The Resurrection of Our Lord, March 23, 2008 “Series A”
Grace be unto you and peace, from God our Father and from our Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Let us pray: God of power and might, you delivered your Son, Jesus, from the domain of death and opened the graves of all who come to faith in him, the faith of our baptism. Through your Holy Spirit, open our hearts and minds to the power of our risen Lord to renew us as your beloved disciples, that we might live our lives in his victory over sin and death. This we ask in Christ’s holy name. Amen.
I would like to begin my message this morning where we left off Friday evening. Jesus had been nailed to that wretched cross, in an agonizing pain we can not even begin to fathom, for nearly three hours. Then, according to John’s Gospel, our Lord’s life ended in this way:
“When Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said (in order to fulfill Scripture), ‘I am thirsty.’ A jar full of sour wine was standing there. So they put a sponge full of the wind on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the wine, he said ‘It is finished,’ or, as other texts read, ‘It is accomplished.’ Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
Jesus died on the cross. It was a most humiliating and painful death. IN his accusers’ estimate, he was everything that was wrong – a dangerous radical, a disturber of the status quo, a law-breaker and a blasphemer.
They had tried for some time to put an end to what they thought was this would-be Messiah. Now they had succeeded. Is this what Jesus meant by these words – that the powers of this world finished his life, accomplished his death, put an end to his ministry?
What are we to make of these last words of this man who had died on a cross and was buried in a tomb? What can be the significance of his final words – for a person’s last words are thought to be significant? Our hopes and fears are never more direct than when we stand at the brink of death.
Two others were crucified with Jesus, both thieves. Luke’s Gospel tells us that one of them died with taunts and abuses on his lips, cursing those who had nailed him to his cross. But the other thief acknowledged his guilt alongside the innocence of Jesus, that he repented and asked to be forgiven, even remembered by Jesus.
Jesus responded to this condemned thief’s pleas by saying, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” Not even his own suffering and impending death prevented the outreach of Jesus’ compassion and love. In the final words of the dying Christ, there is no retaliation, no curses, only love and faithfulness.
“It is finished,” or “It is accomplished,” Jesus said, before his last breath. And many, no doubt, said the same. His disciples, who were huddled behind locked doors in fear, knowing their hopes died with Jesus, may have uttered those same words. The Roman soldiers, who had completed another crucifixion, may have callously uttered those words. The Jewish authorities may have also uttered those words with a sigh of relief that Jesus was finally silenced, ending the threat to their religious beliefs. They all may have said, “It is finished.” It is accomplished.”
But I don’t believe that Jesus meant any of these things when he said these words. He was not admitting defeat, as if to say, “I’ve done my best, and I’m sorry that I failed.” Nor do I believe that Jesus was issuing a sigh of relief that death had finally come, bringing a release to his awful pain. No! These last words of Jesus is a cry of victory! He faced his death in the confidence that he had completed purpose for his life, and was confident enough to place his life into the hands of his heavenly Father, into the hands of God.
Is this not what Jesus said in his prayer for his disciples and for the church, the very night John’s Gospel tells us he was betrayed. Jesus said, “[Father] I glorified you on earth, by finishing the work you gave me to do…” He had accomplished his mission, and by uttering these same words from the cross, just before his dying breath, he was telling us all that his life was a success.
But although these were the last human words that Jesus spoke before his death, they would not be the last words his disciples heard. There was yet to be another chapter to his life, as recorded in the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament. And so, after hearing the dying words of our Lord, we go on to read this morning, not his obituary, but the astounding news of his victory, of his resurrection! I shudder before the sheer wonder of this! I am in awe that the powers of evil did not win. For what God accomplished through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ was victory over sin, and victory over death.
And that’s the victory that God gives to us, through the power of the Holy Spirit, through our baptism into Christ’s death and resurrection – to live in Christ’s victory, and to die in Christ’s victory.
First, let me address the gift that God’s Spirit gives us to die in Christ’s victory. After all, I believe that many of us might be here this morning, clinging to this hope that Easter gives us. Of course, God raised Jesus from the grave at a moment and in a manner that no human eye observed.
There is no account in the New Testament that can satisfy our curiosity as to how a dead body could begin to stir, move, stand up, and walk out into a new day. Easter begins with the mystery and the grandeur of that act by which God declares Christ the victor over sin and death and all that brought him to the cross for our redemption. But the promise of Easter is that the risen Christ will lead us through the gate of death, to be with him in the very presence of God. Today, we cling to this hope of life beyond the grave, of being reunited with our risen Lord, and all those who have died in the faith of their baptism into his death and resurrection.
As F. Dean Lueking put it, in his book From Ashes To Holy Wind, “We can laugh in the face of death. Not a nervous, silly laughter, which betrays a deeper uneasiness or dread of death, nor a gallows humor which reveals a cynicism about death. But a laughter that has a genuine ring to it, a laughter that reveals a trust that since Christ the Lord has conquered death, we might as well enjoy his victory with an ease of heart and spirit that includes a sanctified sense of humor.” End Quote.
Lueking is not suggesting that we shouldn’t take death seriously, nor grieve for the loss of those we love. But through the victory of Christ over death, and through the power of God’s Spirit to enable us to trust that his victory extends to all who are baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection that we will join our risen Lord in his kingdom, we can face death with hope. In Christ, our own victory over death has been accomplished.
But perhaps the most important aspect of our Lord’s resurrection is the call to live our lives in his victory. Although our lessons for this morning do not tell the whole story, and leave us less than enthused about the disciples’ reaction to the news of Christ’s resurrection, history records that they went on, with the power of God’s Spirit, to live the remainder of their lives boldly confessing their faith in Christ’s victory over sin and death. In order to understand this, all we have to do is see a group of frightened, bewildered disciples, who were convinced that it was all over, that their dreams were finished, begin to be knit into the nucleus of Christ’s church. And what did they proclaim, but that Jesus the Christ, through his death on the cross, had accomplished their dreams.
Think of Peter, who had swore he would even die for Jesus, but in the hour of his passion, denied three times that he even knew him. Yet through the power of Christ’s resurrection, and through the gift of God’s Spirit, he became the rock of faith that Jesus told him he would be.
And there was Paul, who started out persecuting the early church, even approving of the stoning of Stephen, the first Christian martyr, through his coming to faith in Christ’s death and resurrection, came to become the world’s first, and most productive evangelist of the Gospel. When he couldn’t preach from prison, he wrote from prison. The Holy Spirit so inspired in the members of Christ’s early church, not only an ability to face their own death with hope, but an inspiration to live their lives in the confidence of Christ’s victory over sin and death.
Quite frankly, I could go on and on for hours giving examples of those who have been inspired by God’s Spirit to live their lives in the victory of what Jesus accomplished for us on the cross, and proclaimed in his last human words.
But those words, “It is finished,” or “It is accomplished,” only apply to what Jesus has done, not to us. His is the victory that enables us to live our lives as his disciples. His is the victory that enables us to live and to die with the confidence that are lives are in the hands of God, who will ultimately give us victory.
Amen.
[This is a rewrite of a sermon that I had written many years ago. I am not sure if there are quotations that are not mentioned in the text.]
