“So the disciples went away again to their homes. But Mary was standing outside the tomb weeping; and so, as she wept, she stooped and looked inside the tomb; and she saw two angels in white sitting, one at the head and one at the feet, where the body of Jesus had been lying”. (John 20:10-12)
The resurrection of Jesus from the grave on Sunday after his sorrowful death on Friday is God’s checkmate to all the plotting and scheming and evil and sin that the world could ever dish up against God and against all that is good and beautiful and right and holy and good. It’s God’s victory over sin and the grave; It’s God’s victory over death itself. The day that began with such great perplexity soon turned into a day of victory and of joyful celebration. Sunday is a microcosm of the human dilemma. We are born into what seems to be a mysterious and confusing universe, and we wonder if there is any purpose to it all. We cry out to the heavens for an answer, and the heavens remain silent. All that we see is a dark and mysterious and silent universe with a myriad of unanswered questions, and we wonder if there is anyone out there to answer them, or if we are condemned to live in the futility of a universe where there are many questions but very few answers. But there are some people at some times and in some places who look out across the universe and we see something very different; the light is turned on, something pierces our souls, and we realize that there is an answer, that God and heaven and truth and beauty are real, that the universe makes sense, that “the heavens resound with the glory of God”, that everything has a purpose, that we have a reason not only to be alive, but to celebrate with joyfulness! Coming to grips with the reality of the death and resurrection of Jesus is the key. While it may seem foolish to many to believe that a man could actually resurrect from the dead, many of us have discovered that the resurrection of Jesus is the key that opens our understanding to the things of God and to the meaning and purpose that we seek. “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ is coming again”. It’s an old refrain that has been repeated by the Church for two millennia, and it is true— more true than many will ever realize. Sometimes the things that seem the least credible are the things that are the most true, but we have to be willing to look foolish in order to discover them. We have to be willing to question the things that seem most obvious. When we make the so-called “discovery”, then we realize that we have not really discovered anything at all, but that God has revealed these things to us, because He wanted us to know the truth that would set us free. We didn’t find the light; God turned it on and focused it in our direction so we couldn’t miss it. Blessed are those who have eyes to see and ears to hear! If we could get beyond our pretty traditions and see things from a higher perspective, we would understand that Resurrection Sunday is a declarative celebration that is the kind of celebration we would have if war and violence and injustice and poverty and racism and discrimination and cancer and COVID-19 and all of the other issues and diseases that inflict and affect humankind were eliminated on the same day, times infinity, because it marks the defeat of all the enemies of God and of humankind, forever. It marks the defeat of humankind’s two greatest enemies, sin and death, out of which all the other of humanity’s problems flow. It marks the breaking of the curse of sin and death. The head of the serpent has been crushed by the wounded heel of the woman’s seed. God had created an unspeakably beautiful and glorious universe, humankind had rebelled, sin and death had reigned for a season, but in the resurrection of Jesus, God has the last word. Checkmate. God will accomplish his purposes. Sin and death and their consequences have been abolished. God is at work restoring his children, his earth and his universe to their original wholeness and beauty, He is carrying out his purposes toward His intended ends, and all obstacles have forever been demolished by the One who died and arose from the dead. God can never be defeated, and his purposes are good. In the proclamation of Resurrection Sunday lies our hope and our joy: He is risen! He is risen indeed! The message of Sunday is that our deepest moments of futility and perplexity and despair can be turned into our greatest moments of joy and victory and meaning once we start to get a glimpse of the God-perspective. We find meaning in the universe by getting to know God and to understand His ways. We get to know God by getting to know Jesus, which involves repentance and faith. We get to know Jesus as we wrestle with the implications of his death for us and his resurrection for us, but we have to move from the global to the personal. His death was for the world, to reconcile a sinful world to God, but in another sense it was specifically for me, to take away my sins. His resurrection was for me, that I also might be raised, as he was. He came to give me forgiveness of sins, eternal life, and a life that has meaning. These things are all wrapped up in his death and resurrection, which took place for me. They are for the world, they are for me, and they are for anyone who will receive them. May God open our eyes and show us the truth that will set us free! As Mary did on that Sunday morning over 2,000 years ago, we came to the tomb. We looked inside. We saw. We understood. We believed. We still believe, and that belief has rocked us to the core or our being, and has transformed our very existence into something very different from what it was before we met him— and that has made all the difference. Those of us who are Christians are people of the cross, and people of the empty tomb, and people of the soon return. These are the things that define us. These are the events that tell us who we are, because they tell us who God is, and how we can be in right relationship with Him, and how we can know Him, and how we can find our place in His universe as His beloved children, with His design, and with His appointed calling, purpose, meaning, and destiny. Look into the empty tomb at your own risk. Look away at your own risk. There is no way to avoid the risk. Whether we choose to look inside or to look away, the consequences are immense. There is no way to play it safe. Choose wisely. Choose carefully. “But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive”. (1 Corinthians 15:20-22)
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On Friday we lament the death of Jesus, and on Sunday we celebrate his resurrection. What do we do on Saturday? What to we do when our goals have been thwarted, our expectations have left us disappointed, our hopes have been dashed, and we wake up and realize that there’s nothing left to do? Saturday is the day of silence; the day of pause; the day of waiting for we know not what. It’s the day of suspended animation. It’s the day when the world waits. It’s the day when the world holds its breath. It’s the day of the drumroll that we think we may hear rumbling faintly, many miles off in the distance— but no, that must be our imagination. Nothing good is going to happen here any time soon. What can we do on Saturday? We can learn to be silent. We can learn to pour out our souls to God in utter honesty, as King David did in the Psalms and as Jesus did in the Garden of Gethsemane. We can learn to listen to what is really going on in our own hearts and minds and souls. We can be honest. We can face our deepest fears and doubts. After all, God already knows how we feel, and there’s no reason to hide ourselves from ourselves when there’s nothing left to lose. You can’t get much lower than rock bottom. What can we do on Saturday? We can listen for the still, soft voice of God, as did the Prophet Elijah. We can strain our ears to hear what God might be telling us. It’s easier to hear when the world around us is silent and there is nothing left to distract us. Dreams die on Friday, but if we are listening for the voice of God, new dreams and new hopes can begin to be stirred on Saturday. While there may be nothing very solid going on in our lives or in our souls, no “aha” moments, no amazing revelations from the heavens, no lightning or thunderbolts or visions in the skies, it’s the day to be looking for the smallest stirrings of the faintest hope of new beginnings. That may be all we get on Saturday, but that is enough. A little flicker of hope is all that we need. Even if we can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, at least we can begin to suspect that the light is out there somewhere. Maybe we’ll see it tomorrow. Didn’t the psalmist of old remind us “You have allowed me to suffer much hardship, but you will restore me to life again” and “Sorrow may last for a season, but joy comes in the morning”? Is it possible that we can have joy again— maybe not today, but eventually? If we listen with our souls, Saturday is the day when we may begin to hear faintly that something is stirring. A still, small voice is speaking. The smallest flicker of hope is being born. Dare we believe it? Dare we trust it? It’s not over. When we cannot see the hand of God, that’s when we learn to trust the heart of God— and the heart of God toward us is good. God is good, and his heart toward us is good. Yes, it is very good. Sometimes the voice of God speaks the loudest when everything else is silent. Sometimes we hear the voice of God most clearly when we are lamenting in silence, too sad and too stunned and too weak and too numb to be able speak or to fix or to repair or to distract or to blame or to argue or to defend or to protest or to criticize or to rationalize or to analyze or to strategize or to give an opinion or to even have an opinion. It’s the day when we stop trying to define ourselves by our positions and by our opinions. It’s the day when we stop trying to prove that “we” are right and “they” are wrong, and we realize that we don’t always need to take a side. It’s a day of learning that we have nothing to defend and nothing to hide and nothing to protect and nothing to lose, as long as we are in God’s hand— and we are in God’s hand. It’s day of realizing that there may never be a “new normal”, but that’s OK, because God is in the abnormal as much as he is in the normal. It’s the day of being still, and knowing that God is God— and that is enough. It’s the day of learning that the day that feels most hopeless is not the end of hope. It’s the day of waiting. It’s the day before the day of new beginnings. It’s Saturday. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? (Mark 15:34)
The death of Jesus Christ for our sins is something that needs to be experienced; not merely analyzed. What could be more horrifying than spending one’s entire life in complete submission to God, experiencing the deepest possible trust because of the deepest possible intimacy, only to feel forsaken at the end. Before we rush to our theological explanations, we need to take a moment to feel the horror of it all. We shouldn’t rush off to explain. We need to avoid the tendency to rush off to celebrate the resurrection before the time. We need to feel the sorrow. Closing the theological loop now would be premature. The Son feels abandoned by the Father. God feels abandoned by God. Whatever the theological explanation, the feeling was real. The horror was real. The darkness of that moment in the soul of Jesus is unimaginable. It was the worse possible nightmare in the universe, but it was real. The emotional pain was real. The agony was real. It wasn’t only physical pain that Jesus felt on the cross. The physical pain was emblematic of the emotional and spiritual pain of feeling abandoned by God Himself. The wretched agony that Jesus was experiencing at that moment can never be described or replicated. Jesus experienced all the physical, emotional and spiritual pain and brokenness and isolation that the universe could dish up against him. It happened once for all. The universe can contain that degree of pain only once. It had to happen this way. The shedding of the blood of lambs and bulls could never accomplish our redemption; it could only point to it. Only a human can pay for the sins of another human. Only God Himself can pay for the sins of a billion humans. The sacrifice for sins must be accomplished by someone who is, in the words of the ancient creed, “very God and very man”. It must be accomplished via a strange kind of sacrifice, where the priest and the offering are one. The priest offers himself as an offering for sin, and the priest is God. This baffles the intellect and stretches the imagination beyond the breaking point. God gives up His life to save the life of His people. God exacts the penalty, because He is just. God pays the penalty Himself, because He is loving. Rational explanations will always fall short. We must experience the truth, feel the truth, believe the truth. In some way that passes all human comprehension, when Jesus died on the cross as the sacrificial Lamb of God, God died for me, so that I could be forgiven. Jesus was forsaken that I might be accepted. Jesus was condemned that I might be forgiven. There is something very deep going on here in the cosmic order of things. Something at the heart of the universe exploded. Something deep in the heart of God exploded, and out of that explosion flowed the love and mercy that forgives a billion people of their sins and reconciles the inhabitants of a rebellious planet to their good Creator. He was forsaken that I might be reconciled. His death is my life. We need to feel the horror of Friday before we can dare to celebrate what will happen on Sunday. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. (Isaiah 53:5) And many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches which they had cut from the fields. And those who went in front and those who followed were shouting: “Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord; Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David; Hosanna in the highest!” (Mark 11:8-10)
The Middle Eastern sun is high and hot as an enthusiastic crowd starts to fill the streets of Jerusalem, cheering, celebrating, giving each other “high fives” as the young rabbi rides into the city on a donkey. Their people had suffered under oppressive regimes for centuries—the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Medes and the Persians, the Greeks, the Ottomans, and now the Romans—and their frustration had reached the boiling point; there was no turning back. An oppressed people can be kicked around for only so long before they start to fight back. At some point someone has to draw a line in the sand—and this young rabbi could be just the man for the job. The people are looking for a champion —someone who would fight for them; some rugged son of David who would stand and turn and face the Goliath of Rome and raise his clenched fist and shout the challenge to the arrogant enemies of God and of His people: “Who are you to defy the Living God?” And so they follow him, cheering as they go. “Hosanna!” “Save now!” “Deliver us from Roman oppression!” “Give us back our kingdom!” “Make Israel great again!” These are the cries that come from their mouths that echo the hopes that they treasure in their hearts as they follow this strong but gentle rabbi who claims that he has come from God and is returning to God. Goliath is about to fall. God and His people are about to be vindicated. The enemies of God and the enemies of God’s people are about to be defeated. No one defies Almighty God and gets away with it—at least not for long—and now the day of reckoning has come. While they are cheering and waving their palm branches, they might be asking themselves some questions that they dare not verbalize. “Why the donkey? Shouldn’t a warrior-king be striding into the city on a white horse? Could this have something to do with Zechariah 9:9? Where are the armies? That embarrassingly ordinary-looking bunch of unarmed “disciples” who insist on following him everywhere he goes doesn’t exactly look like the kind of militia that could march in and take over a city, let alone push back an empire. Something is not quite right about this turn of events. Something is not going as planned. This young rabbi seems to be departing from the conventional script. Why this talk about ‘love your enemies’? What kind of king is this? What kind of man is this? He talks of God as though he really knows Him. Could anyone know God that intimately? He speaks of God as being his Father in a way that seems almost scandalous. His way of dealing with people is not that of a warrior-king. He relates to people as though he really loves them. Can a warrior-king love his people? How can a conqueror allow his heart be touched by the needs and cares of his people, and even of his enemies, and treat them as his friends? He seems too gentle to be a warrior and too loving to be a king. His authority is won not by his harshness, but it’s somehow tied to his gentleness. He acts more like a servant than a king. He gathers his followers neither by threat nor by coercion but simply by being who he is. His people are his willing followers because at a place deep within themselves they know that there is something about him that’s worth following—or so they say. He teaches, but not as the other rabbis. He’s different. He’s a son of David, perhaps, but a different kind of son. Who is the man?” The people are perplexed but they dare not give up their hope, so they continue to cheer, waving their palm branches as the entourage enters the city. Perhaps something good will come of this; perhaps not. If he is the long-awaited Deliverer, the strong man who will set right all that is wrong with the world, then they are in the right place at the right time, following the right man. Rome is about to fall, and they are getting a front-row seat. Some day they will tell their children and their grandchildren that they were there on that historic day when the king came into Jerusalem, turned the tables on Rome and restored the Kingdom of David. If he is not the Deliverer then they have nothing left to lose, and so they continue to cheer. Today here in the US, we have our own brand of religious nationalism, Christian Nationalism, that closely mirrors the religious nationalism that surfaced on that first Palm Sunday in Jerusalem over 2,000 years ago. If Jesus were a Christian Nationalist, the story would have ended very differently. Jesus would have said “So you want a king who will make your nation great again? Fine, I’m here, let’s do it”. They would have put together an army, or at least a very strong coalition of religious and political leaders who were willing to work with each other toward the accomplishment of some mutual goals, with an army to back them up. They would have gotten rid of the Romans and set up their own government. They might have accomplished the task of making Israel great again, but by side-stepping Isaiah 53 they would have accomplished nothing of eternal value. Israel would have become a superpower, and the tables would have been turned against the Romans. Through a powerful alliance between what we would now call Church and State, with the religious leaders legitimizing the power plays of the political establishment and the political establishment providing special status and protection to the religious realm, Israel would be a force to be reckoned with. That’s not the way the story ended, because Jesus was opposed to what we today would call Christian Nationalism, and he refused to become a king under the terms set up by a coalition between the security-seeking religious establishment and the power-mongering political leadership. Jesus would have nothing to do with that kind of an agreement. He wouldn’t dance the dance of “I support you, you support me, and together we’ll make Israel great again”. His goal was not to build a powerful world-dominating empire. His goal was to die on a cross, and to invite his followers to be willing to do the same. He allowed himself to be killed by the very sort of political and religious coalition that the religious nationalists of his day would have wanted him to spearhead. Jesus didn’t say “pick up your flags and guns and follow me”; he said “pick up your cross and follow me”. The way of Jesus is not the way of flags and guns and political might. The way of Jesus is the way of compassion, self-surrender, and self-sacrificial love. Christian Nationalism leads to the building of an empire that is characterized by flags and guns and the pursuit of political and military power. The way of Jesus leads to a cross. On that original Palm Sunday there were two groups of people in Jerusalem. First, there were the cheering palm-waving crowds who were surrounding Jesus. These were the religious nationalists, who wanted to use Jesus as a tool to make Israel great again. Second, there were the disciples who were following Jesus, though it would lead him (and eventually many of them) to a cross. Today we need to declare ourselves. Either we are standing with the crowds, waving our palm branches in hope of building a Christian America, or we are surrendering our quest for power, and we are following Jesus all the way to the cross. We can’t have one foot in each group. After showing us the way to the Father and teaching us how to live, Jesus died on the cross to provide atonement for our sins, and he arose victorious over sin and death, and he ascended into heaven, and one day soon he will return to set up his kingdom on the earth. It will be a peaceable kingdom that will be characterized by love, compassion, justice, and freedom from oppression. Let’s not make the same mistake that was made on that first Palm Sunday on the streets of Jerusalem. When Jesus returns, let’s not be found building the wrong kind of kingdom. Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wants to come after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. (Matthew 16:24-25) |
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