Sermons
A Message by the Rev. Harvey G. Throop
Palisades Presbyterian Church
San Diego, California
April 12, 2009
Easter
But...
(Luke 24:1-10)
"But on the first day of the week… "
(Luke 24:1)
If you come to church only one Sunday a year, this is the Sunday to do it, not only because the music is great and the flowers beautiful, but because the message we celebrate today is the most important piece of news ever delivered: Christ is risen!
Nowhere is the basis of the Christian faith more accurately summarized than it is in Paul's first Letter to the Corinthians, when he writes: “... if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:14).
Easter celebrates the fact of Christ's resurrection. Had it all ended on the cross, had Jesus not been raised from the dead, there would be:
no good news to share,no church,
no New Testament, and
no hope for eternal life.
Without the Resurrection, Jesus of Nazareth would be a minor footnote on the pages of history -- just a man from the obscure village of Nazareth, who stirred things up a bit and who was put to death by Roman authorities.
If you have difficulty believing the Easter story, don't feel bad. You've got lots of company. The fact is that the story is so incredible that we ought to have difficulty with it!
Chances are you have heard sermons or analogies to Easter over the years where someone compares the resurrection to putting a bulb in the ground in the fall and then waiting all through the snows of winter until spring's warmth brings the bulb to life. To be sure, that is a principle of nature, but it's not what Easter is.
Easter is about believing that someone who was pronounced dead on a Friday rose to life again on the third day. If, initially, you are a skeptic or a cynic, you have good reason to be!
The biblical account of the first Easter is – to put it bluntly – sparse. The stone placed in front of the tomb on Friday was now rolled away, the body of Jesus was not where it should be, two men in dazzling clothes tell the women, “He is risen,” and when the woman tell the apostles what has happened, their words seemed to the apostles an idle tale.
What we must not do on this day is the very thing we 21 st Century Christians want most to do, namely, come up with a rational explanation. After all, things like this just don't just happen. So we develop our theories. We say, “Maybe Easter simply means that Jesus' teachings live on or, maybe, that his spirit lives among us – like Shakespeare's or Beethoven's. Maybe he lives in the flowers of spring. There is no better way to deflect or diffuse Easter than that.
The truth is that the Resurrection will not submit to rational analysis. Rather, it is the event that most of all suggests that there is truth that transcends logic. There is a God who exists beyond our ability to understand or comprehend.
Be assured that the story of the Resurrection is not tacked on to the New Testament as if some editor could not bear to leave the story of Jesus at the cross. The resurrection is an integral part of the story of our Lord!
Friday had been a terrible day for Jesus' followers –nightmarish, if the truth were known. It had been a day of dead hopes, unimaginable suffering and bitter sorrowing. Jesus had been spit upon, beaten and harassed. He had been nailed to a cross and subjected to insulting and humiliating mockery.
Had we been there that day, it would have looked to us – just as it did to everyone else who was present – that Jesus' life story was ended – tragically. It was over and finished by 3 pm on Friday afternoon – when the sentence of capital punishment was carried out on Jesus, using the cruel and unusual means of the day called crucifixion. That was when Jesus “breathed his last.” And then he died and was buried. End of story.
We call that day Good Friday. Yet, there had been nothing good about it.
Just before the sun went down that day, the body of Jesus had been placed in a borrowed tomb and his family and followers had returned either to their own homes or to the home of John Mark.
And then came Saturday. Saturday is a day about which we know very little. Saturday was the Sabbath, the day when families gathered within their homes for the sacred observance of the Passover, recalling God's deliverance of the Israelites from Egyptian bondage.
For the disciples, Saturday was the day when they began to come to grips with the reality of what had happened to Jesus. He was dead. All the hopes the disciples may have had, all the plans they may have made were gone. “Now what?” was the question of the day.
And then came Sunday.
When we turn to the 24th chapter of the Gospel of Luke, we find him beginning his account of the happenings of Sunday in a very unusual way. He begins that chapter with the word , “But.”
Anyone who has ever taken a course in English in school will remember being taught to be careful about beginning a sentence with a conjunction: “and,” “but,” “or,” “nor” and “for” and that one should never begin a story with these words.
And yet, the Gospel-writer Luke begins his story of the Resurrection of Jesus with the conjunction “but.” He writes, “But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb” (Luke 24:1).
In fact, in Luke's telling of the story, he uses the word “but” six times in the first twelve verses.
But on the first day of the week…”
“But when the women went in…”
“But the men said…”
“He is not here, but has risen…”
“But these words seemed an idle tale…”
“But Peter got up and ran to the tomb…”
That's enough to give any English teacher heartburn. Yet, that's how Luke tells his story.
The previous chapter – the 23rd chapter of Luke – ends with Joseph of Arimathea wrapping up Jesus' dead body and placing it in a tomb. Everyone thought that was the end of the story. It is how we always think about death. We assume that we're to get all we can out of life before it is over, and that the ending is always the same – death. Everybody knows that. That's just the way it is.
But there is another chapter. Chapter 24 begins with “But” – a word that signals a continuation. But on the first day of the week, at dawn, the women came to the tomb to anoint the dead body of Jesus. But they found it empty. Jesus had risen from the dead.
Certainly, Jesus' resurrection was beyond the wildest dreams of those women – of Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women who came to the tomb that morning. They had come to the tomb bringing spices to anoint the dead body of Jesus – to do for him what was customarily done following death.
The early Christians never preached the resurrection simply as Jesus' escape from the grave or as his physical resuscitation or simply as the return of the Master to his friends. They always proclaimed it as the act of God. That's what gives the resurrection its significance!
The resurrection is an undeniable demonstration of God's power. It is a power available for use in meeting trials, temptations and rising above one's sinful nature to newness of life in Christ. That is why Paul shared his deep desire to "know Christ and the power of his resurrection" (Philippians 3:10). By Christ's resurrection, he can be with us now.
The Apostle Paul insists that if Christ has not been raised from the dead, our Christian faith has no meaning.
If Christ did not rise, everything he represented, taught and lived for were for nothing. What validity would there have been to his work had God left Christ to die on a cross and decay in a tomb?
If Christ had not been raised, there could be no faith in him as Savior of the world. Who would want to follow a dead and defeated leader? How could a victim of death be the Lord and Giver of abundant life?
If Christ had not been raised, we would have no guarantee of our resurrection, and death would have to be feared as our worst enemy.
But Paul proclaims that Christ is raised from the dead, proving that goodness is stronger than evil, that love is stronger than hatred, and that life is stronger than death!
Without the resurrection, there is no substance or foundation to our faith.
The Apostle Paul writes in his letter to the Romans: "If the Spirit of him who raised Christ Jesus from the dead lives within you, he who raised up Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies, also, through his spirit who lives in you" (Romans 8:11).
Don't let Easter get stuck on what happens when we die, or, historically, on what happened when Christ arose. What Easter really means in this life and the next is that God's creative power can raise up something new within us. The Spirit of God that raised up Christ can give new life to us in these mortal bodies.
Easter can be a resurrection morning for every one of us! So many of us need such a morning … to be raised from lifeless, dull, monotonous existing to a life-filled, energetic, enthusiastic living. Just as God removed the stone from the front of Christ's tomb, so God can open the locked door in front of our lives, and resurrect each of us to new life. Each of us can become a whole new creation!
Paul is right: “... if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:14). Then he continues, “But…”
And in that word “But” lies the joy we celebrate today and always!
