The Four Easters
The Four Easters by Rev. L. John Gable
April 21, 2019 (Easter Sunday)
We opened our service this morning by reading the Gospel writer John’s account of the first Easter morning. At the break of day John tells us Mary Magdalene went to the tomb of Jesus who had been dead for three days. The other Gospel writers tell us that there were other women who went with her, but given the way the story plays out, such details are not worth squabbling over. When she got there she found that the stone sealing the tomb had been rolled away which could only mean one thing: grave robbers. Without even bothering to look in she ran back to tell the other disciples, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb and we don’t know where they have laid Him.” Two of them, Peter and John, ran toward the tomb and what they saw there gave them pause. The grave clothes were still there, but the body of Jesus was missing. This was not the work of robbers at all; but of a power far greater still, they just didn’t know what that power was or what it all meant, at least not yet.
Peter and John returned home, but Mary stayed and that’s when she encountered angels; that’s when she encountered Jesus, whom at first she thought to be a gardener. She didn’t recognize Him at all, until He called her by name and then she knew it was the Lord, the risen Lord! And with that, He sent her back to tell the others the Good News, and in this Mary becomes the first evangelist, the first herald of the Christian faith as she announces – “I have seen the Lord! He is alive!”
Friends, this is the great proclamation of the first Easter morning. This one event is the ground and pivot on which the whole of the Christian faith rests. It would be no exaggeration to say that this is the turning point in human history which has determined the destiny of nations and the eternal destiny of every man, woman and child. This is not “a” story of our faith; this is “the” story of our faith; this is where it all begins. Anything and everything else we say and believe about Jesus flows out of this understanding that He was raised from the dead on that first Easter morning. Whether we have heard it 100 times or today for the very first time, this is the greatest story ever told. This is the story of the first Easter, but according to Franklin Ralls, this is not the only Easter; there are three more Easters to follow.
If the first Easter is the one which took place 2000 years ago, then the second Easter is the one we celebrate today just as we have every year for the past 20 centuries.
Whether you are one who is here or somewhere in worship every Sunday, or one who only occasions church a couple of times a year, I believe we are all here today in response to some deep need, some God-given yearning within us, recognized or not. I believe there is something or rather some One, great and powerful, that has moved each of us to get out of bed and to come to this place today. I believe there is within each of us a deep desire, a longing, to hear this story, again and again, and an even deeper desire within us still to be assured that it is really true. Friends, if you are an every week worshiper don’t discount that yearning that burns within each and every one of us, and if you are a “sometimes” worshipper, it is my prayer and our prayer that there will be something about this experience today that will put you in touch with that yearning and beckon you back, not just to church but to the reality of God’s presence in your life and His great love for you. It is our prayer that hearing this Good News once again might be an encouragement to you to start taking the claims of Christ seriously enough to explore this truth for yourself.
So today, as we do once a year, we celebrate the second Easter, but that is not all; we celebrate the third Easter each and every Sunday. Regarding the power and meaning of the resurrection, John Buchanan, former pastor of Chicago’s Fourth Presbyterian Church, once said, “I don’t know about you, but I need more than one hour a year to deal with that (reality) and to celebrate it adequately.” I think we would agree, so every Sunday morning we gather to worship and, named or not, every service of worship is grounded on the claims of that first Easter morning, the claim that Jesus Christ really did rise from the dead and that He really is alive still today!
We typically refer to Sunday as being the Sabbath, the day of rest from our labors, but just as the first Easter changed the meaning of the Sabbath long ago, recall in the Jewish tradition the Sabbath is on Saturday but for Christians because of the resurrection it was changed to Sunday, so every Sunday becomes a “little Easter” celebration!
Most assuredly, without the first Easter we would not be here today or any day. The Jesus movement would have died out with His memory and the church would simply not exist. There would be no staying power to this message if the resurrection proved to be a hoax. However, because the proclamation of the first Easter is true, we continue to live in the power of that message still today. Like a rock thrown into a pond, we are still experiencing the ripple effect of that first Easter announcement.
William Willimon, former chaplain at Duke University, writes, “When you think about it, the quality of the church’s life together is evidence of the truthfulness of the resurrection. The most eloquent testimony to the reality of the resurrection is not an empty tomb or a well-orchestrated pageant on Easter Sunday, but rather a group of people whose life together is so radically different, so completely changed from the way the world builds a community, that there can be no explanation other than that something decisive has happened in history.” The real proof of the resurrection is not that the grave was empty and the body was missing on that first Easter morning. No, the real proof of the resurrection is that lives continue to be touched and changed by the living Christ today, which brings us to what we will call the fourth Easter.
If the first Easter was the singular event 2000 years ago, and the second Easter is the celebration we hold annually in remembrance of it, and the third Easter is the gathering in worship we hold each and every Sunday, then the fourth Easter is the experience we have with the risen Christ every day.
Those who walk with Jesus every day; those who have made the conscious decision to welcome Him into their lives and into their hearts as Savior and Lord; those who desire to live lives that are God honoring and God pleasing; those who know that there is a power that He offers and a peace and a presence that He gives which is undeniable; those who live with the hope-filled anticipation of living eternally in God’s presence; know that this Good News cannot be contained in a single day, much less a given hour on that single day, even if it comes around once a week.
If we only hear about the resurrection once a year, or even if we only consider its meaning for our lives once a week, then what difference does it really make? That’s the question which is posed by the fourth Easter – what difference does the resurrection make in your life and mine? If the resurrection really is true, which of course we believe it is, it is not enough to simply say, “Christ is risen! Alleluia!”, then move on with our lives as though nothing has changed because everything has changed. We have been changed; we have been risen too! As theologian Karl Barth put it, “If you have heard the Easter message you can no longer run around with a tragic face and lead a humorless existence of one who has no hope.” There must be some difference, some evidence, some effect on our way of living.
If the resurrection really is true for you and for me, which is and always has been the central claim of the Christian Church from the first Easter on, then we must have some experience of the power and joy and confidence and hope and meaning and peace and presence that it promises to us. This is what the Apostle Paul was getting at in his letter to the Philippians when he writes, “I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the sharing of His sufferings by becoming like Him in His death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me His own.”
Paul’s desire is to know the power of Christ’s resurrection in his own life, and I pray that that is our desire as well. And how do we do that? Not by trying to be a little better than we were before or by trying to be a little better than the person next to us. Rather we experience the power of the resurrection when we acknowledge the Lordship of Jesus Christ over our lives and surrender to Him; when we desire the things of God rather than the things of “me” or “us”; when we make the conscious decision, day by day, to die to our ourselves and our way of doing things so that we can be open to the indwelling of the Spirit of Christ and God’s way of doing things. When we do this something amazing happens – the power of the resurrection begins to take hold and grow within us and God gives us new hearts, new minds, new feelings, new hope. When this happens, suddenly the Easter story is not something we do today, or something that happened a long time ago, or even something that happened to someone else; suddenly it is no longer “that” story or “their” story, but “my” story/” our” story.
I hope you will be with us in worship next Sunday morning when we will hear the testimony of several members of our church family, regular people like you and me, as they tell their own stories of how the risen Christ has touched and changed their lives as part of our “Can I Get A Witness?” Sunday. Each of them speak, in their own way, of what it means to them to say that “Jesus is alive!”
Henri Nouwen writes, when we live our lives with a resurrection perspective “then everyone we meet and everything that happens to us becomes a unique opportunity to choose for the life that cannot be conquered by death.” When we live our lives with a resurrection perspective then Easter is not simply something that happened once, a long time ago, nor is it just a once a year or once a week experience; it is not something we simply confess or say we believe, rather it becomes something we live out each and every day as we experience of the peace and joy and meaning and presence and hope which Christ alone can give us. This is God’s promise assured and made good on the first Easter which we remember and celebrate and boldly proclaim on the second, the third and the fourth. This is the Good News of the Easter day: when we live our lives with a resurrection perspective we do not simply say, “Christ is risen! Alleluia!”, rather we are blessed to say “I, too, am risen with Him! Christ is alive because He lives in Me! Alleluia!” Amen!