Preached on the Sunday of The Resurrection of Our Lord (Easter Sunday), April 1, 2018
Scripture readings: 1
Corinthians 1:18-31; Mark 15:1-8
 |
| Spring Walks and Gardens of My Past |
One of the greatest events
ever to happen in the history of the universe happened around the dawning of
the first day of the week, almost two thousand years ago. The first people who
discovered this greatest thing were three women carrying armloads of funeral
spices. They were on their way to a stone tomb carved into the side of a hill,
just outside the walls of Jerusalem.
They were on their way to
give a very sad and tragic gift to their dear, dead friend and hero, whom they
had lain to rest in that tomb. They were
on a mission to complete the embalming of his crucified corpse. They had loved
Jesus, and they had hoped great things of him, but Jesus had led them straight
into a fatal ambush, and a dead end to their love and to their hopes.
Jesus had seemed to have
what it would take to open up a new world that they had all learned to call
“the kingdom of God.” Jesus had freely owned-up to being the rightful king of
the kingdom of God.
This was surprising
because, although Jesus was a descendant of the famous David, the greatest of
the kings of Israel, he had long worked as a carpenter, just like his father
Joseph. The clan of David had been poor and struggling for so long that they
had made a sort of mockery of the whole idea of their family producing anything
like a Messiah. It just looked totally impossible for any of them to be a king
raised up by God to conquer the world and put all nations under the power of
the kingdom of Israel, the kingdom of God.
But, when Jesus was with
his friends and followers, anything seemed possible. With God’s help their
possibilities looked unlimited. And God was definitely with Jesus, making the
impossible things possible: the dead rising at one touch of Jesus’ hand, or the
mere sound of his voice. The wind and the waves of the sea stopped at his
command and they became a place where a man might walk, if he had the faith to
do so. People of wealth and influence were becoming beholden to Jesus for his
healing of their loved ones and servants. Yes, with Jesus the possibilities looked
endless.
Then Jesus was arrested
less than a week after his triumphant, royal parade into the capital. The
Passover crowds claimed his as their king under the noses of the Roman army and
the Temple police. No one raised a hand against him.
Then, Jesus was seized by
a joint action of the Roman Army and the Temple Police. Jesus was beaten, and
scourged, and nailed on that cross; heckled, and bleeding, and suffocating to
death, defeated for all the world to see.
He was clearly done with
and finished for all time. Jesus had even yelled, “It is finished.” But he
shouted those last words as if he didn’t mean them. Or else he meant something
completely different from the way they felt, and from the way they were feeling
now.
They were all finished
now.
They and their friends
would be lucky to survive much longer. The world had turned out to be much
worse, and much darker, and more hopeless than they had ever imagined before
Jesus had come to them, and called them, and raised their expectations.
They knew, now, that they
lived in such a world where even someone as remarkable as Jesus could come and
never make any difference at all. They had good reasons for being afraid but,
somehow, their sense of fear was very low compared to their mountains of
disappointment.
They and their friends had
felt all of this for three days, but they had lost their sense of time. Their
feelings were immeasurable. There is a modern British poet named T. S. Eliot.
He was a great poet, really, and a Christian but, looking at the world and
where most people’s ambitions were taking them, he wrote one of the bleakest
and most depressing poems ever written, and it ends with these lines. I think
it gives us the picture of life in this world as the disciples of Jesus were
seeing it in their own time. Here it is:
This is
the way the world ends
This is
the way the world ends
This is
the way the world ends
Not with
a bang but a whimper.
(“The Hollow Men”)
I’m sorry to talk like
this. Even on the celebration of the resurrection of the Lord we can’t
understand the greatest things that have ever happened in the universe unless
we see how Jesus had actually judged his own accomplishment when he shouted
that it was finished.
There’s nothing good about
any cross, and there’s nothing good about the cross of Jesus, unless it leads
from something bad to something good. In a world like ours, the best possible
good would be to produce the end of all crosses (or anything like a cross). The
best possible great thing would bring an end to everything that could be woven
into a world where crosses exist. The cross of Jesus exists to put an end to
all other crosses, someday.
There’s nothing
outstandingly good about the resurrection of Jesus except for the fact that it
follows something evil. The resurrection of Jesus is the ultimate cure for all
evil and sin. We share in that cure when we die with Jesus by faith, on the
cross, and rise with Jesus by faith from the darkness of our living tomb. The
resurrection of Jesus creates a new world that is going to destroy the old
world of crosses.
The Cross is the picture
of death and evil completely defeated and completely destroyed. This is why we
talk about that Old Rugged Cross and cling to it. The gift of the old rugged
cross is to exchange itself for a crown on everyone’s head.
If we truly understood
this, in all its weight and glory, it would blow our minds.
Where the cross and the
resurrection are not understood, they seem foolish and perhaps even evil. Some
people who are much too modern for their own good, or anybody else’s good, say
that a father who sends his son to die on a cross is an abusive father. That’s
what some people say.
The ancient Greeks and
Romans thought the same way. This is why Paul wrote about the foolishness of
God in the cross and, by extension, in the resurrection. What God knows is wise
and what we humans think is wise are at odds with each other, and who will you
listen to?
Paul wrote: “For the
message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who
are being saved it is the power of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:18) In his own time
Jesus also knew that most people wouldn’t understand him and wouldn’t believe
that he was who he claimed to be. (Luke 7:33-35) Jesus knew that few of his own
people (God’s people) would appreciate how his death on the cross would explain
the old laws and prophets, and the perpetually unsolved conflicts between God
and his people.
It is a shock to the
system to go from seeing things the way they normally make sense to us to
seeing things the way God sees them. It’s a shock to go from what you thought
made sense of your life, to what God sees as sense: from what you think is wise
to what God knows is wise, from what you think is powerful and possible to what
God knows is powerful and possible.
In the early morning hours
of the resurrection, the women, who had just been confronted by God’s wisdom
and power, were scared by what they found. When the women did their appointed
job to share this frightening good news with the other disciples, those others
found God’s wisdom and power not to be scary but to be impossible, something
not to be believed.
That first Easter dawning,
the whole church as it was, or the whole family of Jesus was in two locations.
One small group stood at the empty tomb and talked with angels. They were given
a calling, or a mission, to help people believe what seems, at first, to be
impossible.
They had an impossible
mission even though they believed that the truth they served was true. The
other disciples were called to believe what seemed impossible and foolish.
We have been given both
callings; both jobs. The women couldn’t reach inside the doubting men and push
the faith button. They had an impossible task; an impossible job to do. The men
had to believe the impossible. In the end, only Jesus could make their calling
work.
Our job together, like all
of those apostles combined, is to believe the impossible and to do the
impossible.
In the end, they did both.
In the end, we can too.
It must be said here, that
having this twin calling of believing and doing the impossible doesn’t make you
special. It only makes you very, very needy. And that’s the only place where
the impossible becomes possible. This is the foolishness of what we preach: the
foolishness of our message. “For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and
the weakness of God is stronger than men.” (1 Corinthians 1:25)
In his second letter to
the church in Corinth, Paul wrote some of my favorite words. He wrote of a time
in his life when he prayed and prayed for God to mend some desperate situation
and the Lord gave him this solution: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my
power is made perfect in weakness.” Paul wrote how the solution worked for him
in his mission impossible: “When I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians
12:9-10)
Working together, and
working each in our own way, we are called to something that the world and the
people around us would regard as foolish, irrelevant, a waste of time and
effort: an impossible faith for an impossible mission.
For the disciples at the
tomb and the disciples in hiding, two of the best things the world could offer
(the Roman peace and the Jerusalem Temple) were bad enough and strong enough to
kill Jesus, the Son of God, God incarnate. It was a horrible thing think this
way. It was even more horrible to watch it happen. And it was a horrible thing
for Jesus to go through. Therefore, the only valid, logical option left was for
Jesus to rise from the dead.
Jesus died on the cross,
bearing the weight of the attack of the world on his own shoulders. It’s a
weight that we all must carry, either with Jesus or without him. It’s a weight
that seemed to defeat him because it killed him.
Then Jesus did the
impossible thing. He defeated the power of defeat. Jesus defeated the power of
evil to defeat, or corrupt, or ultimately co-opt goodness.
Afterwards, the world
didn’t seem any different as a result, but God was beginning a long impossible
victory. This victory would challenge and inspire those who came to him for all
the centuries that have followed. It was the victory of having faith in a
future new world: a whole new creation.
The cross and the
resurrection are things that seem impossible but they make everything else
possible. They are the victory in Jesus that becomes our victory: the cross and
the resurrection of Jesus.
What’s possible or
impossible is a matter of perspective. In the spring of my twenty-first year,
when I was in college, I was helping a bunch of friends pre-fabricate a log
cabin. I didn’t know what I was doing, of course, but I did as I was told.
I found myself standing on
the eaves, above the loft, when I fell. I fell as far as most people fall when
they fall off the eaves of a house.
Amazingly, I landed on my
feet. I also landed on a nice wide board that was steady enough for me to keep
standing on my feet, when I hit the ground. And that board had a fair-sized
construction nail pointing up through the board at the point where my right
foot landed.
That nail went through the
sole of my right shoe and up between my second and third toe. I felt it go
between my toes and it came out the top of my shoe. I saw it sticking out,
about two or three inches, above the top of my tennis shoe.
I was fine. I was
untouched. There was not a scratch: not one scratch, or mark, or bruise. It
seemed impossible, but many such things happen.
I don’t know if that would
be a miracle or not. It’s within the realm of remote mathematical possibility.
But perhaps God’s miracles are just his input into our universe with its laws of
nature and physics. We have our input, and God has his. And the two sources of
input are not worth comparing. But they work together.
Paul wrote about this in
his letter to the church in Rome: “We know that in everything God works for
good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.” (Romans
8:28)
With God there are
possible impossibilities that work, that have power, that change everything.
These possible impossibilities change us.
The cross and the
resurrection of Jesus give us a foolish message as far as this world’s wisdom
goes. It’s an impossible message, and sometimes we are tempted to rejoin the
world in our opinions.
The cross and the
resurrection of Jesus call us to walk into the impossible where we take up our
cross and follow Jesus. We can love and serve our Savior, and we can love and
serve the world, and our neighbors for whom Christ died and rose from the dead,
even when it all seems impossible.
With our minds properly
blown by our Jesus, this will surely take us through whatever comes next.
No comments:
Post a Comment