Easter Sunday
Resurrection
Psalm 51
April 12, 2009
He is risen. Resurrection. Easter. New life. New birth. Second chances. Fresh starts. Spring flowers. This is what the Easter season is all about. It is an exciting time. It is the bringing forth of life out of death. It is the end of the cold and snow that makes the trees lose their leaves and the vegetation turn brown. It is when the spring flowers push through the muck and dirt to burst forth victorious in an explosion of color and smell.
It is the empty tomb. A tomb that could not contain God is now empty. It is the resurrection of Jesus that marks the promise of kingdom resurrection for all those who believe and seek to serve the Lord.
This is the first Sunday of the Easter season, a celebration of life, that last to about mid-May. It is not just one day. It is forty days of celebrating life, abundant life that is found in Christ.
One of the things that makes Easter Sunday so special is that it truly is a contrast between death and life. Sin and righteousness. Brokenness and wholeness. Emptiness and overflowing abundance.
As I meditated and prayed on the Resurrection scriptures, I was struck with a phrase from John 20 that says, “No one yet knew from the Scriptures that he had to rise from the dead.” Jesus had to die. And Jesus had to rise from the dead as well.
Three people arrived in at the Pearly Gates. Peter welcomed them in and informed them that they would need to first go through a brief orientation class.
“To get started, let’s do a little ice breaker so we can get to know each other. Tell what you would like your friends and relatives to be say at your funeral.”
The first woman said, “I would like to hear them say what a great doctor I was and how much I loved my family.”
One of the men spoke up, “I would like to hear that I was a good husband and that I changed a lot of lives as teacher in the public schools.”
The other man quickly followed by saying, “I want to hear them say—‘I think he jus t moved! Look everyone he’s alive!!!’”
Without death there can be no resurrection. Without the crucifixion there could be no ultimate victory over sin and death. And Jesus shows us that the same is true in our own lives.
This message is simply entitled, “Resurrection.” No clever word plays. Just keeping it simple. Resurrection. Because this is what Easter Sunday is about. But we must remember that resurrection has two parts. It starts with death. It starts with darkness. There can be no resurrection without it.
Resurrection
• Death
Unless we first deal with the price the resurrection costs, then it really becomes empty and meaningless. It is what a great theologian, pastor, preacher called cheap grace.
For with facing the darkness and the death and bleakness, we travel through this valley of the death. We travel through the shadow that hangs over us fearing no evil. Facing the agony of the cross and the tragedy of our own mistakes, our own transgressions, our imperfections, out sins.
Without death, we have no sense of the price that is paid. We have no sense of the great cost and the great sacrifice that resurrection needs to exist. We don’t realize the immense value that our God places upon our love and our lives. We tend to be superficial in our spirituality.
Psalm 51 describes this. David looked at his life and he saw himself as he truly was. He didn’t blame others. He didn’t make excuses. He said, “I know how bad I’ve been; my sins are staring me down.”
It is a concept that is often called brokenness. He has recounted his life. He has prayed and meditated and considered all the wrongs that he has committed, the ways he acted out in anger, the people he hurt. And he concludes that every time he hurt others, then he was walking all over God. He said, “You’re the One I’ve violated, and you’ve seen it all, seen the full extent of my evil.” And then he says, “I’ve been out of step with you for a long time, in the wrong since before I was born.” Not that he was guilty as an infant of sin but that somehow this potential was there and has been plaguing him throughout his entire life.
And now he was willing to face it. He was willing to deal with it. He was desperate for God to help him. He was willing to do whatever God wanted. He says, “Whatever you decide about me is fair.” He also pleads, “Scrub away my guilt, soak my sins in your laundry.” Then later he adds, “Soak me in your laundry and I’ll come out clean, scrub me and I’ll have a snow-white life.” He knows that God wants what is best but first he has to face the death and darkness of his sin. “What you’re after is truth from the inside out. Enter me, then; conceive a new, true life.”
God has led me to help out and hang out down at the Upper Room. There I experience grace in a profound way. I see in some of these men what God must really have seen in me apart from Christ. We tend to think of ourselves as good people. We take care of our families. We help people when it’s convenient. Sure we have our quirks and personality defects but we are not that bad especially when we compare ourselves to others. But that really is the wrong comparison. David reminds us that the comparison is really to God: a Holy but Loving God.
Down at the Upper Room, sometimes there are guys down there that are simply repulsive. Most aren’t that bad. But there are a few. I remember Danny. He has passed on. But Danny was quite a case. He stank. He peed himself and the urine odor was enough to make you wretch. This is not an exaggeration. You could sometimes smell Danny down three flights of stairs when you opened the door to the building.
Sometimes I would leave their and I would smell the awful stench the rest of the evening. It gets into your clothes and it gets into your nose hairs. I’d be sitting down watching TV and I would get a whiff of that stench.
Sometimes it gets so bad, you try your best to help them get cleaned up. They can take showers for free across the street at the YMCA. Yet Danny would go over, shower up and then put the same clothes back on. You give him some new clothes but after a week of urinating on himself, those clothes needed to be burned.
And here is the thing, you had to approach this delicately because Danny would insist that he doesn’t stink. “I don’t smell anything,” he would say. He was so immersed in his own filth and rank odor that he couldn’t smell it anymore.
I wonder how often we miss our own stench. Like dogs, we so busy smelling other people’s butts that we don’t realize how rank we really are.
David said, “Don’t throw me out with the trash, or fail to breathe holiness in me.” But maybe I’m just exaggerating. Maybe I’m be overly dramatic. Then maybe not.
But David also said a simply amazing thing because remember that there are two parts to this: “God, make a fresh start in me, shape a Genesis week from the chaos in my life.” I simply love that imagery, which is found in Eugene Peterson’s The Message. A Genesis week. Out of the death, the brokenness, and the mess of my life, make all things new.
Just as resurrection needs death as a beginning, resurrection has to end with life.
• Life
There’s some beautiful irony here. Death is only the beginning. The end is life. It seems so backward, doesn’t it? Don’t you mean that the end is death? No, not for Jesus. And not for us.
David asks to be scrubbed clean. “Soak me in your laundry and I’ll come out clean, scrub me and I’ll have a snow-white life.” That is the true miracle of the resurrection. It goes against all common sense. There are some things that you just can’t get clean. There are some things in life that get so soiled that they will never be clean again. At least they can never look like new.
One of the things that the Upper Room does, is that we give out new socks to some of the homeless men and women. You walk around and sleep here and there even if you take care of yourself and shower, your socks get dirty. You’ve been wearing probably the same clothes for several days in a row and those socks get stanky and filthy. Believe me, the last thing that you want to do is picked up one these socks that used to be white but are now blackish gray and have literally just been peeled off of someone’s foot like a banana. And there is no way you will get that sucker clean again. Heck I wouldn’t want the thing in my washing machine. It would contaminate it.
Yet, David knows God can make him clean again. God can make him like new. A Genesis week. That is completely and totally new. A fresh start. Revelation depicts a scene where millions of people are worshiping God whose robes are pure white. They are the faithful. They are the ones who follow Jesus and the ways of God and don’t quit and don’t give up and don’t walk away from God or God’s people. No more death. Resurrection! No tears. No suffering.
These white robes were not new robes that replaced soiled ones that were cast off. These robes aren’t handed out like new pairs of white socks. They have washed and cleaned by Jesus. They are made white by his blood. They are washed in his blood and come out white again. They come out pure because of his death.
I have here a mop head that I recently replaced at the Upper Room. This has been used to mop urine. I know because I mopped up when this guy urinated all over himself, the couch he was sitting on, and the floor while he was asleep. It has mopped up the filth that was tracked in off the streets. It won’t come clean. I challenge you. There is no way in this world that you can make this like new. I have new mop head to compare. It will never be this white even with bleach because I have soaked this thing in bleach already to get this clean. The old mop head is literally falling apart.
Yet, Jesus was raised on the third day. His resurrection promises us resurrection as well. We are like this old mop head compared to God. But the resurrection of Jesus promises us that we will one day be resurrected. We will have a new body not like the old but a completely new body free from the flaws and defects of this life.
Notice how the new mop head is not really that white. God doesn’t just promise to restore us back the original condition but God promises more than we can imagine. If it is time for a change, God gives fresh starts. Easter is all about getting a fresh start, new lease on life, being born in a whole new way. This is your day. No matter how far down the ladder you have fallen or maybe how far down you feel you haven’t fallen, this is your day to change the mop head of your life.
