Easter
April 4, 2021
William G. Carter
If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.
In case anybody wondered if a pandemic could shut down Easter, here we are! For the second year in a row, we celebrate this day through a dispersed community. Some are here, some are taking part at home, some are scattered to the four winds. And this is our big day. It is not an exaggeration to declare Easter is the reason our church exists.
A few years ago, I chuckled when I heard an international reporter on CNN as she described the events in Jerusalem. “All across the globe,” she reported, “Christians are preparing to mark their holiest day. Easter was the day long ago when Jesus allegedly arose from the dead. Christians are gathering to remember it.”
Allegedly she had it right. Easter marks an event from the past. Centuries ago, something happened in a graveyard outside Jerusalem. It was a rare event, never repeated, difficult to imitate, hard to explain to young children. A young Jewish man was raised from the tomb. He appeared to the people who knew him. We remember the resurrection. We mark it with glad songs and joyful worship.
Mark’s story is as good an account as any. At dawn, three women take burial spices to anoint the dead body of their friend. He died on the eve of a holy day. He was placed in a tomb in a hurry. A huge gravestone was rolled in front of the entrance. The women have their spices, are almost at the tomb, but realize the stone will have to be moved away. Suddenly they look up to discover that has already been done. Stepping into this weird sight, they see a young man sitting up. It isn’t Jesus, but apparently he knows him, for he refers to him by name.
“Don’t be shocked,” he says. “You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth. He isn’t here. He has been raised. Tell the others, especially Peter, that he has gone ahead to Galilee. All of you will see him there.” And they run out of the tomb, terrified, too shocked to say anything. He is alive…allegedly. Ever since, there have been field reports that he is on the move.
It has always been an unsettling story. There’s not enough evidence to satisfy a Doubting Thomas. Yet the tomb has been opened and Jesus isn’t in it. That’s just enough for a lot of us. We fill the silence with triumphant music. I’ve often wished we could bring in a brass quartet and amplify the proceedings, but the Roman Catholics booked last year’s trumpeters twelve months ago.
Truth be told, as glorious as that might be, it does cover up the mystery at the heart of it all. What actually happened? And what does it mean? Allegedly, says the lady on CNN, Jesus was raised from the dead. OK, we will have to take that on faith. But what does it mean? What does it really mean?
Maybe it means that life is stronger than death. That’s a good message. The daffodils in my front yard brushed off two inches of Thursday’s snow to sing hallelujah today. And the grass is starting to green up. Spring is here, we hope. Life is back. But let’s not confuse the cycle of the seasons with a one-time resurrection in Jerusalem. For the record, I do believe life is stronger than death. But I believe Easter means something more than that.
Maybe it means that love is stronger than the grave. That’s a good message, too, and I believe it. I have seen it. When we lose someone we love, a part of them stays with us. Yes, it is brutal having them torn from our arms for the very last time. We long to hear their voices again and the silence can be deafening. We grieve deeply because we love deeply. Grief is our protest against every loss. It is proof that love continues forever. But as important and true as that is, Easter is even bigger than love.
Maybe it means that life goes on, and we can be instructed by the life of the One who died. The church wrote down the things Jesus said so we can continue to hear his voice. We wrote down accounts of what he did so we can keep doing them. There are lessons to keep learning and tasks to pursue. We could do a lot worse than to be like Jesus, to love like Jesus, to do what Jesus did. And as important as all of that is, Easter is far greater.
How do I know that? Because of something that the Apostle Paul says. He writes to a small congregation in Greece. Not only are they small, they are a mess: chaos in the pews, division between rival parties, questions about how to act and what to do. And do you know why they are a mess? Precisely because Christ has been raised from the dead. Everything they thought settled has been tossed up into the air. Old routines were disrupted, old habits were confronted, old expectations were flipped upside down. And it’s all because of the resurrection!
I think of a great line from a short story by Flannery O’Connor. “Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead, and he shouldn’t have done it. He thrown everything off balance.” Indeed. It fits.
You think thirteen months of a pandemic is disruptive? Imagine having a living Savior at the center of your lives! You thought you had everything figured out. You thought you had that wise Jewish teacher nailed down – but he didn’t stay nailed down. And he didn’t stay safely out of sight in a sealed-up tomb.
Paul says Easter is disruptive. It’s the best kind of disruptive. It jumps off that old script that we know so well, that life only leads to death. I heard it in one of the hymns a few nights ago, on Maundy Thursday. Maybe you know the verse:
Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little
day / Earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away.
Change and decay in all around I see / O Thou who changest not, abide with me. “(Abide With Me”)
With his eyes illumined by the resurrection, Paul says, “Now, wait a minute. Wait just a minute. Jesus changed. He reversed the decay. We thought joy grew dim, and glory passed away, but we were wrong. He is alive. We caught a glimpse of the glory. Dimness was dispersed.” Something is afoot!
Hey Paul, does this mean we are going to stop dying? He says, “No, every person dies. Death began with a human being after the Garden of Eden. All of us die in Adam.”
So Paul, what does this mean? He says, “All of us will be made alive in Christ, for the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being, who is Jesus our Lord.”
To explain this, he draws on a picture from nature, when that first sign of a harvest pokes its head out of the ground. It was the evidence of the “first fruit” of something much bigger. For us, the analogy could be the first arrival of a trustworthy vaccine against covid-19. We hoped for it. We waited for it. There were field reports that it was coming.
Suddenly it happened – and that dark, heavy cloud over our heads began to break up. And I can report, as somebody who has had my vaccines, I feel free in ways that I haven’t felt in a whole year. We’re not all the way there yet. In fact, we have a good distance yet to go. But we have a taste of what is coming.
Paul says, “Now you understand Easter!” All die in Adam, and all shall be raised in Jesus. But keep the order straight, he says. First Jesus is raised, as the first fruit of the harvest, and then we will follow.
Now, I don’t expect the nice lady on CNN to understand apocalyptic eschatology, even though that’s what Paul is talking about. In fact, I have to spell out apocalyptic eschatology to a good number of our flock. Maybe I need to spell it for you. What Paul is telling us is that Easter is bigger than life, larger than love, and greater than any moral lesson. Easter is pointing us to where everything is going.
God’s broken creation is going to be healed. Everything twisted out of shape will be forgiven and restored. This tired, old world, so bent on its own destruction, is going to be spun in the right direction. And thanks to Jesus, God is finally going to win.
This is why Easter causes such a disruption. Resurrection confronts the powers of Death. Resurrection is the means by which God serves notice on anything that opposes God’s gracious and just rule over all things. They will not stand.
We often think of “death” in terms of a loved one. Somebody dies, and it is a death with a small “d.” Easter takes on that death, but in a comprehensive way. Death also comes with a Capital D, in today’s text, Paul calls that “the last enemy.” As somebody notes,
(Capital D) Death is out to steal life from human beings, but it does not stop with individuals. Death wants to capture territory, to possess principalities. It desires to dehumanize all institutions, poison all relationships, set people against people in warfare, replace all love with hate, transform all words of hope into blasphemy, to shatter all attempts to build community, and to make a mockery of God, faith, and the gift of life.[1]
Easter announces that Death with a capital D is going to be destroyed. Do you know what that means?
- Poverty caused by human
selfishness will not stand.
- Cruelty caused by abuse will
be equalized.
- Violence provoked by fear will
be dismantled.
- Ignorance caused by the willful
resistance to truth will fade away.
- All the toxins that enslave us
will have their power broken.
- And the meek shall truly inherit the earth.
For Christ is risen. He is the first evidence of the gracious dominion that God has intended from the beginning. We pray every day, “thy kingdom come.” Easter means it’s coming. It's really coming. And we will see it if we take part in it.
I realize this is a lot to take in, especially if you were expecting a pep talk about looking on the bright side, or tips on how to stay cheerful when you don’t feel like it. If you were looking for proof of something invisible, if you were looking for evidence of something that happened a long time ago, I can only tell you what I know: the evidence is in the kingdom’s mission. The proof comes through serving the Risen Lord whom we cannot see.
Here is the message we proclaim together: Jesus Christ is risen. He is risen from the dead. He is risen to rule over all things until he has put “all his enemies under his feet.” This is the truth. This is Easter in the future tense.
[1] Thomas G. Long, Accompany
Them with Singing: The Christian Funeral (Louisville: Westminster John Knox
Press, 2009) pp. 38-39
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