He Is Risen

Sermon for North Hill Adventist Fellowship, April 23, 2011

The light shone in darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.

But that's not the way it looked at the time. Jesus, the light of the world, spent three and half years giving people hope and healing and wisdom. He was the light of the world. No question about it. Then came that final, dreadful weekend. Jesus was arrested run through a series of sham trials and him crucified. They buried him in a tomb carved in stone, the opening of the tomb closed with a huge rolling stone.

The end. Light extinguished. Hope and healing and wisdom dead.

As he was dying, Jesus shouted to heaven, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" It was not a glorious, triumphant end.

Then came Sunday morning. Mary and other women went to the tomb to grieve their dead master only to find an empty grave and to hear a message from angels, "he is not here. He is risen."


We claim this story for ourselves. We are in Christ. His story is our story. His failure is our failure. His abandonment and death are ours . His triumphant resurrection is also ours.

Like Jesus we have experienced abandonment. We have tasted death and the threat of disease or disaster of our own personal lives or the lives of people we love. And today we celebrate promise of God that like Jesus we too will experience triumphant resurrection.

There are three lessons I would like to draw from the story.

First, we do not end up in darkness by making mistakes. Sometimes, we arrive there by being faithful.

Certainly, we are capable of making mistakes, costly mistakes, mistakes with long, miserable consequences. But making mistakes is not the only way to end up in a dark place. Jesus was faithful. He did exactly what God asked. And his mission led straight into darkness. His obedience was the immediate cause of the situation that forced from him the cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

There will be dark times. Times when every bit of light is snuffed out. There may be nights as dark as the blackness of a cave half a mile in from the entrance. If you find yourself in one of those dark places do not berate and scold yourself.

When your friends end up in a dark place, resist the temptation to presume they could have avoided the darkness if only they had been smarter or more disciplined or holier. Sometimes the cause of our difficulties is faithfulness to the divine path.

Second: our greatest calling in the face of darkness is to keep one another company. The great successes of the friends of Jesus, the noble deeds and their interaction with their master were the instances when they kept him company. The special acts of goodness among the people surrounding Jesus that are remembered by the church are those instances when they kept him company. Mary anointing his feet with tears and perfume. Simon of Cyrene who, even against his will, marched beside Jesus to Golgotha carrying his cross. The thief on the cross who moved from merely being in the neighborhood to genuinely keeping company with Jesus as they died. John and Jesus mother standing at the foot of the cross.

We remember and celebrate these acts of faithfulness.

The failures remembered by the church are the failure of Jesus' closest friends to keep him company. Judas, of course, sold Jesus for 30 pieces of silver, an act of deliberate, premeditated treachery. The other 11 spontaneously failed. Jesus asked his disciples to keep them company and prayer. They fell asleep. The mob came to arrest Jesus. The disciples started to fight then ran for their lives. (Despite their earlier protestations but they would die rather than abandon him.)

We do not fault the disciples for failing to save Jesus. Saving him was not possible. We do fault them for abandoning him.

We cannot save our friends from disease, from tragedy, from injustice. These things will happen in this world. We can keep them company. We can avoid joining the world and condemning them scolding them.

The third and greatest lesson is that the greatest failure, the greatest catastrophe, the greatest evil is not beyond the creative reworking of God. God is working in all things to bring good.

Jesus, the holy man, was crucified. The innocent one was condemned. The Savior was killed. What did God do with this disaster? He accomplished the salvation of the world, the forgiveness of sins, the ransom of sinners.

Did God put Pilate up to condemning Jesus? No, I don't think so. When you read the story, Pilate's condemnation of Jesus comes across as the natural, expected behavior of someone with his personality in those circumstances. Did God put Caiaphas up to condemning Jesus? I don't think so. Again, when you read the story what Caiaphas did sounds like what you would expect him to do given what we know about his personality and the circumstances he found himself in. Caiaphas was doing his job as he understood it. Caiaphas and the Jewish leadership, together with Pilate and the Roman military, pursued what seemed to them the best course of action to preserve the status quo. In the process they killed the Lord of glory.

Still, out of the tragedy created by their stupidity and selfishness, God accomplish the salvation of the world. So we live with confidence that beyond the tragedies that engulf us, beyond the hardships that batter our lives, beyond the miscarriages of justice that twist and crush us, God is active. God will make our tragedies in some way steppingstones toward glory. When we were the people we love our engulfed in darkness we can remember where we are in the story. This is not the end. It is one twist in a plot that moves inexorably to a glorious climax.

Christ is risen. The tomb, the final irrevocable disaster, is reversed, is nullified.

In Christ you, too, are risen. Your losses, your tragedies, your disasters are reversed. They will be nullified.

This is the light that shines from the empty tomb. This is the glory that beams from the open grave.

Alleluia.