“Dessert First”
Jesus' life, teachings and power, as seen through the lens of the Resurrection.
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, March 31, 2002
Text: Acts 2:22-32
I called her Aunt Maggie, but she was no relation. She was an elderly member of the church in which my father ministered when I was a little boy. Aunt Maggie, as she became known to me, was so dear to my heart as a young boy because every Friday my mother would let me go to Aunt Maggie for the whole day.
This was the most joyful day of the week for my mother, and Aunt Maggie seemed more than willing to play with me and to entertain me for a day as my mother received her needed rest. Dear Aunt Maggie, being a rather elderly lady, nevertheless was able to keep up with a young, strapping lad and she would always have the same routine every day. She would pick me up at our home and take me to a little café where we would have a drink called Vimto. Then she would take me into the park and we would look at all the stone monuments - very exciting.
After we had had a look at all the stone monuments, we would go back to her little stone cottage at the bottom of the hill and every single Friday, she would make me the same meal. It began with cabbage soup. The main course was what we knew in Lancashire as "Lancashire hotpot" and it was followed by the most glorious, delicious and delightful apple pie with fresh cream. After that we would have a nap, and she would take me back to my mother, whose face always looked dejected when I walked in the door. This was our routine every Friday for, I don't know, seemed like eternity.
One day my Aunt Maggie took my mother to one side and said, "Mrs. Stirling, I have a real concern about Andrew. You see, the problem is that I offer him soup and he doesn't eat much of it and I give him the hotpot and he doesn't eat much of that either. But what he seems to gorge himself on only are masses and masses of apple pie. Do you think that this is okay?"
Well, my mother took me to one side and said, "Dear, what is wrong that you don't eat the cabbage soup and the hotpot?"
Then I asked my mother a question that brilliant philosophers throughout the years have ignored - neither Wittgenstein, Plato, Socrates, Schopenhauer, Kant, Kierkegaard, Russell - none of them have had the knowledge to ask this most profound of all philosophical questions that I posed that day: "If dessert tastes so good, why don't we have it first?"
Makes eminent sense to me, don't you think? Why do we have to endure all this other stuff just to get to the good bit?
I want to ask that very same question this morning, but I want to ask it theologically: Why don't we have dessert first?
By dessert, I mean that sweet, that most glorious, that most meaningful of all Christian doctrines, the doctrine of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. For it seems to me that the whole of the Christian gospel finds its life and its meaning and its power and its purpose in this one singular and central event. So important is this dessert, as it were, this most sweet and magnificent of all beliefs, that the apostle Paul in writing to the Corinthians said: "If we do not believe that Jesus Christ is raised from the dead then our faith is in vain, our preaching is in vain, we are still in our sins and we have no hope. But if Jesus Christ is raised from the dead, then, all those things that we believe and hold true find their meaning and their purpose and their power and their validity."
This was manifest in the text that Jane read for us beautifully a little while ago from the book of Acts. In this great book of Acts, we read that the apostle Peter delivered the very first sermon after the resurrection. Pentecost had come and the disciples went out into the streets of Jerusalem and Peter stood up boldly in front of the people of Jerusalem and he reminded them that Jesus of Nazareth had been crucified outside those city walls days before. He made the most incredible statement: "This Jesus of Nazareth whom you saw with your own eyes, crucified, is now raised from the dead and we, the disciples that are around me and I, we are witnesses to the fact that this Jesus Christ is alive."
Then he goes back and traces the life and the witness of Jesus - the ministry of Jesus. He even quoted the great King David from the Old Testament to show that, in fact, Jesus of Nazareth's resurrection from the dead made sense of absolutely everything that had happened.
What we need, to use the phrase today, is to make sure that we have our dessert first because the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead does two very profound things.
The first of which is - it makes sense of the life of Jesus himself. Look, for example at how we might examine and understand the miracles of Jesus. When we read the stories in the Bible of Jesus turning water into wine at Cana, when we see in the miracle of healing the blind man by the pool of Siloam, when he raised Lazarus from the dead, when he multiplied the loaves and fishes in order that 5,000 people might be fed, it almost seems incomprehensible to think that an ordinary man would be able to perform these miracles.
But the resurrection of Jesus Christ causes us to look back on those miracles and to understand them for what they were. They were the acts of God's Divine Son! These weren't just miracles that were wrought from a distance, these were miracles that were performed by none other than God Incarnate! The only way that we can really understand and appreciate these miracles is if we look at them through the lens of the resurrection - if we put the dessert first.
So it is with the teachings of Jesus. I've always thought it is amazing how few of the teachings of Jesus are actually covered in the New Testament. I'm sure that there were many things that Jesus taught and said and did that are not contained in the pages of Scripture. Nevertheless, the teachings of Jesus Christ in many ways parallel many of the great teachers of history.
But what makes the teachings of Jesus unique, what gives them power and authenticity is the resurrection. The One who spoke these words, the One who gave that great Sermon on the Mount and said all the "blessed are's", the One who taught the people in Jerusalem and around the Sea of Galilee and who wandered into the land of the Samaritans, who welcomed the Gentiles - this was not just a teacher among many good teachers, this was the one who would be raised from the dead. And when you look at his teachings, they come alive in the light of the resurrection. Dessert must come first.
So it is true of the death of Jesus. The resurrection illuminates the death of Jesus. This could have been the death of another innocent man at the hands of an unjust and a powerful humanity. It could have been. This could have been just a miserable story with a sad ending of another wandering rabbi who was followed by a few good men and women.
But it was more than that. For the Cross of Jesus Christ comes to life, finds its meaning in the resurrection. The death of Jesus Christ was not just the death of a man, it was God's self-giving love. It was God's victory and conquering over sin and death. It was the ultimate symbol of salvation. The Cross, then, is not something from which we should turn our eyes away in shame. Now, because of the resurrection, we can look upon it with glory and thanksgiving. Even the death of Jesus of Nazareth, then, takes on new meaning when we put the dessert first.
This is also the justification of the disciples. The disciples had followed Jesus for years. They'd listened to Him, they'd obeyed Him, they'd gone to the Garden of Gethsemane with Him, they had been there at His crucifixion. They'd denied Him, they'd questioned him, they'd adored Him and they'd loved Him. But the one thing that validated and justified all that they believed in was that they found He was raised from the dead. All the things that they had done and all the things that they had seen and said took on a whole new life when they looked at it through the eyes of the resurrection - when dessert comes first.
You see, my friends, all the Gospels were written after the resurrection. All of them give an account of the life of Jesus looking back through the lens of the resurrection. Everything that was written or said or done about Jesus Christ takes on a new life when you look at it through the eyes of the resurrection - when the dessert comes first.
The great Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard, once said, and I've quoted this here before, "Life must be lived forwards but understood backwards." And how true this is, even for the Gospel of Jesus Christ! It only is really understood in the light of the resurrection - when the dessert comes first.
But the resurrection is far more than that; it also makes sense of human existence and of our life here on earth. There are many people who I believe are cynical and skeptical and who question whether God is really who He says He is, and wonder whether God really does know the whole story. The apostle Paul said that we see through a glass darkly - we do not get the full picture of what God is doing.
Just like those disciples at the foot of the cross, they did not know what was to come and they only saw with a certain vision that was cloudy.
It reminds me of a story that I heard from a colleague in ministry who taught at Asbury Seminary in Kentucky. In the cafeteria of the seminary there was a long line-up every day and there was a great worry on the part of the people who ran the cafeteria that students would fill their pockets with food and take it back to their rooms and leave nothing for anyone else. Does that sound familiar?
Well, one day, they had this magnificent basket of Red Delicious apples and the manager of the cafeteria put a sign on the basket. It said: Take only one, please; God is watching.
At the other, distant end of the line, there were chocolate cookies with peanuts in them and one student decided to put up a sign of his own: Take as many as you want; God is watching the apples.
So many of us are like that in our attitude towards God. We limit God. We put God in a box. We think there are things that God cannot do. The resurrection of Jesus Christ says to us just like it said to the disciples: Remember, dessert first. When you think that God is not able, remember the resurrection.
There are also many people who in this life despair and feel that there is no hope. I have been thinking about that a great deal. I thought of the fact that a year ago in this church, we gathered to celebrate the resurrection as we do today. Think what has happened in the world between then and now.
Between then and now there was September 11th and all that it wrought on this continent and in our lives. There was the destruction that has been brought to Afghanistan. I think, too, of Netanya, that most beautiful town on the coast of Israel that has been shattered and destroyed with bombings. I think this week of Ramallah and the young people who live in anxiety and fear and the inhumanity of man to man and woman to woman that has occurred.
Many of you may have lost a loved one since last Easter, or you may be mourning and grieving an illness or a pain. There are many people who, when confronted by such things, despair.
Well, my friends, this is the morning to turn the page back away from despair and to once again renew our hope. Not a Pollyanna hope of pie in the sky, but a hope that is predicated on an event, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Those who have gone before us, that those who have died have not in fact lived in vain: but for all those who believe there is hope and no need for despair.
I believe there are people out there who desperately, desperately need to hear this word. If only they will look at life and understand the power that comes from having dessert first.
But there are also many people who do not feel that they have freedom in their lives, who feel that they are constrained and wonder whether good will in fact prevail.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ, my friends, frees us and liberates us. As the cross was the symbol of God's self-giving love for others, so too the cross and the resurrection of Jesus Christ are symbols that we should be free to live our lives for others; not to be so wrapped up in our own lives, not so self-centred and so absorbed that all we see is that which is immediately before us; but that in opening ourselves to the power of God in His resurrection, we might look at the needs of the world and, as Christ did on the cross, put those things first. This is our freedom. This is our joy.
It is precisely this that is the foundation of our cry for social justice, for hope for people who are marginalized, for peace where there is violence, for love where there is hatred, for security when people feel displaced. It is the power of the resurrection, and the resurrection alone, that causes us therefore not to look simply down to our own feet and our own lives, but to look up to Christ on the Cross. From there, He looked at the lives of others, and before He was raised, He said, "I will draw all people unto me." If only we will believe this to be true and have the same compassion, we would have freedom.
Lastly, it speaks, I believe, about the very power of our faith and of the central place that Jesus Christ has in it. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is not just a comment about God, it is a demonstration of God's activity and grace in the world. It is not a statement that we believe that God forgives us, it is a statement that we have seen that God forgives us. This is our hope and this is our faith and the Son is at the centre.
There is a very beautiful story told of an old man and his son. The old man was very wealthy and lived in a mansion and he and his son shared something in common: They were lovers of art.
And so the father and the son went to many different places and they accumulated with their massive wealth some of the greatest works of art known to humanity. They purchased Rembrandts and Van Goghs. They had a whole room filled with some of the finest paintings by some of the most splendid painters known to the world.
But a war came and the son was called up to fight. After a few months the father received a telegram informing him that his son had died. His heart was broken.
A few weeks later there was a knock on the door and one of the son's friends came along and he said: "Sir, I knew your son and I fought alongside your son and your son was a great man. If you would be gracious enough to receive it, although it is not splendid, I have painted a portrait of your son and I would like you to have it."
The father was so moved that he took all the great paintings and pushed them to one side and in the centre of the wall in his mansion he placed the painting of his son, and he adored it.
A few years later the father died and many of the great paintings that were in the house were auctioned off. People came from far and wide. There was excitement in the whole community. They would finally be able to get their hands on some of these works of art. They were thrilled to pieces and the place was packed.
The auctioneer got up and he said: "Ladies and gentlemen, the first item that is to be bid on is a painting of the old man's son."
They all looked at it and cast their eyes away. The auctioneer said: "A hundred dollars, the bidding can begin." But no-one would take it.
He went down to $80 and no-one would take it; $70, no-one would take it; and finally down to $45 and a young man stood up and he said: "I am a friend of the son. I would like to have it. I will purchase this."
Everybody else at the auction was ecstatic: "Now we can get on to the real paintings."
But the auctioneer stood up and said: "Ladies and gentlemen, the auction is now over. You can all go home."
Well, they were furious: "What do you mean, we can all go home? We have come here for the great paintings. Why are you doing this?"
The auctioneer said: "There was a codicil in the old man's will that read: Whoever gets the son, gets them all."
My friends, the gospel of Jesus Christ is that those who receive the son receive it all. That is the glory of the resurrection. That is the heart of our faith. It makes sense of our lives and our reason for being here. It gives us hope in the years to come. It makes sense of all that has been said and taught about Jesus of Nazareth, because ultimately, the real joy in life and the real meal is when you have the dessert first.
Hallelujah and to the Lord be the glory. Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.