Sermon delivered Easter Sunday, April 4, 2010.
Lectionary texts: Acts 10:34-43; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24; 1 Corinthians 15:19-26; Luke 24:1-12.
In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
What is the Human Condition?
Good Easter morning! Today of course is Easter Sunday, the day when our Lord Jesus was raised from the dead and death was vanquished forever. Jesus’ resurrection reminds us that God’s promises are trustworthy and true. It means that everything really has changed and today I want to focus on what is our hope of glory.
Because we know the story and have the benefit of 20-20 hindsight, it is easy for us to miss the despair that is in the first part of Luke’s Gospel lesson this morning. The women who went to Jesus’ tomb to finish anointing his dead body did not expect to find an empty tomb or him alive. They expected to find a dead corpse. Despite Jesus telling them otherwise before he was crucified, the women, like Jesus’ other disciples, had no hope or expectation of finding Jesus alive. It simply wasn’t in their frame of reference or life experience. As far as they were concerned, the most wonderful person they had ever known had fallen victim to a monstrous injustice and now he was gone forever. Surely they must have felt very defeated and very alone.
Likewise with Jesus’ disciples. Even when they heard the women’s report of the empty tomb and their encounter with an angelic presence, Luke tells us that the disciples thought that the women’s report was an “idle tale.” After all, as John reports, the disciples were in hiding, afraid of being arrested and put to death like their Master had been. Surely they too felt very defeated and very alone because clearly they too had forgotten Jesus’ promise to them that he would be raised on the third day (see, e.g., Matthew 17:22-23).
And we can relate to all this, can’t we? We, like Jesus’ first disciples, often forget his word and promises to us, that he will never abandon or leave us alone (see, e.g., Matthew 28:20; John 14:18), and we act accordingly. Others refuse to believe the story of the Resurrection, considering it an “idle tale” just as Jesus’ disciples did at first. I have an old friend and former colleague who died recently and he was not a believer. As I read his obituary I was struck by how stark it was. There was an accounting of his life but nothing else. There was not one shred of hope in it. None. It was heartbreaking to read because it reminded me of what can happen to us when we either do not believe in God, stop trusting in his promises to us, or forget them. When that happens, it inevitably leads to fear, loneliness, isolation, and despair.
Where is God’s Grace?
But that is not how it is to be for God’s people. We are Christians and we have the cross of Christ and a Risen Savior. We do not worship some dead guy; how bizarre is that? No, we worship a Living Lord who is our great high priest, who empathizes with our weakness, and who offers us grace and mercy in our time of need (Hebrews 4:14-16). As Peter reminded his audience in our lesson from Acts today, by raising Jesus from the dead, God vindicated him in all that he said and did. We can believe Jesus’ promises to us and take him at his word because God raised him up from death. Simply put, the resurrection validates who Jesus said he was and is—God’s Son and Messiah. He is Lord of all!
For you see, we Christians have Good News in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. By becoming human and dying for us on the cross, God himself took care of the intractable problem of human sin and rebellion. He loves us so much that he bore the just punishment for our sins himself because he knows that none of us can lead sinless lives. In doing so, God made it possible for us to live with him forever. We no longer have to try to do the impossible, we no longer have to try to save ourselves. God has done that for us in the cross of Christ. Thanks be to God!
And by raising Jesus from the dead, God has given us a preview of coming attractions, so to speak, of his New Creation. As Paul reminded the Corinthians (and us), just as sin and death came through a human being, so life and the resurrection of the dead come from a human being. When God raised Jesus from the dead, he vindicated not only Jesus, but also God’s very creation and those of us who are in Christ. As Paul told the Romans in chapter 6, we who are baptized into Christ are baptized into his death. Just as we are united with Jesus in his death, so we are also united with him in his resurrection. In Colossians 1:27, Paul puts this very succinctly when he tells them that we have Christ in us, our hope of glory.
So what does the resurrection mean for us? What is our hope of glory that is in Christ? It means that God values his good albeit fallen creation and plans to redeem it rather than destroy it (and us). We are not destined to live in eternity apart from God or as disembodied spirits. Instead, as Paul writes to the Corinthians, when Christ returns again in power and glory we are going to be part of God’s New Creation, with a new heaven and earth. We who belong to Christ will be raised and get new resurrection bodies like his. Paul explicates this more in 1 Corinthians 15:35-58. We must be careful about supplying too much detail about our resurrection bodies but we know that they will be like Christ’s. Paul calls them “spiritual bodies,” bodies that are superior to our mortal bodies, bodies that will never be subject to sickness or decay or deformity or death. They will be immortal and incorruptible.
Whatever they look like, our new resurrection bodies will be equipped to live in the New Creation where there is no longer any brokenness or discord. And best of all in the New Creation, we will get to live directly in God’s presence with our loved ones who have died in Christ forever. Again, we must be careful about not adding too much detail to God’s New Creation but we can get a glimpse of what God has in mind by reading the last chapters of Revelation and Isaiah 53-55.
Whatever the New Creation looks like, we know that God will wipe away all our tears and sorrows and we will never have to experience the alienation, fear, or isolation we too often experience in our mortal lives. It is a glorious and wondrous vision of what life with God really is all about because we see in it life, perfection, and wholeness that we simply cannot comprehend or imagine. But we would expect this from a God who died for us and in his mighty resurrection vanquished death forever.
Where is the Application?
Besides giving us a wondrous hope for our eternity, what does the resurrection of Jesus have to say to us right now? First, it reminds us that life is more than just biological existence. The resurrection should help us develop an eternal perspective of life because it reminds us in very powerful ways that life does not end with the death of our bodies. Instead, life is a relationship with the Living Lord as Jesus reminds us in his high priestly prayer found in John 17:3.
This, in turn, helps us acquire a radically new orientation about this life. Suddenly our priorities change and our focus turns from pleasing ourselves to pleasing the Lord Jesus because we know that our mortal lives are simply a drop in the comprehensive ocean of eternity. As Paul told the Corinthians, if for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we Christians are the most to be pitied because this life is finite and is not going to end up well for any of us. But when we realize that life is about having a relationship with the Living God, then our priorities must necessarily change. The resurrection is proof that there is more to life than our mortal existence.
Second and related to the previous point, the resurrection reminds us that life and salvation are from God alone. No longer do we have to try to earn our salvation, especially since it is impossible for us to do so in the first place. Instead, God gives it to us freely in Christ Jesus our Lord. But if we are to accept his gracious offer to have life in him forever, Christ requires that we deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow him because he wants us to become just like him. Of course, we don’t do any of this by ourselves or on our own. We do it with Christ’s help because we have Christ in us, our hope of glory.
Real life, therefore, no longer becomes a balance sheet for bean counters, where we keep track of all of our “good deeds” versus all of our sins and hope that the good deeds outweigh our sins enough so that we can get our ticket punched. Instead, real quality of life is measured by the quality of our relationship with the Living Christ, who loves us and gave himself for us. As Paul writes elsewhere in Romans 6, we who are baptized into Christ count ourselves dead to sin but alive in Christ because he lives in us and transforms us into his very likeness. And because Christ was raised to life, so we too can count on being raised with him to enjoy God’s New Creation. Do you have that kind of relationship with Christ?
Last, the resurrection reminds us that we are not to live our lives here and now as defeated people, the way Jesus’ first disciples initially were before they were confronted with the reality of his resurrection. I am not suggesting that suddenly you will be immune from all of life’s problems. Nothing could be further from the truth. What I am suggesting is that the resurrection reminds us we have a living Savior who lives in us and is right now, transforming us into his very likeness, and helping us deal with all of life’s brokenness with joy and hope. The resurrection reminds us that a new and better day is coming, that death is not the end, and that God is really in charge of his creation despite appearances sometimes to the contrary. If we are truly resurrection people, our lives will be filled with joy and power, even in the face of adversity and death because we know that beyond our brokenness is life and wholeness.
But that is sometimes hard to remember and live out, isn’t it? Life can get quite, well, yucky. That is why it is so important that we keep praying and reading Scripture, especially the NT, to remind ourselves of the promises of God and how we know they are trustworthy and true. That is why it is important for us to live life together as a resurrection people so that we can let God love us through his people and use us to love and support others when they need it. This is partly what it means to live as a resurrection people. Use the means of grace God gives you to help him empower you to overcome the Evil One and the brokenness of this world.
Summary
We come back to my friend’s recent death and obituary because it serves as a stark reminder of what life without Christ is really like. Without Christ we are on our own and without hope because death is our end. In contrast, I think of my own parents’ funerals or more recently my father-in-law’s funeral. They died in Christ and at their respective funerals there was joy and hope in the midst of tears. Sure, we miss them but we know where they are. We know they are safe with the Lord who loved them and claimed them. They died in the Lord and we know they will be raised with him. It is not because they were “good people.” It is because they were resurrection people who wanted a relationship with God and believed his promise to redeem them through the blood of his Son.
In the death and resurrection of Jesus, God has demonstrated his great love for us. He has taken care of the problem of sin and the alienation it causes; we are no longer separated from the Source and Author of all life! He has defeated death and reminds us that there is a better day coming. We will have new resurrection bodies to which can look forward. We will have a New Creation in which to live. And as we await our final redemption we have Christ in us, our hope of glory, right here and now to help us live not as a defeated people but as a resurrection people. All of this is God’s free gift to us because God created us to have a relationship with him, not for just a few years but forever. That’s good news, folks, now and for all eternity. Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!
In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.
