone that sacrifices and gives their all like Jesus did. The city has
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  mourned all week for his loss and his murder, I should say, and
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  rightfully so. And it comes on the heels of a day where a certain
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  sector more than the loss of Christ. See, I wish there was more
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  unity to honor Good Friday like there was to honor Officer Diller, because Christ's
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  not dying in vain. That's a perfect example. Christ gave his life for
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  us. Jonathan Diller gave his life for us and the city. And then
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  there's a ray of hope we on Easter Sunday. Isn't there that life is
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  ever lasting? Life is everlasting? And Easter Sunday proves that. Another thought
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  I thought of today, My dad wanted to see through Easter one more time
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  before the Good Lord called him home last year, and in his hospital ben
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  he set up an Easter train set and an Easter set up before five or
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  six days before he passed. And I knew he wanted to see through Easter.
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  I knew he wanted to have Tom's restaurant one more time before going home
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  to the Lord. And I'm reminded today that his spirit and his life will
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  be everlasting because we continue the tradition today of going up to Saint John the
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  Divine. That is a way I will continue to make his life everlasting is
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  by continuing the traditions he set forth at a very very very young age,
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  and the different places we went to. But I'm thinking when I say Christ
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  does not die in Vain, he did not hang on the cross at three
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  o'clock in the afternoon in Vain. I mean those who roll their sleeves and
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  whether it be ems workers or hospitals or local missions, those are the people
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  that are continuing God's work. I know megachurches get a bad rap, but
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  at the end of the day, we can look aside from that and say,
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  who are the people on the ground besides being in the pulpit this Easter
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  Sunday that are doing God's work. We have to focus on that in this
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  next year. Is not always for who's in the pulpit. And I love
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  our pastors at a good Jefferd Lutheran church, but we're also doing things beyond
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  the pulpit. And that's what we got to think of, is who's doing
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  work beyond the pulpit, Because that was Jesus did not have a pulpit.
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  He had sandals and a mountain to do the sermon on the mount he had
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  walked through town and did great works. That was his pulpit, doing the
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  work, doing God's work. His pulpit was a very nomadic one if you
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  think about it, whether it was the Fisherman's story where he told the fishermen
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  to put down their nets and join him, and they did and they became
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  disciples. So the pulpit is not just in a church. The pulpit is
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  something we can all take to the streets on the streets ministry. That was
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  Jesus ministry on the streets. So I want you to take a good look
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  after listening to this and say, well, who is doing God's work?
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  You may not have affection for the church, but there are others who are
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  bringing God's work to real life and the words into real life by just being
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  in the community, by just doing what Jesus did. I know the cliches,
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  hands and feet of Jesus, but there are those who are being though,
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  being that and making a difference. And those are the people we have
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  to think about and focus on. All Right, So a bishop in Brooklyn
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  gets a bad rap and gets arrested and all this other stuff that that's not
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  God's work. That's not what we should focus on. We should focus on
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  who was doing on the ground ministry. And maybe this year as a commitment
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  to keeping life everlasting, to keeping this commitment, to show that God did
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  not die in Baying, that Christ did not die in Bay. We'll bring
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  those who are doing on the ground ministry, because the pulpit is beyond the
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  church corridors. As much as we love church, it's the extension of the
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  church. What they're doing outside of the pulpit, beyond the pulpit, that
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  really I think matters the most. Those are in the community that matter the
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  most, not just those who go to church on Sunday and that's it.
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  It's how do they continue the work from Sunday through Saturday into Sunday again.
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  How are they in the community Monday through Friday. What are they doing to
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  impact the community beyond the pulpit. Because Jesus did not have a pulpit,
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  His pulpit was a roving one. It was always an action. The Bible
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  shows how in the action he was. His words meant a lot too.
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  But when people hear the stories of how he healed Lazarus and made a blind
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  man, see, those are the stories that this Sunday brings hope that we
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  can be made whole again, even on Easter Sunday. But there were a
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  couple of things. And don't worry. I'm also worried that, you know,
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  for as sacred a place what Israel is, there are gonna be protesters
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  out there today saying how bad Israel is. And that's not the point either.
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  You cannot disrupt a church service and be anti Semitic, You just cannot.
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  That is not who Jesus would want us to be as a society,
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  and who you, if you decide to protest a church service, should be.
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  Israel is a very holy land, a holy ground, and His birth
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  and death and resurrection took place on that ground. So please, if you
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  were thinking about protesting, they don't even do it. Stay away. We
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  don't need anti Semitism on Easter Sunday either, we do not. And that's
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  what I'm my mind also. But let me get to where Cardinal Dolan wrote
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  this in the post, and he said some really interesting things. He wrote
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  some very interesting things. Jesus dying on the cross on Good Friday, with
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  his sobbing mother underneath, with the young beloved disciple Disciple John was with her,
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  Officer Dylan dying with his wife and little boy Ryan mourning him. He
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  says, lots of darkness folks not only in our city, scourged with murders
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  and police officers, crime, drugs, homelessness, violence and fear. Consider
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  Ukraine, Israel, God's I hate it. We could stretch the litany.
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  How much can we take and listen to this very closely well experience history,
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  our very makeup tells us we can take a lot, and we believe this
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  darkness will dissipate. And we are convinced that this evil, hate and suffering
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  does not have the last word. He says, only three months ago at
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  Christmas, we rejoiced as the same Bible reports at midnight, that blackest hour,
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  the people who walked in darkness saw a great light, the Prince of
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  Peace, the one would thirty years later call himself the light of the world.
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  He says, It's as if we realize that the broken, fractured,
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  wounded world is beyond our fixing. We need saving, We need God.
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  Three days. Remember the number three in the Bible means a lot a long
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  time. But here's the light, the promise, the reason we have to
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  go on. Then comes Easter, and this is the line he does.
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  He shares his triumph with those of us who believe God has the last word,
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  those powers who were giggling and teptin's a good Friday afternoon. Sin,
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  Satan, evil, hate, Death are on the run. Jesus is written
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  Risen, so that's correlate Officer Dillon's passing. I'm sorry murder to Jesus's murder
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  on the cross is very powerful, and I hope this Easter Sunday, this
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  soul of the city can be resurrected, and that every one of our souls
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  are resurrected, no matter what denomination. Today's a time for rejuvenation. Have
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  a blessed Easter Sunday, twenty twenty four,