The Real Resurrection

Happy Easter, or as millions of Americans think of it: The Day Before Monday. Although 79% of us plan on celebrating this year. Last year only 32% went to church on Easter, mostly online. 28% said they were planning on going to church today. 31% plan on doing an Easter egg hunt for their kids, though. Which doesn’t quite make sense to me because 79% of parents plan to decorate Easter eggs—what are they going to do with them? Put them back in the carton? Sit around and eat hard-boiled eggs? Happy Easter kids! You need some water to choke down those egg yolks? 44% plan on visiting family and friends. 59% plan on cooking an Easter meal—everyone else is going to get really hungry. 60% of parents say they’re carrying on the Easter traditions from their childhood. 52.4% of Americans, after putting a lot of thought into it, say the Easter bunny came before the Easter egg. Now we know. But the world’s record for the largest chocolate Easter egg is 6,513 pounds heavier than the world’s largest chocolate bunny—which makes me think they have that backward. What’s the right way to eat a chocolate bunny? Most people go for the ears first, but I usually try to make a clean kill and get the entire head. It’s more humane. Even though only 79% of parents plan on celebrating Easter and buying candy—81% plan on stealing candy from their kids’ stash. Watch your candy today kids.

These are the top family Easter activities according to this same poll. See anything missing? I’ll give you a hint: it rhymes with “slurch.”

I’m not trying to make anyone feel bad about any of this. I didn’t grow up going to church ever, let alone on Easter. I didn’t know Easter had anything to do with Jesus. It was all eggs and bunnies at our house. I was so completely ignorant about Easter that when I was fourteen, I wrote an English paper on how Easter was the stupidest of all the holidays. I brilliantly pointed out that all the other holidays had some kind of religious or national significance but Easter—it was as silly as having a holiday for the Tooth Fairy. I was probably just bitter because as a kid I was too fat and slow to get any candy in the Easter Egg dash. True story. Anyway, at fourteen I was a brand new Christian and my English teacher was not a believer in the slightest. She rather enjoyed pointing out to her “know-it-all” Jesus Freak of a student the connection between Easter and the Christian religion. 

As a culture, I think we’re working overtime to raise a bunch of people who will be as clueless as I was. 

I think the most important thing we can do every Easter is make sure we tell the story, so people know what Easter is actually all about. And talk about the implications of what that story means for all of us.

On Good Friday, Jesus finished what He came here to do. He died as the Lamb of God to take away the sin of the world. Then, in the Biblical way of counting, on the third day, He rose from the dead. Three days: Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I know, that’s not how we would count it but the fact remains: those are three days.

Friday was horrific. Death is horrific.

Saturday had to be the worst, longest day in the history of the world. Everything the followers of Jesus had hoped for, this new life, all their dreams—they all died with Jesus. What now?

They just ran away and hid. They were probably going to be hunted down and killed next. Do you even bother praying when you just watched your God die?

Saturday had to be the most hopeless day that had ever happened.

On Sunday, the women came out of hiding, they had work to do. They went to the tomb to anoint the dead body of Jesus with burial spices. It was so incredibly sad. They were just doing what people normally did when they buried the people they love.

The Jewish leaders seemed to be the only ones who remembered that Jesus said He was going to rise from the dead on the third day. They didn’t believe it but they didn’t want the Christians to steal the body and start spreading rumors about a resurrection. They convinced Pilate to put armed Roman guards at the gravesite to keep it secure. 

But when the women showed up early on that first Easter morning, the stone had been rolled away, the Roman guards had abandoned their post, and a couple of Angels were sitting on the tomb, patiently waiting for them to arrive.

“Why do you seek the living among the dead?”

That angel had a way with words. If the women would have had a social media account, that would have made a great post.

“He is not here. He is risen!”

They run back to tell the boys, Jesus meets them on the road. I think there’s a really sweet moment when Jesus lets His mom know He’s okay. Back at the house, the guys don’t really believe it but a couple of them run to the tomb to check it out. Two of the disciples had decided to get completely out of town they end up having a long talk with Jesus on the road to Emmaus. Jesus shows up at the house where the boys are hiding with the shades drawn.

Jesus is alive. He did it. He came back from the dead.

He spent the next 40 days hanging out with his friends, answering their questions, getting them ready for the rest of their new lives. Helping them understand that they were to continue the work He had started in them. This thing was far from over. Their hope was anything but lost.

I’m going to jump to the fifteenth chapter of 1st Corinthians. A letter that was written to a church of mostly gentile, non-Jewish, Christians. A small church, probably about a hundred people. A lot like our church in a lot of ways.

It was written less than 20 years after the resurrection. A lot had happened in that time.

It was written by one of those religious leaders who wanted to silence all that noise about Jesus and kill all the misguided Christians who kept talking about him.

It was written by a guy who the post-resurrection Jesus showed up to give a little attitude adjustment. Okay, a pretty big attitude adjustment. He went from being the leader of the people trying to shut the church down, to becoming the most influential leader in the church as it took the Gospel to the whole world. St Paul not only wrote 1st Corinthians, he wrote thirteen of the twenty-seven books in the New Testament—and his ministry partner wrote the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts, which are word for word, more than half the New Testament all by themselves.

I think we should hear these words of St Paul with as much astonishment as we can muster up. This was a guy who thought Jesus was a fraud, until Jesus showed up and said, “why are you persecuting me?”

This is 1st Corinthians 15, known as the Resurrection Chapter:

“Let me now remind you, dear brothers and sisters, of the Gospel ... this Gospel saves you if you continue to believe it. Unless it was never true in the first place.

This is the Gospel, you ready? Christ died for our sins, He was buried, and he was raised from the dead on the third day. 

It’s simple but I don’t want you to miss it. Christ died for your sins. What does this mean? If I were to ask you to write down an answer to this question, very few of you would get it right. It means that when God returns at the end of time to pour out His wrath on all the wickedness of the fallen world—just like Noah and the flood, only with fire (You really want to be on the Ark this time). Like Sodom and Gomorrah, you want to walk away without looking back. Like the final plague in Egypt, the death of the firstborn (you better have the blood of the Lamb on the door of your house). Christ is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Sin has marked you for death, Jesus died in your place to mark you for life.

The good news of the Gospel is that you’re with Jesus, you’ll be okay when He comes back down here. This isn’t just about going to heaven, this is about surviving the apocalypse. Bet you never thought about it like that before. Ha.

But Jesus didn’t just die for your sins. He wasn’t just buried. He was raised from the dead on the third day. That’s the reason we’re here today. Maybe that’s the part that’s hard to believe. I mean, everyone dies. But I’ve never seen any of them come back.

Paul knows that’s the hard part to swallow. So he has a lot more to say about it.

Verse five, He was seen by Peter and then by the Twelve. After that, he was seen by more than 500 of his followers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he was seen by James and later by all the apostles. 

In other words, if you don’t believe me, ask around. Most of these people were still alive, it was only a few years ago.

Then he says, “Last of all, I saw him, too.” You know I used to be against this whole Christianity thing. Seeing Jesus back from the dead is what changed my mind.

Then he addressed the skeptics. 

“But tell me this—since we preach that Christ rose from the dead, why are some of you saying there will be no resurrection of the dead? For if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, then all our preaching is useless, and your faith is useless. ...if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is useless and you are still guilty of your sins. In that case, all who have died believing in Christ are lost! And if our hope in Christ is only for this life, we are more to be pitied than anyone in the world.” 1 Corinthians 15:12-19

Some people might be like, “I don’t think He literally came back from the dead. It’s just the idea of resurrection! It’s a powerful concept.” 

Paul says that’s hogwash. If Jesus didn’t really come back from the dead then all this Gospel talk and Jesus stuff is a bunch of nothing. Completely useless. You’re still in your sins. You’re going to die in them. God’s going to come down here and you’re going to be on your own to face His judgment.

Verse 20: “But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead. He is the first of a great harvest of all who have died.”

This is the Gospel truth. And this is what it means: Jesus is the first harvest. The first fruits of the resurrection. You’re all going to rise from the dead, just like He did—He just went first.

Death came into the world through Adam, and resurrection of the dead came into the world through Jesus. Just like everyone dies because of their connection to Adam and his sin, everyone who belongs to Christ will be raised to new life.

So when is this going to happen? He says there’s an order to the plan. First Christ was raised, then everyone who belongs to Him will be raised when He comes back. Then it’s game over. Jesus will destroy every ruler and power—a reference to the kingdoms of the world and the devil and everyone who stands in opposition to God.

Verse 25: For Christ must reign until he humbles all his enemies beneath his feet. And the last enemy to be destroyed is death.

Sometimes people talk about death as if it’s our friend, as if it’s just part of life. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

If there’s no resurrection—of Jesus, or for all of us—then there’s no hope. No point to any of this.

But he knows the skeptics still have questions. 

Verse 35: But someone may ask, “How will the dead be raised? What kind of bodies will they have?” Like, what if they died a long time ago? What if they were eaten by a shark? You might have similar questions.

I had a great high school science teacher. Mr Likes didn’t pull any punches and had no trouble teaching science from a foundation of Christian faith. Thanks to him, I’ve never believed there was any tension between faith and science.

I think he might have been the person who first pointed this out to me: The first law of thermodynamics is that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It can only change from one form to another. Well, human beings have measurable energy—I’ve always thought of this as our soul. Where does that energy go when we die? It has to go somewhere.

The second law of thermodynamics is the law of entropy—everything runs down unless an outside force does something to re-energize it. You put these two ideas together and I call it the Gospel According to Einstein. 

When a person dies, their soul goes somewhere. 1st Law.

It’s only going to get worse, or weaker, unless an outside force (in this case, God) does something to it. 2nd Law.

You might think resurrection is just too much of a stretch, too hard to believe. I don’t think so. I think we’re surrounded by all kinds of resurrections everywhere we look. Seeds go into the ground and die, then new life comes from it. Almost everything we eat has to die in order to give us life. We can find resurrection in nature all around us. Things die and come back as something else. Every living thing is like energy, it can neither be created or destroyed, it can only change from one form to another. Resurrection is built into the way things work. Trust the science!

Verse 42: It is the same way with the resurrection of the dead. Our earthly bodies are planted in the ground when we die, but they will be raised to live forever. Our bodies are buried in brokenness, but they will be raised in glory. They are buried in weakness, but they will be raised in strength.”

Every cemetery is a garden waiting for the harvest. God is the external power of your salvation.

And at the end of time, when Christ comes back for His people, when we have all been changed into the heavenly, glorified bodies in our resurrection: 

Then this Scripture will be fulfilled: 

    “Death is swallowed up in victory. 

    O death, where is your victory? 

      O death, where is your sting?” 

Some of the sting of death is already taken away because we believe what Jesus has promised us. Because He rose from the dead, he showed what’s going to happen to us. Death is still horrible, we still grieve when people die, but we don’t grieve like those who have no hope. Not anymore. You will be resurrected like Jesus. In your own body, except without sin—which is something you can barely imagine. Your body without corruption. Without sickness. Without the fear of ever dying again. Without the fear of losing the people you love.

This is why we all showed up here today. To remember the story of Easter and what it means for each of us. So we can pass this story and this hope to our children, and to their children. So they can have the same hope we do. That Christ died for our sins, that He was buried, and it all hinges on Easter, that he was raised from the dead on the third day.

It’s why we show up here every week. To encourage each other and proclaim the good news of the Gospel: That Christ has died—past tense. He won’t die again. That Christ is risen—present tense. Ongoing. Like church is happening right now. And that Christ will come again—future tense. This is what we are hoping for. Say it with me: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.

He is risen. He is risen indeed. AMEN