"The Resurrection HAD to Happen" (Luke 24:36-48)

 

Watch - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvoY6A1tZIk

Sunday, April 18, 2021

 

            The universe and everything in it belong to God.  It is created by God; all of it.  Physicists, astronomers, chemists, biologists, and geologists weigh in on how the world came to be.  Their scientific methods of observation describe what God has done.  Everything is God’s.  God’s values are ultimate values and apply to everyone. 

            This is why the death of Daunte Wright last Sunday in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota at the hands of a police officer who mistook her firearm for her taser, is so awful.  One of God’s ultimate values is life.  Jesus says, God is God of the living.  Speaking in Luke 20, “to him all [who have died] are alive” (v.38).  God has no place for death.  The death of a 20-year-old young man is an offense to God.

            The list of unarmed black people killed by white people in America is impossibly long.  It is our national shame that it keeps happening, and that people – mostly white – emotionally defend the integrity of the police instead of mourning the evil of institutional bias that results in so many defenseless people dying.  We hear that most police are people of good character.  That’s true, but it’s not the point.  We hear that Daunte committed some misdemeanors.  Again, not the point. 

            I have an 18-year-old son.  He has had public encounters with the police; not as many as I did when I was his age.  And he hasn’t done anything dangerous or too destructive and he does not have a record.  But, if a simple encounter with an officer ended in his death, it would tear my world apart.  Think of someone you love, deeply, about my son’s age, or Daunte Wright’s age.  Think of how devastated you would be if that young person died.  How hard would it hit you?  The death of Daunte Wright should hit you and me that hard.  It hits God that hard because God made us to live.  You and I and my son and Daunte Wright, God made us to be alive. 

            Parents of black young people have to have a talk with their kids about how to act when pulled over by the police for the most minor of offenses or even for doing nothing.  They have to have this talk because black people are so much more likely to be pulled.  And those encounters are so much more likely to end in death at the hands of officer we trust to protect us. 

We can talk all about systemic injustice, slavery, Jim Crowe, and mass incarceration. We can talk about the root issue being white people’s desire to hold onto to power and to keep black people in a socially subjugated role.  Individual white people do fight alongside black and brown brother and sisters for a more just and equal society, and we may be gaining ground, the trial of Derek Chauvin for killing George Floyd and the death of Daunte Wright at the hands of 26-year police veteran Kim Potter make it clear we aren’t there yet and we have along way to go.  

We could have that racial justice conversation, but on this third Sunday of Easter I bring up Daunte’s death for a theological reason.  God is offended and dishonored by what happened.  The fear our black neighbors have to endure every time they do the most mundane thing, drive a car, is unacceptable to God.  Remember.  America is God’s possession.  You and I might tell ourselves we are masters of our own fate, but it’s a fallacy.  The truth is we are God’s.  God’s values are ultimate for us.  God values life.  To God, Daunte Wright and George Floyd are alive.  Don’t believe me?  Wrestle with what Jesus says in Luke 20:38. Take all the time you need.  Jesus insists that God’s ultimate value applies universally; to everyone.

Racism is only one space in which we mock God’s creation with our prolific killing.  What are others?  When I preached Luke 24 in 2007, I had only been pastor here a year.  As I read the resurrection story, I looked around my life and saw death in every direction.  First, I was called to my previous church to preach the funeral of a beloved member.  We wouldn’t call the death of one in his 80’s, by natural causes, a tragedy.  God actually would.  God did not create us for death; not death by Gunshot, not death by cancer, not death by old age.  God created us for eternal life. In April 2007, I preached my friend Ralph’s funeral and God was honored by the love we showed.  But even that, what we call ‘sensible,’ death was an affront to God.

A few months later that year, senseless killing followed.  August 14, 2007, over 200 Yazidis in Iraq were killed in a terrorist bomb.  Americans don’t know who the Yazidis are, so we pass off such news as ‘something terrible that happened over there.’  I hate that vacuous phrase ‘over there.’  When Americans use that phrase, we are insulting ourselves.  ‘Over there’ means ‘not here,’ so, not my problem. 

What happened on August 16, 2007, certainly was our problem.  Seung-Hui Cho shot and murdered 32 of his classmates and professors at Virginia Tech, and then killed himself.  It happened at Tech, not ‘over there.’  It could happen at UNC. 

All of it disregards God’s intent for humanity.  As Jesus said, he is God of the living.  Death in situations of racial prejudice or racial profiling or unconscious bias, death in school shootings, death in war, and death of natural causes; all of it is the opposite of what God had in mind when God created Adam and Eve. 

In God’s vision, nature, humanity, and God all live in beautiful harmony with each other.  The Jewish idea describing this beautiful state of Eden is ‘shalom,’ a combination of peace, bliss, safety, provision, and most importantly, right relationships.  This was lost in the fall and this is what God restores in the coming of Jesus, the death of Jesus, and the resurrection of Jesus.  The story is not complete until the disciples meet and touch the risen Lord. 

The empty tomb did not convince Jesus’ followers he was alive.  On Easter morning, when the women told the disciples, they had seen an angel who told them he had been raised, Luke 24:11 they did not believe it.  Do we think the empty tomb was evidence that would show skeptics, scribes, and Romans Jesus was alive?  The empty tomb didn’t even convince his own followers.

Then, two others, Cleopas and his wife who is not named, meet Jesus making the 7-mile walk from Jerusalem back to their home in Emmaus.  Though they were his followers, they do not recognize Jesus until he breaks bread with them.  He breaks the bread, a physical act in their presence, and then vanishes.  They immediately turn around and hike 7 miles back to Jerusalem to tell the disciples what they’ve seen!  Jesus, alive! 

As they tell their story, Jesus, who they saw vanish, now materializes before them and the eleven disciples.  This is where our reading for this morning picks up.  We know the disciples did not believe Cleopas.  They didn’t even believe their own eyes.  Resurrected Jesus says to them, “Peace be with you,” but the next verse describes them as ‘startled and terrified’ thinking they are seeing a ghost. 

The empty tomb, testimony of friends they absolutely trust, and even their own eyes are not enough to shake the hold death has on these disciples.  They saw Jesus’ miracles and heard his teachings, yet they remained locked in their sense that natural forces, not God, determine how things are in the universe.  The dead stay dead.  It’s what they expect.  It’s what we expect. 

What’s the first recorded meal in the Bible?  It’s Adam and Eve, eating forbidden fruit.  The first meal rips apart the serenity of God’s creation and brings death in when God never intended death to be in this story.  Adam and Eve made a choice.  They were in a garden full of fruit trees.  Clearly God intended eating to be part of his creation when it was at its best.  God wants us to enjoy life, just on God’s terms. 

At that first meal, the first humans rejected God’s ultimate value of life and instead opted for toil and death.  We chose the wartime massacres of people like the Yazidis and we chose school shootings and we chose institutionalized racial bias and the death that comes with it.  Every time an Officer Kim Potter shoots a 20 year-old Daunte, Adam and Eve and you and I take another bite of that apple, when we could be eating all the other fruits God put there for us to eat. 

Jesus announces new creation with a meal.  In this act, he undoes the harm of Adam and Eve in Genesis 3, and begins the new day.  He asked the disciples in Luke 24:38, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?  Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself.  Touch me and see for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see I have.” Then he asked if they had anything to eat. 

The resurrection had to happen.  What was lost as Adam and Eve and you and I munched on forbidden fruit had to be restored.  Eating fish with his scared disciples, Jesus reset creation, with our sins atoned and eternal life assured. 

At the first meal of new creation, there was no white supremacy or systemic injustice or violence or death.  Those things had no place there.  There were and there are places set for you and me to sit down together in love and right relationship.  The resurrection assures our place at Jesus’ table alongside Trayvon Martin, who sits with George Zimmerman, next to George Floyd sharing fellowship with Derek Chauvin, and Daunte Wright and Kim Potter.  None is killer or victim because sins have been covered and death is no more.  Because of the resurrection, we sit in right relationship with one another, with God, and with all that He has created.

AMEN

Plausibility of the Resurrection

 

            With the advances of scientific research too intricate and numerous to recount or even summarize here, it is apparent that the present age is one in which ‘what happens’ can be weighed, measured, timed, and, thus, explained.  That is, phenomena can be explained in concrete terms.  People sometimes accept things that happen outside the boundaries of scientific explanation, but even in those cases the claim has to make sense.

            If one claimed the moon was made of cheese, such a claim would be quickly and easily rejected.  Simply examine rocks brought back from the moon and the physical properties of cheese, and look at the process by which cheese is made, and the fact that there are no milk-producing animals on the moon, and the claim is shown to be absurd.

            On the other hand, what about this claim?  “Love makes my head swim.”   This is not a statement any law of physics can account for.  Yet, if someone spent time with me and saw that I had trouble concentrating, could not wipe the silly grin off my face, and walked around in a dreamlike state, they might readily accept the conclusion: “he’s in love alright!”  So, in our science-ruled age, non-scientific ideas are accepted by people all the time, but non-provable ideas do have to make sense to gain a hearing.

            I write these words as a Christian pastor two days after the Christian’s highest holy day: Easter.  Can we Christians make a plausible case for the resurrection of Jesus?  Resurrection cannot be tested the way theories and laws of physics are tested.  Who would want to be a test-subject in trying to determine that the dead will rise?  And, what would be used as a catalyst?  Christians accept the resurrection by faith, but why should anyone outside of Christianity even give the idea any consideration? 

            Several New Testament scholars have tackled this question and their work is helpful and thus worth the time of church-goers who don’t do scholarly research in theology or Biblical studies.  I say this because the 21^st century is a science-ruled, rational age.  If the Christian faith wants a voice in this age, it must be conveyed in the language of this age, even in moments when Christianity defies the core principles of this age (like the resurrection of those who are completely dead).

            Mike Licona, Gary Habermas, and N.T. Wright are scholars who deal extensively with the evidence, or at least indicators, that the resurrection of Jesus is an event that happened in history.  Licona, in The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach (IVP Academic, 2010) weighs what he calls the ‘Resurrection Hypothesis’ against that of hypotheses of various Bible scholars who reject the notion that Jesus rose because resurrection violates natural law. These skeptics propose a number of explanations for why first century Christians claimed that Jesus rose when they knew he actually did not.  Licona compares his Resurrection Hypothesis with that of the skeptics.

            His basic argument is as follows.  Jesus died by crucifixion at the hands of the Romans.  The earliest sources (Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians) claim that Jesus rose from the grave and appeared to his followers.  There is early source documentation that is as reliable as any source from this period of history.  That Jesus rose and appeared to his followers adequately explains the birth of Christianity.  And the actual resurrection is more plausible, as it is described by the Bible, than the thought that what Paul and the gospel writers present might be an intentional fiction. 

If these early, first century Jews wanted to concoct a fiction they hoped others would take as true, they would not have had women as the earliest witnesses.  The testimony of women was considered unreliable in court cases in first century Israel.  They would not have re-conceived the idea of resurrection.  None of the Messiah-claims included a story about a crucified-resurrected Messiah.  This would have been so unrecognizable, it would be unlikely to convince any 1^st century skeptics, of which there we as many as there are today.  And finally, they would not have claimed a resurrection the authorities opposed to the movement could disprove by producing the corpse of the one they claimed to be alive. 

Of course, there’s much more to Licona’s argument and the other authors mentioned above significantly add to the discussion.  What believers today wanting to show the viability of Christianity need to understand is when it comes to resurrection, there is cogent argument to be made.  Licona bases his argument on the following points: (1) the resurrection provides explanatory scope of the events in question; (2) it possesses explanatory power; (3) it is plausible; (4) it is less ad hoc than other arguments; there’s no filling in the gaps with a retreat to ‘this doesn’t accord with the laws of nature”; and, (5) it illuminates the evidence (Licona, p.600-606).

Christians are free to believe Jesus rose simply as an expression of faith.  Christians can leave it at that.  Christians can defiantly declare, “The Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it.”  But it doesn’t settle it for those outside the church. We are called to be witnesses declaring what God has done to those outside the church.

We can do this.  We can express this faith in a way that speaks convincingly to skeptics in a secular age ruled by naturalism and rationalism.  Will such a presentation convince someone to turn to Jesus and put their faith in him?  Probably not.  Conviction of the heart is achieved by the Holy Spirit, not powerful arguments.  But, arguing for the plausibility of the resurrection in a way that’s intelligible to a scientists’ rational mind will help that skeptic see that Christian faith is more than an easily dismissed fantasy.  When Christians present their faith in a well-reasoned argument, skeptics will see that there’s something there; something worth exploring further.

We Share Hope (Luke 20:27-40)

Sunday, November 10, 2019

          His name was Wendell.  Everyone called him ‘Rip.’  Rip  was in the same church for over 40 years.  I was the under 30 pastor of just a couple of years. 

          Be patient with pastors under 30.  They’re full of energy and excitement.  They want to win the world for Jesus.  Let their energy energize you.  But, they don’t know much.  So, give them a lot of grace.  One guy in the church affectionately called me their “boy” pastor. 

          Ninety-year-old Rip was much healthier than a lot of the octogenarians and septuagenarians in the church.  His beloved wife Elizabeth, 87, was not in good shape.  Shortly after her funeral, Rip, clearly, shaken, came to ask me, his “boy” pastor a theological question.  “Rob,” his trembling voice said, “Do you think in Heaven we’ll get to see the people who died before us?” 

          I don’t remember how I answered.  I could see that Rip was trying to cope with the deep sadness he felt in burying his bride of more than 60 years.  The question is one that’s been asked since the beginning of time.  Once this life is over, will we see our loved ones again.?  In his song “When I Get Where I’m Going,” Brad Paisley sings, “I’m Gonna walk with my Grandaddy.  And he’ll match me step for step. And I’ll tell him how I’ve missed him every minute since he left.  And then I’ll hug his neck.”  It’s something we all want.

          Five weeks from today, we relaunch our congregation as Hillside Church.  What will this new thing be all about?  It’s about what we say and do.  At Hillside, we follow Jesus, love others, and share hope.  Zoom on that last word – “hope.”  What is the substance of the hope we claim to have and share?

          Will I get to see my loved ones when I get where I’m going?  Will Rip still be Elizabeth’s husband?  Can I play catch with my great-grandfather, the only Detroit Tiger fan I know who watched Ty Cobb play?  Paul addressed this concern directly in 1 Thessalonians 4:17.  He assures believers we will reunite with those who have preceded us in death.  Jesus does not deal with this question in his confrontation with the Sadducees in Luke 20.  However, when we read a story like this, the question of afterlife comes to mind..

          Several things happen at the end of Luke 19 and into chapter 20 that set the course of the story leading up to Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion.  He weeps as he enters Jerusalem because God’s people fail to see what God is doing to save them from sin and death.  Next, Jesus enters the temple and violently evicts the moneychangers.  That week he daily taught in the temple court.  As he did, chief priests, scribes, and leaders of the people looked for the opportunity to kills Jesus, but were thwarted because he was so popular with crowds that were spellbound by his teaching.  

          Included in this leadership group opposed to Jesus were two political parties, the Sadducees and the Pharisees.  They generally hated each other.  The Sadducees were a wealthy, elite class and held most of the power.  There were more Pharisees.  They held greater influence in the countryside and outlying villages.  For all the confrontations Jesus had with Pharisees, he was much closer in thought to them than to the Sadducees. 

          The Sadducees only accepted Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy – the Torah.  They did not consider the Psalms or the prophets to be scripture.  Resurrection is not mentioned in the Torah, so the Sadducees had no place for it in their theology.

          By Luke 20:27, temple leaders have challenged Jesus’ authority and he has rejected theirs, calling them hypocrites and seeing them as opposing what God was trying to do.  The Sadducees wade into the arena.

          In Deuteronomy 25:5-10, a passage the Sadducees would have revered, it is decreed that if a man dies his wife shall marry his brother.  She is required to do this.  Any children the wife has with the brother will be credited to the man.  That man’s name would be remembered in Israel by his offspring.

          Marriage was not the result of romantic love.  Marriage was for procreation.  The woman probably had not chosen her first husband.  She was probably given to him by her father.  However she ended up marrying him, if he died, she had no choice.  Her duty was to marry his brother and have children with that brother so the original husband’s name lived on.  Marriage was for procreation.  The woman had no choice.  And the way one’s name lived on was in his offspring.

          Based on that law, the Sadducees came up with a hypothetical situation.  The oldest of seven brothers gets married, but dies childless.  The next brother does his duty and marries the woman, but also dies childless.  This continues until all seven and the woman are dead. 

          The Sadducees are so smart.  They’ve come up with a real doozy that will knock Jesus off his perch and will quiet their rivals, the Pharisees, who very much believed in resurrection just as Jesus did. 

          So, who does the woman belong to in the resurrection?  Jesus upends the Sadducees and their challenge by explaining that the age of resurrection is different than the present age, the age of death. Ever since Adam and Eve sinned, sin has been in the world, causing corruption and degradation of all living things, and bringing death.  This is a theological understanding of the world, not to be understood in place of the scientific explanations for the origin of the earth, the theory of evolution, or the way biology understands life cycles.  Read theologically, we see in Genesis the origin of sin and the way sin brings death.

          The present age lasts from the day Adam and Eve sinned to the end of history, the final resurrection, and the full inauguration of the eternal Kingdom of God.  The point Jesus makes in responding to the Sadducees is that the age of resurrection is fundamentally different than this age.  How?

          In this age we get married.  In Jesus’ day, marriage was for procreation and in ancient Israel it was to carry on a man’s name through his children.  Why?  In this age, the man would die.  In the age of resurrection Jesus says that man will not die.  No one does.  So marriage is irrelevant.  Procreation is not needed to carry on someone’s name. 

          One other fundamental difference: the woman will not be given in marriage by her father.  She will not be a possession of a husband required to do his bidding.  She will live freely as a child of God.  Jesus says she will be like the angels in this sense: she will not die. 

          Jesus was not saying she would become an angel. In Christ, we are sons and daughters of God, made in the image of God.  Angels are God’s servants, but are not God’s image bearers.  When we die, we do not go to heaven and become angels.  Hebrews chapter 1 is quite clear on this, and it is evident in the book of Revelation and other places.  We human beings fundamentally are different than angels.  In resurrection, we become more human – more of what God intended when creating humans in the first place. 

          That’s the hope on which we stand.  In Christ, we know that resurrection comes after death.  In resurrection, our physical bodies rise, take on flesh, are recognizable but also different.  We can be touched, but also can pass through locked doors as Jesus did after he rose in resurrection. 

The Bible does not promise that we go to Heaven when we die.  The Bible doesn’t tell us much about what happens to the soul at a person’s death.  From a few passages we can glean the after death our experience is in Jesus’ care and is peaceful and without suffering.  At funerals a grieving person will say of his lost loved one, “Well, she’s in a better place.”  I don’t know if it can be described as a “place.” All I can say with confidence is that our beloved dead are in the care of Jesus.  And that’s enough.

The Bible promises at the end, after this age is over, we rise as Jesus rose.  Our resurrected bodies cannot die, a point Jesus makes to the Sadducees.  We are free to live in joyful relationship with God and with each other.  Will Rip and Elizabeth again be husband and wife in the resurrection?  Jesus says no.  But, as Paul indicates in 1 Thessalonians, they will be together along with all of us who follow Jesus.  The reunion will be more joyful than relationships we have in these age, even our closest ones.  

Following Jesus and loving others, resurrection is the centerpiece of the hope we share.  It means freedom –oppressed people in this life will be liberated.  It means complete health as our bodies cannot be injured or killed; we are eternal. 

As we live here and now, awaiting that glorious day, the materialistic values of this age hold no sway over us.  As we live here in Christ we are already getting glimpses of resurrection joy that will be ours eternally and those glimpses of God shape who we are in the present.  We have a mission to glorify God and draw others to him that they might know the salvation he gives.  When we get hurt, and we will, or we meet others in pain and they’re all around us, we comfort each other, share with one another the love of Christ, and help each other see the promised eternity before us. 

We feel sadness.  We grieve, but not as those who have no hope. We have eternal hope for ourselves and those whom we love.  At Hillside Church, we share that hope with a dying world that badly needs it.

AMEN

The Apostle Paul defends His Belief in Resurrection

Accused of Hope (Acts 23:6-11; Acts 26:6-19)

Sunday, May 5, 2019

            This is what I want to see happen: you, on trial!  And I hope you are convicted.  Guilty!  That’s my hope: that you know the full weight of standing utterly exposed, and with nowhere to turn, you have to face up to reality.  It’s true!

            Ok, what’s this about?

            Paul lived in the first century.  He traveled around the nations along the Eastern and Northern shorelines of the Mediterranean Sea, Israel, Lebanon, the independent city-states in what is today Turkey, Greece; why?  Paul was going from city to city talking about Jesus.  He felt driven to do this.  He made tents and sold them so he would have money to eat and travel and tell people about Jesus. 

Previously, Paul had been a dignified Pharisee rising rapidly in that Jewish religious sect.  He even acquired arrest papers from the temple authorities to bring followers of Jesus to trial for the crime of proclaiming Jesus “Lord” and declaring him to be the Messiah.  The high priest felt this message was so disruptive people preaching it had to be stopped, even if it meant execution by stoning. 

That happened to the leader of the first appointed deacons.  Stephen was stoned to death for preaching about Jesus. Paul, then a young and up-and-comer among the Pharisees approved of Stephen’s killing and even held the cloaks of those throwing the stones.  Then, with armed troops, he headed to Damascus to arrest more Christians.

On the road to that city, the risen Lord Jesus, appeared to Paul in a blinding flash of light.  Paul realized he was on the wrong side.  He stopped persecuting Christians and became one.  Being blinded by the light of Jesus helps one see and once Paul recovered his senses and his vision, everything was clear.  The Jesus who met him was the same as the one who had been crucified a few years earlier.  The claims his disciples made were absolutely true.  Jesus was Messiah!  Jesus was Lord!

That’s when Paul started going everywhere, telling whomever would listen what he had learned.  His adventures in following Jesus are told in the book of Acts beginning in chapter 9.  By chapter 23, we have gone with Paul all the way to the Greek city of Corinth, and all the way back to Jerusalem.  A group of Jews, upset with the message Paul preached, followed him to the city.  They riled up a mob at the temple with the false accusation that Paul had defiled the temple.  He did no such thing, but they convinced a crowd he had.  It’s the one crime the Romans allowed the Jews to punish by execution.  These crazies could kill Paul without repercussions from the Roman overlords who controlled Jerusalem.  And they tried. 

Acts 21 - “They seized Paul and dragged him out of the temple; while they were trying to kill him word came to the tribune of the cohort that all Jerusalem was in an uproar.  Immediately he took soldiers and centurions and ran down to [investigate the ruckus]” (21:30-32).  The tribune was a Roman military commander charged by his superiors with maintaining order.  He did not care if the temple leaders, Jews, killed one person, but if a riot ensued, he would be punished, maybe himself executed.

Paul was taken into Roman custody.  The Jews demanded he be executed.  The Romans decided to examine Paul.  “Examine” means they were going to whip him with a thick knotted chord until he admitted what he had done.  That’s when Paul dropped his bomb.  He asked the centurion holding the whip, the one about to turn his body into a bloody pulp, “Is it legal for you to flog a Roman citizen who is uncondemned” (22:25)?  Oh boy!

The centurion ran to the tribune, his superior, and demanded to know, “What are you doing?  This man is a citizen!”  The tribune didn’t have a very enviable job.  He would get in serious trouble if the nationals, the Jews, weren’t kept in order.  He would get in even more trouble if he mistreated a citizen, and Paul was a citizen.  He immediately halted all proceedings and interrogated Paul gently, but before the questioning was over, it was as if Paul had interrogated him.  Paul was a natural born citizen.  This tribune had had to bribe someone to buy his citizenship papers.

This improbable series of events is how Paul ended up on trial before the Romans accused of committing blasphemy against the Jewish god.  The mob of Jewish roughians could not slow down Paul’s preaching about Jesus.  The mighty Romans, feared by all, had no control and seemingly were controlled by this outcast Jesus-loving Pharisee.  How did this happen?

Paul gives an indication in the course of his numerous defenses.  When he revealed he was a Roman citizen, he then appealed his case to the emperor in Rome, which was his right.  The tribune moved him to the city of Caesarea, not far from Jerusalem.  There he was held for a couple of years, long enough for a new Tribune to come into the position and for Paul to have numerous opportunities to speak about his faith in Christ.  

In one of those speeches, to a primarily Jewish audience, he says, “I am on trial concerning the hope of the resurrection of the dead” (23:6).  Later, this time speaking before King Agrippa Herod and Roman Governor Portius Festus, he said, “It is for this hope, you excellency, that I am accused by the Jews!  Why is it thought incredible by any of you that God raises the dead” (26:7-8)?

I am here, accused, because I believe God raised Jesus!

Why do you find it so hard to believe God resurrected the dead?

Paul believed the resurrection of Jesus is what led to him being attacked by both the Jews and the Romans.  And the resurrection is the reason he was so glad to be right where he was - testifying before the most powerful, influential leaders in society.

Our core confession is that Jesus is Lord.  He died on the cross for our sins and he rose from death in resurrection.  His resurrection is a prelude to the resurrection of all people, some raised to everlasting life with him and some to eternal separation from God and we call that eternal separation Hell.  

Seminary Professor Rodney Reeves tells of one of his fishing buddies from his days as a pastor.  This man said to him, “If it weren’t for the resurrection, I wouldn’t be a believer.”[i]  Have you ever thought about it that way?  Would you be a follower of Jesus if the resurrection had not happened?  

This friend of Pastor Rodney had lived a hard life.  His father murdered his mother and then took his own life.  He and his younger brother ended up growing up in poverty.  He was able to climb out of his painful beginnings and go to college and build a life.  His younger brother didn’t do so well.  He drifted from struggle to struggle, constantly battling substance abuse, and finally dying at a young age.  His death was connected to his own bad choices.  In spite of all the loss, this man lived with a cheerful, joyful outlook.  He told Pastor Rodney, “The Resurrection of Jesus is my only hope.”

We believe Jesus rose from death, and at the end of history, on the last day, all who have faith in Christ will rise as he did.  We believe that future hope, but what about today?  How does the resurrection empower Paul to take on Jerusalem temple authorities and Roman Tribunes and governors?  How does our belief in Jesus conquering death help someone like Pastor Rodney’s friend overcome such a tough life and live in joy, today?  How does resurrection fill our present with hope?

Theology professor Kelly Kapic of Covenant College wants Christians to understand this.  She writes, “The work of Christ ... is not just something done over our heads or merely long ago and far away.  United to Christ by the Spirit, we are to live as God’s children now. ... Christian devotion must always be shaped by the resurrection of Christ.”[ii]   The resurrection reminds us that God did not simply do something in the past but is also actively working in our individual lives and church lives now.

            The great reformer Martin Luther wrote that we Christians should live an eternal Easter life in which we continue in the peace and joy of the Holy Spirit as long as we remain on earth.[iii]  And I love Rodney Reeves’ way of putting it.  “The resurrection of Christ is an unstoppable work of God in the life of every believer.”[iv]

            I hope you’re feeling that unstoppable force!  I hope you have opened your heart to Jesus, received forgiveness of sins, and now are walking in a real relationship with the resurrected one.

            At our church leaders summit in March, all elders and deacons present agreed upon a mission statement for our church based upon what we do.  What do we at HillSong church do?

• We follow Jesus.
• We love others.
• We share hope.

            That’s what Paul was doing when he was on trial, sharing hope that he based on one reality.  Jesus had risen from death.  Because of the resurrection, he could position himself to talk to the Roman emperor about Jesus.  Because the Holy Spirit of the risen Christ was with him, he was empowered.  Because Jesus rose, we too are empowered.  At Christmas time, we sing Emmanuel, God with us.  Because of the resurrection, today, the first Sunday of May and every day, we have God with us. 

            No matter how hard or discouraging life becomes, I long for each and every one of us to live in hope.  I pray we will be found guilty - guilty of the hope of eternal life. And I pray that hope pours forth from us so that we draw people to Jesus.

AMEN

---

[i] R.Reeves (2011), Spirituality According to Paul, InterVarsity Press (Downer’s Grove, IL), p.173.

[ii] K. Papic Christianity Today, “Is the Cross Enough” (April 2019), p.46-49.

[iii] M. Luther, Epistle Sermons Vol. II, Epiphany, Easter, and Pentecost, translated by John Nicholas Lenker (1909), The Luther Press (Minneapolis), p.178.

[iv] Reeves, p.175.