March 27, 2005
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for Life: Yes! Many of us left this sanctuary in heartbreak and contemplation Friday night as we considered the shadows that Christ knew as he journeyed from Jerusalem to Calvary. We watched the apparent defeat of Jesus as he was crucified and dead. We read later that he was buried in a borrowed tomb, closed and secured by the seal of the Roman government. But that was on Friday. Today is resurrection Sunday, it is Easter, the day we celebrate the good news that Jesus Christ, who was crucified, was raised from death to life by God. The resurrection is first told in I Corinthians since the letters of Paul are older than the gospels. In I Corinthians, Paul says, “for I handed on to you as of first importance what I had in turn received: that Christ died for our sins…and that he was raised on the third day” (I Corinthians 15.3-4), and in II Corinthians 1.19-20 we read that “for the son of God, Jesus Christ whom we proclaimed among you…was not yes and no; but in him it is always ‘yes’. For in him everyone of God’s promises is a ‘yes’. For this reason it is through him that we say the Amen to the glory of God.” Amen. Let it be so. Let it be so that this is the day that we say yes to the one who has said yes to us. We know that what Douglas Hare says is true. “The resurrection of Jesus is an affront to many scientifically trained minds. While the disciples’ feeling that Jesus was still present with them ‘in spirit’ is credible, the story of the empty tomb is dismissed as a pious legend. The church’s celebration of Easter is sometimes perceived by such by such persons as an embarrassing fraud” (Interpretation series. Matthew. Douglas RA Hare. Louisville: John Knox Press, 1993, p.327). They may say, “we understand following the teaching of Jesus, about love and care, but how can an intelligent person believe the resurrection – it’s not possible”. Well, it might not be possible for humans to understand intellectually, but thank God, we are not only people to whom God has granted intelligence. God has also given us a spirit and a desire to reach out to touch something beyond ourselves. We follow the one who has come to give us life in all its abundance (John 10.10), and for followers of Jesus, life with God through Christ is not limited to this life we know. Say yes to being open to all that God can do and not to thinking that we know all there is. That is what happened to the women when they went to the tomb. It can happen to us as we search for Jesus this Resurrection morning. The women arrived at the tomb to mourn their friend and Savior, but what they found was that the power of God was on full display and it was such that it said no to the earthly influence of Rome to contain the power of Jesus Christ, and yes to the power of God to raise Jesus and to raise us. When they get there, the earth has shaken and an angel, one of God’s messengers broken the seal of a international superpower, and moved the stone. The angel is sitting on the stone as if to say, “Caesar’s soldiers claimed the authority to seal this tomb, thinking they could contain and control the body of Christ. But the power of Rome is no match for the power of God. The seal of Rome meant nothing compared to what God could do. The seal was broken, the stone was rolled away to let the women and the world see the great thing God had done. When they arrived, the resurrection had already occurred, the tomb was empty. Don’t you love the irony? In the face of the resurrection, the guards, soldiers of the Roman Empire faint dead away, and the angel proclaims life. Listen, as the messengers of God says to us, listen always for the affirmation of life around you – look for signs of hope in your life. The power of death is real but the power of God to renew us and to raise us up is so much greater. Let’s agree to rely on God when it looks like everything is coming at us. When adversaries appear to have all the power – remember the earthquake and an angel and an unsealed tomb, live in the power of the resurrection. I agree with a colleague who says that when Jesus uttered his last words, “it is finished”, he was not offering a sad benediction to a beaten ministry. In fact, the day is called Good Friday because it is the day of ultimate sacrifice and love. No, it is not benediction, rather, it is finished is a victory shout. It is the last earthly word of the Lord of life, who is saying, my human life may be over, but it is that death is finished in me. From this moment through eternity I will be at that right hand of God and in a special place in the heart and being of every believer. Say yes to belief and courage and no to unbelief and fear. The women must have been stunned. I have an image of them with their eyes wide open and their jaws dropped hardly believing what they see. He helps them to say yes to courage and no to fear. “Don’t be afraid. I know you are looking for a body, you are looking for Jesus – you saw him on the cross, you heard him say, ‘it is finished’, you saw him take his last breath.” We can almost hear the women saying, yes but what is going on here? The angel knows that the living Christ has no place in a cemetery or in a tomb, and says to the women, “here is what is happening. He is not here, he has been raised as he said he would be.” The word to the women is a word for us. “Come and see”, the angel says. Don’t just take my word for it, or anyone else’s for that matter. Come and discover for yourself as you hear and believe and put your faith in and give your life to the risen Christ. Come and see for yourself that the tomb is empty. Understand that our hope and trust, our confidence and sense of hope and perseverance, the source of our spirit’s life does not come from a dead teacher, but from the risen, living Christ. After coming to believe for yourself that the tomb is empty and that Jesus lives, don’t simply bask in the knowledge of the risen Christ, share the good news you know. Come and see, then go and tell. The women are to go tell the disciples to meet Jesus in Galilee. We who believe today are to tell the world that Christ is risen and will meet us wherever we are, and we will go where they are – people are hungry and thirsty, without proper clothing and without people to visit us when we are sick and in prison. We meet the risen Christ when we meet the needs of others. The women go and as they go they move with a combination of feelings we know well. They go in fear and great joy, and they teach us to say yes to hope and proclamation and no to doubt and silence. Fear and great joy. Peter Gomes tells us what we already know about fear. “Everybody is fearful, terrified of some public or private demon, some terrible unnamed fear that gnaws away even in the midst of our joy, some cloud that hangs over our head or in the recesses of our spirit. It is fear that not only holds us together but keeps us from being whole. Fear, not sin, is the great curse. Fear that I’ll be recognized for the fraud that I am – the great imposter complex. Fear that I will fail in some worthy endeavor or fear that I will succeed in some unworthy enterprise. Fear that I will not have enough time to do what I must. Fear that I will hurt or be hurt. Fear that I will not know love. Fear that my love will be painful and hurtful. Fear that the things that I believe and trust are not so. Fear that I am untrustworthy. Every one of us is a hostage to fear. (Peter J. Gomes. Sermons: Biblical Wisdom for Daily Living. New York: William Morrow & Company, Inc. 1998, p.77). The women are afraid but they head toward Galilee anyway. Sometimes we have to go even when we are afraid, there on the uncertain journey is where the miracle can happen. As they go and as they do they meet the risen Christ himself. We can become paralyzed by fear, but if we can move, in spite of our fears, we just might get to the joy. His presence affirms what the angel said, and his words calm the women’s pounding hearts. Our reading translates the word as “greetings”, but it is more than that. It is not just hello, or hey, or what’s up that Jesus is saying. It is not even the traditional, peace be with you. The word we have as “greetings”, really means rejoice. Rejoice women, rejoice church of believers, rejoice those of you seeking a relationship with me, rejoice! I am not dead in a tomb, I am here, alive. Do not be afraid, but have joy. I am alive and I want you to tell the disciples the news. Rejoice. The promises of God find their yes in Jesus Christ and we find our yes in him as we share the good news of his resurrection with joy. On this resurrection morning, let’s say yes to God and yes to joy. Let’s find renewal as we practice joy. Kirk Byron Jones tells a story of joy through music. It seems that Duke Ellington and his orchestra played at the Newport Jazz Festival in July, 1956. They were scheduled to play two companion pieces, “Diminuendo in Blue” and “Crescendo in Blue”. It had been years since either had been played, and the tenor saxophone player who was assigned to play the solo parts did not know the piece. He knew fear, but Ellington told him to trust that he would guide him in and out of the solo. He should go out and do what he had done before, put his heart and soul into the piece. Jones says what happened next took the jazz world be storm. “Jana Tull Stead tells the story: Duke opened ‘Diminuendo and Crescendo’ with four rhythmic choruses. Duke was punctuating his piano playing with guttural murmurs and shouted exclamations. Out of the crowd’s sight, Count Basie’s drummer Jo Jones egged on the rhythm section by slapping a rolled-up newspaper against the stage. The band answered, Duke came back for two more choruses to set up [the sax player]…at about the seventh chorus, the crowd began to catch fire…A platinum blonde in a black dress began dancing in one of the box seats, couples broke into the jitterbug, and soon all seven thousand fans were on their feet, dancing, cheering, clapping…but still listening to the phenomenal performance. The band and the crowd were now one…” It went on for 59 choruses. The producer and the police were worried that a riot would break out and they tried to get Ellington to stop. But “he wagged his finger at them, then shook his head and proceeded to cool down the crowd the same way he heated it up, with – with more music” (The Jazz of Preaching. Kirk Byron Jones. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2004, p. 125-127). The story is told in a book called, The Jazz of Preaching which could have just as easily been called the Jazz of Being a Christian. I tell it sets up the way the author describes Easter. He says: “the great theme of our faith – Resurrection – is reason for Newport-jazz-joy, and then some. Resurrection incites laughing aloud because God and good are never dead and done” (Jones, p. 128). The sign in front of the Apostolic Faith Temple on Main Street declares this good news. "We are resurrection people in a Good Friday world.” We are people of hope in a hopeless world. We are resurrection people, and Easter is the celebration of the most significant event in Christianity; it is God’s way of saying yes to life and yes to the world God loves. It is mystery and miracle and an absolute article of faith on the part of believers in God. Easter says that if God can raise Jesus from the dead, then surely God can raise up in us hope and healing, accountability and activity, love for God and for God’s creation, and for life itself. Please know that I am not saying that because we believe that Christ lives, we will never know pain or sorrow. We are not spared the ups and downs of living. But because Jesus Christ lives, and lives in us we have been given the spiritual tools to say yes. We can say yes to peace in the midst of stormy times in our lives, to a God to talk to in prayer, a Bible to console and calm, friends and family to remind us that we are loved and we are valued, and we can say yes to life with an assurance that can stun the world. “How can you stand this grief, this disappointment, this hurt, loss of job, the end of the relationship”, they say. We say that we do not stand it, but we do get through it. We are not immune to what happens to us, but we have heard the word given to the women on that first resurrection morning, rejoice, and we can know that because Christ lives, we live too. The tomb is empty, Jesus is not there, he is going before us inviting us to follow him with joy and thanksgiving. This is not a day for fear; it is a day for us to say yes to hope, yes to wholeness, yes to joy, and yes to life. Say yes, and be renewed on this day of resurrection and may Jesus Christ be praised. Amen. Dr.
LaTaunya M. Bynum |
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Broad
Street Christian Church
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