The Day Before Easter

What we are remembering this morning is the central, defining event of the Christian faith. Today all over the world, Christians are gathering together, in cathedrals and in rented storefronts, in remote villages and in crowded cities, in thousands of different languages, all celebrating and bearing witness to the world that Jesus Christ has risen from the dead. Hallelujah! Jesus Christ is risen! That simple statement of faith is the key distinction between Christianity and every other religion or philosophy known to man.

It sets us apart. It defines us. Buddha didn't rise from the dead. Confucius is still in the grave. Aristotle and Socrates and Plato all sleep the sleep of death. The Roman Caesars and Egyptian pharaohs are still in their tombs. Every other man or woman in history who claimed to have discovered the meaning of life, who claimed to know the way to God and eternal life -- every one of them died, and is still dead. But Jesus Christ lives.

This fact not only makes Christianity unique. It also makes it good news. But to call the gospel of Jesus Christ "good news" is a great understatement. It's not just "good" news. It's great news. It's fantastic news. It's unbelievable news. It’s wonderful, amazing, incredible news! In a few moments, I'm going to talk about why the resurrection is such great news, why it's more to us than just an interesting historical event. But first, I'm going to talk about a different day. Not today, Resurrection Sunday, but the day before, Holy Saturday. The day between the death of Christ on Good Friday and the discovery of the empty tomb on Easter Sunday. Because the good news of Christ's resurrection life can only be fully appreciated when we consider the bad news of his death.

Consider how the disciples must have felt as the sun came up on that cold, gray Saturday morning. On the day before, they had witnessed the brutal execution of their leader, Jesus. They watched him suffer as his life slowly drained away. And keep in mind that His wasn't a calm, peaceful passing. Nor was it a noble, heroic death. It was the agonizing, shameful, humiliating death of a condemned criminal, nailed to a wooden cross between two murderers. The disciples listened helplessly as Jesus took his final, tortured breaths; they winced as the Roman soldier thrust his sword into Jesus' side to make sure he was dead; they witnessed his bloody, lifeless corpse being pulled down and dragged away to be placed in the tomb.

How must they have felt on that Saturday? Grief-stricken. Heartbroken. Shocked. Traumatized. As any of us would be to see someone we love treated this way. But most of all, terribly confused and frightened. Only a few days before, on Palm Sunday, they walked proudly at Jesus' side as he rode triumphantly into Jerusalem, surrounded by adoring crowds. Crowds shouting, "Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!"

They were convinced that Jesus was the Messiah, the one who would deliver his people.

He was going to re-establish Israel as an independent nation, he was going to give them, his disciples, positions of honor and authority in his new kingdom. But then everything came crashing down around them. Jesus was arrested, and brought before Pilate, and the crowds suddenly changed their tune. "Crucify Him!" they shouted, "Crucify Him! We have no king but Caesar!". And now this. A dead teacher. A lifeless savior. Not a triumphant king, sitting on a throne, but a decaying corpse, laying in a tomb.

"How could it end this way?", they must have thought. Everything Jesus taught had seemed so right, so true. Was it all a lie? If so, then how could they have been so mistaken, so deceived? How could they have ever thought that this uneducated carpenter was right, and all of the religious authorities were wrong? What fools they had been! But then again -- didn't Jesus perform miracles? -- heal the sick, open the eyes of the blind, cast out demons? Could a man who did those things really be a liar and a fraud?

Or could they have been following a madman, a lunatic who thought he was God's Son, but who was really just an ordinary, deluded man. Was that it? Or was he just tragically misguided? A sincere man who got carried away, who started to believe the things that people were saying about him, and who didn't realize where it was all leading until it was too late? Their heads were spinning. Who was Jesus, anyway? They thought they knew him, but now their whole world had been turned upside down, and they weren't sure of anything. They couldn't reconcile what had just happened with what they thought they knew about Jesus. Surely, the Son of God couldn't die, could he? The Creator couldn't be destroyed by his own creation, could he?