Sermon for Easter

Sermon for Easter -- And this is Life!

     Dear friends in Christ, grace to you and peace, from God our Father, and His Son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  Amen.

     Let’s try this one more time: He is risen! (He is risen, indeed). And that is why we have gathered in this place today; to celebrate that life-changing, future-altering, remarkably astounding fact of our faith. Jesus has risen from the dead. No other event has changed the course of human history as much as the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Years on the calendar are determined by it. Entire civilizations have been shaped by it. More books have been written regarding it than about any other subject in history. The resurrection has captured the hope and the passion of every generation for the past 2000 years. And today we have the joy and privilege to gather in this place and consider once again how it has touched our lives forever.

     Now having said that, I must also add that there is not universal understanding of the events of that first Easter Day. A case in point would be the pastor who invited the children to come forward one Easter morning to tell HIM why we celebrate Easter. Why do we celebrate Easter: One little girl said “Because last Easter, I got a chocolate bunny.” A second child said “Because the Easter Bunny hides Easter eggs at our house.” Though the pastor was discouraged by this lack of understanding, he asked again, and a third child said “Because Jesus died on the cross on Easter.” It wasn’t quite right, but it was headed in the right direction, so he tried one more time. The last child said “Easter is when Jesus came out of the grave.” YES! They finally got it, but then the child continued “And if he sees his shadow, we have six more weeks of winter!”

     The truth of that first Easter Day is written in the four gospels of the bible: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Each of them tells the story just a little bit differently, but one common feature shared by them all is that it was women who were the first to know that Jesus was alive. Perhaps it was because embalming the body was women’s work, I don’t know; but in each gospel account, it was a woman or women who arose early on Sunday to go to the tomb where Jesus lay.

     So this is where we begin today, by following Mary Magdalene in the darkness. She was expecting to find a cave, its entrance sealed by a giant rock, and perhaps surrounded by Roman soldiers in order to discourage grave robbers. What Mary expected and what Mary found were two vastly different scenes, because when she arrived, the stone had already been moved. Jumping to a radical conclusion, she ran back to where the disciples were still grieving, and announced “They’ve taken the Lord and we don’t know where they’ve laid him.” To Mary, it wasn’t yet a resurrection. It was something…but she didn’t know exactly what.

     Upon hearing the news, two of Jesus’ closest friends, Peter and John, sprinted back to the tomb to see this for themselves. Sure enough, the stone was moved. One disciple was filled with fear, the other was filled with fervor; ultimately both men entered the tomb and discovered grave cloths – folded and lying on the ground. Grave robbers wouldn’t leave valuable linens behind; there was no other explanation. They didn’t need any more proof than this: Jesus was alive!

     The final installment of the story finds Mary, still hanging around the entrance to that tomb. She was confused; she did not make the same deduction that Peter and John did, so she was still trying to sort it all out in her mind. Isn’t faith like that for us, too? For some people, it comes so easy…so childlike. But for others, we need evidence; proof beyond a shadow of a doubt, that something is real. This is what Mary needed, and it is exactly what she was given.

     Bumping into a man whom she supposes to be the gardener, she asked if he knew where Jesus was. She was, in fact, speaking to Jesus but she didn’t have a clue…until he spoke her name. “Mary. Mary, it’s me!” And then she knew that her Savior had been raised from the dead. Mary…this branded woman of the night. This sinful prostitute who was never quite good enough to be accepted by the rank and file religious people of society…she was the first one to see the resurrected Savior face to face. And for 2000 years, we have been telling and re-telling this amazing story so that other sinful people just like us can hear, and believe, and have our sins washed away by his grace. This is why we celebrate today: because Jesus is alive, and our sins have been forgiven.

     You know, any pastor worth his or her salt knows that, on Easter morning, we are really speaking to two distinctly different congregations. Some of you have been in church so much this past week that you are receiving mail and phone calls here! Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Saturday. Good grief, why don’t you just move in! But others of you are here today under duress. You’re not really sure that you believe in God, and you brand those who do as “hypocrites.” Your presence here today is one of obligation, or curiosity, or boredom.

     I feel the need to speak to each group separately this morning, because one sermon will not do. One size does not fit all, when it comes to comprehending the story of Christ’s resurrection. So bear with me as I share a word to both groups of friends.

     First, to those of you for whom church attendance is rare; I’m glad you are here today. Thank you for taking the risk and coming into an environment that may seem very foreign to you. You may feel foolish because you don’t know when to stand and when to sit and when to sing and when to be silent. None of that matters to us. What matters is that you hear the Good News that was intended for you: that your sins do not keep you from God anymore. Author Max Lucado writes “God would rather die for you than live without you.” That is the Good News of Easter.

     John Donne tells the story of the early Spanish explorers who sailed from Europe to South America, and after many months of travel, finally sailed into the headwaters of the Amazon River, a body of water so great that they thought it was still the Atlantic Ocean. It never occurred to the sailors to drink the water because they assumed it was salty. Consequently, many of those sailors died of thirst. How ironic; they floated atop the largest body of fresh water in the known world, and yet they died of thirst.

     I think that is a fitting description of the hurting world in which we all live. We seek life from a multitude of sources, and each one of them leaves us thirsting. Money may make us content for awhile, but not forever. Relationships can give our lives meaning, but relationships are fragile, and sometimes they crash and burn. Success can’t do it, popularity can’t do it, drugs and alcohol can anesthetize us but they cannot give us Life. God’s unconditional love for us in Jesus Christ is the only source of Life I know of that can never run dry. If you are here today, considering what makes your life meaningful and worth living, may I suggest that you will find that answer in Jesus Christ.

     Now, to you who have been teethed on the Christian faith, you who are comfortable with our practice of praising and worshipping the Savior, Sunday after Sunday after Sunday, I have another message for you. Sometimes, in circles where the astounding truths and spectacular stories are told, it is rather easy to become bored with it all. I mean, Jesus is risen from the dead; we celebrated that fact a year ago, we’ll celebrate it again next year. Dead on Friday. Alive on Sunday. Blah, blah, blah. After awhile, it doesn’t seem so unusual anymore, does it?

     In his book Finding God in Unexpected Places, author Philip Yancey tells of the first time he and his wife visited Yellowstone National Park. Having lunch in a restaurant overlooking Old Faithful, they waited for the large digital clock on the wall to count down to the one minute mark before the geyser’s eruption. At the one-minute mark, every diner in the place rushed over to the window to see the spectacular event. It was then that Yancey turned around to see that not a single busboy or waitress was looking out the windows. Old Faithful had grown so familiar…so common, that it had lost its power to impress them.

     People, the Savior has risen from the dead. The grief that shrouded Good Friday is gone! The despair that gripped people at the moment of Jesus’ crucifixion has been replaced by unspeakable joy! Our sins are forgiven! Our eternity is secure!  How sad, when it becomes commonplace and boring! May this truth give you goose bumps today as it did the first day you believed it. Jesus is alive, and so, therefore, are we!

     But where do we go from here? On Monday morning, it’s back to routine for most of us. The bills that were on our desks last Friday will still be there tomorrow. The medical tests that concerned us last week will concern us next week. The war still rages, the economy still sags; unemployment, and addiction, and house payments all remain the same. None of this has been changed by the resurrection of Jesus Christ…but we have! The resurrection has the power to change how we look at all of life. The Savior has risen. Love has won out. Hope has been restored. Now this is life! This is really life! Thanks be to God. Amen.

     ©2003 Steven Molin

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