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April 20, 2003
The Gladdest Day in History
The Gladdest Day in History
Psalm 18: 46-50 / Job 19: 23-26
Luke 23: 56b-24: 12
April 20th, 2003 (Easter)
Several times in recent weeks I’ve told friends who were about to turn fifty years old that they were entering the best decade of life. You really young people might think that ridiculous, but I think I’m right. For a lot of us at fifty the face is still recognizable as the kid in high school. But you’re wiser than you were at eighteen. So for ten years you have as much of the best of both worlds as you can get in this life: some maturity, with a body still somewhat youthful.
Whether you understand or agree with me on this score, you all know it’s true that we change over time. And it’s not all physical change. Life experiences change us. I attended my 30th high school reunion a few years ago and came away thinking I’d not go back to another one. I saw much more than that the super-athletes didn’t look very athletic still, and that the cheerleaders weren’t all narrow as an arrow still where high school girls often are. Classmates I remembered to be fun-loving I found guarded and cynical. I saw sad faces where I remembered happy faces. I also saw that some of the geeky, social misfits had blossomed into charming personalities, my best friend, for example.
I saw how the trajectory of certain kinds of personalities play out. Some cocky kids developed courtesy, while others became the adult version of a not very winsome teenager. I saw a few girls I remembered as shy and friendly who had unfolded into beautiful, kind woman. We change.
The change is sometimes painful. Not a few people reap what they did not sow; life brought bewildering hard knocks. They need the patience of Job to make it. Job needed the patience of Job, in fact.
The passage from the Book of Job we have come to associate with Easter from Handel’s “Messiah,” finds this ancient victim of terrible circumstances at the end of his rope. We use the term “Job’s comforters” for friends who get preachy when bad times come. Job’s friend, Bildad, the Shuhite—whom we used to call the shortest man in the Bible—tells Job he earned his problems. “the wicked . . . are thrust into a net by their own feet.” As the prophet Isaiah said, “Woe unto the wicked, it shall be ill with them. They will receive the consequences of their deeds.”
Sometimes this is true, but it wasn’t true in Job’s case. And it’s not always so for you and me. And it’s never comforting in the time of your deepest distress that someone tells you, “You sowed the wind, now you’re reaping your whirlwind.” You deserve what you got.
Job responded to his boorish comforter. “It’s not true.”
I know that my Redeemer lives,
and that at the last he will stand upon the earth,
and after my skin has been thus destroyed,
then in my flesh I shall see God.
Whereas Job surely meant that eventually someone would come along to vindicate him, to prove that he did not earn the bad things that happened to him, Christians have read this and recognized something much more than that. In his misery Job said something more significant than he could have dreamed possible. The Hebrew word for “redeemer” goel, has come to mean The Redeemer—Jesus. God guides the growth of meaning of words. At a time when the doctrine of the resurrection was not full-blown, Job speaks as though he understands fully the doctrine of the resurrection. “In my flesh I will see God.” But it was a plea to a righteous judge, a fair judge who would prove Job did not earn his suffering.
Christians very early after Jesus’ resurrection read the words Job blurted out in his time of suffering, and God comforted them through these words. Jesus was the ultimate Redeemer. And every time we hear that beautiful soprano aria in Handel’s “Messiah,” –“I know that my Redeemer liveth,” our hearts echo “Amen,” looking back at that first Easter morning. Jesus was the Redeemer of whom Job spoke. This Redeemer who was dead came alive. Our Redeemer lives, and so we sing, “Because He lives I can face tomorrow. . . Life is worth the living because He lives.”
But what happened to Jesus’ body at the resurrection, and what will happen to us when we are raised with Him at the final resurrection? Why do we talk as though the resurrection is such an exciting thing? Why do we want “eternal life” anyway? We think of death as a sad thing, but very often death is a release, a kind thing. Come with me to the nursing homes on Sunday afternoons. You’ll know what I mean for sure. John Henry Newman prayed so eloquently,
O Lord, support us all the day long, until the shadows lengthen and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over and our work is done. Then of Thy mercy grant us a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last.
The resurrection was far more than Jesus’ body coming alive again. Though it is obvious that Jesus’ body came back to life. Let’s be clear about that. His heart was beating; His lungs breathing. He was able to eat, to be touched. It was no apparition that Mary Magdalene saw outside the tomb on Easter morning. Peter ran to see. Jesus’ body wasn’t in the tomb because only dead people are inside tombs.
But Jesus was not only alive now, He had been changed—not just from death to life but to a new quality of life. The Gospel of Mark tells us after His resurrection Jesus appeared in “another form.” His mortality put on immortality. As Paul spoke of us, so it was of Jesus, “This mortal must put on immortality.” What is immortality? It’s far more than hearts beating forever.
On the first Easter God did not turn the one-way street from birth to death into a two-way street. That would only mean moving backwards towards infancy, an endless boomerang of birth to death.
But I do remember that Jesus taught us that we have to retrace our steps to infancy in one way and be “born again.” When Jesus taught that, Nicodemas, a learned Jew, was puzzled. “How can anyone get back into his mother’s womb and be born again?” How can we start all over this way? He took Jesus a lot more seriously than many Christians do.
Some folk talk a bit glibly about being “born again.” God certainly had much more in mind than it seems many people have in mind when they say “born again Christian.” When God talks about making all things new, He means it. You and I recognize the difference between something new and something old. You don’t make an old car new with a paint job. And you don’t slap a Jesus-label on the old life and make it a new life.
The Apostle Paul recognized that though he was “in Christ,” though Jesus forgave his sins, and in this way he was new—newly forgiven, newly adopted into the family of God—there was a lot of the old in him. A battle now raged inside him. “The good that I want to do, I don’t do. What I don’t want to do is what I do.” It’s that way for you and me, even if we have trusted in Jesus for forgiveness of our sin. Even though you can say, with confidence, “I am God’s child because Jesus paid for my adoption,” a lot needs to happen in you and me before we’ll look like a new product. If you’re alive, you struggle incessantly inside. We need the resurrection to end this struggle. Never brag you are a born-again Christian. You only demean the Christian life every time you don’t look like a new creation.
When Jesus came out of the grave on Easter morning, He was a new product. All that He emptied Himself of in His Incarnation was restored. He was no longer limited by space and time. He appeared now here, and now there. He broke bread and ate fish, but there was something strangely different about His body. He passed through doors and walls at will. He then disappeared in front of His disciples, rising mysteriously into the clouds. These were signs of something very different about Him. He didn’t do these things before He died.
What happened when Jesus rose from death? We only have hints of what happened in the New Testament. But we can draw some conclusions about ourselves from these hints that give us hope. Faith is a venture of hope. Trusting that Jesus rose from death opens wonderful vistas.
First, we can trust that when we rise again from death, which will happen for us all, we will be recognizable still as us. As Jesus was recognizable as Jesus, so you will be recognized as you.
The Apostle Paul tells us that when we are raised, “We shall be changed.” “This mortal body shall put on immortality.” If you and I had to keep on getting older and older, with every flaw maturing indefinitely forever, I could think of nothing more miserable than eternal life. We have only so many teeth to lose, only so many eyes to lose sight, only two knees … It would be eternal hell. But we will be changed, making eternity everlasting joy in our bodies.
Second, the longings we have for truth and beauty will be fully satisfied. In the Gospel of John we read of Jesus, “We saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” What is visible grace? We recognize hints of this when we see unusual beauty. What Glenn Sparks described to me of the cathedral in Salamanca, Spain—which was too grand for him to find words—is a step in the direction of visible grace. What I remember of the Taj Mahal in the moonlight comes to my mind as visible grace. But the cathedral in Salamanca and the Taj Mahal can be destroyed by a bomb or by an earthquake. They are not lasting. In the resurrection you and I will not only see Someone who epitomizes visible grace, but we will be like him.
You may have a hard time believing this, and those who know you best may agree with you, but when God made you, He created something very exquisite, very remarkable, very beautiful. Take away all that diminishes you, and you would be startled by your own beauty. In the resurrection you will be startled by your own beauty, but rather than this making you arrogant, your beauty will be accompanied with perfect truth—and you will think of your Creator with a thrill, rather than merely of the beauty He created.
In Handel’s “Messiah,” one of the most beautiful, gut-twistingly glorious choruses has the choir singing, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, to receive power and riches, and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing.” These words are drawn from the Book of Revelation 5, where we hear “the voice of many angels surrounding the throne and the living creatures and the elders, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands singing with full voice.” All these have things in the right perspective.
Last Sunday afternoon a number of us listened to the exquisite Russian music the Bach Chorale Singers offered. It was as glorious as I’ve ever heard. I don’t know when I’ve heard more heart-wrenching beauty. I wanted the music to go on and on, but 5: 30 PM came, a mere one and one half hours after this wonderful choir began to sing, and it was over.
I thought, what a parable of life. Every joy is over too soon, far before we want it to. No joy is complete. But in the resurrection, the joy I anticipate will be fulfilled. We will not come to 5: 30 PM and feel like a pin has punctured the balloon.
Then I realized that if the music had kept on and on, not only would the choir have grown weary of standing, and their voices of singing, but my mind would have drifted too. We come to a point of diminishing returns in our possibilities of enjoyment. This is a defect the resurrection will erase.
All life’s joys suffer from these two problems. They end too soon. Our capacity to enjoy them dwindles. But in the resurrection, this will change.
Third, We will lose our capacity for remembering grievances. One of the most touching aspects of Jesus’ ways with His disciples after He rose from death was that He forgot the offense of their forsaking Him. Peter would have reasonably expected to go to the bottom of the class of Jesus’ disciples for denying Him three times in a row. Jesus promoted Him to the top of the class.
Paul wrote, “Then we shall understand even as we are understood.” Can you imagine a time when all of us will understand even as we are understood? Can you imagine eliminating the cross-fire of judgmental thoughts that criss-cross every marriage, every home, every church, every neighborhood, every town on this planet? Can you imagine knowing from the body language, from the look in the eye of everyone you meet that every offense you have done was not only forgiven, but “understood” in the best possible light. So that you are freed from all guilt, all remorse—every stain of conscience removed! What Jesus felt after He rose again, will be what will characterize us all—because of Jesus’ resurrection.
Fourth, we will know the difference between what is important and what is not. Jesus pointed out the foolishness of the rich farmer building bigger and bigger barns when his harvests increased. The crops he harvested were meant to feed people. He thought their purpose was to make him richer. Then he died. Jesus asked, “How many truck loads of that grain did he take with him when he died?” When you pause to consider, how many griefs do you bring on yourself by treating as important what is not. Perhaps you are now absorbed in something either wrong or silly, and it’s doing you in. You’re making yourself and others miserable. This will end in the resurrection. What a release that will be!
So how should you respond to the promise of the resurrection? Perhaps there are things going on in your life now that don’t make you very happy. Maybe you’re disgusted with yourself, or disgusted with others. Maybe you’re not well. Maybe you’re afraid that something bad is going to happen to you. Maybe you cannot escape feelings of guilt for something you did in the past. There is hope.
I believe that the miseries we suffer now have a purpose. The anxieties you have may convince you that you have to look somewhere besides yourself to find release. We say, “You’ve got to start thinking outside the box.” When you ponder what I have tried to describe of the resurrection of Jesus, it’s thinking outside the box. All Jesus did was for your sake, to bring you hope, to offer you the promise that everything you dread about life will one day be resolved. Doesn’t it seem appropriate just to say “Thank you, God.” You can’t take it all in, but try. Don’t get modest and say, “I don’t deserve it.” That’s true, of course, but our ideas about deserving and God’s ideas about deserving aren’t the same.
God loves you with a love beyond description because God made you. God created you. You are the work of His hands. Your body is a work of infinite wisdom and skill, with parts working together day after day over the years in harmony. Your mind may have become occupied with a lot of useless and painful thoughts, but it has the capacity to burst with delight, when it is occupied with worthy subjects. This is all God’s doing. The purpose of Jesus’ birth, life, death, and resurrection was to restore you to God’s exquisite design when He drew up the blueprints for you.
Paul called Jesus “the first fruits.” Jesus lived, died, and was raised, changed from mortal to immortal, changed from sorrow to joy, changed from limited existence to possibilities no Hollywood special effects artist can imagine. Jesus was the first installment of what you and I will be.
Be thankful that this is so. Then take the obvious step of accepting from God what you can only receive by faith, by simple trust.
Will you let my prayer now lead you to pray? O Lord, thank you for Jesus and for His resurrection the first Easter morning. Thank you that He came alive for me. Help me, who finds trust very hard, to trust in Him. Help me to go from this place today trusting Him. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, Indiana
Posted by faithpres at April 20, 2003 09:30 AM