Hope: Hard to Believe
Rev Dr Mark Porizky
3/23/08
Matthew
28:1-10
Easter
is early this year. The next time
Easter will be this early will be in the year 2228.
The last time it was this early was 1913, meaning nobody here has seen or
will ever see Easter this early ever again.
(Pause) Good!
Those
of us who associate Easter with warm, sunny spring days are no doubt
disappointed this morning. Perhaps we’re like the title character in the
children’s book, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad
Day, who concludes after numerous things go wrong during his day that “I
think I’ll move to
I
checked the weather in Sydney and the temperatures there will be in the low 70's
today, but of course you need to remember that in the Southern Hemisphere they
are preparing to move into fall and winter....they routinely celebrate Easter as
the weather gets chillier, the leaves are falling, and the days are getting
shorter, so in Australia there is not much temptation to confuse the
Resurrection of the Lord with springtime renewal: it is all about resurrection.
Weather
isn’t the only thing that gets in the way of our Easter celebration; sometimes
it’s the resurrection itself! The narrator of John Irving’s book A Prayer
for Owen Meany offers this thought: “I
find that Holy Week is draining; no matter how many times I have lived through
Jesus’ crucifixion, my anxiety about his resurrection is undiminished. I am
terrified this year that it won’t happen; and that, that year, it didn’t.
Anyone can be sentimental about the birth of Jesus. Any fool can feel like a
Christian at Christmas. But Easter is the main event.”
Every
year I find myself thinking about the power of an event that, at times, seems so
hard to believe. Of course, so much
in everyday life is hard to believe.
Consider
this hard to believe moment. "According
to the officers on the scene, a woman told police she was attempting to reenact
a scene from a movie," said
Uh
huh. Who will ever be able to forget the moving scene when Jesus drives his
Chevy into the baptismal pool?
One
more. A man in
Which,
of course, gives new meaning to the police slang, "We nailed the
suspect."
Such truth
is stranger than fiction moments can be hard to believe, be it baptism by Chevy
or Resurrection from the dead.
Of
course, it’s not simply believing that can be hard.
Other
things can get in the way of our Easter faith: some of us come here today
bearing burdens: burdens of grief and sorrow from world events or personal
events; burdens of turmoil at work or home, important decisions that are looming
in our lives, or situations that seem to be spinning out of control.
Or
maybe it’s just honest doubt. I’m
sure that many people are here today because it’s culturally appropriate to do
so, the right thing to do before joining the family for lunch or dinner.
But resurrection? Well, for
some that is simply too fanciful an idea. It’s
simply hard to believe.
To
be honest, doubts about Easter are not at all new. Even in the life of the first
century church the questions were raised. The Apostle Paul was concerned enough
about the skepticism that he addressed the issue at length in a letter to the
church at
Then
Paul continues with a list of those who saw the risen Christ, witnesses - Peter,
then to the disciples gathered in the locked Upper Room; there was one
appearance about which we know no details which was witnessed by more than five
hundred at the same time, most of whom are still alive (and presumably willing
to verify), says Paul; he appeared to James, then to all the apostles again, and
last of all, Paul writes "he appeared to me also" on the Damascus
Road.
Witness
after witness after witness, Paul shares. Which then leads Paul to ask,
"How can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?"
Well, Paul,
it is just hard to believe, that's all. But I do have to add, I DO believe, and
I'll tell you why - all those witnesses.
Now,
you Bible scholars know that there are fairly significant differences in the
resurrection accounts in the four gospels. How many women went to the tomb? One?
Two? Three? More? Was the stone already rolled away or did they see it happen?
Was it men or angels who announced that Christ was risen? Who of the disciples
responded to the women's report? Just Peter or Peter and John? It all depends
upon which account you read. Indeed, some skeptics want to use those differences
to convince folks that it never happened at all. Are they right?
I
would respectfully say no. To me, those differences are precisely what validate
the story. Listen to eyewitness testimony at a trial - if each one gives exactly
the same account of events, without any deviation whatsoever, that makes a jury
suspicious that they have colluded together to concoct something; but if there
are differences in detail while the major points remain the same, the testimony
sounds more legitimate. Yes, from gospel to gospel, the resurrection accounts
are different, but on the main point, they all agree: the tomb was empty and the
risen Christ soon appeared.
Hard
to believe, yes, but frankly easier to believe than the opposite, that it was
all an elaborately contrived hoax.
Think about
that. If the resurrection of Christ did not happen, the accounts we have are all
fabrications. Those witnesses cited by Paul all lied, everyone. The Apostles who
had been living in utter terror during and after the crucifixion but who
suddenly became quite public in their proclamation and finally each one gave
their lives for it had made this incredible shift for no reason at all. Now,
which is harder to believe? All that? Or that the God of all the universe was
not about to let evil and death have the last word on anything, much less the
life and ministry of Jesus Christ? I suspect you know the one I choose.
And if you
want to know what difference it makes, Paul answers that in that wonderful
resurrection chapter in I Corinthians; he says, "Christ has indeed been
raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep." The
firstfruits. That means his resurrection is just the beginning. The promise of
new life is for you and me as well. God is not done with us yet, and will not
even be done when we come to the end of this earthly life. The older I get, the
more important that becomes.
One of the
more famous preachers of the last decade, Tom Long, notes the following,
"It has been my observation that somewhere deep in the forest of life many
Christians come to a fork in the path. Some head in one direction, traveling
their last few days in bitterness, shouting at the world for its iniquity,
wagging their heads over the sad plight of our time, cursing 'what this world
has come to nowadays.'
“Others,
however, are given the gift of traveling the other way, the path of a cheerful
confidence in providence...This is the path that knows that a banquet table
awaits at the end and that a house of music and dancing can already be heard in
the distance. This is the path that sees a world full of miracles. This is the
way of blessing, the path of gratitude.
Friends, I
am convinced that it is the risen Christ who stands at this parting of the ways.
If the good news of Easter is true, then we have hope, and it is hope that
sustains us when we face our darkest hours.
Everybody
needs hope. Everybody.
Several
years ago a school teacher accepted the volunteer position of visiting and
teaching children who were patients in a large city hospital. One day the phone
rang and she received her first assignment as a new volunteer. She took his name
and room number and was told by his teacher that this boy was studying nouns and
adverbs in his class before he was hospitalized.
It
was not until the visiting teacher got outside the boy’s hospital room that
she realized that he was a patient in the hospital's burn unit. She was prepared
to teach English grammar, but she was not prepared to witness the horrible look
and smell of badly burned human flesh. She was not prepared to see a young boy
in great pain either. She wanted to hold her nose...to turn...and leave faster
than she came. But she could not just walk away. So she clumsily stammered over
to his bedside, and she simply said, "I am the hospital teacher and your
teacher sent me to help you with your nouns and adverbs."
The next
morning a nurse from the burn unit asked her, "What did you do to that
boy?"
The teacher
began to apologize profusely, but before she could finish, the nurse interrupted
her: "You don't understand. We have been really worried about him...his
condition has been deteriorating over the past few days, because he had
completely given up hope. But ever since you were here with him yesterday, his
whole attitude has changed and he is fighting back, and responding to treatment.
It's as though he decided to live!"
When the
nurse later questioned him about it, the boy said, "I figured I was
doomed...that I was gonna die...until I saw that teacher." And as a tear
began to run down his face, he finished: "But when I saw her, I realized
that they wouldn't send a teacher to work on nouns and adverbs with a dead
boy...would they?"
Hope.
Or
take Habitat for Humanity. Don’t for a minute think that Habitat is about just
building houses; it is about new life, it is about the chance to start over.
Dale spoke about our coming project next summer with Group workcamps to
house over 400 kids to work on over 50 homes in this area.
But we aren’t just building homes, Lord no.
We’re building hope. Jus
like what Habitat does.
The
Rev. James Howell shares the story of how his church brought Millard Fuller, the
founder of Habitat, to their town to speak and share his vision. Instead of
having a preacher type introduce Fuller, they asked an owner of a Habitat house
to introduce him. And so Melissa Cornet, tall gangly, not a professional speaker
at all, stood up. She hesitated to find words, but then she suddenly began to
speak to Fuller, who was seated in the front row. She said,
“Millard
Fuller, you are the answer to my prayer. I grew up in a tenement, a terrible
place, full of violence, full of drugs. I wasn’t nobody, knew I’d never be
nobody. I grew up and had a little boy—and there he was, in a terrible place,
full of drugs and violence. I knew he wouldn’t never be nobody either. So I
got on my knees and I prayed, I prayed hard, I said, Lord I will do anything, I
will give up my life. But please, please, I just want my boy to have a chance to
be somebody. Millard Fuller, when God told you to give away your money, you were
the answer to my prayer. I heard about Habitat, and I got to build a house. We
got a house, a nice house. Millard Fuller, you are the answer to my prayer.
Before we moved in, my boy had started school but his teacher said he was slow,
he would probably never catch up. He never smiled. But then we moved into our
new house. He had his own room. And he began to shine that day. He got to where
he played and he had fun. And he started making good grades in school. Now he is
in third grade, and he’s making straight A’s. The other day, my boy said to
me, ‘Momma, do you know what I want to be when I grow up?’ I said,
‘No, what do you want to be?’ He said, I’m going to be a doctor.’
Millard Fuller, you are the answer to my prayer.”
Melissa
realized she had gone on and on, and so she just stopped and said, “Here’s
Millard Fuller.” She walked to the side of the stage, and as she did, the
crowd rose as one and gave her a standing ovation. Melissa turned and started to
clap for Millard Fuller. The pastor put his arm around Melissa and said, “Melissa,
they’re not clapping for him. They’re clapping for you.”
And they were clapping for a God who gives second chances, a new start, victory
over the power of death, and abundant, eternal life.
Hope.
For
believers, resurrection is a reminder that new life is a gift from God that
calls us to a walk of gratitude. Remember who you are and whose you are. Thank
God It’s Sunday. He is risen! He is risen indeed!
Will you pray with me now?
St.
Andrew Presbyterian Church, Groton
,
Web Site: WWW.SAPC-CT.ORG
Office Email: OFFICE@SAPC-CT.ORG
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