Neither New or Improved (Easter Sunday)
Neither New or Improved by Rev. L. John Gable
April 12, 2020 (Easter Sunday)
I want to let you in on a little secret. Every year, pastors and preachers enter into this season trying to think of something “new” to say or do that we’ve never said or done before, lest we simply re-tread the same old ground. I know you’ll believe me when I tell you as I was trying to think of something new for this Easter morning I never considered the thought of a global pandemic and cancelling “in person” worship, but as disappointing as this may be, I assure you we are doing exactly the right thing, not only for our own individual well-being, but most importantly for the safety and well-being of our neighbors and those most vulnerable among us. You have heard me say, numerous times, “When in doubt do the loving thing”…this is “the loving thing.”
But I think you can imagine the trap we can fall in to, as pastors and as worshipers, as we revisit even these, the great passages of Scripture which tell us the great stories of our faith, passages we have read and re-read and heard preached on year after year for who knows how many years, that somehow we think we have to find something “new” in them, something we haven’t seen before, some “new and improved” insight we can glean from this “old, old” story. We naturally fall in to that trap because who wants “old and familiar” when we can have “new and improved”, right?
Interestingly enough, this is a modern problem of ours, the ancients, our ancestors in the faith, would never have thought to ask for a “new and improved” telling of a story that was “time tested and true”. No, they wanted to hear the old, old story, again and again, trusting that it was God who would speak a new word or give a new insight, not whoever it was who happened to be standing in the pulpit that given morning.
So, as much as we would never think to buy a computer with a floppy disc or an eight track tape player or a manual typewriter; neither would we ever say, “No need to play Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, I heard it once before, what else have you got?” In a similar way, look at the dog-eared books you read to your kids and grandkids, stories you’ve read so many times you’ve almost got them memorized, as do they. I remember putting our kids down when they were little. I’ll confess, if I was tired I’d try skipping a few pages and they’d catch me every time. As much as we may think we always want “new and improved”, there is something to be said for “tested and true.”
So this morning I’d like to tell you the “old, old” story of our faith trusting that God will use it to speak a “new” word to us.
It is the story of a man named Jesus of Nazareth, if it is right to call Him a man. Today we celebrate His resurrection from the dead, but His story doesn’t begin here; it begins some 20 centuries ago along the shores of the Sea of Galilee in Palestine. As Albert Schweitzer writes in his book, Search for the Historical Jesus, “He comes to us as one unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lakeside. He came to those who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same words: “Follow Me!” and sets us to tasks which He has to fulfill in our time.”
The Gospel writers tell His story, the first being Mark, who curiously enough doesn’t even bother to tell of His birth, he would leave that to others; instead he begins by telling about a man named John who was baptizing people in the Jordan River. He tells of John’s ministry because it was well accepted in ancient prophecy that there would be one who would come to prepare the way for the coming Messiah, and that is exactly what John was doing, he was proclaiming a baptism of repentance, a making of the way in people’s hearts, for the coming of the Lord. Even Jesus Himself went to John to be baptized in the river and when He came up out of that water, a voice from heaven was heard saying, “This is My Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
Jesus, the son of a carpenter in Nazareth, an unknown itinerant rabbi, began teaching, “The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God has come near; repent (turn around, change your ways, confess your sins, return to God) and believe in the Good News.” His message was simple but clear and compelling and unambiguous, “Follow Me” and when people heard it, they did; they dropped their nets, left their homes and families and without looking back, set out after Him. He didn’t offer a new way of thinking about God, a new and improved plan for self-improvement; rather, drawing on the ancient texts of the Hebrew Scriptures, He offered only Himself as “the way and the truth to a new life with God.”
Who was this man? So writes theologian Hans Kung, “He did not belong to the establishment or to the revolutionary party, but neither did He want to opt out of ordinary life, to be an ascetic monk. Obviously He did not adopt the role which a saint or a seeker after holiness or even a prophet, is frequently expected to play. For this He was too normal in His clothing, His eating habits, His general behavior…So He became a skandalon, a small stone over which one might stumble. He was attacked on all sides. He did not play any of the expected roles: for those who supported law and order He turned out to be a provocateur, dangerous to the system. He disappointed the activist revolutionaries by His non-violent love of peace…He offended the passive, world forsaking ascetics by His uninhibited worldliness and for the devout who adapted themselves to the world He was uncompromising. For the silent majority He was too noisy and for the noisy minority He was too quiet, too gentle for the strict and too strict for the gentle. He was an obvious outsider.”
Unlike other would-be messiahs of His day He didn’t gravitate toward the big city of Jerusalem, but preferred to stay in the backwater regions of Galilee. He called the few, the committed, to follow Him, not the crowds, but come they did when they heard Him preach about the coming Kingdom of God and as they watched Him perform miracles and heal the sick, the blind, the lame.
Rather than attempting to amaze people with esoteric insights in to the ways of an unknown and unknowable deity, He spoke of God in terms so familiar that even a child could use and understand, calling Him “Abba”, “Daddy”, “Poppa”. He summarized the great traditions of the ancestors not with more and more “dos and don’ts”, but with simple truths, “The first and greatest commandment is this: love God with all that you are; and the second is like it, love your neighbor as much as you love yourself. In this is all the Law and the prophets”; and He applied those truths using very worldly examples: turn the other cheek, walk the extra mile, surrender your coat when asked for your cloak. Simple, practical, profound truths spoken in a way that people could hear and know and understand.
Of course, He was more than a charismatic teacher with a compelling message, He also commanded the power of God to perform miracles: walking on water, turning water in to wine, feeding thousands with a little boy’s lunch; but even these weren’t used for purposes of “shock and awe”, but simply to demonstrate the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God.
Yet as the crowds of His followers grew, so did the number of His detractors. His talk about loving God and neighbor by following in His way flew in the face of those who were imbedded in the religious practices of the day. His talk about intimacy with God without the institutions of the Temple, the priesthood and the elaborate sacrificial system threatened their very livelihood. They took offense at His welcome of the sinner, the outcast, the untouchable and declared His forgiveness of their sins “blasphemous”, so they set out to look for a way to silence Him.
Not more than three years into His ministry, and perhaps even fewer than that, Jesus and His chosen twelve were in a remote place in the northeast corner of Palestine, a place called Caesarea Philippi, the site of the Temple to the Greek god Pan. “Who do people say that I am?” He asked them. Their answers varied: good teacher, perhaps a prophet. But then He asked His question more directly, “Who do you say that I am?” and Peter, one of the twelve, answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus said, “You are right!” But rather than basking in that proclamation, rather than using it to expand the affect and effect of His ministry, immediately Jesus began His journey to Jerusalem where He told His disciples He would suffer and die, and despite their objections, He was undeterred. He knew, “for this reason He had come in to the world, to suffer and die for the sins of the world”. He was the “suffering servant of God” spoken of by the prophet Isaiah centuries before.
He entered the city on a Sunday to the waving of palm branches and shouts of “Hosanna!”, but by mid-week the die had been cast. One of His disciples, a man named Judas Iscariot, had determined to betray Him, and was only waiting for the opportune time to do so. On Thursday evening, He celebrated the Passover meal with His closest friends, first by reinterpreting the ancient words by speaking in personal terms saying that He was the sacrificial lamb, that this was His body broken and His blood poured out in a new covenant; and then He gave them a new mandate, to “love one another as I have loved you.”
After the meal He went to one of His favorite places, a garden called Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives, and it was there that Judas betrayed Him with a kiss. He was arrested and taken before the High Priest and the other religious leaders where, in a mock trial which extended through the night, He was found guilty. Early the next morning they took Him to the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, demanding that He be put to death on charges of “blasphemy” (speaking against God) and “sedition” (speaking against the state). Finding no cause against Him Pilate determined to release Him, but the gathered crowds began to chant, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” and so sacrificing justice for expediency, he condemned Jesus to death on the cross.
So, that day, Friday of the same week He had entered the city, Jesus hung for six hours between two common criminals on a Roman cross, the most excruciating and inhumane form of capital punishment ever conceived, and on that cross He suffered and died. And, after ensuring that He really was dead, His body was taken down and, as was the custom, prepared for burial, then laid in a borrowed tomb. End of story….or not quite, for if it were, Jesus would have been just another teacher, just another prophet, just another “wanna be” messiah lost in the annals of history, and we most certainly would not be here this morning.
We don’t need to rewrite history in a “new and improved” way because Jesus did that for us on the first Easter morning. Now we pick up the “old, old story” the way the Apostle Paul tells it in his first letter to the Corinthians. “Now I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the Good News that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which you stand, through which you also are being saved if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you- unless you have come to believe in vain.”
This is not a “new and improved” story, this is the “tried and true” story, the same story we have heard time and time again, “For I handed on to you what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Peter, then to the twelve; then He appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time,…and last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared also to me.”
Friends, this is the “old, old” story that became “new” on the first Easter morning and becomes “ ever new” every time it is heard and believed, every time a new heart is opened to receive it.
“He was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant. He grew up in another village, where He worked in a carpenter shop until he was 30. Then, for three years, He was an itinerant preacher.
He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family or owned a home. He didn’t go to college. He never lived in a big city. He never traveled 200 miles from the place where He was born. He did none of the things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials but Himself.
He was only 33 when the tide of public opinion turned against Him. His friends ran away. One of them denied Him. He was turned over to His enemies and went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed to a cross between two thieves. While He was dying, His executioners gambled for His garments, the only property He had on earth. When He was dead, He was laid in a borrowed grave, through the pity of a friend.
Twenty centuries have come and gone, and today He is the central figure of the human race. I am well within the mark when I say that all the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned–put together–have not affected life on this earth as much as that one, solitary life.” (James Allen Francis)
Friends, we don’t need to hear a “new and improved” story on this Easter morning; we need instead to hear this: the “old, old” story, “tested and true” which holds for us all the hope and promise and power of new life and salvation.
New and improved? In most things, yes; but not in this. This is the Good News of the Gospel: that “Jesus Christ was crucified, dead and buried and on the third day He arose again from the dead!”; “neither new or improved” but “tested and true”. Thanks be to God! Amen.