Easter
3/31/2024
Now I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you—unless you have come to believe in vain. For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them—though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we proclaim and so you have come to believe.
It was clear that he had a good time. The Easter worship service was over. He approached me at the back door and shook my hand vigorously. “This was absolutely fantastic!” he exclaimed. “The flowers, the decorations, the glorious music – I loved it all. If I weren’t in church, I would say, ‘What a great show!’ It’s more than a show, of course, but, well, wow!”
He stepped away, then paused, turned back, and a twinkle in his eye, he added, “Why can’t it be like this every Sunday?” I smiled and said, “How do you know it isn’t? Come back and see.” He chortled, and then stepped away.
Now, I know what he’s saying. Easter is our big day. We turn up the wattage, sing hymns that everybody knows, have communion, and all of you show up looking so fine. It is wonderful. We could do this every week – and in some sense we do. Every Sunday is our Little Easter. Even in the forty days of Lent, the Sundays don’t count toward that season of austerity. The spiritual deprivations are on hold. This is the first day of the week, the day when God flipped the Sabbath calendar by raising Jesus from the dead. It’s Easter every week.
That’s the official answer. As we all know, time rolls on. The week snatches us back and wears us down. Old habits resurface. Old routines rebound. Old choices re-present themselves: should we go to church, go to brunch, or catch up on our sleep? And the annual pep rally, the great show, doesn’t seem to have the same juice. I understand all of that. This big day, this Easter celebration – how do we keep it going?
Or the better question: this big day that we watch, how might it get inside of us?
That’s why I invited the apostle Paul to speak with us today. I knew the Gospel of Mark would announce that the tomb is empty, Jesus is risen, and he is out there on the loose somewhere. That’s good news, even if it terrified that first group of women who had taken spices to embalm the body. Easter is an explosion of vitality. The event sent shock waves through the faithful and the unfaithful. Something happened beyond explanation, beyond control, beyond all reason.
And like all explosions, spiritual and otherwise, the energy returns to equilibrium.
Yet, twenty-five years later, the apostle Paul was still talking about it. That’s about the time Paul composed this text. This may be the earliest written account of the resurrection that we have. Yes, there are four other accounts, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They wrote down the stories that got into the book, but Paul came before all of them.
Historically speaking, his correspondence is the earliest in the Christian scriptures. He started churches, he corresponded with them, he gave them advice. To the struggling congregation in Corinth, he answered their questions about the resurrection. It comes at the end of his letter, but we get the sense that he has been saving up all his energy to say the one thing he wants them to know. He has saved it for the end to give it maximum emphasis. He wants them to have the message – and he wraps that message in his own experience.
What is the message? Jesus died for our sins, because of our sins, on account of our sins – and God raised him from the dead. We did our absolute human worst to him, just the prophet Isaiah declared: He was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruised we are healed.[1] It is no mystery that he was destroyed; people damage one another all the time.
Yet there is a mystery in what happened next: he took the damage and removed it. He canceled the damage. He forgave it. Then God gave him back to the very people who tried to get rid of him. Death and resurrection. It is profound.
For Paul, it was a personal story. Was he religious? Yes, he was religious. He had memorized his Bible. Have any of you done that? Was he faithful to God? Well, he thought so. He discovered a small group of infidels, declaring the Messiah had come. He knew it couldn’t be true because the world was still in a mess. The Messiah was supposed to fix everything, so it couldn’t have been Jesus. Paul decided to silence those misguided people, to cut them off, to remove them from the land.
And then, you know the story. On his way to hunt down more of those Jesus followers, there was a bright light that he did not initiate. There was a Voice speaking only to him, nobody else heard it. And the Voice knew his given name, “Saul,” an Old Testament name. The Voice quoted the Jewish scriptures that Saul knew so well, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” This was an ancient story told in the present tense.
The eternal Son of David confronted this younger son of Saul. Saul realized that he did not see. Instantly, the damage he was doing to others ceased. It was absorbed and taken away. Then, through the prayer and teaching of a very modest Jesus follower named Ananias, Saul had his eyes reopened. It was his own resurrection. Saul rebranded himself as “Paul,” a name that means “Tiny,” “Puny,” “Shortie,” or “No account.” He was the last, the least, the most unlikely follower of a Jesus who is very much alive.
There are two things he says about that experience in this Easter account of his. First, there is no human way that it should have happened. “I am unfit,” he says. “I persecuted Christ’s own people. Morally, ethically, I am the wrong guy.” He even uses a strange phrase to describe his change of heart. If Simon Peter and James and the others were “born from above,” Paul says, “I’m a spiritual miscarriage.” It is an ugly way to put it, but we know what he means – Jesus should never have found him, much less let him off the hook.
And that is the second thing he says, twice in fact. It is pure grace. “The grace of God…the grace of God.” Grace is the power of resurrection, freely providing a second chance on life. Grace is the pure gift of God, lifting any of us out of the captivity to our worst impulses. New beginning, new life, however God works it into our lives. Easter was not merely a one-time event for a long-ago Galilean named Jesus. Easter is the present-tense power of Jesus working in you and me. To borrow a verb from Paul, it’s the experience of being salvaged, which is another word for “saved.”
What is amazing to me is that the apostle Paul speaks as if it all had just happened to him. The events he narrated occurred twenty, twenty-five years, before. Some of us can’t remember what we had for lunch last Wednesday, and here’s the apostle with a crystal-clear affirmation. How did Easter get inside of him? How did it stay real? How did the resurrection retain its power?
He tells it to us straight: by repetition. “I tell you what somebody told me.” “I tell you of first importance what I first received: Christ has died, Christ is risen.” Same message, over and over again. The same message that restructured his soul. This is the same message that somebody told me, which I give to you, which you can give to somebody else. When you come back next week, we will say it again. And the week after that, too.
When Easter gets inside of us, it is more than an annual spectacle. It is the Way, the Truth, the Life. It is the grace to see us through, the light by which we see.
That reminds me of a little story. Perhaps you have heard of C. S. Lewis, the British academic of the last century. The author of scores of books, he came to faith the hard way, through bumps on the road, deep studies into mythology, lectures, and radio addresses to thousands. He says hit conversion happened quietly. When he got on a bus one day, he didn’t believe. When he got off the bus, he did. How did that happen? The mystery of grace.
And it changed him. In fact, although he was buried in a churchyard near his cottage, somebody put a memorial to him in Westminster Abbey. It includes a quotation from one of his talks. He said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe the sun is risen. Not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”[2]
This is what happens when Easter gets inside us. May it get
inside you over and over again.
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