The Sermon for Easter Day, the Resurrection of Our Lord (A), preached on Sunday, April 9, 2023.
Everything rests upon this. Christ is risen! St. Paul insists that it cannot be a spiritual resurrection or a symbolic resurrection or the resurrection of the soul. It can only be the resurrection of the body. If Christ is not raised, our preaching is hollow and empty, your faith is equally worthless, and you are still in your miserable sins waiting for the end. BUT Christ IS risen. More than this, Christ IS risen as the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep in death. He is first but there are more to come. Not just more to come, but YOU to come.
There are those who want to fixate on every detail of the things Christ did. Those who want to argue about a six day creation or the factuality of the details of Israel’s history or the miracle of the Virgin Birth or if the miracles of Jesus were real or slight of hand. What do these matter if Christ is not raised? If Christ is raised, who would not believe these? Christ is risen. Without the resurrection, we have nothing but a false hope. But because Christ is risen, we have a real hope.
In the creeds we confess what must be believed to be Christian. The heart of this confession is the fact that Jesus is the Son of God, that Jesus suffered and really died, and that Jesus rose from the dead. This is what really divides humanity. Do you believe that Jesus is risen or not? Jaroslav Pelikan once said that if Christ is not raised from the dead, nothing else matters and if Christ is raised from the dead, nothing else matters. Life is either a hopeless end or an endless hope.
Scripture is clear. This is not an imagined resurrection. This is not a spiritual resurrection. This is not some ghostly resurrection. It is the resurrection of His body. Nothing less than the resurrection of His body offers us any real hope. Sure, the whole circle of life thing sounds nice. The spiritual you flies away and leaves behind the limitations of flesh and blood. But for what? For food you cannot taste, for water you cannot drink, for life you cannot live? Who wants that? We insist that God give us something more and nothing less that all He promised.
The resurrection of the body is what we confess, what was dead is now alive but in glorious form where illness and frailty and age and death can no more curse and where life is even better than it was when creation dawned. It is not a do over but the redemption of what was lost and the gift of a future beyond imagination. We need Him to be raised in flesh and blood or our futures are only imaginary.
We need Him to be raised with a real body or our own futures are merely a shadow of tomorrow and not the real tomorrow God has been promising all along.
Parents need to be careful what they promise to their children. Kids remember and they will not settle for anything less than what you said. We are the children of God who insist from the Lord that He give us nothing less than what He has promised. The risen Savior in glorious flesh so that we may die in hope and be raised with Him to life that death cannot overcome. Unless Christ is raised in the body, Satan still has room to gloat with at least a partial victory. No, Jesus is risen body and soul or there is no good news for us here.
Those who claim to be spiritual but not religious would be satisfied with a spirit flying high and a body still decaying in the grave. They were never tied to the body in the first place. Indeed the whole shape of our modern world is to disdain the body as not that important. It cannot even define your gender. The reason the world is ready to surrender the body to the ground is because it does not want to risk being disappointed. The world has grown accustomed the ways of sin and ordered its way around sin and injustice and cruelty and hate and death. We have made it into an industry and a business. But Christ promised that the industry of death would be put out of business permanently. Christ insists that the body is not bad or merely the container of the soul but the gift of God to be rescued by His death and restored by His resurrection. Christ is not about a symbolic victory or a partial victory. Either Christ is raised in His body or we have nothing to look forward to.
Today the corruptible has put on incorruption, the moral immortality. Today the grave has coughed up its most important dead and surrendered its sting to the life stronger than death. Today the future began for a people who thought they had only a past, a tomorrow for a people who were content to live with only memories, and a body stronger than death for a people who would have been happy to get their best lives now. Christ Jesus did not merely rise but abolished death and the grave and brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel. It is this that we preach on Easter Sunday and it is this that we testify to without end.
Christ IS risen. We say in the creed that He is risen according to the Scriptures. Somebody once asked me what that meant, fearing that only the Scriptures said Christ was raised. What it means is that the resurrection is what it all hangs on. None of the Scriptures are true if the resurrection is not. That is why St. Paul calls us pitiful and pathetic if Christ is not raised. What is there left to hold onto? Can we become the shallow who content themselves with this life only and comfort themselves with what they might accomplish in a moment the world will forget? Sadly, some have. They have decided the resurrection is a step too far and surrendered the lynch pin of our hope out of the fear of being disappointed.
Brothers and sisters, this is not Easter. Easter is not a distraction from the norm of despair or a myth to occupy our curiosity. It is the hope on which everything stands or falls, on which the whole promise of God rests. Either Christ is raised or nothing is real and everything is an illusion. That is why on this Sunday we insist BUT Christ IS raised. He is risen. Christ is risen! He is risen indeed. Alleluia!
The truth is that the devil is as done he can be. Once he surveyed the world as his own and now he prowls about trying to deceive one more soul to provide company for him in hell. He gambled it all on killing Jesus only to find it was God’s plan all along. And when the stone rolled away from the tomb and the women came in search of a body, the devil lost everything. Christ is risen, body and soul, the new and glorious flesh that is the promise of our own glorious bodies when He raises us to dwell with Him forevermore.
Christ IS Risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia.
No comments:
Post a Comment