Peace is yours through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, friends! Amen.
If you’ve worshiped with us during the Easter season before, you’ve heard this responsive phrase we use in worship. I say, “Christ is risen!” Your response, “He is risen indeed!” Let’s do it. Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia.
On Easter Sunday, my message focused on the reality of Jesus’ resurrection. He truly, physically, bodily rose. A dead man came back to life. That is the best explanation for the acknowledged historic facts of Christianity’s origins. Because that shocking thing happened, we can conclude a few things.
There is a God. At the very least, we could conclude that there is some higher power, who’s able to reverse death. But we can go further, and specifically conclude that the Christian God - the God of the Bible - is that “higher power”. Because that’s the God whom this resurrected man, Jesus, proclaimed.
We can also conclude that this resurrected man Jesus is himself God. Because that’s who he claimed to be. And God would not resurrect a heretic, a charlatan, a fraud, to keep abusing his name.
And one more - not that these three are the only things we can conclude because of the resurrection, but they’re what I want to note right now - we can conclude that we will also rise one day. It’s at least possible! Simply by virtue of the fact that it happened to someone else. But we can be certain it will happen to us because that’s what Jesus promised. John chapter five, “A time is coming,” he said, “when all who are in their graves will hear my voice and come out.”
All people will, one day, rise from death. That’s the teaching of the Bible, it’s the teaching of Jesus himself. Later Biblical texts refer to Jesus as the “firstfruits” of this general, total resurrection. Firstfruits, like the first apple on a tree in season, or the first flowers that started poking their heads up around our church campus.
Well, if we’re all going to rise one day, why will God allow us to die in the first place? Why will we die before this resurrection? Couldn’t we simply go on living? Is God not powerful enough to do that? Certainly he could. If he can undo death, he could put it off as well.
I should back up first and note why we die at all. We die because we sin. We harm one another in word and in deed. God created humans as the crown of his creation. He treasures us, he considers each one of us priceless beyond measure. Any harm done to something God considers precious needs to be answered.
But - the problem is - human sin is directed against other humans. How can God answer all the sins which harm humans, whom he loves, without harming humans, whom he loves?
The answer is Jesus. God himself becoming human, entering our world, becoming subject to suffering and pain and sin. God himself living the only perfect human life; a life which harmed no one, which benefited everyone. Then, God giving his life on a Roman cross after two unjust trials; an undeserved death sentence. The undeserved death of Jesus is like a black hole into which all our sin, all the pain we cause one another, all the world’s injustice and evil, was pulled into one spot so God could [BANG!] administer the punishment for it all, at once.
So Jesus died. Because we should die. Jesus rose. We will also rise. But then - the question I asked earlier - why will we still die?
This isn’t the only answer we could give, but it’s the one I’ll focus on right now. We still die because we need the focus that death provides. God allows death to serve that particular purpose right now.
Our awareness of an inevitable personal end leads us to think through the choices we make. It causes us to prioritize. Death fundamentally limits our lives. We only have so much time. In fact, a recent book makes this point in its title: Four Thousand Weeks, by Oliver Burkeman. The book’s title is a reference to lifespan. If we live to eighty, we get about four thousand weeks to do what we will. That’s it.
During those four-thousand-ish weeks, however we spend them, we realize that it is really hard - often impossible - to guarantee that our actions will have the impact we want in any area of life. We can’t make our kids choose what we want them to choose. We can’t make our friends take our advice. We can’t make our employers implement our suggestions for improvement. We can’t make our political leaders govern as we wish they would. On and on and on.
King Solomon came to recognize this during his own life. In his book Ecclesiates, he wrote this: “I saw this example of wisdom that greatly impressed me: There was a small city with only a few people in it besieged by a powerful king. A very poor but very wise man lived in that city, and he saved the city by his wisdom. But when he died, nobody remembered him. His wisdom is no longer heeded.”
Solomon was a student of human nature. He found examples like that very interesting. And it pained him to see such things! His conclusion: “Everything is meaningless,” he says in Ecclesiastes. If our best efforts won’t be remembered, if the impact of our actions will barely outlast us, life has no meaning.
That’s the clarity which we gain because of death. But that clarity is self-defeating. As Solomon concludes, everything becomes meaningless. We should just give up, if we’ll die one day.
That would be a valid conclusion, but the Resurrection changes things. The Resurrection actually gives us a reason to act in the face of death. This is the point which the apostle Paul made in our second reading: “Count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” “Alive to God.” By that, Paul means, “able to act with the certainty of effectiveness.” In the Resurrection, God gives us this promise: What we do matters. It will not disappear forever because, one, God himself sees and remembers our deeds,and two, he comes alongside us, with his power, while we act as his representatives in this world.
We who know what God has done in raising Jesus from the dead are God’s representatives. He sends us out to tell others. That’s what happens with those women at the tomb. God could, himself, announce the Resurrection to all people. He could send angels to do it, as he did that morning. But instead, he uses us.
When the angel speaks to the women, there’s some abruptness to his directions. “Yes, certainly, come in and see the place where Jesus was,” he says to them. “But then get out! And go tell the disciples. Go tell Peter.” Don’t stay here! There’s nothing for you to do here! No one needs you here.
The Resurrection message - what we also call the Gospel - sends us back out into the world. We gather, like those women, and we hear the message about the risen Jesus. Then we’re sent back out, away from church into life among people who need to know about Jesus. We’re sent out with the same mission as those women- “Go and tell” - but this “new life” we live before God, being “alive to God in Christ Jesus,” through Jesus’ resurrection, it gives us the confidence to fully engage with daily life as God places it before us. What does that look like? It depends on who you, in particular, are.
Are you a young adult - man, woman - who is yet finding a place, in good Lutheran German a Stand, a vocation, in life? Then your resurrection life looks like this, from the apostle Paul in First Timothy five: “Be self-controlled and follow the example your elders set as they do what is good.”
Are you a husband or wife? Love one another; place one another’s benefit before your own. Wives, support and honor your husband’s leadership; husbands, lead in a way that benefits your wives, as Christ himself lived for the good of his bride, the Church. This is Ephesians five.
Do you have children? Raise them to know their Savior. Bring them into the Lord’s house. Learn the Bible yourself, so that you can share it with them. When you discipline, do so with love and humility. Ask for their forgiveness when you fail to do so. Also Ephesians.
If you are a worker, the Lord says, Colossians three, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not just for people.”
If you are an employer, that same passage goes on, “Masters, provide your servants with what is right and fair, because you also have a Master in heaven.”
Here is the most important thing to understand about what the Resurrection does to impact your daily life. It does not take you away from the life you were living. You are sent back into it.
When someone becomes a Christian - that is to say, when they hear about God’s love shown in sending Jesus to die and in raising him to life, and they then trust in that love of God for themselves - when anyone becomes a Christian, they are not placed into a new life. Newness of life is given to them where they are.
They may change. The apostle Paul certainly says that at the beginning of our second reading. But we are changed while still married to the same person; parenting the same kids; being employed at the same job; living in the same house. The Resurrection changes, not our lives, but us. It gives us new eyes, new hearts, restored love.
There’s something frightening in that! Just as the women were afraid as they ran away from the tomb. It would be way easier if God placed us in new lives when we became Christians. Because to be a Christian necessarily involves us acknowledging that we are sinners. And those people - spouses, children, parents, employers - who were in our lives before we became Christian, who are still in our lives after becoming Christian, are inevitably people we have sinned against. Couldn’t we be given a full fresh start? It would be so much easier!
But that’s where God does his most important work through us. As we acknowledge our sin toward those in relationship with us, and ask for their forgiveness, we powerfully witness to the Gospel. If this life is all there is, reconciliation is unimportant. We’ll all be in the dirt anyways, reconciled or not. But because of the Resurrection, reconciliation is of utmost importance.
That’s underscored in the angel’s words. “Go tell the disciples and Peter.” Peter, who denied Jesus three times. Peter, who seemingly didn’t even show his face before the cross. Peter, who is broken and guilty, needed reconciliation. Easter would bring it about.
Easter sends us out into life renewed and forgiven. Easter sends us into life with the message that brings about forgiveness and renewal. We might think that Easter only speaks to us about eternity. It certainly does! But because of Easter, we have new life for every day of life. Amen.