April 15, 2001
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church of San Francisco.
Dead End
When Joy and I purchased our first home in the Bay Area in 1975 when housing was still affordable, we lived on Tallwood Drive, off Hillside in Daly City. We liked the little house and how close it was to BART and the city. But before we could finalize the deal, we had to tell my mother that the house was on a “Dead End” street!
For most of us, we have an uneasiness with anything that reminds us of death. For my mother, she worried that it may bring misfortune and bad luck. Signs warning of dead end streets apparently are too depressing for some people that the City Council of Longmont in Colorado voted to replace them with less offensive signs that read, “no outlet.” One resident who favored the change said, “We just moved into a condo and right outside there’s a dead-end sign…Every time you come, you have to go by this sign, and it just isn’t very pleasant.” We rather say, “cul-de-sac” than dead-end.
Happily Ever After
Death is such an unpleasant part of life that we would rather believe that everyone lives happily ever after. The finality of death has been upstaged by a new vision of the afterlife. The afterlife we would like to see is that the dearly departed can communicate with their loved ones, influence events, even come back to the mortal world for another go around.
Some of the most popular movies in recent times have been those that depict everyone living happily ever after. I can remember Warren Beatty who died from a motorcycle accident in a tunnel but comes back as an angel in Heaven Can Wait. Or how about Patrick Swayze who is killed by thieves but comes back to communicate with Demi Moore in Ghost.
One of the most popular TV shows, Buffy and the Vampire Slayer, features Buffy and her boyfriend, Angel, who just won’t die. In What Dreams May Come, Robin Williams is killed in a car crash but is incredibly reunited with his wife, kids, and the family dog in a sort of German Romantic landscape. The message is that love can survive death, that our mortality doesn’t doom us.
Even Titanic, the most popular movie in China, took three hours for the passengers to die features Jack and Rose at the end of the movie happy after all, despite Jack’s drowning, reunited on the grand staircase as if the whole iceberg thing was a joke.
Might it be that as a generation of baby-boomers that we are saying to ourselves, “Wait a minute; a generation as wonderful as ours can’t die, maybe we won’t.”
When Meryl Streep dared to die of cancer in One True Thing and actually leave her daughter behind, the movie bombed at the box office. We don’t want to see this kind of movie.
And when we got to the end of Grouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon, did Jen die or did she make a wish and just flew down the mountains to live forever? Or maybe there’s a sequel in the making.
Some think this idea that death will be different for us began with the death of Princess Di for it is inconceivable that such a life could be cut so short. She is Elton John’s “candle in the wind” that goes on forever.
We just go on and on, immortal, like Jack Frost’s Michael Keaton this past Christmas in which a workaholic father, killed in a car crash, comes back as his son’s snowman. Give me a break!
I have one little thing to say about all this talk about immortality: none of it has anything to do with Easter!
Jesus Really Died
In the Scripture this morning, we read that Jesus really died. He did not appear to die. He was not asleep. He died a death more cruel and painful than you and I can imagine. He wasn’t dead for a moment on the operating table having an out-of-body experience; he was dead, sealed in the grave for three days.
He didn’t show some “immortal soul,” some “divine spark” that lived on in him or in the hearts and minds of his disciples. Jesus was dead. The disciples did not deceive themselves about his death, did not have a sense that, though he was crucified, “he will live on in their memories.” The one whom they loved, in whom they had hope in, was dead.
On that first Easter, there was great grief. When they saw that the tomb was empty, they didn’t think, “Jesus is alive.” They thought, “Somebody stole his body.” There’s a lot of weeping of real grief in the story that John tells in John 20. The disciples and the women were really crying because tears are the appropriate response when it comes in the face of death.
Yet, within a few days, Jesus’ followers began to understand what that happened to Jesus was “according to the Scriptures.” That is, Israel believed that one day, God was going to solve the problem of Israel’s suffering and oppression and, while God was at it, God would solve the problem of evil and injustice in the world. The Scriptures of old promised such a day of divine victory—that God’s kingdom will come and his will be done.
On Easter, the disciples discovered that day came in the resurrection of Jesus. The cross, which they had thought was the end, the death of their relationship with Jesus, was really just the beginning. Easter was God’s answer to the question, What shall be done about the world?
Life After Death
The answer to that question is that we have much to do because the world is good. And that for you and me, life in its fullness is worth living for and dying for. What happened
on that first Easter morning is that God’s will was being done and that his kingdom is coming!
When the first disciples arrived at the grave, it was empty. Jesus’ dead body was not there. It was not like Jesus’ body was still tightly wrapped with linen lying in the tomb and there was this ghost of Jesus talking with Mary. John reports that when “Simon Peter went into the tomb, he saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings, but rolled up in a place by itself.” John reported such details because he wants us to know that what happened on Easter morning really happened.
Surely Jesus’ body has changed since Mary at first didn’t recognize him but thought that he was the gardener. But when he spoke to her, “Mary,” Jesus was not some kind of ghost, but in bodily form. Mary answers, “Rabbouni!—Teacher” and wanted to hug him, but Jesus told her that he had not ascended to the Father yet.
Later Jesus the risen Christ would eat with his disciples and be touched by them in his resurrected body. Thomas didn’t put his finger on the hand and side of Jesus the ghost but on his real body—flesh and bones. And he exclaims, “My Lord and my God!”
Easter is resurrection, not the immortality of the soul as how Hollywood portrays; not the resuscitation from a near-death event. Life after death is not what we would like to think of as a divine spark that goes on living despite our death. Life after death is like what happened to Jesus Christ. By raising Jesus, our loving God defeated death and evil forever. For it is God’s kingdom that is coming. We believe that God will raise us as well.
In the resurrection of Christ, God has decisively acted, defeated death, thus fulfilling the Scriptures. This is better than any Hollywood movie! The resurrection of the body, Jesus’ or yours or mine, means that this world matters, now. We may not know exactly how all this can happen, how our resurrected bodies will look. As Paul says 1 Corinthians 15, “It does not yet appear what we shall be.” But we do believe that just as Jesus’ body was raised, so shall ours.
Thy Kingdom Come
When God resurrected Jesus’ dead body and he is alive right now, God is saying to us that this world matters. We are not to be dreaming about some spiritual never, never-ending land where just the spirits live on and that this physical and earthly world doesn’t matter. Resurrection is about God getting at last what God wants here, now, on earth, in this physical world that we know.
That’s the reason why we pray Sunday after Sunday, “Thy kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven.” It’s not just that there’s a cushy afterlife in store for us who make the grade, someday. Christianity is not some sort of pie-in-the-sky religion rather it is thy-kingdom-come-on-earth-as-it-is-in-heaven religion that it is. If Easter is just about Jesus exiting the tomb in some spiritual sense, leaving a body in the tomb to rot, leaving the world to die on its own time, than what hope is there for us? Nor is Easter just about Christ leaving us having some warm feeling in your heart.
It is about kingdom-on-earth-as-it- is-in-heaven. It isn’t just about warmed hearts. Easter is ultimately about transforming the world into a new heaven and a new earth first hinted at in the resurrection of the body of Jesus. And one day to come in the fullness of God’s plan, the power of Easter will be transforming the whole of creation.
God faced evil and death on Good Friday, then on Easter God triumphed. Now God intends to do for the whole world, through us Easter people, what was done first for Jesus on Easter. For it is God’s kingdom that is coming!
Easter People
In Hollywood, after people died in a movie, everything tends to get fuzzy, vaporous, and pink. Here in church, we do Easter with the real things of this world—flowers and new clothes, sunrise service and pancake breakfasts, and great music. It’s like a world in tune with God’s will and out of tune with the Good Friday definition of death. And finally when we get back in tune with God, the whole creation that was destined for death, now soars in song having been healed and reclaimed by a God who is determined not to leave us to death.
When the disciples and the women witnessed the first Easter, they knew full well that something, something really happened to them. Their world had been entered, encountered, transformed, reformed. Easter wasn’t God saying, Let me get you out of this terrible, deadly, tearful world and swoosh you to someplace else. Easter was God saying, Let me show you what I am doing to you and your world. For it is God’s kingdom that is coming!
Although Easter is today, millions of Christian people don’t really believe that the resurrection really happened. It’s merely an idle tale. We get more excited about what the Easter bunny might bring.
But when we take the resurrection of the body seriously as it happened with Jesus, we have a great responsibility laid upon our shoulders. When we sing, “Christ the Lord is risen today, Alleluia!” then we are saying that Jesus Christ really is lord and all other would-be lords, kings, queens, and princesses of this world are not.
When we sing, “The strife is o’er, the battle won,” it means that we must join in the mopping up actions wherever evil still dares to challenge the reign of a good and loving God.
When we sing, “Thine be the glory, risen, conquering Son,” it means that we praise God by giving him credit for all of creation and that it’s our responsibility to be good stewards of this beautiful and natural world.
When we sing, “He lives, he lives, Christ Jesus lives today!” it means that we are Easter people, no more Good Friday people who are destined to death, but Easter people with the faith and hope that we too will be raised for God is so good.
If you believe that today is the “Day of resurrection,” then get ready to witness to that the next time someone by their hate, or cruelty, or lust act as if they believe death is in charge.
If you believe that “Up from the grave he arose with a mighty triumph o’er his foes,” then get ready when God’s kingdom comes on earth as it is in heaven, and you are there in the name of Jesus Christ to say to all the powers and evil in the world that “Hallelujah! Christ arose!”
In the raising of Jesus, a great battle has been fought and won. And the kingdoms of this world shall be the kingdoms of our Christ and he shall rule forever and ever and ever. Amen.
Let us pray.
O God, on this day you burst the bonds of death and defeated the power of evil forever. As Easter people, call us to the responsibility of proclaiming that “Christ is Risen” and that your kingdom comes and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. For “Thine be the glory, risen, conquering Son; endless is the victory thou o’er death hast won!”