On September 11 all of our lives changed drastically. And although we’re back into our daily routines six months later, we’re still trying to make sense of what happened. Like most of you, I still remember exactly what I was doing when I first heard about the first plane crashing into the world trade center. I was taking my 12 year old son to school, and as we listened to the news, both of us immediately started praying.
On September 11 we experienced the largest loss of American life on U.S. soil since the Revolutionary War in 1776. As of February 7, 2002, the death toll at the World Trade Center totaled 3,290 people, and the death toll at the Pentagon totaled 125 people. Plus there were five deaths caused by Anthrax tainted mail.
For the first time in American history, United Nations Airborne Early Warning System airplanes are patrolling the United States. Our lives have changed more than longer waits at airports. We’re getting used to Homeland Security Directory Tom Ridge making announcements about credible terrorist threats like the one given on Wednesday. American lives have been lost in the fighting in Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban and hunt down Al Qaeda terrorists.
And here we come to Easter Sunday, a little over six months later. More blood is shed in the middle east each day, as terrorism becomes a part of our daily lives. Do we pretend that 9/11 never happened in our celebration of Christ’s resurrection? Or do we look at the events of 9/11 through the lens of Easter, trying to see it in new light?
Today I want to talk about recovering our hope after 9/11. The tragedy of 9/11 and the crucifixion of Jesus share some similar characteristics. In both cases, before the tragedy came people thought they were invulnerable. The first followers of Jesus believed that since Jesus was the Messiah, no harm could come to him. They believed that God would never allow his only Son to be killed in such a vicious, cruel manner as Roman crucifixion. And of course, before 9/11 we thought we were invincible as well, immune to the hateful attacks of others. In both cases, people were caught off guard.
But some ways the crucifixion of Jesus was even more tragic. Not to minimize the horrible tragedy of 9/11, but the death of Jesus had a uniqueness to it that no other tragedy had ever had before or since. You see, according to the New Testament, it wasn’t just the Roman soldiers who killed Jesus. And it wasn’t just the religious leaders who conspired to murder Jesus. According to the Bible, human sin led to Christ’s execution. It’s like that anti-drug commercial that says every time a person buys drugs that they’re supporting terrorism. Every time a human being disobeys God, that person participates in the execution of Jesus. The Romans were simply the henchmen. If we believe the Bible’s claim, we all participated in the crucifixion of Jesus. So while 9/11 was the act of a handful of people taking the lives of thousands, the death of Jesus was the act of the entire human race taking the life of one innocent man. So even though only one life was lost on Good Friday, the complicity for that act of terrorism passes to every person who’s ever sinned. And that pretty much includes all of us to some extent.
So by looking at how the resurrection helped the early Christians gain hope in the aftermath of that tragedy, we can also gain perspective for recovering our hope in the aftermath of the 9/11 tragedy. Today in our time together, I want to look at some common responses to tragedy and how Easter can answer tragedies like 9/11.
1. Responses To Tragedy (Luke 24:1-12)
Let’s begin by reading Luke’s account of that first Easter morning in Luke 24:1-12. Here we find several women arriving at the graveside of Jesus early Sunday morning. They came to finish what they’d started when they first laid Jesus’ body to rest in this tomb. You see, because the Jewish Passover was dawning when Jesus died on Good Friday, they weren’t able to complete the body preparation process required by Jewish tradition. So for 24 hours they waited, and now that they could return, here they were.
I’d imagine that this early morning was crisp and misty, the way it usually is in Jerusalem this time of year. Most people were still in bed after celebrating the Passover feast with family and friends the night before. There’s nothing to indicate that these women expected anything more than to finish their preparations of the body of Jesus. Resurrection was the last things on their minds.
They’re surprised to see that the stone that had covered the tomb has been rolled away. According to the Jewish historian Josephus, the stones that were used to close off tombs were usually large and heavy, placed in a channel cut out in the front of the tomb. It would take a platoon of soldiers to muscle the stone away, yet there it is rolled away sometime during the night.
These women tentatively venture inside the tomb, only to find it empty. Their immediate thoughts would’ve been that grave robbers had desecrated the tomb and stolen the body. But that would’ve been odd, because grave robbers usually steal valuables off the body, not the body itself. While they’re trying to figure out what happened, suddenly two shining men appear to them. In the early morning mist through tearful eyes, they looked like men, though we know from the other gospels in the New Testament that they were actually angels. The women are so overwhelmed with the brightness as it cuts through the early morning mist that they fall to the ground.
These two angels deliver the very first Easter Sunday sermon ever preached. Like any good sermon, they start with a question. Why were these women looking for the living among the dead? This question must’ve puzzled these women, because if the Roman government had become expert in doing anything, it was killing people. According to historians, the Romans crucified over 30,000 Jewish men at the time of Jesus. They knew what they were doing, and there’s not one account of anyone surviving Roman crucifixion. So what was all this talk about the living?
The angels move from their rhetorical question to their main sermon idea. Jesus isn’t here because he’s risen from the dead. They explain the absence of a corpse, not to grave robbers or a conspiracy, but to a miracle. Now the Jewish people back then believed that a resurrection would occur at the end of the age, but no one had ever considered the possibility that a person might be raised from the grave into an immortal condition before the end of the age.
While the women’s mouths were still open, trying to comprehend this new information, the angels move to application in the sermon. The sermon application comes in the form of a command: "Remember!" Remember what Jesus said before he died. Even as the angels issued the command, the minds of the women started working again. Memories of quiet times of teaching with Jesus flood into their minds, and suddenly they did start to remember. Jesus had said that he would be delivered over to people, executed, and that he would rise on the third day. It didn’t make sense then, but it certainly did now.
They run from the empty tomb to find the surviving eleven apostles of Jesus. The eleven were cowering behind closed doors with their bags packed, reading to leave the city of Jerusalem when things cool down. They’re fearful that the next arrest and execution might be their own. They’re filled with despair as they try to make sense out of the tragedy of Christ’s death.
As the women rushed in, blubbering about angels and rising, it made no sense to their grief numb minds. Luke tells us that it seemed like nonsense to those who heard the women. Now you need to know that the ancient world was very sexist against women. Women were universally considered unreliable witnesses by Greek, Roman and Jewish society back then. In fact, women were considered so unreliable that they couldn’t testify in court. So I think it’s a little bit of God’s holy humor in allowing these women to be the first witnesses to Christ’s resurrection. Certainly this is not the kind of resurrection story the early Church would invent to bolster the credibility of the resurrection claim.
Even though they didn’t believe the women, one of Jesus’ followers--Peter--decides to investigate for himself. He runs to the tomb, sees the burial cloths still intact, and stands wondering exactly what happened. As he walks away, he’s puzzled.
This story shows us that the resurrection of Jesus is exactly the last thing the early followers of Jesus were expecting. Like we were on September 12, the followers of Jesus were numb with grief and shock. Like we struggled to even go through the routines of life, they were paralyzed with uncertainty and confusion. Their minds were numb, that kind of numb you feel when something so awful happens that you can’t comprehend it all at once.
I think this story of the aftermath of Jesus’ crucifixion reveals some of the things we do in the face of tragedy as well. After all, these men and women are just like us, so why would their response to tragedy in their lives be any different than our response?
Let me share with you three insights I see from this story about how we deal with tragedy. In the face, of tragedy, we forget the things God has taught us.
Tragedy hits a delete button in our minds, causing us to forget the things God has taught us up to that point in our lives. Jesus invested lots of time trying to prepare his friends for what lay ahead of him. In fact, according to John’s gospel, he spent hours instructing them, preparing them, warning them. However, when the Romans arrested Jesus, dragged him to the execution hill, and drove nails into his hands and feet, the delete button in their minds was pushed. It was only as the angels prodded their memory and they started at the empty tomb, that they started to remember again.
Second, in the face of tragedy, we become blind to God’s plan.
Not only is our memory deleted for a time, but we also become blind to the hand of God. The first followers of Jesus simply couldn’t comprehend how God could be working in their tragedy. Twenty four hours earlier they’d been enjoying a meal with Jesus, watching him laugh at their jokes. They couldn’t comprehend the fact that he was now dead, cold in a tomb. The hands that had healed the sick were pierced and lifeless; the mouth that had spoken words of authority was now silent; the feet that had carried them on some many journeys bruised and bloodied from the nail.
Where was God’s plan in this? Surely God had forsaken them. Some terrible, cosmic miscarriage of justice had occurred. Surely God had lost control of his creation and it was now careening out of control in utter chaos.
Yet look again at v. 7: "The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified, and on the third day be raised again." The angels are quoting Jesus here. Circle that word "must." It had to happen because it was part of the plan of God to accomplish the means for forgiveness of sins.
Now I’m not going to stand here and say that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 were part of God’s plan. But I can say that these events did not take God by surprise. In God’s wisdom he allowed evil men to do an evil thing. And although I can’t comprehend why God allowed such a thing, I do know that God can bring good out of the evil actions of others. That’s now the perspective of Lisa Beamer, the widow of Todd Beamer who went down on United Flight 93 in Pennsylvania. You’ve heard Todd Beamer’s story, about how he and other passengers rushed the terrorists, sacrificing their own lives in order to save the lives of others. Listen to Lisa Beamer’s words: "My family and I still wrestle with what has happened, but are comforted with the knowledge that a sovereign God is in control." When tragedy first invades our lives, we struggle to see God’s plan in the midst of it.
Finally, in the face of tragedy, we distrust other people’s faith.
To the ears of Jesus’ eleven apostles, the words of these women seemed like nonsense. It’s not because the eleven apostles were unspiritual, but because they were still numb from the tragedy. In the face of tragedy today, we tend to distrust the faith of others.
This is a common response to tragedy. Consider media icon Ted Turner. Turner’s 15 year old sister died of lupus back in the 1980s, and for him that was proof that God wasn’t real. He came to distrust other people’s faith, especially the faith of Christians because of that tragedy in his life.
Last year the chairman of the psychology department at New York University wrote a psychological study of atheism. In that book The Faith of the Fatherless, Dr. Paul Vitz examined the lives of dozens of famous atheists, and he found that in all but one case each one atheist had a father who either died early in the person’s life or who was abusive. Vitz’s conclusion is that something about losing a father figure early on creates a psychological propensity toward atheism. That tragedy causes people to distrust the faith of others.
Our faith sounds like nonsense to many.
2. The Reality of Easter
If this is where the story ended, the Christian faith would’ve died off as quickly as it started. As soon as these first women got tired of being called nitwits, they would’ve given up. After all, they only heard about Jesus’ resurrection from two angels. It’s not like they saw Jesus alive personally.
However, the story doesn’t end there. The rest of Luke chapter 24 recounts Jesus Christ himself appearing to his followers. In fact, the rest of the New Testament claims that Jesus appeared to over 500 different people over a period of forty days after Easter Sunday. And when each of these people encountered Christ personally, all doubts were gradually dispelled. It’s one thing to look at the historical data, and infer that the most likely explanation is the hypothesis that Jesus rose from the grave. It’s quite another thing to see Jesus standing in front of you, inviting you to touch his hands and asking you to share your burger with you.
The main idea I want to get across to you today is this: Until we encounter the risen Savior personally, we cannot make sense out of our tragedies.
When I was the college pastor here at the church eleven years ago, one of our college group’s favorite movies was Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. In that movie, two airhead high school students from San Dimas are given a history assignment to do an oral report on a historical figure. Well Bill and Ted are too dimwitted to go to the library and study, but they’re miraculously given the ability to time travel. So as they time travel into the past, they collect various historical figures. For their history report, they bring back Socrates, Sigmund Freud, Napoleon, Abraham Lincoln, and Beethoven. They soon learn that actually knowing a historical figure personally is very different than studying about them in a book. It’s a silly movie, but the point is well taken.
Our mission as a church is not to simply persuade people that the resurrection of Jesus Christ really happened. Surely we’re to do that, and there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that the resurrection of Jesus is the most reasonable and rational explanation for all the data surrounding these events. But if that’s where we end, we’ve only gone half the journey.
Our mission as a church is to personally introduce people to the risen savior Jesus Christ. If Christ has truly risen from the grave, then he can be known today. He’s a person to be known, not just a subject to be studied, or a proposition to be proven. Just like Bill and Ted learned, there’s a big difference between knowing Christ rose from the grave and having a relationship with the risen Christ personally.
That’s why Jesus created the Christian Church. It’s been said that the Church did not create the resurrection of Jesus, but the resurrection of Jesus created the Church. You see, the Bible calls the Church the body of Christ, the place where Jesus makes himself known and reveals his resurrection life. If you want to encounter the risen Christ, hang out among his people.
This is why every week people join our worship experience who haven’t yet met Jesus but who want to. This is why many of you are here as seekers today, because you don’t merely want information about Jesus, but you want to know Jesus. As we meet together, worship together, celebrate the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s supper together, and learn form the Bible together, we encounter Christ. As we relate to each other in small groups, serve with each other in ministry, and share our faith with people in our community, we encounter Christ.
If the Christian faith were simply knowing about Jesus, then we might as well stay home and read a book. But its because the Christian faith is about knowing Jesus personally that we gather as a church community.
Conclusion
Let me close by telling you about someone who started attending our church on an Easter Sunday a few years ago. This man didn’t have a faith at all. He described himself as an agnostic, someone who wasn’t persuaded that God was real. But he was also open, so at the prompting of his wife and because he wanted to expose his children to religious education, he started attending our church. He started attending worship services, getting to know people, and building relationships. He sang the words during the worship and he started learning from the Bible. Soon he began to realize that Christ was alive, and that as he sang and learned, he was encountering Christ. And after two years as a seeker, he awakened to a relationship with Christ. He expressed his faith in Jesus in baptism a few months ago.
If you just want information about Jesus, read a book. But if you want to encounter Christ personally, you’re in the right place.
