Boomer the 4th… and Why Easter Changes You Now

Happy Easter. (Yes, I’m Still Here.)

From Pastor John — the priest of nothing, the king without a castle, the boat without an ocean, the man who has been told at least four times in the last decade that “the church doesn’t really need a building to be a church.”

Sure. Absolutely.

Neither does a surgeon need a hospital, but I’d still like one if you’re coming at me with a scalpel. And yet —

I still got to preach.

So here’s my Easter Devotional, I mean Easter Sermon!

Thirty years of this, people. Thirty years. I’ve outlasted three sound systems, two worship trends, one very unfortunate era of interpretive dance, and more “vision rebrands” than I care to count.

And I’m still standing here on Easter Sunday telling you the same thing I told you in 1995:

Jesus is alive. And that changes everything.

Now buckle up. We’re going somewhere today.

The Parakeet That Wouldn’t Die (Except It Did… Repeatedly)
Let me tell you a story.
Early in our marriage, I’d go over to Renee’s childhood home after Easter Sunday. After. Because I had to preach first — a detail her family never quite grasped. Every year I’d show up a little late and a little wrinkled, and every year her dad Frank would look at me like I’d just wandered in off the street.
“John. You’re late.”
“Frank. I had church.”
“We had brunch. You preach too long…”

Sigh…

And Frank wins that argument every single time, because Frank has a gift.

But anyway — there in the family room, every single year, front and center like a feathered little celebrity…
Boomer. The parakeet.
Now Boomer had apparently been alive for thirty-three years.

Three. Three. Years.
I’m thinking, Dang, Frank.

I didn’t know parakeets could outlive some of my church committees.

So I pull Frank aside one year — very casual, very son-in-law — and I go, “Frank, how old is that bird?”
Frank leans in. Looks left. Looks right. Like we’re about to discuss the nuclear codes.
“Don’t tell Renee… but this is Boomer the Fourth.”
I blinked. “I’m sorry — the Fourth?”
“We’ve had to replace him a few times.”

“Frank, that is not replacing. That is lying. That is a conspiracy. Renee thinks she has one bird. She has had four birds. You have been running a parakeet shell game for thirty years in this household.”
And Frank — God love him, rest his soul — just shrugs and says:
“Metaphorically speaking, John… it’s still Boomer.”
I about fell off my chair.
No, Frank. No it is not. Metaphorically speaking, that is a different bird.

And I say this with all the love in the world — that is not how Easter works.

Easter Is Not a Replacement Story

Here’s what a lot of people — including, apparently, some seminary professors I’ve sat under — want Easter to be:
“Jesus lives on in our hearts.”
“His teachings survived.”
“The movement continued.”
I had a theology professor — brilliant man, genuinely — stand up and say with great academic confidence: “Metaphorically speaking, Jesus rose from the dead.”

That is Boomer the Fourth theology.

Because here’s what the Bible actually says:
Jesus was dead.

Actually dead. Not “mostly dead.” Not “spiritually dead.” Not “his memory lived on.” Dead dead.

They put a Roman seal on the tomb — and Rome didn’t mess around with tomb security because dead guys staying dead was important for the empire.
And then — three days later —He wasn’t dead anymore.

Same Jesus. Same body. Same scars

Thomas literally stuck his fingers in them, which is either the most faithful thing ever or the most unsettling meet-and-greet in human history.
This is not Boomer the Fourth.
This is not a metaphor.
This is resurrection.
And you want to know what convinces me?

The disciples.

These men went on to preach, travel, get beaten, get imprisoned, and ultimately get killed — not for a symbol or a movement or a warm feeling in their hearts — but screaming “We saw Him. We talked to Him. Peter had breakfast with Him.”

Fish. Actual fish. On a beach. Post-resurrection Jesus made breakfast.

Now listen. Men — and I say this as one — do not lie to get into trouble. We lie to get out of trouble. That’s basically our factory setting.

The disciples had every reason to say, “Okay, He’s gone, we don’t know what happened, we’re going home to fish.”

Instead, they walked straight into persecution going,

“Nope. We saw Him. Arrest us if you want.”
Nobody does that for a metaphor.

And here’s a detail that still gets me after thirty years: Women were the first witnesses.
In first-century Jewish culture, a woman’s testimony wasn’t even admissible in court. If you were making this story up — if this was a PR campaign — you would never, ever have women as your lead witnesses. That’s terrible marketing. You’d lead with the guys.
The fact that they didn’t?
That’s called evidence.

Easter isn’t Boomer the Fourth. It’s the same Jesus — breathing, eating, talking, and walking out of His own grave.

Salvation Isn’t Just a Plane Ticket. Stop Treating It Like One.

Okay. Now here’s where I’ve been trying to get for thirty years.
We have reduced salvation — this massive, universe-altering, death-defeating act of God — to a plane ticket.
“I prayed the prayer. I’m going to heaven someday. Cool.”
Great! That’s true! Heaven’s real and you should absolutely want to go!

Salvation is not just for when you die, if that were true that would be like being a gym membership to The Athletic Club and saying, I will use it in 40 years!

But if that’s ALL salvation is — if it’s just a destination — then explain to me why your life looks exactly the same as it did before you got saved.

Explain to me why you’re still bitter at your sister.
Explain to me why you still fall apart every time things don’t go your way.
Explain to me why you’ve been “saved” for twenty years and you’re still running the same patterns, the same excuses, the same wounds wrapped in slightly nicer language.
I’m not throwing stones. I’m describing myself in my thirties. Saved, Spirit-filled, and still a complete disaster in a sport coat.

Here’s a story. I had a guy in my congregation years back — great guy, loved Jesus, came every Sunday without fail. Let’s call him Dave, because his name was Dave. Dave had accepted Christ at age 19.

He’d been in church for twenty-two years.
Dave was also the angriest man I have ever personally known.
At traffic. At the government. At his neighbors. At the coffee machine when it was slow. At me — though he was very polite about it, which almost made it worse.
One day I finally sat down with Dave and I said, “Dave. You’ve been saved for over two decades. What exactly do you think got saved?”
He looked at me like I’d asked him to explain calculus in Swahili.
“My soul,” he said.
“Dave,” I said, “what about Dave?”

Because here’s the thing. The biblical word for salvation — sozo — doesn’t just mean “your soul gets a ticket to heaven.” It means: Saved. Healed. Restored. Made whole.

Now. Not just later. Now.

When Jesus healed the woman who had been bleeding for twelve years — twelve years — He didn’t lean down and whisper, “Hang in there, sweetheart. You’ll feel better in heaven.”

He healed her.

Right there. Publicly.

In front of everyone. In a culture where she wasn’t even supposed to be in public.

Salvation isn’t just about where you go when you die. It’s about who you become while you live.

You Can Be Saved and Still Stuck. I’ve Met You. You’ve Met You.

Let me be lovingly direct with you for a second, because I’ve earned it — thirty years, remember.
There is a category of person — and they are in churches everywhere, possibly in this room, definitely in my mirror at various points — who is:
Forgiven… but still bitter.
Free… but still in chains they built themselves.
Saved… but somehow still exactly, precisely the same person they were the day they walked the aisle.
How?
Because they stopped at “I’m saved” and never took the next step, which is “God, now change me.”

We trust God for the courtroom — the moment of forgiveness, the verdict of “not guilty” — but the second He tries to do some construction work on our actual soul, we put up caution tape and say, “Actually, I’ll handle the renovation myself, thanks.”
And we are terrible at this.

Absolutely terrible.

We have been renovating ourselves our entire lives and the house still leans.

What Resurrection Actually Looks Like From The Inside

I want to be real with you, not theoretical.

I have watched resurrection happen in people. Thirty years of it. And it doesn’t look like a movie montage. It looks more like… a slow thaw.

It looks like a man who used to drink himself unconscious every weekend — three years later — sitting across from his estranged son at a dinner table and just listening. Not defending. Not deflecting. Just listening.

It looks like a woman who was so bound by what people thought of her that she couldn’t make a single decision without polling twelve friends — learning, slowly, painfully, to actually hear her own voice. And God’s.

It looks like a couple that had one foot out the door — both of them — somehow finding their way back. Not because marriage counseling is magic, but because something in both of them decided to let God into the places they’d been protecting.

That’s resurrection. Not always quick and dramatic. Just different.

If the power of Christ is actually at work in you, you don’t react the same way.

You don’t want the same things.

You don’t see yourself or other people the same way.
Not perfect.

But different.

Because God isn’t just keeping score — He is actively, presently, right now rebuilding you.

The Same Power That Raised Jesus From The Dead Is Not Retired

The resurrection wasn’t a one-time magic trick.

It was a demonstration of what God does. He takes dead things and brings them back.

That’s His thing. That’s always been His thing — go back and read your Old Testament sometime and watch how many times God works with people who are done.

Finished.

Washed up.

Out of options. He specializes in it.

He is still breaking addictions that should be unbreakable.

Still healing marriages that looked like crime scenes.

Still calming tempers that have been burning for forty years.

Still restoring identities that got crushed before people even knew who they were.

Still renewing minds that have been running the same painful loop since childhood.

So when you look at your situation and say, “It is what it is” —
I am here, after thirty years, to tell you with great pastoral affection:
That is not a faith statement. That is a resignation letter.
“It is what it is” is something you say about the weather or the parking situation.

It is not something you say when God is involved.

You Think About Your Past. God Is Already Thinking About Your Future.

Here’s the thing that keeps me going. Keeps me preaching — apparently indefinitely, much to everyone’s surprise.
When you think about you, you think about your past.
What you did. What was done to you. What you ruined. What you lost. What you can’t come back from.
When God thinks about you — and here’s the part that wrecks me every time — He thinks about your future.
Not what you’ve been. What you could become.
Not what’s broken. What He can restore.
Not what’s dead. What He can raise.
You hand Him your history. He starts talking destiny.

I’ve watched God do this with:
Zacchaeus — a corrupt, greedy little tax collector who had built a career on stealing from his own people. Jesus doesn’t say “fix yourself and then we’ll talk.” He says “I’m coming to your house for dinner.” One encounter. One meal. And the man who spent his life taking starts giving everything away. That’s not self-improvement. That’s resurrection.
Nicodemus — religious, educated, morally clean. Does everything right. And Jesus looks at him and says, “You need to be born again.” Not improved. Not upgraded. Reborn. Nicodemus thought he needed a tune-up. Jesus offered him a whole new engine.
Mary Magdalene — delivered from darkness so deep the Bible describes it as seven demons. And God turns around and makes her the first person to witness the resurrection. The first preacher of Easter morning. From broken to chosen. That still gets me.
Peter — oh, Peter. Denied Jesus publicly. Three times. Then went back to fishing because what else do you do when you’ve been the worst version of yourself in the worst possible moment?
And Jesus shows up on the beach.
Makes breakfast.
Reinstates him. Completely. Publicly. Three times — once for every denial.
From failure to the foundation of the church.

So Here’s What I’m Asking You Today

I’ve been at this thirty years. I’ve given sermons in churches and living rooms and parking lots and at least once — true story — in a Denny’s, which is a longer story involving a bus breakdown and a Grand Slam platter, but the point is: I have preached everywhere.

And every single Easter, it comes back to this one question:
What in your life needs to die so God can raise something better?
What are you holding onto that is keeping you in your own personal tomb?

Pride that won’t let you apologize?
An addiction that’s got its hands around your throat?
Bitterness you’ve been feeding so long it feels like a pet?

An identity built on something that stopped being true about you years ago?
An excuse you’ve been recycling so long it’s basically furniture?
What needs to be buried — really buried, not just set down temporarily — so resurrection can happen?

Because Easter is not God shrugging and saying, “It is what it is.”

Easter is God standing outside a sealed tomb saying:

“Watch what I do with what everyone thought was over.”

And if Jesus walked out of His own grave —
He can walk into yours.
And bring you out with Him.

He is Risen, Literally, not in a this is Boomer the 4th kind of way…
Rev. John Roberts
Priest of nothing. King without a castle. Still preaching after thirty years.