Easter Sunday
2003
The Rev’d Quintin Morrow
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
Fort Worth, Texas
www.st-andrew.com
“Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee?”
A philosopher once wrote that an empty tomb is a poor foundation on which to establish a world religion. It might surprise you to know that I agree. In fact, the empty garden tomb is quite incidental to the integrity of the Christian faith. What really counts is the risen Lord.
A Wisconsin fishing magazine once jokingly proclaimed in an editorial that the only thing which called the fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ into question was that the story was told by a group of fishermen.
Here are the facts of the death and resurrection.
They are relayed quite simply and wonderfully for us in Peter’s Pentecost Day sermon in Acts chapter 2.
Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs which God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves also
know--him, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by law less hands, have crucified, and put to death; whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that he should be held by it.
There they are. None of these facts are in dispute. Historical investigation, as well as a reasoned, impartial look at the evidence, will support them and affirm that they are true. Jesus of Nazareth died. He was buried. Three days later He rose again. His Disciples did not expect to see Him alive again, and were in fact shocked and in disbelief themselves until they saw Him for themselves. Moreover, 10 of them died martyrs rather than deny that He was risen from the dead. Men will give their lives for all sorts of crazy causes, but a lie they know to be a lie is not one of them.
What does the resurrection of Jesus Christ mean? An event this singular, unusual, and wonderful cannot be an accident and must have purpose.
Firstly, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead means that Jesus is Lord.
Before I begin to explain this affirmation, I must state an obvious fact. Our lives as human beings are typified by struggle, and we are in desperate need of spiritual guidance. Life, it seems, is a brutal competition—a competition for a parent’s affection, for an "A" in class, for admission to college, for a promotion and raise, for security, inner tranquility, and finding our purpose in this world.. Life has been called a "rat race" for just this reason. We struggle with the reality that life is at times unfair. Some people are rich, others poor. Some live to be a hundred, and others die painfully at seventeen. Some are born with wit, intelligence and good looks. Others, through no fault of their own, are born plain, disfigured or ordinary. We struggle with guilt. We constantly find ourselves unable to live up to even our own minimum standards of right and wrong, let alone our highest ideals. And so we constantly feel the accusations and the pricks and stings of conscience. Finally, we struggle with our own mortality. We know that one day we will die, and that fact makes us shiver.
And since life is a constant struggle in which seemingly no quarter is asked or given, we feel our desperate need for spiritual guidance. Human beings are spiritually hungry creatures. We long to know the answers to the questions life poses, and the solutions to its riddles. And that is why human history is replete with sages, gurus, and world-be messiahs. The list of some of these is impressive: Buddha, Zoroaster, Pythagoras, Lao Tsu, Joseph Smith, Mary Baker Eddy, David Koresh, Jim Jones, Sun Myung Moon.
We live, and have always lived, in a world that is truly religiously pluralistic. Many have made the claim to be the enlightened one, the one who came to answer our questions and meet our deepest spiritual longings. But which one is true?
St. Paul answers that question in Acts chapter 17, during his visit to Athens. Upon seeing a multiplicity of altars to a myriad of gods, and even one erected to "The Unknown God," the apostle says to the Athenians: "What you have worshipped as unknown, I will proclaim to you." And after boldly declaring the existence of the God of the Hebrews, He concludes:
[Now this God] commands all men everywhere to repent, because he has appointed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising him from the dead.
Do you get the significance of that statement? Jesus is the one. Jesus is Lord. The proof of the pudding, as the English say, is in the eating. Easter is the proof. The resurrection validated Jesus’ teaching, his life, his death, the claims he made—most especially the ones concerning about His own divinity and His being sent by God the Father.
Philosopher Stephen Davis said it like this:
The resurrection of Jesus is God’s decisive proof that Jesus is not just a great religious teacher among all the great religious teachers in history. It is God’s sign that Jesus is not a religious charlatan among all the religious charlatans in the world. The resurrection is God’s way of pointing to Jesus and saying that he is the one in whom you are to believe. He is your savior. He alone is Lord.
Many sages, gurus and messiahs have stood upon the world’s stage. And all are now gone. Only Jesus remains. To him, and only to him, Paul says, will every knee bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. The resurrection means Jesus is Lord.
But not only that. The resurrection of Jesus also means that God will win.
Now, I am aware that this is an odd claim to make—especially after the unbelievable horrors of 9/11/2001—for at times it seems that on the contrary, God has lost. Just look at the news. Justice doesn’t seem to prevail. The forces of evil appear to be running rampant. The world is full of enemies of the
God—sin, violence, poverty, suffering, war, oppression, bigotry, crime and death. Confronting these ugly realities we cry out in despair. Where is God? Where is His goodness? How could He allow this to go on?
I am certain that the dejected disciples asked themselves these very same questions following the crucifixion of Jesus. They had given up everything to follow him. They had left hearth and home to be His disciples. They had placed their faith in Him. They had loved Him. And they had come to believe that He was the one who redeem Israel and restore their nation’s independence and glory. But then He was arrested, crucified and His dead body was placed in a borrowed tomb. End of story. Right? Wrong.
There is a beautiful post-resurrection story relayed to us at the end of Luke’s Gospel. Two men—two disciples—were walking on the road to the town of Emmaus discussing the sad happenings of Good Friday, when suddenly a stranger begins to walk along with them and talk to them about the Messiah. It is of course Jesus, alive from the dead, though the Disciples do not at first recognize Him. The Lord then chides His friends with these words in Luke 24:25-26:
O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?
Like those two disciples on the road to Emmaus, we too need a new interpretation of the events we see, and some of those occasions have to do with the erroneous perception that God is losing the battle.
Sometimes, in a mysterious way, God uses evil events to bring victory. Often, in a way that is hard for us to understand, evil events are necessary for God to achieve victory. Out of the tragedy of the cross, God brought redemption. The Savior had to suffer, Jesus showed the disciples. But that horrible event was just a prelude to resurrection. God’s final victory will not be achieved until Jesus returns, but until then we can see glimpses of God’s victory in such events as the resurrection. And they show us that often times God’s victory is hidden from all but the most discerning eyes.
The message of Easter is that, despite appearances, God will win. Believers are on the winning side. Despite the dashed hopes of the disciples, Jesus was, after all, the one to redeem Israel. In the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, we see God’s decisive victory over death, hell, suffering, pain and loss. In that one climactic event, we see the certainty of God’s ultimate triumph over all that opposes and oppresses us.
That is why the resurrection is the best news ever. It assures us that God will win in the end, and that this world is not rudderless or hopelessly insane. Yes, events do happen that we cannot explain. Irrational tragedies and horrible outrages do occur. But because God raised Jesus from the dead after the catastrophe of the cross, we can be sure that he will one day overcome all catastrophes.
And because of that, we can have hope. Peter, in the beginning of his first epistle, writes that we have been born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. We can dare to hope in the midst of our most confusing and painful turmoil, because God will win. And we will win too, if we belong to him. The Bible says that hope never disappoints.
Further, we can have faith. We can trust God, knowing the He is working all things together for our good—even when seeing just exactly how he is doing it is difficult.
I read once that when the great Reformer Martin Luther was in the midst of a terrible trial, during the heated battles of the Protestant Reformation, alone, uncertain, afraid, he simply stared at the table next to which was seated and wrote with his finger in the dust of tabletop "Vivit! Vivit!"— He lives! He lives!
The resurrection of Jesus means that God will win.
And thirdly, and finally, the resurrection means that death has been overcome.
The ancient Stoics, who believed that human happiness could be achieved through optimizing pleasure and minimizing pain, held that death was nothing to fear. Because, in their words: "When I am, death is not. When death is, I am not."
But for those of us who have stood at the graveside of a loved one, and watched as their bodies were lowered into the ground, and listened as the clods of dirt covered them from our eyes, you know the maxim of the Stoics is hogwash. Death hurts. A lot.
All people fear death. The thought of no longer being—of literally "not being"—has always been frightening to us. Whether we want to admit it or not, we are the centers of our own universes, and it is difficult to imagine the world going on without us. We fear death because it is inevitable—no one escapes or is granted a reprieve from it. We fear death because it is mysterious. No one knows for sure what happens on the other side. We fear death because we face it alone. If we could all hold hands and leap into the great beyond together, we might be comforted. But we can’t. We fear death because in it we are separated from loved ones. And we fear death because it seemingly marks the end of our hopes and dreams. But death is real.
Man is the only being on the planet that is cognizant of his own demise. He is also the only being which tries and hides that reality from himself. We pay morticians thousands of dollars to make corpses look as alive as possible. We refrain from using the word "death"—even at funerals. But that fell sargeant death, as Hamlet said, is quick and certain in his arrest. We will all die. And our loved ones will also die. And if death truly had the last word, then all of life would most assuredly be hopelessness and gloom. But it isn’t. God has conquered death.
St. Paul, writing in 1 Cor. chapter 15, says:
Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by one man came death, by one man has also come the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.
"I am the resurrection and the life," Jesus said. "He who believes in me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in me shall never die."
Not bad news, that. What it means is that because God raised Jesus from the dead, he will also raise up from death all those who have died with faith in him.
Death, therefore, is temporary. Death has ultimately and finally been destroyed. The proof, again, is Easter. We know that God will raise up our mortal bodies from death—and the mortal bodies of those we love who belong to Christ—because he raised up Jesus. Jesus is the first of many to come, or the first fruits, as Paul says. The Apostle’s logic is this: "Because him, so us."
Death is not the end. It is a pause. Death is not defeat, but the gate through which we appropriate final victory and eternal life. Death is done and we will live. The resurrection means that God has conquered death.
For you believers here today, this glorious news of the resurrection should be an occasion of re-commitment to service and faithfulness. Today is the reminder of all the good and certain promises of God toward the elect in Christ.
For those of you here today who do not yet believe, it should be the occasion for your belief. Keep before your mind’s eye the 3 “empty” promises of Easter. The empty cross means your sin has been paid in full and you can be forgiven and free. The empty tomb means Jesus is not there, but on the right hand of the Father as our advocate and intercessor. The empty grave clothes means the Savior is alive, clothed now in immortality and glory.
Peter, at the end of his Pentecost Day sermon, concluded by saying that God has made this Jesus both Lord and Christ. The Bible says that his hearers were cut to the heart and cried out: "What shall we do?" The apostle declares, "Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ."
The risen Lord, Ladies and Gentlemen, is God’s one and only saving provision. He is the only lifeboat, the only rescue. Apart from Him there is no salvation. The word for you today is "Repent and believe in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ." As Paul says in Romans: "If you will confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you shall be saved.”
In one poignant scene of James Goldman’s play of dysfunction in a royal family, The Lion in Winter, Henry II, who wants son John to succeed him, and Eleanor of Aquitaine, who wants son Richard to get the crown, are quibbling over the province of Aquitaine. Henry wants it for John, Eleanor has it and refuses to give it up. “Can’t some agreement be made?” Henry asks. Eleanor replies, “In a world where carpenters get resurrected, anything is possible.”
That’s why we are here today. A carpenter—but much more than a carpenter—has been resurrected, and now the impossible (eternal life, and transcending death) has been made possible.
AMEN.
