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Easter in a Good Friday World

Easter Sunday

Colossians 3:1-4

March 27, 2005

Rev. Dave R. Garwick

I don’t know if you caught those last thoughts there from the Second Lesson. It was such a short lesson that if you blinked you might have missed it. It started out this way: “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ …..” In such few words, already two great big assumptions there. First that Jesus was raised from the dead. And secondly that you yourself have been raised with Him.

As for the first assumption, it is fairly well established that Jesus actually WAS raised from the dead. Well, I should say, it is fairly well established among BELIEVERS that Jesus was raised from the dead. For the rest of you who are not so sure about that, take a peek at the back of the bulletin …. AFTER the sermon, please. I’ll just say that if He was NOT really raised from the dead then – well, I’ll let Paul make the point here: “….. how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? … if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. …. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.” (1 Cor 15:12-19). Point being: if Jesus was NOT really raised from the dead, then neither can we, and then … well, this is all there is, folks.

THEN what can you say at Red Lake? THEN, what can you say at the bedside of Terri Schiavo? When all the guards and metal detectors and school lock-down procedures can not eliminate evil and violence; when the best that medicine has to offer, and umpteen court appeals, the force of both houses of the United States Congress, and the authority of the President of the United States cannot stop the death of a single human being …. then what hope could we possibly have without the fact that Jesus really and truly did rise from the violent death of evil? And what good would even that do, without the assurance that we ourselves can rise with Him?

I came across the title of a book this week. I have not read it so I cannot comment on the book itself. But the title of the book really grabbed me during a week when I’ve been trying to plan for Easter while the names of Red Lake and Schiavo have been zinging through my brain like bullets every time I stick my head up. The title of the book seems to say it all: “Easter People in a Good Friday World.” THAT is our predicament. As Christians, we are trying to live as Easter people in a Good Friday world.

In that little lesson that was just read a moment ago, Paul essentially says the same thing twice. He said that since we have been raised with Christ, “…set your hearts on things above.” And in the next sentence he says, “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.” To which I am tempted to say, “Easier said than done, Mr. Paul.” THAT is so typical of religious talk …. just close your eyes to what’s going on in this world and dream your way into the Land of Oz.

But you know where Paul was when he wrote those words? He was under arrest in Rome and was awaiting execution by the same Emperor Nero who soon would fiddle while Rome burned. Paul was no stranger to the tough things in life: being flogged thirty-nine times on five separate occasions, three times beaten with rods, stoned another time, three times shipwrecked, (2 Cor 11:23-30). THIS is the guy who says that because Jesus was raised, and because we ourselves have been raised with Him, we should “set [our] hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God, [and] set [our] minds on things above, not on earthly things.” Take it from him: he knew what he was talking about!

Still don’t get it? Still don’t see what the reality of Jesus’ resurrection has to do with things like Red Lake and Terri Schiavo or your own personal struggles? Well, there has been another name in the news this week – in fact on the last page of this week’s issue of Time magazine. The name is Ashley Smith. This is a single mother whose husband had been stabbed to death a couple years ago, a broken woman who then descended into a life of drugs, who had been arrested for drunken driving and then assault and who had to give up her five year old daughter to her aunt. Into her apartment comes crashing a fugitive who had just escaped from custody where he was about to be tried for rape, who had just murdered another woman and three men, who now ties her up and throws her in the bathtub. And what does she do, but talk to the man and then shares with him her faith in the Jesus who died for this man’s sins and who rose from the dead for HIM. And then she read to this killer the book WE had studied throughout Lent last year, The Purpose Driven Life.

Ashley Smith then tells what happens next: “He said he thought I was an angel sent from God and I was his sister and he was my brother IN CHRIST and that he was lost, and God led him right to me.” With SWAT teams zeroed in on his head and his heart, this man surrenders his heart without one more act of resistance.

The miracle continues, folks. It’s the back page of Time magazine, no less, which prints these words: “The crimes [Brian] Nichols is suspected of are inexcusable. The serenity of Smith is close to inexplicable. But the message of the Gospels is that God works though the crooked timber of human failure.” THAT preached in the closing editorial of Time magazine! “The message of the Gospels is that God works though the crooked timber of human failure.”

THAT is what the Resurrection is all about – not just as an example of how God can work good through all things for those who love Him (Romans 8:28) – not just as an example but as THE actual event which literally took evil and twisted it into the greatest good for all humanity, which took death itself and turned even that into a temporary thing, making THAT the gateway to eternal joy for those who are joined at the soul to the RISEN Christ, who are the only ones who can afford to do what Paul said, to “set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.” THAT is how Easter people can live in a Good Friday world. Amen. May it be so!