Sermon for Easter Day, April 4, 2010
“ CHRIST our Passover is sacrificed for us: therefore let us keep the feast, Not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. 1 Cor. v. 7.
“ CHRIST being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him. For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Rom. vi. 9.
“CHRIST is risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, * by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” 1 Cor. xv. 20
IN faithful keeping of the most profound teachings of Jesus Christ, the first ones to know it were doing a menial and subservient duty. The Apostles didn't want to do it. For fear of what had happened to their Master, they still hid. Had they not been afraid, I'm still convinced they would not have wanted to prepare Jesus' body for His long burial, with washing, anointing, and filling His burial shroud with spices. Leave it to the women, a servant's task. So the Apostles were not the first to know.
And it wasn't Peter who saw Him first. Trying so hard to be the leader, to guide this confused band of disciples toward their next step, Peter was running this way and that. Into the tomb, back to the upper room. I'm not criticizing him, but what was needed was Mary's humility, her sorrow and the lack of pride to simply ask that gardener if he knew where the body of her Lord had been taken. And so she was the first to see Him.
When we need most to know, desire most earnestly to see, we have to remember His words : “Whoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant: Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.” Matt 20:26-28 The proud will not see Him, nor will they know that He can't be held by the grave. They will seek another explanation, teach a different gospel, make up a more plausible story and lie when they tell you that they are Christians.
Just listen to what Jesus says, and believe Him. Just do what Jesus commands, and He will come to you. Don't you sometimes figure that it must have been easier to do back then, their world was simpler, and they had the evidence of their long walks and talks with Him, of their eyes beholding His many miracles? We stand at this great distance of time with 2,000 years of doctrines and theologies, scholastic pursuits and the haughtiness of our age to doubt the inscribed words of the ancients. Naturally many today don't credit the words ascribed to Jesus and make up their own right and wrong. Yet it's no better for us when we fail Him that way than for the 1 st century Jews. We have 50 translations of the New Testament, inexpensive printing, churches in every city, radio and television Christian broadcasting. If you haven't heard the Gospel of the Resurrection of Jesus, you've been intentionally running from it. Today, as in the 1 st century, it takes humility to hear it and to know it's true. Jesus Christ is Risen! He is Risen!
And why is it true? Is it important? Where was He? And how did He come back to life?
The most common complaint Jesus fielded from His fellow Jews was that He healed sick people on the Sabbath. The fact made them want to kill Him. And what did He do on Holy Sabbath, the day after He died? His body lay dormant, in apparent keeping of the day of rest. But His soul was among the dead who, because there had never been a righteous atonement for their sins, were wandering dim paths in expectation of the promises, but couldn't rise to God's Paradise until He preached among them, releasing them from their prison. What was He doing on the Sabbath? Healing the sin-sick dead and raising them to their hoped for land of light. That was just like Him. When God is resting, He is still keeping the entire universe in existence and blessing every creature.
The fact of the Incarnation helps us understand the wonder of His rising. God became man in Christ. This man lay in a stone tomb, dead. Yet the two natures had become one in Jesus. How could he stay dead? If God could un -incarnate, unbecome man… but not so, impossible ! To shed His humanity like a snake sloughs off its skin rejects us again, leaves us to our doom once more, and this time for having killed the Lord of life. No. Jesus had to live . And not just in spirit, not just for Himself. The amazing secret of Resurrection is that we are human, not angels, and our nature demands physical form as well as spiritual nature for us to be truly human. When Jesus reclaimed His physical body, He reclaimed us as well. When He bodily rose up into the sky, He united our humanity with the Father in heaven, not only a spiritual reunion but a reconciliation.
2,000 years before Jesus emerged from His stone tomb, warm, smiling, alive—Job declared to his detractors, “I know that my Redeemer lives, And He shall stand at last on the earth; And after my skin is destroyed, this I know, That in my flesh I shall see God, Whom I shall see for myself, And my eyes shall behold, and not another.” Job 19:24-27 The prophet Isaiah, 750 years before Jesus ate with His Apostles in the upper room, wrote: “He will swallow up death forever, And the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces; The rebuke of His people He will take away from all the earth.” Isaiah 25:8 “Your dead shall live; Together with my dead body they shall arise. Awake and sing, you who dwell in dust; For your dew is like the dew of herbs, And the earth shall cast out the dead.” Isaiah 26:19 Looking forward they knew, God showed them death is temporary, the end of this marvelous life is not a rotting corpse, lifeless clay. Unlike the pagans, those who followed Abraham's One True God never thought the afterlife was a mere ether land of ghosts. Life is such an astounding miracle: animated matter, living earth, wondrous mingling of created orders into something more , not less, than spirits.
He did not distain this wonder, but became part of it. Jesus was conceived, then born, He lived among us, walked this earth in his human feet and died with nails through those same precious feet. He gave a lot to be one of us, for our sakes. He valued our humanity; He would not abandon it to Joseph's grave. And so the Lord is Risen !
He rose from that grave and we too shall rise. He said it and because He rose we must believe what He told us. “ Do not marvel at this,” He said, “for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear [my] voice and come forth—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation.” John 5:28-29 “…Everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day.” John 6:40 “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die.” John 11:25-26 His Resurrection seals the issue of our own resurrection. We do not reincarnate. We do not simply cease to be. We don't wander endlessly as shades in dim worlds of wispy spooks. We will die physically, go to Him for rest, and on that great day be restored to our created nature in living bodies which can never die again.
Now, if we're not His, if we're not living right, that resurrection will not be good news. “…and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation,” He said. The second death spoken of in Revelation is having bodies and being forever tormented. But we will have bodies. We are bodies. And if the specter of being tortured forever in physical form raises horror in us, think too of the endless pleasure of being fully human in a new creation with Him, enjoying the boundless joys of being alive in a perfect world without sin or even the memory of suffering. He will wipe those tears from our eyes and they will not return.
All this is realized in the fact of His Resurrection. His coming forth from the tomb of the Arimathean is not an isolated incident, but a deposit on His promise to return for us, to bring us into His Father's many mansions. St. Paul wrote, “For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout... And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.” 1 Thess 4:14-16 “That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.” Phil 3:10-11 “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God.” Romans 8:18-19
Christ is Risen! Xristos anesti! In Greek. Mary Magdalene burst through the door that had meant safety to the frightened Apostles with her joyous phrases: “He is Risen! I have seen Him! He talked with me. I thought He was a gardener, but He called me Mary. He told me to tell you all, He will come and appear to you all too, in Galilee. Why are you still afraid? You don't believe me, do you? I tell you, He is Risen! The angel told me so, the bright one that sat on the stone door of the tomb. Thomas, why are you shaking your head. Peter, John, go see what I have said, that it's true. They'll believe you! Go see! The Lord is Risen !”
She had come to do the work of slaves and was rewarded with the greatest news ever told to anyone, had even touched His risen body—first of all of us. As He humbled Himself to be a man, those who humble themselves to the fact of His Resurrection receive it too. Finally the Apostles and other disciples found it to be true. Thomas, poor Thomas last of all, who just wouldn't believe it unless he could put his fingers into the wounded hands and side of Jesus. In this faith, these men and women went all over the world and their message was called the Gospel, the good news that Jesus Christ is alive and no one can kill Him again, and that the power of His Resurrected life is ours by faith in Him and obedience to what He said. Our faith, our courage, our life is simply a humble acceptance that the Lord is Risen! He is Risen!
PFH+