2.5.12--Sermon on the Resurrection of Christ

Two years ago, Jessica and I were living in Princeton while I was attending my first semester of seminary. Jessica was working full-time at Starbucks as a shift supervisor and when I wasn’t working on my homework I was desperately and hopelessly trying to find a part-time job. We weren’t in a good place financially. Even with the scholarships and loans that I received, the cost of living was too much for us to handle, and our savings was slowly but steadily diminishing as the bills seemed to steadily increase. In about six months’ time, we would be out of money and in need of other options. Now, I don’t know about you, but money is an extremely stressful thing for me. I never feel like I have enough of it, and I always feel like too much of it is gone before it hits my wallet. Having no money, especially so early in our marriage, was all the more stressful, and we were beginning to worry more and more about how we were going to make it through the summer. To top it off, I was already struggling with my work because I didn’t have any practical outlet for the highly abstract things I was learning. The academic aspect of Princeton Seminary so outweighed the practical that I felt I was drowning in it!

Then I got a call from my district superintendent asking me what I thought about doing a two-point charge. It was a less-than-half-time position at two small but grounded churches, and it came with a parsonage. Would I maybe be interested in this? I remember my voice catching in my throat as I answered him, “Absolutely!”

And all of a sudden, doors that were previously barred began to open. In that one conversation, Jess and I went from not knowing how we were going to continue making payments on her car to figuring out when she would be able to quit her dead-end job and find something she really loved to do. I went from dreading my classes to feeling excited about the chance to learn more that I could then share with my congregations!

It was as if the new day had dawned, and the dread of night fled at the approach of the rising sun.

Our chapter this week from The Story reads the same way on a much, much grander scale. The first Easter Sunday was so good because the day before had been so bad. Good Friday commemorates the crucifixion and Easter Sunday the resurrection. The Saturday in between commemorates desperation. On that Saturday it seems that Christ was totally defeated as his body lay utterly dead in a rock tomb. The spear had sliced his heart and his tongue had gone silent. Death was absolute. No one was betting on resurrection. Let us turn in our Bibles to Matthew 27:62-66.

The next day, the one after Preparation Day, the chief priests and the Pharisees went to Pilate. “Sir,” they said, “we remember that while he was still alive that deceiver said, ‘After three days I will rise again.’ So give the order for the tomb to be made secure until the third day. Otherwise, his disciples may come and steal the body and tell the people that he has been raised from the dead. This last deception will be worse than the first.”

“Take a guard,” Pilate answered. “Go, make the tomb as secure as you know how.” So they went and made the tomb secure by putting a seal on the stone and posting the guard.

Saturday was a no hope, no courage kind of day.

And while Jesus’ opponents’ celebrated his death and guarded his body, his disciples were hiding in fear that they, too, would meet a similar fate at the hands of the chief priests or the Romans. They hid behind closed doors and met in locked upper rooms in fear because they did not understand what Jesus had spoken to them. They did not believe in the words that we know to be true. They did not trust Jesus’ promise of a resurrection.

You would think that this would not be the case, especially since Jesus tried to beat this message into them. In Mark’s account of the Gospel, Jesus speaks three different times of the suffering, death, and resurrection of the Son of Man: first in Mark 8:21, then in 9:31, and finally in 10:24. But, as we realized two weeks’ ago, the disciples are kind of slow on the uptake much of the time.

Even the women disciples—who by the way are not spoken of enough in the Gospel accounts, which is a sad fact because most of the time they have the strongest faiths of any of Christ’s followers—even the women disciples go to the tomb on the third day not to celebrate the resurrection but to embalm the body.

We, too, can easily get stuck in Saturday, living with a Saturday state of mind—no hope, no courage, no plans, believing that death is the final end. Romeo and Juliet died, JFK died, Princess Diana died. Love gets buried in a tomb, poetry gets buried in a tomb. Is this all there is? Max Lucado, a pastor from Texas and a well-known Christian author, tells the story of his brother, D. D was an outgoing, friend-making, joy-bringing kind of guy. D was a personal ambassador for his shy, younger brother, Max. In his teen years D met a bootlegger and alcohol trapped D. For four decades D drank away his health, his friends, his jobs and his money.  At age 54 D made a serious decision to join AA. His life and marriage stabilized, but the years of alcohol and smoking 3 packs a day left D in very fragile health. He began to have chest pains. He was rushed to the emergency room by ambulance. By the time his wife, Donna, arrived with one of their sons, D was gone. They went in to see his now dead body. One of his hands was resting on his thigh with his fingers curled in the international sign language form of “I love you.” Max knows why D did that. He had moved out of Saturday into Sunday; out of desperation into hope; out of fear into courage. By God’s grace D moved from Saturday to Sunday.

You see, Sunday—resurrection day—is a day of eternal love, is a day of life, and is a day of hope. Sunday is where Jesus takes away our grief.

In The Story, this week, we see how God can pull us out of the rut of desperation Saturday and move into the joy of resurrection Sunday. In John’s account of the resurrection, Mary Magdalene goes to Jesus’ tomb stuck in a Saturday state of mind. Let us read together this account from John 20:10-18.

Then the disciples went back to their homes, but Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.

They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”

“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

“Woman,” he said, “why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”

Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”

Jesus said to her, “Mary.”

She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means Teacher).

Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”

Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had said these things to her.

Mary was stuck in her despair and grief. The empty tomb did not take them away from her. The angels did not take them away from her. She is wrapped up in them so tightly that neither miraculous sign can shake her free. Mary Magdalene, the one Jesus befriended and saved from demonic oppression, had the sadness of Saturday covering her heart. But then she sees Jesus. He speaks her name, and she realizes that Jesus, her Lord, is alive from the dead.

On this first Easter Sunday, Jesus, the resurrected Lord, took away her grief.

Friends, she is not the only one who has been given the gift of hope and of new life. For you see, though our lives might seem to be stuck in the grief of desperation Saturday, Christ appears to us and welcomes us into the joy of resurrection Sunday.

Christ the Lord is risen today! Alleluia! Amen.