We began our service with the words with which Christians
have marked the resurrection for two thousand years: “Christ is Risen!” “He is
risen indeed!” We say these words, and we mean them; but this has been a hard
week. Two funerals, and the echoes and ongoing loss of at least two other
deaths. We have lived in the pain of Good Friday for more than just a day.
Grief and loss are all around us, and the affirmation of Jesus’ resurrection
takes energy that we barely have and faith that we only partly feel. The words
are nevertheless true. Christ is risen! Jesus has conquered death! We are able
to live with hope and joy because he died and rose from the dead.
Matthew 28
Our text tells the story. The disciples had lost everything.
They had watched their Lord and friend killed on a Roman cross. They had buried
him in a grave that Joseph of Arimathea had made, presumably intending to use
it for himself or other members of his family. Jesus had to be buried
somewhere, and Joseph offered his grave, cut out of a rock. Jesus was laid
there on Friday evening, and then all observed the Sabbath. We assume that the
disciples grieved silently on the Sabbath, hiding from the crowds. And then on
Sunday morning, early – before others were up and about – some women went to
the grave.
Matthew names Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary” (27:56 –
mother of James and Joseph, or mother of James and John), but Luke adds “and
the other women”. So, a group of women led by Mary Magdalene and the mother of
some of the disciples. These women went to the grave to grieve, to see where
the body of the one they loved lay. How often have you or I gone to the grave
of someone we love. My mother died in May 1991. This past week, my older sister
sent me a picture of the plot and headstone where she and my father lie buried.
We remember, and they were grieving and remembering.
Then something none of us has ever experienced happened.
There was an earthquake. The stone blocking the grave was rolled away. An angel
appeared and sat on the stone, frightening the guards who were supposed to keep
people away so that they fled. The angels spoke to the women, “Be not afraid.
Sing out for joy. Christ is risen, Alleluia!!” John 20 tells us that Jesus had
a special word for Mary, but Matthew notes only that Jesus then appeared, that
they worshipped him, and that he sent them to the disciples to tell them that
he was alive.
History or Principle?
Some people suggest that this only a good story, meant to
help us keep hoping in the face of dangers and troubles in this world. Are they
right, or did it really happen? John Dickson is an Australian historian who has
written a little book called Is Jesus History? He notes that there are
rules for historical inquiry by which we can tell how likely a story is to be
true. By the cannons of history, he suggest, the New Testament is histoprically accurate.
Dickson tells of an Australian judge, well respected for his
ability to sift evidence in the courtroom, who spent the last years of his life
evaluating the evidence of the New Testament to see if it would have made a
trustworthy testimony in his courtroom. The judge himself was agnostic about
the existence of God and expected to find that the story of the resurrection
was a story designed to give hope, not the record of what actually happened.
His conclusion was that by all the canons of history, the record of the
resurrection is trustworthy. The gospel writers recorded truth faithfully.
Jesus lived, and died, and rose from the dead.
If that is true, the passage we read this morning is not
just a story meant to help us hope in the darkness. It is instead the reminder
that death itself has been defeated on the cross. Jesus walked the path of life
that every one of us walks. Jesus came up to the end of his life, knowing full
well that his ministry would end on the cross. He died, and then God raised him
from the dead.
The World We Live In
When we look around, we see great beauty and goodness, and
we see all kinds of danger threatening to overwhelm us. When we look at the
beauty, we can believe that God is Creator. We see love and delight in the way
that people help each other and the enjoyment we have in a good friendship. But
then a friend dies, or a family disintegrates, or a storm system destroys our
home. We see the problems of our world, and we wonder what hope there is for
the future.
What is reality? Is reality the friend who helped me out
when I needed a friend? Or is reality the friend who stabbed me in the back and
destroyed my hopes? Is reality the beauty of the Rocky Mountains or the Great
Plains, or is reality the possibility that we have already passed the point of no
return with climate change?
In short, which is stronger – good or evil? Who wins – God
or Satan? Our head says that God and good are stronger, but sometimes we wake
up in the night and we’re not so sure. Let me tell you something: There is no
shame in doubting the goodness of our world. The problems we face are real, and
we take them seriously. Let me tell you something else: Our fears and our
doubts are not the last word. The women came to the tomb full of fear and
doubt, and then the angel rolled away the stone and dispelled their fear, and
they worshipped the risen Jesus.
We should perhaps not be too surprised at this resurrection
story. Where does a tree growing in your yard come from? It came from another
tree that dropped a seed – perhaps an acorn – as it got older. From that acorn
another oak tree grew in its place. The analogy is imperfect, but it shows a pattern in which
all of us participate. Where did I come from? My parents have died, but they
gave me life and I am here. When I die, my sons and their wives take my place.
Where did they come from? From me and Lois, just as we came from our parents. I
trace this pattern of dying and continuing in one’s children back six generations
in North America – I am the son of David, the son of John, the son of Peter,
the son of David, the son of Martin, the son of Johann Heinrich Kleimenhagen,
the first of our family to come to Canada from Germany 240 years ago.
There’s death and new life for you. Every one of us is a
testimony to new life coming out of the death of our parents. This is a basic pattern
in all of created nature. Jesus simply took this basic truth of reality to a
new level and promised each of us that our own deaths likewise are the door to
new life with him.
What Does This Mean for us Today?
I grew up in the Brethren in Christ Church in Zimbabwe. When
I taught in Zimbabwe in the early 1970s, there were about 5,000 members of the
BIC Church there. Then came the Liberation War, and the people suffered
greatly. The mission schools were closed, and those who could moved from their
rural homes into the cities. At the request of the church there, the BIC
missionaries who remained were brought back to North America in 1977.
I remember my last General Conference there in August 1974.
A missionary named Luke Keefer preached a sermon on the filling of the Holy
Spirit. After the sermon, pastors and deacons, leaders of the church pressed to
the front of the church building singing, “Woza Moya Oyingcwele” (“Come, Holy
Spirit”). I was one of them, singing and praying for God’s Spirit to fill me. When
we were all finished singing and praying and searching together, the man beside
me asked, “Have you been filled with the Spirit?” I said, “Yes.” I asked, “Have
you?” He said, “No.” I met him again two months later, and he told me with
great excitement that he had now been filled with the Spirit. What he and so
many others in the church received was the presence and power of God to endure
the Liberation War. When the war ended and the churches reopened, the church
that had been 5,000 members was now 20,000.
What did the resurrection mean for the church in Zimbabwe?
It meant that the darkest days of the war were only the prelude to the light of
the resurrection. Even today, when Zimbabwe still struggles with economic problems
that make life increasingly difficult, the resurrection reminds us that the
darkness lasts only for a night, and joy comes in the morning.
I have lived in four countries – Zambia, Zimbabwe, the USA,
and Canada. Each one of them has its problems and failures. I wonder sometimes
if we have any real future. Human sin and conflict make life look almost
hopeless. But Jesus rose from the dead, and his resurrection reminds us that no
problem, no conflict in this world is hopeless. The war in Ukraine? Fears of
climate change? Duelling judges in the United States? Politicians who care more
about lining their own pocket than doing public good? They are all here, and
Christ died to redeem each one of them. The resurrection is our evidence that Jesus
can and will heal the world.
A friend of mine, Patrick Franklin (former theologian at
providence Seminary), wrote the following Easter meditation:
What difference does the
Resurrection of Jesus make? Christian belief in the resurrection is
misunderstood and misguided if taken to imply a kind of escapist pipedream
optimism, which distracts us for a short time … from the troubles, challenges,
and sufferings we face in the world. … But this is not what characterized the
earliest Christians who were witnesses and devotees of the Risen Jesus and
whose experience of the Resurrection radically altered their existence. For
them, the Resurrection meant that death does not have the last word, and
therefore its instruments and servants – fear, despair, lies or untruth, sickness,
poverty, egoism, apathy, hatred, violence, and the preservation of self and
tribe by any means possible – are exposed as deceivers and destroyers. …
The Resurrection led the early
Christians not into escapism and disengagement, but to enter villages and towns
ravaged by sickness and plague to care for the sick and dying. To share their
own resources – “everything they had” – among them “so that there were no needy
persons among them” (Acts 4:32-35). …
The Resurrections means . . .
- That we will have conflict, but
we are not to make enemies or return evil for evil.
- That we will face suffering,
sacrifice, and death, but we are not to give in to despair or escapism. …
- That we will face the ‘will to
power’ in our politicians, leaders, institutions, traditions, histories, fellow
human beings, and – if we’re honest – in ourselves! – but we can also embrace
the Spirit’s power to will the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, and to love
our neighbours … as we love ourselves …
- That we will feel alone,
disconnected, divided, alienated, misunderstood, and hated, but we are not to
become jaded, resentful, and suspicious, but to fix our vision … on the
reconciliation that Christ [has] achieved, that we have been made brothers and
sisters in Christ (whether we like each other or not), we are the Body of
Christ, the household of God – a family defined not by blood ties and
ethnocentric and xenophobic tribal loyalties, but by the “new birth,” by
baptism, by love, by faith, and ultimately by the saving, reconciliatory act of
God, our common Creator …
This holy Easter weekend, I
choose … to align (and re-align) my vision – my faith, hope, and love – to the
Risen Lord in light of the Resurrection of the Son of God. May the new creation
that is dawning in him – by the Spirit’s presence and power – dawn more fully
and powerfully in me; may it dawn more fully and powerfully in the church …;
and may it dawn more fully and powerfully in the world, that we in all our
created, beautiful diversity and multiplicity might be one in Spirit and in
Truth. …
So Also for Us
We have experienced our own struggles and hardships these
past weeks, and all this is true for us as well. We come to see Jesus, and we
find him risen from the dead! We come with our fears and frustrations, and he
gives us new life and strength to forge ahead.
Thirty-two years ago, my father-in-law died on Easter
Sunday. I remember the phone call. We were visiting my parents from Easter
Weekend, and my mother woke us up early in the morning to say that Lois’ Dad
had just died of cardiac arrest brought on by his cancer. We got up and packed
and drove immediately to her home to be with her mother and family.
We had the funeral service and imagined her father singing
in the choir in heaven. After the service, we drove to the cemetery. After the
words of committal, they lowered the casket into the grave. As it was being
lowered, I saw our younger son start to sing. He was about four years old, and
his favourite song was “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.” I stepped over to stop
him, since I thought that was really not appropriate, and then I heard what he
was singing. A song from Sunday School, “One, two three, Jesus loves me. Number
four, more and more. Five, six, seven, we’re all going to heaven. Eight, nine,
ten, he’s coming back again.”
I stepped back and let him sing. He had it right. Because
Jesus lived and died and rose from the dead, we also live and die – and rise
with him. And Jesus says to all of us, as he did to the women that morning, “Do
not be afraid; go and tell my brothers and sisters to go back home; there they
will see me.” Or, as we sang it this morning, “Be not afraid. Sing out for joy.
Alleluia! Christ is risen!”
Resurrection Sunday 2023
Steinbach Mennonite Church
Beginning Thoughts
1. God wants all people to be reconciled with God and with
each other. God wants this reconciliation so much that Jesus died – and rose
from the dead – to accomplish it. We live in the reality of this cosmic shift
from death and alienation to life forever with God.
2. Text: Matthew 28: 1 to 10.
The
Resurrection of Jesus
28 After
the Sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the
other Mary went to see the tomb. 2 And suddenly
there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven,
came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. 3 His
appearance was like lightning and his clothing white as snow. 4 For
fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. 5 But
the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking
for Jesus who was crucified. 6 He is not here, for
he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he[a] lay. 7 Then
go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead,[b] and
indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.’ This is my
message for you.” 8 So they left the tomb quickly
with fear and great joy and ran to tell his disciples. 9 Suddenly
Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came to him, took hold of his
feet, and worshiped him. 10 Then Jesus said to
them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers and sisters to go to Galilee;
there they will see me.”
3. Remembering the resurrection of Jesus can become routine
with annual Easter celebrations. Can you see with your inner eye what really happened
that first Resurrection Sunday? How does what happened re-orient our lives and
help us to live in a world where death appears to be in charge?
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