I Cor. 15:20-26.54-57
I was a little surprised when I heard a store clerk wishing each of her customers a “Happy Easter.” It’s been a while since I’ve heard anyone do that. Anyway, when I heard it I thought of all the hubbub over just wishing someone a “Merry Christmas.” For a while, some folks felt there was an implicit gag-order that kept them from saying something as innocent as “Merry Christmas.”
Last Christmas we heard the familiar greeting more often so I wonder if we’re going to hear “Happy Easter” more often. It’s hard to say. You see, Christmas and Easter are different. Obviously, Christmas is on a fixed date—December 25th—and Easter is a “moveable feast,” that is, the date varies from year to year. Of course, you can argue that it is really on the same day each year: The first Sunday following the first full moon after the Spring equinox. But there are other differences.
Christmas points us to a Baby and babies are so cute. Only a Grinch doesn’t love a baby. A baby isn’t particularly threatening; well, unless you’re a paranoid king, but that’s another story. Christmas reminds us of a young couple who loved each other and their Child, it reminds us of pious shepherds (shepherds weren’t known for their piety but at Christmas we picture them as really spiritual), and it reminds us of generous Wise Men. Christmas can be captured nicely on a Hallmark card.
Easter is different. To get to Christmas you have to deal with songs about seven French hens leaping as they play pipes for swans in a pear tree (or some such thing); it’s annoying but hardly disturbing. To get to Easter you have to deal with that Man on a cross. And that can be disturbing.
Add to this the fact that Christians—the people who insist we should observe both Christmas and Easter—use the days before Easter to encourage people to think about their sins and the need to repent. Then, too, while you can spend the days before Christmas at parties gobbling down candy, cookies, and eggnog; some Christians dare to suggest the days before Easter ought to be times of self-sacrifice and reflection. How in the world can anyone say “Happy Easter?”
Of course, sometimes it seems we’ve tried to treat Easter to a paradigm shift, to change the whole focus of the holiday. But, again, the Easter story itself won’t let us get away with that. Our attention many be diverted to “hopping down the bunny trail” but then we hear:
Down the Via Dolorosa called the way suffering
Like a lamb came the Messiah, Christ the King.
But he chose to walk that road out of his great love for you and me.
Down the Via Dolorosa, all the way to Calvary.
In the end, we’re not allowed to forget that Easter is not about chocolate bunnies, not about bonnets or new dresses, not about pristine lilies; it’s not even about the promise of spring seen in the blossoming of flowers. And again, even the most obtuse maybe forced to ask, “How can the day commemorating Jesus’ death be called ‘Good?’”
That’s why Easter is as exciting as Christmas. Imagine it, we’re talking about the event that prompts statements like, “The best news the world ever had came from a graveyard.” Yet, many don’t know what Easter is all about.
We can begin to understand the meaning of Easter as we peer into a dark tomb—hardly a happy place. But, remember, it’s an empty tomb.
As we look…
We can say “Happy Easter” because in it we see the beginnings of a glorious faith.
The church’s earliest historian reported.
…with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.
Acts 4:33 (ESV)
The Easter story was on the lips of every Christian teacher and preacher. Why?
--Through the resurrection of his Son, God confirmed the claims of Christ.
Many men have made fantastic claims about themselves, but they lie decaying in their tombs; Jesus Christ made fantastic claims about himself and his tomb is empty!
Easter teaches that God was committed enough to his creation, us that he joined us enrobed in humanity, showed us what we were intended to be, died the death we deserved, and offers us eternal life.
Remember this, Christians were speaking of Jesus as God within a fortnight of his crucifixion.
What convinced them to describe Jesus as God rather than as a just another tragic figure who gave his life for his convictions was the resurrection.
We can say “Happy Easter” because in it we see the possibility of a glorious forgiveness.
The Easter story is a wonderful story but it demands that we answer the question, “So what?”
The resurrection of Christ was God’s seal of acceptance on the sacrifice Christ made on the cross. Good Friday and Easter are not two separate events. They are linked.
Let Christ remain in his tomb and you and I are left with the impossible task of making peace with a God whom we cannot approach because of our unrighteousness.
The Risen Christ has opened the door of forgiveness to all who will put their trust in him. Paul wrote, “…if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Romans 10:9 (ESV)
The Resurrection is the foundation of that promise of forgiveness but it isn't enough to simply affirm the fact. Easter calls for our response. Eugene Peterson paraphrases Paul’s words: “Say the welcoming word to God—“Jesus is my Master”—embracing, body and soul, God’s work of doing in us what he did in raising Jesus from the dead. That’s it. You’re not “doing” anything; you’re simply calling out to God, trusting him to do it for you.”
Easter is just a date on the calendar, unless you respond in faith.
We can say “Happy Easter” because in it we hear an invitation to a glorious fellowship.
There’s an invitation to fellowship with the Risen Lord and with the people committed to that Risen Lord.
Everywhere they went the Christians proclaimed the Easter story, and wherever men and women believed that story an enclave of “Easter People” was left behind.
In a world marked by despair, we may have fellowship with the most hopeful people in the world. It changes perspective.
Joseph Bayle buried three of his four children before they reached adulthood. Listen to his “Psalm of Laughter for Easter.”
Let's celebrate Easter with the rite of laughter.
Christ died and rose and lives.
Laugh like a woman who holds her first baby.
Our enemy death will soon be destroyed.
Christ opened wide the door of heaven.
Laugh like children at Disneyland's gates.
This world is owned by God, and he'll return to rule.
Laugh as if all the people in the whole world were invited to a picnic and then invite them.
Bayly would have been the first to say the Easter People don’t deny the reality of grief and loss, but he would have insisted they bring a new perspective to the graveside. Those people helped him face those repeated blows that might have been broken him.
We can say “Happy Easter” because in it we see the potential for a life-changing freedom.
There’s the freedom from the dread of death.
We spend much of our energy in the denial of death because we so dread the unknown beyond the grave.
Because of the Resurrection we know this is not the end, that whatever makes us unique does not dissolve into nothingness, is not absorbed into some impersonal mass of spiritual stuff.
In his book Where is God When It Hurts?, Philip Yancey describes a funeral custom conducted by African Muslims—a custom which would not be orthodox by either Christian or Islamic standards. Close family and friends circle the casket and quietly gaze at the corpse. No singing. No flowers. No tears.
Each person receives a peppermint candy. At a signal, each one puts the candy in his or her mouth. When the candy is gone, that participant remembers that life for this person is over. They believe life simply dissolves. No eternal life. No hope.
What a contrast to the viewpoint of those who have the Easter faith. When Jesus came out to the tomb he provided living proof that life goes on, that who you are isn’t obliterated by something as insignificant as death. Paul wrote to the Corinthian believers, “…if we have hope in Christ only for this life, we are the most miserable people in the world. But the fact is that Christ has been raised from the dead. He has become the first of a great harvest of those who will be raised to life again.”
Christ’s resurrection pointed ahead to that time when all believers would share the same experience.
Believers can live life to its fullest because they have been set free from the dread of death. They don’t have to focus only on themselves.
There is the freedom from the grip of grief.
We may confront our own motality and even come to grips with the fact that we will one day die, but how do we handle the death of a loved one?
Paul wrote to answer the Thessalonian Christians who were wrestling with the loss of loved ones and friends to death. He told them that he did not want them “to grieve as others do who have no hope.” While he did not expect them to be without grief, he did believe their faith in Christ would cause their grief to be qualitatively different from that of non-believers.
Their grief would be tempered by hope.
Conclusion
Holy Week is a time of looking back. On Sunday we recall the Triumphal Entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. We remember the cheering crowds with their cries of “Hosanna.”
On Good Friday, we focus our attention on the cross. We recoil from its brutality but know we must look if we were to even begin to understand the depths of God’s love.
Remember, on the eve of that first Easter, that Friday looked anything but good. Those who watched the crucifixion walked away chalked another one up to death. The Saturday before the first Easter was a day with little hope. That’s because his followers didn’t know what was going on.
Jesus had died but it was the aftermath of his death that made such a difference. Somewhere in the world beyond human perception, Jesus stood eyeball to eyeball with death and death blinked.
The first Easter morning Jesus stepped out of that tomb a victor.
Some of you came this Easter morning with hearts filled with grief. Death may have touched your family. It may have been recent, it may have been years ago but you still feel the pangs of loss.
You need to leave this morning knowing that death has been defeated.
That knowledge won’t necessarily ease your grief, but it can transform it. Knowing death has been defeated silences the mocking echoes from the grave.
Early in 1992, some old friends visited Pat’s family in Amarillo. We joined them for a meal. Their son, a member of Penn State’s football team, was with them. Earlier that year, Penn State had beaten Tennessee in the Fiesta Bowl and the young man was wearing a ring to commemorate the event.
Someone asked him what it was like to play in a big game like that.
He said he hadn’t played. He had spent the game on the bench, injured. Still, he had the ring—he shared the victory.
That only seems fair. Earlier in the season he had helped bring his team to that Bowl game. But consider this.
You and I didn’t feel the sting of the whip on our bare backs. You and I didn’t hear the hammer blows nailing us to the cross. You and I weren’t left in a dark tomb borrowed from a generous friend.
Still, we share Christ’s victory over the grave. It is that victory that gives meaning to Easter, it is that victory we celebrate this morning.
Jesus’ victory is a victory we can share. His resurrection was a pledge of net life to come.
That makes Easter a happy day.
