"All is Revealed"
God is always with us
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, April 8, 2007
Text: Isaiah 26:19-21; Mark 16:1-8
I sat in a coffee shop with a colleague and friend. There were dark circles under his eyes, his face was creased with tiredness and he looked drawn and ill at ease. I order decaffeinated coffee - he ordered a very large caffeinated coffee - and we talked. He had just returned from Darfur where he was working as an aide on behalf of a Christian organization, trying to bring healing and peace. As we have seen in the media, so often the aide workers are rejected and over-tired. Yet he had given himself thoroughly for the people in that part of the world. Now that he was home for awhile, the tiredness overcame him and the sadness brought him down. But within his eyes, as tired as they were, there was a glimmer of hope.
He explained to me what he had seen: the mud and the flies, the camps and the teaming numbers of people. He said he had never seen anything like it in his life; no words could describe it. I asked him, “How do you speak about this, then, when you've seen so much?”
He said, “Well, Andrew, at one point in my life I would have said these words: ”˜But by the grace of God go I.' Now, having been there, I say, ”˜But there goes God.'”
You see, my friend had witnessed the most terrible devastation in the world. He had seen the inhumanity, and witnessed the poverty, degradation and violence. Yet, as a man of faith, he looked at what he saw and still saw God at work. He would not be crushed to the point of saying, “But by the grace of God go I.” He saw God at work even in the midst of the suffering and death of the world. Such was the strength of his conviction, such were his eyes of faith, that he saw God at work even in the low places.
My friends, it is precisely that truth that holds us here this morning, on Easter Sunday. It is precisely that conviction that moves us to see the glory of this day, and the magnificence of God's presence. In many ways, what we see this morning are four moments of divine revelation in which God was at work. In each one, the risen Christ, the presence of God almighty and the victory of the Lord are to be seen.
The first moment is described in today's text. During the last two weeks, we have studied the Book of Isaiah. It shows us how God was with a nation at the moment of its need. According to the prophet Isaiah in chapter 26,500 years or more before the birth of Jesus the people of God, the people of Israel, were going through terrible turmoil, torture and disdain. They had a crisis of faith, so much so that we ended last week with Isaiah saying, “Like a woman with child, who writhes and cries out in her pangs when she is near her time, so were we because of you, O Lord; we were with child, we writhed, but we gave birth only to wind. We have won no victories on earth, and no one is born to inhabit the world.”
Yet, a verse later in this week's reading, Isaiah changes has a revelation. God speaks to him, and he says, “Your dead shall live, their corpses shall rise. O dwellers in the dust, awake and sing for joy!” You see, even in the crumbling façade of the people of Israel, Isaiah saw hope. Hope that was also expressed by the prophet Ezekiel when, in Ezekiel chapter 37, he had a vision of dry bones and Israel rising from the dead. Furthermore, Daniel 12:2 captures a similar sentiment in that great apocalyptic theme. Daniel writes, “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.”
You see, this was their hope: that no matter what happened to the nation of Israel, God would keep his promises, that God's covenant with Israel would never end and God would be faithful. This hope was a theme that the apostle Paul picked up in chapters 11 and 12 of the Book of Romans. This sense that God can be trusted and relied upon; that no matter what the nation was going through, the people would rise; that someday God would vindicate His own.
In Mark, we read the story of Jesus' crucifixion and see again this great message of Christ on a cross. Just like Isaiah, who really felt at one point that all was lost, Jesus, nailed to the cross, cries out, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” (“My God, my God why have you forsaken me?”) Even Jesus, the Lord of life, felt for a moment that he was abandoned by God the Father. He had faithfully lived his whole life, but nailed to a cross in his moment of desperation and pain he says, “All is now lost, why have you forsaken me? Where are you when I need you?”
Jaroslav Pelikan, one of the greatest church historians of the last century, taught at Yale and wrote numerous books on the creeds of the church. A few years ago, he studied how people in different cultures expressed themselves in their statements of faith. He came upon one of the most meaningful of all when he visited the Masai people of eastern Nigeria. The Masai are a nomadic people. They are hunter-gatherers whose culture goes back thousands of years. Many of them are Christians, and Pelikan found a Christian Creed amongst the Masai that went something like this:
We believe that God made good His promise by sending His Son, Jesus Christ, a man in the flesh, a Jew by tribe, born poor in a little village, who left His home and was always on safari doing good, curing people by the power of God, teaching about God and man, and showing the meaning of religion is love. He was rejected by his people, tortured, nailed hands and feet to a cross, and died. He lay buried in the grave, but the hyenas did not touch him. On the third day, He rose from the grave. He ascended to the skies. He is the Lord.
What an incredible statement the Masai were making. In their own language, according to their own experience , they used the image of a predatory hyena to convey Jesus' triumph over death. Even hyenas could not touch him. You see, the Masai knew what Jesus, at that moment on the cross, did not know. Even in his death and suffering God would still be there. God would still vindicate; God would still come to the aid of His son.
Author Peter Larson once said, “Aren't the stories of the birth and death of Jesus absolutely amazing? One talks about the virgin birth - beyond our imagination - and the other talks about an empty tomb. One begins with a door that says, ”˜No entrance' and the other with a door that says, ”˜No exit.' Jesus and God the Father defied them both.”
Even in the midst of suffering and death, God does what only God can do. On the cross, Jesus had to completely and absolutely trust in the power of his Father, just as Israel had to trust in its Lord, Yahweh, knowing it would be vindicated. Even on the cross, and even in a tomb, God was at work.
We don't really want to talk much about death, and the death of Jesus offends us. To think that the Lord of life would be crucified is too much for us. We'd rather not talk about it, we'd rather not experience it. Let's just tuck this away as something that didn't really happen. It's a little bit like the story of a famous gambler in Las Vegas. When he died, every one of his gambler friends attended his funeral. Just like they do in many funerals, people got up and said great things about him: “Wasn't George magnificent?”
“He was a lovely fellow, really, even though he had too many full houses, he was still a good man.”
They went on and on, eloquently praising him until one of his friends got up and gave a particularly touching and meaningful eulogy. “George was the greatest man who ever lived,” he said. “We're all going to miss him, but I would rather not say he is dead. He's only asleep.”
A fellow gambler got up and said, “I'll give you eight to five he's dead.”
Don't we all like to sort of fluff over death? I've read books that claim Jesus did not really die. They argue he just passed out when he was on the cross. My friends, if you saw someone crucified as Jesus was, who had a spear driven through his side, as Jesus did, and if you witnessed all those around him who were terrified by his death, there would be no question that he was dead.
No matter how we want to cover it up, that is the truth that makes the tomb of Jesus such a great message. Jesus was buried in a tomb as one who was dead. According to Mark, on the third day the women went to the tomb, as was their custom, to prepare the body, put spices on it and get it ready for burial. Worried about gaining access to Jesus' body, they wondered, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” They were concerned about how they would be able to prepare this body early in the morning. To their absolute wonderment, the stone has already been moved. Then, and this is the key, when they entered the tomb they saw an angel who said, “He has been raised; he is not here.” The women were terrified, for they had never seen or heard anything like it before.
But why can we not believe the tomb was empty? After all, the resurrection of Jesus was the act of God the Father. It was not a human act, and it knows no parallel. It was a unique moment in history, reserved for the Son of God. If this Lord who made this universe, this God who created us out of nothing, this Lord who made the beauty of the flower and made each and every one of us here today, decides to raise his son, can he not? Is it beyond the bounds of faith to believe that the Lord of the Universe could raise his son from the dead? For those who have eyes to see, for those who have faith to believe, for those who have a belief in that God, of course He can raise his son from the dead. That is what is magnificent about Easter. Even in the tomb, God was there. But God is also with us and for us.
I once read a bumper sticker when my wife, Marial and I were driving through the Berkshires in New England by Williamstown that said, “If you feel far from God, guess who moved?” I thought about that many times and realized that, in many ways, it sometimes makes me feel guilty. I think I've moved, not God, and there are times when I feel God is absent. There are times when I feel lonely and that God is not with me. There are times in sorrow and death when you feel that God is a long, long way away. Just like Jesus on the cross and just like Isaiah, when you feel the burden of sin and inadequacy, you feel you've moved a long way.
However, when Israel wandered into the wilderness, God said, “I will redeem you and take you to the Promise Land.” When Jesus cried on the cross, “Why have you forsaken me?” God said, “I will raise you up on the third day.” When those who were frightened at the foot of the cross did not know what to say, God said, “I will vindicate you, for I am faithful and I will be with you.” The message of Easter is for us not to worry about how far we have gone from God, but to realize the extent to which God comes after us. To understand the extent to which the grace of God says, “I will not let you from my grasp! I have kept my promise to you, and I will keep it to your dying day. I will be with you; I will strengthen you; I will forgive you.”
The great Wolfhart Pannenberg, one of the greatest theologians of all time, once said, “The evidence for Jesus' resurrection is so strong that nobody would question it, except for two things: First, it is a very unusual event, and second - and this is crucial - if you believe it happened, you have to change the way you live.”
What Christ wants from us today is to assure us that He is with us. What He wants to tell us loud and clear is, “I will never be far from you.” What Christ says is, “I am risen, and I am Lord and I can be with whom I want.” But if you believe that, your whole outlook on life changes. Everything else is put in perspective. Everything changes when Jesus the Lord is with you.
I asked my friend from Darfur, “Are you going back?”
He said, “If they let me, Andrew, I will.”
I said, “How can you? I couldn't.”
“Look, aren't you preaching on Easter Sunday?” he asked. “You should be telling me; I shouldn't be telling you.”
I said, “Well, tell me anyway.”
He began to hum a hymn and the words came to me, giving me the answer:
Because He lives I can face tomorrow.
Because He lives all fear is gone;
Because I know He holds the future,
And life is worth the living just because He lives.
All is revealed. Hallelujah! Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.