« Looking at Jerusalem from Afar | Main | After Easter, What? »
March 27, 2005
Unexpected Joy in the Morning
Unexpected Joy in the Morning
Isaiah 60: 1-3 / Matthew 28: 1-10
Easter Sunday, March 27, 2005
It has been about four hours since dawn started to tint the eastern sky this morning. It was about this time on the first Easter Sunday that two women named Mary stirred from their homes and came together bringing myrrh and other spices to the cave-tomb outside the city of Jerusalem where Jesus had been buried the Friday before. They wanted to anoint Jesus’ body that by now they were sure would be decomposing.
Matthew’s Gospel tells us that before they got there, there was a great earthquake. It wasn’t the first such earthquake that weekend.
On Friday afternoon the earth shook. At the moment Jesus died, tombs opened outside Jerusalem and devout people who had died came back to life. The shock waves of the Author of life dying reversed the process for many who had died and been buried nearby. These who had been dead but were now alive spread throughout Jerusalem. What a surprise that must have been in many a home! “There’s grandpa at the door! It’s impossible. He died last year. But grandpa says, “Touch me. It’s really me.”
A few days before that in a little suburb of Jerusalem Jesus had raised Lazarus from death four days after he died. Only Matthew and John tell us of these two events as God started to break people in to the idea of life after death.
Those two resurrections of the dead had nothing like the effect of the resurrection that took place on Easter morning—which all four Gospels describe. An angel of the Lord came down from heaven and rolled back the great stone that covered the mouth of the tomb. They did this not so much to let Jesus come out as to let people see in. Because in the days to follow we notice Jesus was not restricted by such things as doors and walls.
The angel sat on the stone now removed from the mouth of the tomb, watching to see who would come. How courteous he was to welcome the two women who came. “Do not be afraid; for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay.”
Many years have passed since that morning, and nobody is sure exactly where was the place that Jesus lay. When some of us were in Jerusalem in 1994 we went to a garden tomb cut into rock that seemed authentic. But who knows for sure? And many ideas of what happened have coursed through peoples’ minds. Some people think angels are just make believe. Some people think that Jesus didn’t really come alive, but that a fresh inspiration of His memory filled the hearts of those who loved Him. This inspiration transformed them and launched the movement we call Christianity. I find this hard to believe. How straightforward the Gospels are. He who was dead came alive, bodily.
The reason why we are here this morning is that Jesus of Nazareth, who died on the Friday afternoon before, came to life again the Sunday morning following. What the Gospels intend for us to understand is that Jesus’ heart started beating again. His lungs breathed air again. His eyes saw what was around Him again. He felt the morning breezes. Maybe He was hungry for breakfast. We know He ate later in the day.
We might say that Jesus came alive because humanity needed a complete makeover. Paul wrote, “As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” But who wants to be made alive again with the same problems and the same body we had before?
A popular kind of TV program nowadays is about body makeovers. With TV cameras zooming in, plastic surgeons rearrange the shape of peoples’ body parts, fashioning “ideal” bodies out of defective ones. You know the details. But eyelids droop again, and we all know the problems following other body part reconstructions. Furthermore, despite whatever pleasure folk might find in their spiffy new body parts, their hearts remain unaffected. Selfish people don’t come out from the anesthesia with gracious hearts.
What people need is a complete makeover—heart, mind, and body. God promises this in the resurrection. To show it is not only possible, but also a promise of God for ordinary people, we read of all those resurrections that took place near the time of Jesus’ resurrection. Lazarus and all the rest who rose from death died again, but Jesus began a new tendency in nature, where the one who died will live again, altogether changed. We need changing. All of us do. Oh, how we need changing!
What wonderful capacities God put into each of us. Each of us is fearfully and wonderfully made. Our bodies are amazing works of art. Not only that, but God created us with the capacity for friendship, for iridescent love for each other. God created us with the ability to compose beautiful music, to paint beautiful pictures, to build strong and beautiful buildings and bridges, to take the raw material of this earth and transform it with imagination that is like the imagination with which God created the diverse plant and animal world. What variety of animals! What variety of trees and flowers. And what variety of beautiful and useful things people have imagined and created!
But how badly we have so often twisted the wonderful capacities we have. We have imagined and made fearful egnines of destruction. We have taken the wonderful capacity to love and changed it to hatred. Broken friendships are blight on the landscape of family and community. The attraction of man and woman that is to lead to mutual happiness has turned predatory. Nowadays women prey on men’s bodies as men do on women for their bodies. No longer do people hide how they have cheapened the beautiful gift of our differences as man and woman. How coarse things have become.
The capacity to love and care for children has been twisted so that many children die or have their lives broken by parental abuse. No other animal on the planet has wrecked the destruction on its kind or on other kinds that we have wrecked on other people and on our planet. The corruption of the best is the worst, Augustine said. We desperately need a complete makeover.
The Apostle Paul wrote, “If anyone is in Christ, that one is a new creation. The old has passed away, the new has come.” The prophet Jeremiah gave God’s promise, “Your life will be like a watered garden, and [you] shall languish no more.” “I will put my law within [you], and I will write it upon [your] hearts; and I will be [your] God, and [you] shall be my people.” The Apostle and the great Old Testament prophet saw the same thing.
How often as we read the Gospels’ words about Jesus do we read that what was happening was to fulfill the word of the prophets. Or we read that it was “according to the Scriptures” that events in Jesus’ life took place.
God gave to the prophets clues of important things that were going to happen as God unfolded His plan to restore this broken world. The prophets saw the very same kind of human behavior you and I see, but they also saw that despite all of this evil, this cruelty, that God had not abandoned this world. Some times they pronounced God’s judgment against evil. But they also came out with glorious promises reflecting God’s good purposes for this world. Often they wrote clues nobody could recognize immediately.
One of these clues Fran Thompson read for us from the prophet Isaiah. “Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For behold darkness shall cover the earth, and think darkness the peoples, but the Lord will arise upon you and his glory will be seen upon you.”
This is a promise to God’s people, Israel that we usually remember around Christmas because Handel’s oratorio, “Messiah,” sets it to beautiful music. But how pertinent this happy promise is to the other side of Jesus’ life on earth. When the prophet promises Israel, “the glory of the Lord has risen upon you,” and “the Lord will arise upon you and his glory will be seen upon you,” he foretold Jesus’ resurrection. The word “rise” is repeated with good reason. But no one thought to apply this in any specific way to a Person who was the Glory of the Lord. No one imagined that this rising would be an actual event.
But I have learned that there was a way of understanding the Bible that developed in the dark years of the Jews after they had been taken into exile that opened them to new meanings in the prophets that they could not have seen before. Far from home, their beloved Temple in Jerusalem destroyed and left in ruins, they returned to a close study of their Bible that we call the Old Testament.
When Jesus was born a number of these Old Testament hints suddenly came into focus. The prophet Micah pointed at the tiny village of Bethlehem and said, “From you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient of days.” He had no idea that “from ancient of days” would mean someone who was with God in the beginning, at creation, in fact, who was God, as John’s Gospel tells us.
The prophet Hosea thought he was writing about Israel when he wrote, “Out of Egypt have I called my son,” little knowing that the Son of God would come out of Egypt, back to Israel, after having been taken their by Joseph and his mother, Mary, to protect Him from the murderous hands of King Herod.
The prophet Isaiah, writing hundreds of years before the time of Jesus pointed his finger even more forcefully and often, little realizing that he was pointing as other prophets had done, and still others would do, at Jesus. He wrote, “The people who walked in deep darkness have seen a great light. Those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined.”
Then a time came when the One arrived to whom all these ancient prophets were pointing with their mysterious, incomprehensible words. Here was Jesus, the salvation of God not only for the Jews, but “a light for revelation to the Gentiles.” The promises of the prophets Isaiah, Hosea, and Zechariah that God would embrace those who were not considered God’s people into His arms, along with the Jews.
Time after time in Jesus life He showed how an Old Testament prophet was describing Him perfectly. He opened the eyes of blind people and made the lame walk, and His disciples remembered the words of Isaiah, “Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped, the lame man shall leap like a hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing!” In the synagogue in His hometown of Nazareth, Jesus, having returned to His home village, he was invited to read the lesson, which happened to be from Isaiah 61. He read it and sat down, as preachers did in those days. He said, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
When the prophet Isaiah wrote, “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you,” it was another such forecast of God’s care for us. Jesus Christ rose from death and the glory of the Lord has risen upon us.
But Easter is not just about what God did with the body of Jesus that had died. There is another side of the story, my side and your side. It matters what we do about this story. It matters how you and I respond to this amazing tale of ancient prophets speaking of days to come, days of blessing to the world. God will never impose on us His kindness. God offers everyone regardless of their goodness the gift of sunshine and rain, of the fruit of our harvests, the magnificence of our land. But He does not impose on the human will. God does not force us to be thankful to Him. How much happier is a thankful person than an unthankful person. But God does not compel us to be happy.
Jesus died because the world was in a mess. He died because your sin and my sin have so corrupted us that we’re not fit to live any longer than these weak bodies survive. Jesus said, “Come unto me all you who are weak and heavy laden and I will give you rest.” How sweet is that promise, but we have to come to receive His rest.
It may be a great blessing to your life if things are very hard right now, because if you’ve reached the end of your resources, you are primed to come to Jesus. He will forgive the sin of your past. He will erase your guilt. But you must come to Him.
But this is not all. Jesus said to those who come to Him, “Don’t stop, but start to follow me.” “If anyone will come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.” Come; accept the discipline of Jesus’ way, as a replacement for the way that has done you in.
What God will do with our bodies after we die is a gift He will give us. But what becomes of us now depends entirely on what we do with Jesus’ invitation, “Come, and follow me.” Come, receive Jesus’ forgiveness. But come as well to follow Jesus. It is a life worth living to replace a way of life that is often hardly worth living. Come. Come to Jesus. He welcomes you. All of this Easter story is for your sake and mine who need Jesus to make us over again. Come.
Let us pray: O Lord God, thank you that Jesus did not stay dead, but that He lives. Grant to us who hear Jesus’ word of welcome the wisdom to come to Him for His forgiveness and for His way of life. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson, Pastor
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at March 27, 2005 09:30 AM