Easter 2009

04/12/09
Easter 2009
Hudson UMC

The resurrection of Jesus Christ lies at the very heart of Christian faith. Despite all the attempts of critics to reduce the significance of Christ’s ministry to His teaching and example, the entire New Testament stands or falls on the physical resurrection of our Lord. Every statement of the New Testament was written from a post-resurrection point of view. If we take that one fact out of the equation, the apostolic witness is simply incomprehensible.

The angel of the Lord meets the two Mary’s at the tomb where, only three days earlier, Jesus had been buried, as dead as dead could be. There was no confusion; Jesus was very much dead. Imagine the surprise of the women to find that He was no longer there, but had been physically raised from the dead. Put yourself into the story. A beloved friend of yours has just died. The funeral was three days ago. Today, you go to place some fresh flowers on the grave and pay your respects only to experience an earthquake, the grave open, and your dear friend gone; raised from the dead. How shocked would you be?

Every day, we, as Christians, celebrate the fact that our God raises the dead. Every time we talk about Jesus, we are not talking about a Jew who died two thousand years ago, but the one whom God raised from the dead, declaring the victory of God over the power of death. When we say that Jesus is Lord, we are not just saying that He is Lord over all there is or even that He is Lord over the church or Lord over particular Christians, we are saying that Jesus is Lord even over death, one of the greatest enemies of humanity since the beginning.

Let us think about what the resurrection means for us. After all, the Christian promise is that, as Christ was resurrected, so shall we be. It means that, despite the fact that death seems like it is final, it isn’t. It means that the statement, “Nothing is certain except death and taxes,” is half wrong. Death is by no means certain. Life is certain. Life is God’s ultimate plan for humanity, His ultimate plan for us.

The resurrection also tells us that the idea in popular American piety about the inherent immortality of the soul is not the Biblical promise of eternal life. When we talk about salvation, we often use language that says things like trying to “save your soul.” Preachers have spoken eloquently about the immortality of the soul, explaining that, while bodies die, souls never do and that our utmost concern should be the eternal destiny of our souls. And yet, this is not quite the truth. Jesus’ resurrection was not simply the life of the soul, it was an embodied life. The angel pointed out to the women who came, “He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay.” Jesus was no longer in the tomb. If the resurrection were simply a spiritual resurrection, the body would have still been lying there. We read that when the women meet Jesus, they take hold of His feet and worship Him. They grabbed the feet, not of some disembodied eternal soul, but a human body, resurrected in glory. God took our human nature upon Himself, not to do away with it, but to redeem it and incorporate it into God’s divine plan for us.

Though our text only goes as far as the women running into Jesus and going off to tell the disciples, Jesus does indeed meet up with the eleven remaining disciples on a mountain in Galilee. We read what might be the most amazing and hard to believe statement in the entire New Testament. “When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.” Imagine that. Do you think that you could stand in the presence of the resurrected Lord, clothed in glory and not believe? The point is that, though the church has taken the resurrection for granted, it was a point of controversy even at the time, even in Christ’s own presence.

The question we need to ask ourselves this Easter morning is, do we really believe that God raises the dead? Do we believe that the man Jesus was really raised bodily from the grave? This is a major issue that we have to come to terms with. If we say, “I believe that Jesus was a mighty man of God who lived a life of excellence and was a great moral teacher, but I fundamentally deny that He was God in flesh that was bodily raised from the dead,” we put ourselves against the entire New Testament witness. The apostles lived their lives from the conviction that their Lord was no longer dead. It was this conviction that empowered them to face their deaths boldly. For them, if Jesus was raised from the dead, nothing else really mattered.

If God raised Jesus from the dead and we believe that we will participate in that resurrection, it impacts the way we live our lives. If death is not the end, but we will live forever, not in some ethereal, purely spiritual way, but truly embodied, then the things that we do, even here and now, have eternal significance. Every day that goes by gives us opportunities to participate in the love of God in Christ through the Holy Spirit. Do we choose to do so? Do we allow the fact that we are called to be in perfect fellowship with the Triune God influence how we pursue the Christian life today and shape the way we live in fellowship with others?

On Good Friday, we talked about the sad reality that humanity, if left to its own devices, will murder the God who created them and loves them if given half a chance. What Easter shows us is that God is not hindered by that evil. Jesus tells us to not be afraid of human beings who have the power to kill us but cannot do anything more to us. Jesus followed His own advice. He went boldly to death, allowing human beings to be the worst they could be. Though the disciples lost their hope on that day, only three days later, Christ was raised from the dead in glory, showing that death, the great enemy of humanity, cannot defeat God. God in Christ has endured the worst that we can dish out and has emerged victorious. The Psalmist writes about God laughing at the nations of the world, united against the authority of God. Our evil, our malice, our determination to do harm are shown to be less powerful than the grace of God.

Christ is risen! The word of God made flesh who was crucified is now alive! How will you live today in light of that fact? I don’t mean, what are your family’s Easter traditions. I am not interested in the fact that you will eat a large meal with family and friends. What I challenge you to do is think about how the fact that the one who was crucified on your behalf is now alive and praying for you and calling you to participate in His eternal life actually makes you live differently than if it were not true. For some people who come to church, it does not seem like the fact that God raises the dead and promises to include them in that reality impacts them in the slightest way. They still gossip, they still are quick to find fault, they still cling more tightly to social norms than the transforming power of the Gospel, and they still see love as a sentimental emotion instead of a participation in the radical love of God.

So today we celebrate the resurrection. Today we rejoice because God has proven that, in spite of all the skepticism in the world, in spite of all the evil around us, in spite of the uncertainty and difficulties of modern life, God is still at work. We can spit in God’s face, we can mock Him, we can even crucify Him, but He is simply not going away. Try as we might, we cannot escape the presence of God. He will not stop pursuing us. I do not mean that God is always with us so He can strike us down when we make a mistake. What I mean is that God loves us so much that He wants to be with us. Despite all of our sin, shortcoming and weakness, God wants to be around us and wants us to want to be around Him. Don’t ask me why. After all, I could make you a list why He shouldn’t want to love me. And yet, we believe that God does not respond to our hate with more hate. We believe that, even when we are at our worst, God showers love and blessings upon us. Remember that, while He was being crucified, Jesus cried out, “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.” If even the cross could not stop the love of God, let us rejoice that God indeed loves us.

We as the church are Easter people. We are resurrection people who are grafted into the life of God in Christ through the Holy Spirit. Let us live as people who have been raised from the dead, as people who have had their sins forgiven, and as those who are in active, living and loving relationship with the Triune God of the universe. Let us pray.

AMEN