Sermon for Easter Sunday, April 11, 2004JESUS: DEAD OR ALIVE?By Scripture: Luke 24:1-5
We start our worship each Easter Sunday with the lights subdued and the drape over the cross to help us get just a tiny little taste of the mood and feelings of those disciples when we left them two days ago on Good Friday. It seemed to them that their whole world had just come crashing in on them and all was darkness. The beloved prophet and teacher and the one they knew to be God's messiah had been cruelly executed by Rome and was now in his grave. The whole past three years of their lives looked wasted now. Their hopes and dreams were just shattered, and they were deeply depressed and disillusioned and defeated. We may can get a glimpse of what they were feeling if we can get in touch with a dark time in our lives, a time when we felt the world might as well have ended, when we knew that God had abandoned us, when all we could see was dark and doubt and emptiness and fear. Can you think of a time like that? If you can you will know what it meant for those friends of Christ to hear the incredible news that he is no longer in that tomb, that his is alive - Christos Aneste - Christ is risen and he is going on before us to the next place we are going and that he will meet us there. Easter is a problem for many Christians. It just doesn't make sense. It does not fit into our rational, scientific, logical minds. That is true. It is a mystery. No one knows what happened exactly. In fact if you sit down today with each of the four gospels and read the last chapter in each of those about Jesus resurrection, you will find differences and disagreements. The people who experienced the risen Lord tell different stories about that. Sometimes they recognized him immediately. Other times he appeared as a stranger. Sometimes they could touch him and he seemed to be just like us physically. Other times he was like a ghost, appearing in a room when all the doors had been locked. This was not a resuscitated corpse but something very different. But here is what is logical and rational. Something incredible had to occur for that group of defeated, depressed disciples to get turned around completely into contagious missionaries who went on to turn the world upside down with this news that Christ is alive, not dead, and that this means that God wants people to know God and live by the teachings and example of Christ. That little rag tag band of believers had an formidable task because as they spread the news, they came up against the most awesome power in the world, the power of the Roman government, that began to persecute and harass them and for a while to jail and execute these Christians for their unpatriotic beliefs, their refusal to acknowledge Caesar as lord. This was really scary. Think about the power of Rome. You have seen the film Gladiator. Roman might prevailed against every group that tried to oppose it, wiped out every opponent-except for this rag tag group called followers of the way of Jesus who outlasted Rome and the many other political forces that have tried to wipe it out because it is from God. Our group that goes to Greece next week will stand in a few days in a Roman amphitheater in the excavated ruins of Philippi and there in that spot where other Christians were killed by beasts or gladiators we will sing a hymn. Something happened on that Easter Sunday or we would not be here today, and the good news about Jesus now being alive made a life changing difference and still does. One thing that Easter meant is that people got a second chance. Easter is about new beginnings, a second chance or a third chance, the gospel is a comeback story not just for Jesus but also for us. Does anybody here today need to hear about a second chance, need to hear that you have been forgiven and you can start over and that God wants you to be able to come back? Peter needed to hear that because after he had loudly boasted that he would never leave Jesus' side, he did and even denied three times that he knew Christ in order to keep from being arrested himself. He felt deeply ashamed for selling out and for his cowardice. He was not only grief stricken on this day, he was guilt ridden. Do you know what that feels like - to look back and say to yourself, "How could I have possibly done that?" But the risen Christ gave Peter a second chance, and in one of the resurrection stories the angel at the tomb says, "Tell all the disciples, including Peter, that Jesus is gong on ahead of them and will meet them in Galilee." Peter is included now and is given a second chance. Do you need to hear today that God wants you to have a second chance? Before singer songwriter Johnny Cash was thirty years old, he had become very popular and successful. But he had also become an addict. He started with pep pills, then anti depressants, and some days he was taking 100 pills a day. One morning, somewhere in Georgia, he woke up and realized he was in jail. He didn't know how he got there; he didn't remember anything. But this had happened to him before, and now he was in jail again. The jailer said, "Johnny, one of the night men found you stumbling around the streets. We only brought you in so you wouldn't hurt yourself. I'm a big fan of yours. I've always admired you. It's a shame to see you ruining yourself like this. I didn't know you were this bad off." He shook his head sadly and said, "I don't know where you think you got your talent from Johnny, but if you think it came from God like I do, then you sure are wrecking the body God put it in." With that the jailer opened the cell door and let Johnny Cash go free. That conversation was a turning point. Cash says, "It was that reference to God that suddenly cleared my mind. It hadn't occurred to me to turn to God for help. I realized I would need all the power I could get in kicking my habit and I knew this power could only come from God. I asked God to go to work on me then and there and he did. He turned my life around. He set me free." Easter is about new beginnings, a second chance. It's a comeback story not just about Jesus but about us also, and if you need to hear that good news about a second chance for your life, a chance to be forgiven and to start over again, you've come to the right place. Easter is also about a God who is with us even in our pain and suffering and darkness and who tells us through the risen Christ that we are not alone and God will see us through what ever valley of pain and shadow we walk through and will help us prevail. When Christians wrestle with the question of how there can be suffering and illness in our world when God is a God of love, we can finally only point to the cross and say that even this man, this Messiah, this holy teacher and prophet and Lord knew what it was to experience pain and grief and death, that even God's son is not exempt from suffering and that God is able to see us through our dark times and will walk with us in Christ to new life right now - not far off somewhere in the distant future but right now. The Apostles Creed says it this way: He was crucified, dead and buried. He descended into hell. There is nothing we can experience or will experience that Christ also has not experienced. That is one of the meanings of the cross. Christ has been where we may be or where we will be and Christ will help us to make it through. There is a story told a few years back by Chicago news writer Bob Greene In the Chicago area a fifteen-year-old boy became very ill. His fever spiked to 105°. He was rushed to the hospital. The tests showed that he had leukemia. The doctors were very frank about what this meant - long hospital stays, endless tests and treatments, and probably three years of chemotherapy and no assurance these things would work. Douglas, the fifteen-year-old became very discouraged and depressed. To help him feel a little better, his family called a local flower shop to send him some flowers. They explained to the young women who took the order that Douglas had been told he had leukemia and they hoped the arrangement would really be attractive and cheerful. She said she knew just what to do. When the flowers arrived they were very attractive. But strangely, there were two cards in the envelope attached to the arrangement. One of course was from Douglas' family. The other was from someone named Laura Bradley. No one knew who this was. When Doug read the card she sent, he understood. The card said, "Doug, I took your order. I work at the flower shop. I had leukemia when I was seven years old. I am twenty-two now. Good luck. You can make it. My heart goes out to you. Laura Bradley." That note from someone who had been through what he was experiencing gave Doug inspiration and his fear turned to hope. But the power in the note was that it came from someone who had been there, who had gone through this experience before him. The cross tells us more. It is an empty cross. Jesus is not still hanging there suffering. He is alive. He is at work in our world. The question the angel asks at the tomb is critical: "Why are you looking among the dead for one who is alive??" Let me ask this to each of us: In practical terms, is Jesus dead or alive for you? Is he a nice memory from the past or is he a living friend and guide and life coach for you every day? Is he in the words of the hymn, someone who walks with you and talks with you along life's narrow way, or is he still locked in the pages of that dusty, musty Bible sitting around your house and for all practical reasons still unrelated to your real life decisions and experiences? Our scripture text says that he is alive and available with us now every day. A couple of years ago Phil and Wanda Wilson sent me a story about what happened in another church on Palm Sunday. One family had a five year old still recovering from strep and he stayed home from church on Palm Sunday with his dad while mom took his seven year old sister to church to sing in the children's choir. When the mom and sister came home they brought palm branches with them to share. Five-year-old Jacob asked what the palm branches were for. His mom said that people held palm branches over Jesus' head as he walked by. Jacob was incensed. "Wouldn't you know it! The one Sunday I miss church, Jesus shows up!" Well, of course, the real truth is that whenever people come together as the church, whenever people are here together with open hearts and open minds, whenever people are willing to meet and bring our hurts and hopes and wounds and dreams, Jesus shows up - thanks be to God. Jesus is alive and is among us and the energy and spirit and enthusiasm and vitality that people say that they feel when they are in this congregation - that is the spirit of Christ. That's the risen one among us who invites us to tell others about him, to announce to the world that he is not just a vague memory from 2000 years ago but that he is alive. We will sing that good news at the end of the service and then we will be sent forth to live it, to let his light shine through us and in us, to point with our words and deeds to this risen Christ who can still give people a second chance, can still walk with us and see us through the valleys of darkness and shadows and give us hope and life no matter how dark things may have seemed. The purpose of that exciting new building that is going up now as a witness to Christ is that we can point others to him and offer others a chance to experience joy and hope and new life! My friend Robert Allen at First United Methodist Church in my hometown of Wichita Falls, Texas tells about the time he served a congregation in Oklahoma City that was near the medical school. He says that a young doctor was doing a rotation at the Children's Hospital. He had been assigned to care for a seven-year-old child. The boy had been running a high fever and would occasionally have a seizure and this young inexperienced doctor was doing all the right things to help. The child was frightened and very sick. The doctor would talk kindly to him and would tease him occasionally. And the doctor even found himself singing to help calm the child as he was running one series of tests. At one point in this series of events the boy looked at the doctor and asked, "Are you kin to Jesus?" It's a question that could and should be asked of us if we our lives and hearts are open to this risen one who is still alive and with us and able to work in us and through us as we point others to new life in him. Here is how we will sing that Easter news: Christ is alive, let Christians sing, his cross stands empty to the sky. Let streets and homes with praises ring. His love in death shall never die. Christ is alive no longer bound to distant years in Palestine. He comes to claim the here and now and dwell in every place and time. Amen. |
