Sunday, April 21, 2019

Resurrection of the Lord
Acts 10:34-43 or Isaiah 65:17-25
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
1 Corinthians 15:19-26 or Acts 10:34-43
John 20:1-18 or Luke 24:1-12

Why do you seek the living among the dead? He isn’t here, but is risen.

What can we say about the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ that hasn’t been said already? The only words that come to mind are “Alleluia, He is risen! He is risen indeed.”

Easter is not just a special day filled with baskets and bunnies and pretty new dresses. It is the culmination of the redemptive work of God through our Lord Jesus Christ. The crucifixion brings us forgiveness and the resurrection brings us eternal life in Christ. We are now drawn into a personal relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ.

The hard part is that I’m writing this before we have even experienced Holy Week. We are still considering what the disciples and the other people were thinking about as they watched every move Jesus made. How could they go from a royal welcome to crucifixion in such a short period of time? Did the disciples ever try to stop Jesus? What made the people change their mind about Jesus? Perhaps these are silly questions, questions without answers, but it helps me identify with the people involved and understand my own role in the death of my Lord. I see the imperfection of those whom Jesus chose as His own and I can believe that He chose me too. I experience the hypocrisy of the temple rulers and know that I am no different. I sense the confusion of the people and I rejoice at His love and mercy even when I have doubts and fears.

So, I’m not ready to talk about the resurrection. I think it is unfortunate that so many Christians would prefer jump past the events of Holy Week and move right into the celebration. Oh, we have the advantage of looking at everything with twenty/twenty vision. We know the end of the story. We know we are saved. Yet, if we ignore the message of the cross - the forgiveness of sin given through the blood of Jesus - what need is there for the resurrection? How can we live as Easter people if we do not know we were sinners in need of a Savior? Though it is hard to write about the Resurrection today, by Sunday morning the crucifixion will be over and the day of mourning past. We will wake to the jubilant cries of Christians worldwide who sing praises to God. “Alleluia, He is risen, He is risen indeed.”

Easter Sunday gives us a taste of what heaven will be: churches overflowing with believers, altars covered with fresh blooming lilies and all of creation singing Alleluia again. The sorrow of Good Friday has passed and the people are overflowing with joy and peace. The congregation is crammed with every type: the long standing member, the C & E Christian (Christmas and Easter), family who are dragged along to make their mothers happy and even a few who are just curious about what we are celebrating. They are looking for answers to their questions: what is Easter? Who is this Christ? More than Christmas, Easter provides us an opportunity to share the Gospel message: that Jesus Christ was raised so that we all might have new life in Him.

In Easter, we see the fulfilling of the promise made through Isaiah the prophet: that God will create new heavens and a new earth, and that the lion will lie down with the lamb. As we catch a glimpse of that promise being fulfilled, we feel a longing for the time when we will not experience hurt or destruction. This is especially true in those times when we are facing difficulty in our world. As people are still suffering from disappointment and defeat, they need to know that God is doing something about it.

We know God is faithful, but we still see suffering and pain all around us. People are still hungry. Enemies still wage war. Leaders still let us down. We still sin. In our hearts we believe that God is doing this new thing, creating this new world, bringing reconciliation and peace to His creation. But in our minds and through our experiences we know that the promise has yet to be fulfilled. Even though we are filled with joy on Easter, we wake up Monday morning to the reality of our lives. We look forward to heaven, but we live in this world now. And in this world, the lion eats the lamb.

Yet, the promise in Isaiah is not just for some far off place, but for a renewing of our world here today. God is not concerned only for where we will be for eternity, but how we live in the here and now. Heaven is something to look forward to, but it is also something to be experienced as we live our lives in this world. While we do still experience hardship and death, has not the world become a better place? Though children still die much too young, have we not been able to save the lives of infants that once never stood a chance? Though men and women do not always make it to old age, are we not living longer? Though some have had economic difficulty, are there not more people who dwell in homes of their own? We can focus on the pain and the things that have gone wrong, or we can realize how much we have been blessed and then join God in recreating the world into the place He means it to be.

It won’t be perfect. We’ll still fail. Paul tells us that Christ must rule until He puts all His enemies under His feet. He rules now; we see this to be true on Easter Sunday, as we gather together to celebrate His resurrection. He was the first. We look forward to the day when He will come again. Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again. This is the hope for our Christian faith. One by one the enemies of Christ are being defeated, even as each person’s heart is melted by God’s grace. It seems like it will never end, because just as one ruler is changed, another rises to fight against God. As one person comes to a lifesaving faith in Christ, it seems others are born to reject Him. But God is working. He is creating new heavens and a new earth. He is changing the world, one heart at a time.

God speaks through Isaiah and He begins with a new beginning. “For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former things will not be remembered, nor come into mind.” This is as great an accomplishment as the first creation, perhaps even greater. The first creation was made out of chaos, out of nothing, out of darkness. This new creation is made out of the failures of God’s people. We were created and commanded to care for the earth but we failed. We failed to care for all that was entrusted to us, especially our relationships. In our sin we broke the harmony between God and man and between one another. Our sins, though against each other, hurt God even more because in our sin we were not living as He intended us to live.

But God’s love for His people is greater than our failure. He is faithful to His promises even when we are not. So, in response to our sin, He has promised to make things new, a new creation that will lead to a new beginning for the world. This promise of new heavens and a new earth is a future promise, something that will come in the day God has promised. That day began with Jesus Christ, who lived and died for the sake of mankind. He restored the relationship of men and God, made it possible for men to restore their relationships with one another. The fulfillment of that day is not now; it will be. Though things began anew with the raising of Jesus, there is another day coming when we will see everything as it was meant to be.

There is a candy called “Now and Later.” It was given that name because it is a package of several individually wrapped squares of a chewy substance, some of which can be eaten now while some is saved for later. There is enough in one package for now and for later. There is so much about the Christian story that has a “Now and Later” viewpoint. Jesus Christ reigns and will reign. Eternal life is our hope for tomorrow and our assurance for our today. Salvation is now and later.

On Easter Sunday we celebrate the empty tomb. We are amazed with the women and surprised with the disciples that Jesus’ body was gone, wondering what it all means. Once Jesus appeared before them, stories we will hear in the weeks to come, they began to understand everything that He had told them as they journeyed together toward the cross. They began to understand why He had to die and what God had planned all along. Once Jesus appeared before them, they saw that God’s power is over everything, including death.

Yet, on Easter Sunday we see only the empty tomb and the promise of meeting Jesus again. On that day when our pews are full, with family and friends of our members or curious strangers seeking to understand Christianity, we speak of Jesus being raised and give them the empty tomb, and yet in Luke’s version of this story we do not meet the risen Lord. We are given the promise that we will see Him again, but we see only a missing body and the confusion of the disciples.

Unfortunately for many people, hope in an afterlife gives no consolation in times of stress and difficulty. The disciples were told what was to come, that He would die and be raised again, but they did not understand what that meant while they were experiencing the grief of their loss. They could not see beyond the moment. What good does an afterlife do when we are suffering in this life? The Christian faith, to those who do not believe, is foolishness. Recently someone said to me, “He’s dead, get over it.” The resurrection is meaningless to many because it does not seem to do anything to change this life.

Though Isaiah speaks of the heavens in the first verse of the Old Testament passage, everything else is about the earth. The future promise is for today, also. The future fulfillment is the hope of today and in that hope we can live in joy and peace. We aren’t to see the Easter story as one that is still to be completed. God’s salvation is now. In that salvation we live and breathe the Gospel in this world, offering hope and peace to those who are still lost in the darkness. The world is being recreated one heart at a time as we, God’s people, share His love to the world. In our words and works, things are transformed and people are changed. We can see a glimmer of what is to come when we will no longer labor in vain or be subjected to misfortune. How great a day it will be when the earth is new, when the wolf and the lamb, the lion and the ox shall share the bountiful gifts of God’s abundance.

Easter is about life. Certainly, the raising of Jesus is about new life for Him, but it is also about new life for all of us. The empty tomb means that we will receive the eternal life that is promised by God to those who believe. In baptism we die with Christ, in faith we are raised again. Life is the end of all we face in Christ. That is completely upside down from what we experience in the world. No matter what we do, our flesh will perish and decay. Believing in Jesus will not keep us from dying. Our Christian lifestyle might extend our life a bit. Good and healthy living can keep death at bay, but not forever. We will die.

Cemeteries are often placed near churches, sharing the hallowed ground. In places where the church buildings are hundreds of years old, the more prominent members of the congregations are even buried inside, with engraving on the stone floors marking the resting places of the wealthy landowners or exceptional members of the clergy. Churches like Westminster Abbey appear to be little more than huge, elaborate tombs. While the church is known for other things like weddings and coronations of monarchs, funerals and even secular gatherings, most people visit the site to see the resting places of hundreds of famous people from poets to kings.

Yet it is a living church. People gather there each Sunday for worship, to hear God’s Word and to receive the sacraments. As a matter of fact, the church offers several worships every day, including weekdays at lunch, so that people visiting and working in the city can gather to worship the living God in the midst of the hustle and bustle of our life. We happened to be visiting over the lunch hour. We heard the worship announced over the loud speaker that there would be a brief communion service. We asked one of the staff how to get to the service and he was so excited that we wanted to worship that he took us through through the red velvet ropes and against the flow of visitors so that we could be there in time.

I was terribly disappointed when we arrived at the worship area to discover that there would only be a few dozen worshippers. There was easily a thousand people in that church at that moment, and in the midst of that chaos we few received the body and blood of Christ. I wondered, as I watched the visitors filing by, why they would spend so much time with the dead when they could be worshipping the living God. For them, Westminster Abbey was nothing more than a tomb.

Our world is truly upside down. After the resurrection, the women went to the tomb seeking Jesus’ body so they could finish the work of anointing Him for death. As they were there, two men in dazzling robes appeared asking them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” They did not yet know that Jesus had been raised, though He told them to expect it. They did not understand what He meant until later when He appeared alive before them. As Christ lives, so do we. But we see the world with a skewed point of view, seeking death instead of life. We would rather spend an hour looking at the tombs of famous people then worship the living God. This is true of our daily lives, also, as we chase after the things that will perish and decay rather than spending time with our God.

Peter was in an unusual situation in the story from Acts. He was a preacher for the Jews, sharing the love of Christ with those from his own cultural background. He knew the Jews understood the story of God, the symbols of his faith, the expectations of the God of their forefathers. He could not be so sure with the Gentiles. This is perhaps why it was so important for the Gentiles to be converted to Judaism first, so that they would understand the history of God, His purposes and His grace. Yet, Peter was given a vision and that vision changed his point of view.

Peter was traveling around the country, preaching and teaching the Good News of Jesus Christ when he received a message from a man in Caesarea named Cornelius. Cornelius is described as a God-fearing man, one who gave generously to the poor and needy. He received a message from God to call Peter to his house so that he might hear the Gospel message. Peter would have been reluctant; after all, Cornelius was not a Jew. Before the messengers found Peter, God sent Peter a vision. In it God told Peter not to call anything He created unclean. So, when the messengers arrived, Peter followed them to Cornelius. Cornelius told Peter about his own message from God. Peter had no choice. This was God’s work.

He began this brief sermon with the words, “Truly I perceive that God doesn’t show favoritism; but in every nation he who fears him and works righteousness is acceptable to him.” So, despite all his fears, doubts and biases, Peter told them about Jesus. Perhaps this is not his sermon verbatim; what it is a summarization of all the Luke had written about the story of Jesus and the work He did for the world. This is the last evangelistic message of Peter in the book of Acts, and it is given beyond the nation of Israel. Peter reaches out, pointing toward the future of the Church which is found not only in Israel, but throughout the entire world. The Gospel is for all those who fear God and do what is right.

In all things, we are reminded that the message of Easter is not limited to those whom we believe to be right with God. The Gospel is given to all men so that they might believe and be saved. Some will reject the message; some will persecute the messengers. Yet, we are called by God to share the Gospel with all men. He has no favorites. We are commanded to preach to the people and to testify that He is Savior. At Easter we rejoice in what He has done, and then we go out in the world to share His grace with all. As Easter people, we are to be like Peter, telling others about Jesus, no matter who they are, having hope and trust in God that He will be in the words we speak making miracles of transformation in their lives.

Perhaps that’s why it is good that we are hearing this message a few days early. Now is the time to pray for those you know who do not yet know the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Now is the time to invite them to join you at worship this week. Take them on Maundy Thursday to experience the covenant Jesus made with His people so that we will be assured of His promises even while we live in a world that is still chaotic and difficult. Take them to Good Friday services so that they will see what Jesus was willing to do so that they would be freed from sin and death. Take them on Easter Sunday to rejoice in the empty tomb, to hear the worlds of forgiveness and the promise of life so that they can join in chorus of voices singing “Alleluia!”

It is interesting that Paul uses the word “pitiable” in the epistle lesson because for many non-Christians we are to be pitied. They think we should be pitied because we believe in myths or fairy tales about Jesus of Nazareth being raised from the dead. They think that we should be pitied because we believe in heaven, in eternal life with our Lord Jesus Christ. Christianity is unique in that we believe in something beyond this life. It seems odd that Paul would call us the most pitiable, but the world in which the Corinthians lived was a pagan world, a world where there were dozens of gods available for human consumption. You could take a pilgrimage to any of the larger cities and find massive temples in honor of those gods as well as all the tourist trappings to help make your trip more enjoyable. You could enjoy the physical pleasures of that religion: the food, the wine and the prostitutes. Christianity has always set a different standard, a standard of moderation and of self-control. Based on the moral code established by God through the Hebrews, Christianity has a moral code that defines the actions of the believer, both behavior that they should not do and behavior that they should.

For many people, Christianity is to be pitied because they prefer to live for the satisfaction of their hedonistic desires, which the religions of Paul’s world satisfied. Unfortunately many today have the same expectations within their belief system, even some Christians. Faith, to them, is about feeling good, about self-satisfaction, about being a better person. And though the Christian response to God’s grace often brings about good feelings, satisfaction and a transformation into something new and better, Christ never promised that our life with Him would be easy. As a matter of fact, Christian faith is hard. The Christians in Paul’s day were persecuted because they did not live according to the societal expectations. Even though they had faith, Christians got sick and they died. Though there were those in the community of faith who had wealth, many of the Christians suffered because they had been outcast from both the Jewish community and the pagan world for their unusual beliefs. Christians truly are to be pitied, if you expect faith to be rewarded in this life.

If there is no heaven, if there is no eternal life, then we are indeed to be pitied. But in Christ we are not to be pitied, because we have a hope that goes beyond today. The non-Christian who pities a Christian for faith in some heaven or afterlife sees no purpose of living beyond the here and now. They want their reward immediately. We know that Jesus Christ was the first of many, the first born of the dead. He rose and through faith we will rise with Him. Those without faith in Christ can’t see the point of it. But we know that Christ lives and in Him we live also. This is our hope and the foundation of our faith.