Trinity Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
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SERMON
“Fear and great joy”
is how Matthew describes the emotions
of the women who went to Jesus’ tomb
and found it empty.
Their fear is perhaps understandable:
Dead people don’t just disappear from their graves
in the regular course of human events.
And what’s going to happen when the Romans find out?
Will we be blamed?
Are we going to see Jesus again?
What will he look like?
Will we recognize him?
Will he want to see us?
And who’s going to believe this crazy story of ours, anyway?!
Even more understandable, of course,
is their great joy.
They’ve seen an angel!
Not exactly an everyday occurrence
even in their day and time.
And the tomb is empty;
they’ve seen it for themselves.
And they’ve been entrusted with a message for the disciples:
Jesus has risen from the dead.
He is alive.
And so hope is not lost.
The resurrection is one of those mysteries of the faith
that we hear about all the time.
Especially we Protestants –
in the Catholic tradition, there’s a little more emphasis
on the crucifixion, on Good Friday –
but we stress the empty cross, the empty tomb.
He is not there; he is risen.
We hear about and talk about Christ’s resurrection
in a number of different ways,
with different levels of meaning.
Sometimes, of course,
we may just recite it as part of the creed,
without thinking about its meaning at all!
But, for example,
we talk about it with a great deal of seriousness
when someone has died.
We remember that Christ was raised,
and that he has promised that
we also shall be raised along with him.
We are reminded that not even death
can separate us from God,
or, ultimately, from one another.
And although of course we grieve our loss at such times,
we can also celebrate through our tears,
because we know that God has power over death.
That the last word belongs to God.
Easter reminds us.
Now … the past few years, in this congregation,
this is probably what we’ve heard most
about the resurrection.
Most of us are at an age where
we lose friends and family and other loved ones
fairly regularly,
and we need the assurance and strength
that come from God’s promise that we, too, shall be raised.
But that isn’t the whole story.
And we misunderstand Christ’s resurrection
if we see it only as a sign and message of comfort
for facing death.
It is that, but it’s more as well.
We also have to understand the resurrection
in a less literal sense.
The new life that Christ offers us
is not only an ongoing existence of some kind
after our earthly flesh and blood have passed away.
It also has to do with
new life here and now,
in the flesh and blood we already inhabit.
Perhaps it might best be understood as
a new quality of life.
The season of Lent is intended to be a time
in which we examine our lives,
ask questions about ourselves,
reflect.
Who am I?
Who do I want to be?
Who does God want me to be?
How do I get there from here?
And part of the answer to that last question
is the resurrection.
That’s a great mystery.
There is no way to understand
logically or scientifically
how those events of almost 2000 years ago
could have an impact and an influence on us.
But they do.
And I don’t mean just in the sense of,
“it’s history, and so we learn from it.”
It goes deeper than that.
In some way that we can’t entirely fathom,
our old self is put to death
with Jesus on the cross;
and our new self,
as God created us to be,
is raised out of death with him.
This is why the earliest church
baptized new believers on Easter.
The symbolism was very rich.
The new Christians came down to the river together.
The removed their clothes –
a complete shedding of the old life and its ways –
and they went down into the water.
And they were immersed in the water,
completely submerged,
buried.
The old self is dead.
Then they are raised out of the water
into a new life.
And as they come out of the river,
they are clothed in new, white, shining clothes.
They are a new self.
And so are we,
even though most of us probably didn’t have
quite so dramatic a baptism,
and maybe don’t even remember it.
In Christ, we have the power
to bury the old self
and to be raised a new creation,
along with him.
We can be
the people God created us to be.
Christ’s resurrection gives us the hope,
and the power.
And yet, there is still more to be said.
Because with God, the story doesn’t ever stop
with individual believers.
God has a world view,
and insists that we do the same.
And so the resurrection is not limited to
God’s victory in Jesus’ life,
or even God’s victory
in our personal battles with sin.
It’s more than a battle between
Jesus and the Roman authorities.
It’s more than a battle between
who I am and who I was created to be.
It’s a grand-scale, cosmic struggle between
the forces for good and the forces for evil,
however we want to name those.
And the resurrection of Jesus Christ demonstrates, powerfully,
(1) which side God is on,
in case we had begun to doubt, and,
(2) who will ultimately be the victor.
Now, here, speaking and listening and thinking about it
in a beautiful sanctuary,
some of this may seem awfully obvious
and you might wonder why
I would make such a big deal out of it.
But I would suggest that it’s
out in the rest of the world
that we need to be reminded
of the resurrection and why it matters.
It’s easy to say,
“Christ is risen! Alleluia!”
in church.
It’s much harder
when we leave this safe place
and go forth into less-safe places.
It is “in the world”
that we need the constant reminder
of which side God is on.
When we watch bodies being dug from the rubble
more than six months later.
When we see innocent people
blown up by suicide bombers,
and other innocent people shot down
because they are the same nationality as the terrorists.
When we watch wealthy Enron executives
defend the indefensible
while their employees lose present and future security.
When we hear the cries of those
who go to bed hungry …
Sometimes, we see so much evil around us
that we may begin to falter.
The resurrection reminds us of our hope.
We remember that the powers of evil
tried to destroy Christ …
that for a time, it seemed that they
might be more powerful than he.
We remember that God overcame the evil,
and put it to shame.
We need to be reminded
that, ultimately, God will conquer evil.
It won’t happen once and for all
in any of our lifetimes …
And I’m sure all of us can share stories about times
when evil seemed to have gained at least a temporary victory.
But it is only temporary.
Without Christ’s resurrection,
we might not be certain about that.
But: Christ is risen.
The wicked will not always prosper.
The hungry shall be fed.
The innocent shall be vindicated.
Justice will be done.
The promise is sure.
Christ is risen.
And with him, we are raised
to new life and new hope.
He is risen indeed!
Thanks be to God!
Amen.
© 2002 Julie
Adkins (e-mail: Drjadkins@aol.com)