Côte des Neiges Presbyterian Church Easter Sunday, April 5th, 2015

“On the first day of the week …” Text: Luke 23:50 - 24:12

Rev. Joel Coppieters, B.Th., M.Div.

The story is told of the old couple who sat together in their living room on a Sunday night listening to the live broadcast of the old time Gospel preacher doing a revival meeting in a tent somewhere. As he got near the end of the service, the preacher had already worked the crowd into a frenzy with some really emotional hymns, and then he started to talk about the power of healing. “Now said the preacher, I am going to pray for powerful healing in just a minute. And I am going to send that out to you listening to my voice on the air. I want you to put one hand on the radio, and I want you to claim the power of healing with the other hand. Whatever it is that needs to be healed …” The old man got up, went to his coat in the front entrance and pulled out the keys to his beat up old Chevy pickup truck. The one that had broken down again twice in the past week but that he just couldn’t bring himself to get rid of. “What do you think you’re doing?” the wife asked with a snarl. “That preacher’s a powerful man” the husband said. “I know he can help my Chevy!” “You fool,” she replied. “The preacher just said he could heal the sick … he can’t raise the dead!” There are those two Sundays in the year it seems when everybody remembers to come to church. And somehow, on both of those Sundays we Christians insist on talking to you about something hard to believe. At Christmas we insist on the virgin birth, and here we are at Easter, once again celebrating the Resurrection. This strange belief that Jesus came back to life after being put to death on the cross. But why do we insist on it? Wouldn’t Christianity work just as well, and maybe even better some say, if we didn’t ask people to believe apparently impossible things, like people come back to life? What is it that makes the Resurrection so important that we not only celebrate it in this big hoopla once a year, but that it has caused billions of Christians around the world to pick as our day of worship each week, the first Day of the Week … this day on which we believe that Jesus rose from the dead? The resurrection of Jesus is such an important part of our Christian faith, that Luke and the three other Gospel writers, and the other writers of the New Testament, go to great lengths to be sure that you and I understand that this wasn’t just wishful thinking, that it wasn’t just a dream, that it wasn`t just some kind of imagery … but that Jesus Christ actually physically, bodily, tangibly rose from the dead. Luke and his three colleagues knew that we don’t see resurrections every day. They knew it would be hard for us to believe. So they were careful to record all the details our faith would need to grasp this important event. Luke knew that some people would try to explain away the story by suggesting that Jesus hadn’t really died. Maybe he just passed out from all the pain, and then after a day or two of rest in a cold refreshing tomb in a cave, he revived, came to, walked out of the grave and convinced people that he had risen from the dead. But this cannot be. We know this, because of the lengths to which Luke went in the texts we read on Thursday and Friday this week to tell us about the painful way in which Jesus was executed by the Romans. They executed people all the time. On some days, when they conquered new territories or when they put down slave rebellions, they would crucify people by the hundreds and by the thousands. They were trained executioners. They knew what they were doing. They had seen death a thousand times before and they knew what it looked like. And several of them in the story affirm that Jesus was dead. Its also very hard to imagine how somebody who had been beaten to a pulp, whipped and flogged almost beyond recognition, nailed to a cross, and then passed out from the pain and gone several days without food could have had the strength to awaken, roll the grave stone away alone from inside the grave, and then appeared to his disciples, looking powerful enough to fool them into thinking that he had risen from the dead. And not only that, but that new resurrection body did weird stuff … like walking through locked doors! We also know for sure that Jesus was dead because Luke explains in great detail the way two of the secret disciples carefully took the body of Jesus, cleaned it and prepared it for burial. And they were heartbroken as they did that. In spite of the fact that Jesus had warned them about his death and about his coming back to life, the disciples didn’t catch it. So when he was arrested, tried and then executed as a criminal, they thought that all their dreams and all their hopes had come to a crashing end. They did not want Jesus to be dead. They did not want this to be over. I guarantee that if there was any chance that Jesus was still alive, they would have done what was necessary to revive him. One of these men knew the law, knew the rules about preparing dead bodies for burial. He knew a dead body when he saw one. Jesus was dead. By the way, there is something really strange in Luke’s description of Jesus’ burial. Two strange things actually. The bodies of executed convicts were not normally treated with this much respect by the Romans. Normally, the bodies of criminals were either just left up to rot on the cross and be eaten by the birds of prey, or they were thrown into a common pit with the piles of burning garbage. If that had happened to Jesus’ body, it would have been hard to be sure about the resurrection. If his body had been thrown into a common pit, just about anything could have happened to it. So the Holy Spirit, who had quietly been working in the heart of Nicodemus and Joseph, pushed them into action now. Up to this point, these two men had not been public about their beliefs or about their sympathy for Jesus. But now was the time when they were needed. God knew that our faith in the Resurrection would depend on the work these two men did burying Jesus. So at just the right time, they stepped forward, risked their reputation and their prestige and claimed the body of Jesus to properly prepare Him for burial. The second surprise about Luke’s account of the burial is that for most of their history, the Jewish people have buried their dead in the ground. The body would be placed in a sack or in a wooden box and then placed in a hole in the ground and covered with dirt … much the way many of us still do it now. But for this very short period of time in their history, the Jews had adopted this strange custom that seemed to have been borrowed from the Egyptians or from the Roman elite classes. The dead body would be placed safely in a cave, wrapped in linen and loaded with spices to cover the smell of the decomposing flesh. Several months later, when the flesh had completely decomposed, the family would come back, gather up the bones that remained and place them in an ossuary … a bone box. In a wealthy family`s burial cave, you might the latest body, still decomposing, and a collection of bone boxes, each one inscribed with the names of the person whose bones they contained. It is no coincidence, it was directed of God, that when Jesus died, the Jews had adopted this strange burial practice. And because of this strange burial practice, when Joseph and Nicodemus claimed Jesus’ body, instead of burying it in the ground, they wrapped it in linen and laid it in a cave. And on the first day of the week, the women returned to the cave, prepared to come with the spices to complete the next step in the process. Its important by the way that Luke tells us it was a new burial cave in which nobody else had been buried yet because that meant there was no way for anybody to make a mistake with the body. The body of Jesus was the only one in the new cave on the Friday night when they laid him there, and when the women arrived early on Sunday morning, the body was gone and the cave was empty. It is because of this strange practice that we can know for sure. That there is no doubt. That Jesus. This Jesus. Was dead. Was placed in this tomb. And then his body disappeared. Many people are ready to accept that Jesus was dead, but they’re convinced that he remained that way. They believe that on Friday, the body of Jesus was put in one tomb, and when the hysterical women came on Sunday morning, they went to the wrong tomb. Maybe they went to another tomb that was still empty and they came to the wrong conclusion that Jesus must have been raised from the dead because his body was missing. But Luke tells us that this tomb belonged to Joseph of Arimathea, that he knew precisely where it was and that he led the women there. Then on Sunday morning the women returned to the right tomb. And when Peter went to the tomb, he also went to the right tomb and he also found it empty. And when the women were there at the empty tomb, they met the two men in dazzling white who confirmed that Jesus had been there, but that he wasn’t anymore. “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember what he told you, while he was still in Galilee …” “You came to the right place, they say, but you’re a little late!” Some people like to explain the missing body another way. They suggest that it was one of the great cover-ups of history. That the disciples of Jesus stole his body, hid it away and then made up a story about the Resurrection. But there are several things wrong with that suggestion. First, we know that the disciples were surprised by the Resurrection. Jesus had told them, but they hadn’t really heard Him. It never registered until after the fact. They hadn’t expected it. It came as a total shock … and in fact, as they learn the news one by one, they are shocked and startled and they refuse to believe it until they see it for themselves. Until he appears to them. And at this point, the disciples are all hiding out in fear. They have fled. Some of them are locked together in the upper room. Many of them have abandoned him altogether. The only ones who risk their lives by coming openly to the tomb are these few women. There is no swarm of bold disciples coming to steal the body. Much to the contrary. But you know, after they had seen the risen Jesus … and we will consider some of those apparitions in the weeks ahead … after they had seen the risen Jesus, they were so convinced about what they saw that they were willing to suffer for what they believed. They were even ready to die for this. As the book of Acts recounts the story, and as the Early Church carries on after that, again and again, brave men and women are threatened with death unless they recant their story about seeing the risen Christ … and they refuse to change their story. If they had hidden Jesus’ body, and made up a lie about it, it is hard to imagine that they would have been willing to die for something they knew to be a lie. But you see, it wasn’t a lie, it wasn’t a fairy tale … and it wasn’t wishful thinking. I’ve told you before why Jesus didn’t buy a tomb. It would have been a waste of money. He just needed to borrow one for the weekend. It doesn’t normally work that way. Now that we are down to one car, sometimes during the week when Debbie is at work in Drummondville with the car, I need a vehicle to get around so I rent a car or a truck for a day or two. If you want to start a business, you could start a short term car rental business and there would be some demand for it … but it would be a bad idea to start a short term tomb rental business. Because everybody who needs one, usually needs it a for a little longer than that. Jesus literally just borrowed a tomb for the weekend.¸ Jesus was dead. Jesus was buried. And Jesus rose again. This is our faith. But why do we insist on this? Wouldn’t Jesus be just as good a man, and just as great a teacher if he was still in the tomb? In fact in many cases, people go and visit the tomb of Martin Luther King, or of Abraham Lincoln or of some other great hero and they are inspired by being there next to their remains, and reflecting on what they did while they were alive. No, it wouldn’t be the same. There are many, many important reasons why Jesus rose from the dead. I could give you a long list, but I want to give you just the top three - the three most important reasons why Jesus rose from the dead. First, the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead proves his identity. If you read through the first 22 chapters of the Gospel of Luke, if you read through the other Gospels, you will see that Jesus claimed to be far more than a good teacher. He didn’t just say that he was a good man with some neat ideas to help you live a better life. He wasn’t just a really wise spiritual guru who came to bring peace and good will to man. Jesus claimed to be God. He claimed to be God in the flesh. He claimed to be the prince of life. And when His enemies attacked Him, challenged Him, told Him that He was crazy, He offered them one final proof. Speaking metaphorically about His own body, Jesus said “Destroy this temple, lay this body in the ground … and three days later I will rebuild it again!” Remember the words we sang together this morning as we started … Low in the grave He lay, Jesus my Savior, Waiting the coming day, Jesus my Lord! Vainly they watch His bed, Vainly they seal the dead … Death cannot keep its Prey, He tore the bars away … Up from the grave He arose, With a mighty triumph o’er His foes, He arose a Victor from the dark domain, And He lives forever, with His saints to reign. He arose! He arose! Hallelujah! Christ arose! You can visit the graves of many great men of history if you are so inclined. You can pay your respects to Martin Luther King Jr., to John F. Kennedy and to many others. but you cannot visit the tomb of Jesus Christ, because it is empty. And there is no point seeking for the living among the dead. This is why I am a Christian, and not a Buddhist, a Muslim or a Hindu. Because just as He promised, just as the Scriptures had prophesied from long ago, just as the disciples and the hundreds of eye witnesses testified, just as you might expect from the Prince of Life, the Ancient of Days, the Almighty Lord of Lords, and the Creator of Eternity … death could not hold Him down … and He is risen. He is risen indeed. There is a second very important thing about the Resurrection. When Paul talks about the Resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15, he says that if Jesus did not rise from the dead, than we are still in our sins. You see when a priest went into the Temple to offer a sacrifice for sins, if God was not pleased with the offering, sometimes the priest would not come out alive. There are instances where God was so displeased with the offering, with the fire on the altar, or with some other part of the process, and where the priest offering it would not come out alive. The Bible says that Christ went to the cross for our Redemption, and there is a sense in which when He was there, He was both the priest offering a sacrifice and He was the sacrificial victim at the same time. We believe that God raised Jesus from the dead, and then glorified Him, as a sure and certain sign that His offering on our behalf had been accepted. The Resurrection of Jesus is an affirmation that our redemption is secure, that our atonement has been secured, that our forgiveness is settled, that we have peace with God and that you and I are secure. My resurrection to eternal life in the presence of a holy God on the last day is guaranteed by both the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. If Christ was not raised, then you and I are still dead in our sins … but thanks be to God, thanks be to God, Jesus Christ has been raised! He is risen. He is risen indeed. I want to tell you quickly about one last very important thing about the resurrection in Luke’s account. Luke takes a strange approach to the story. Like a narrator, Matthew tells us about the body of Jesus being sealed in the tomb, about the guards posted nearby, about the earthquake on Easter Sunday morning and about the angel who rolled the stone away. But Luke doesn’t tell us all of that. He lets us figure it out. It’s as if he fills in the details bit by bit. He tells us about the first witnesses to the empty tomb. In the final chapters of Luke and the early chapters of the other book he wrote – the book of Acts – Luke simply tells us about the first people who were confronted with the signs, with the incontrovertible proofs of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and he tells us how they responded, how it transformed their lives. By insisting on the experiences of those first eyewitnesses, Luke wants us to be drawn in to the story, to realize that this isn`t just a story. This isn’t just a series of historical events. You and I must respond. We must come to terms with what we see. Let there be no doubt in your mind this morning. Jesus died. Jesus was buried. Jesus has risen from the dead. His Resurrection affirms His divine identity. His Resurrection affirms his divine purpose in fulfilling our Redemption. These things are not in question this morning. The real question on this Easter Sunday morning is how you will respond. Will you accept the promise of new life that is available only through the risen Prince of Life? Will you let the risen Christ turn your life upside down, and use you to transform the world the way he did with those first few women and men who stepped in to the empty tomb on that first Easter Sunday morning and understand that everything had changed? Won`t you join us as one of the witnesses of the Resurrection?