Scripture: Luke 24:1-12

April 11, 2004

Rev. John W. Fowler

On this Easter morning I want to ask you: Do you have the hope of the Resurrection in your life? Is it a strong hope, or is it a small hope, a hope-so? I want you today, before you leave, to be sure that you have the strong and certain hope of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, that because He lives, you too, can have eternal life and need not fear death, and allow the Risen Christ to live in you and to change you, and through you, change the world. The good news of the Resurrection is found in the Luke’s Gospel.

9When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others. 10It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles. 11But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense. 12Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened.

We call it the Masters. Phil Michelson is read as 0 for 42 in major golf tournaments. He is hoping to get his first major today. He is sharing the lead; he just might do it. He wants the green jacket. He wants to win. The only problem is that there are others who want to too and they are mighty good. There is another man, though, that played this week. He is not playing today. He is seventy-four years old and when he finished playing Friday I think he was thirty shots off the lead. He had different hopes. He wasn’t hoping to win a green jacket this time. He already has four of them. He really wasn’t hoping to make the cut, because he hadn’t done that in twenty years. But when he finished on the eighteenth hole, Arnold Palmer, “Arnie”, was still strong and rejoicing and thankful for not only this great athlete but this great man. What were his hopes that day? I am sure it was more just to finish well and to say goodbye as well, as he is playing in his fiftieth, final Masters tournament.

Can you say that about your life? You have no idea how much longer God is going to give you. You may think it is twenty, thirty, or forty years. Read the obituaries. You will find out that not everybody gets three score and ten, or four score. But will you finish well? Will you say goodbye well? When we have the hope of the Resurrection we can do that. We can live well. We can finish well. We can say goodbye well when the Risen Christ lives in our lives.

What is the hope of the Resurrection that we have on this Easter morning? First of all, it is forgiveness of sins. That Holy Week began with Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem amidst shouts of Hosanna; God save us; blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. He was the Messiah. He deliberately, though, chose to ride in on a donkey, as the Prince of Peace. Before the week was over they would be shouting, “Give us Barabbas.” “Crucify Him.”

He suffered and died for us. Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion of the Christ has been seen by some thirty million people now. I have seen the movie. One of the things Mel Gibson’s movie does for us: It brings back the Atonement to the Church. What is the Atonement? The Atonement reminds us that Jesus suffered and died for us. I cried at the movie. I had to look away. I don’t know if the scourging was overdone. I do know that when the Romans did it, it was called the “near death.” I do know that it was somewhat unusual for someone to be scourged and crucified. I know that there was a very good reason that Jesus could not carry His cross: He was near death from that beating. But why did He go through that? Jesus died on the cross. He took upon Himself the sins of the world. And if someone doesn’t like that word, you don’t understand that. But to the Messiah, to the Savior, that’s the number one problem in the world today. It is sin. It was the fulfillment of many Old Testament prophecies, but especially Isaiah 53, where the Prophet Isaiah, some six hundred years before this was to happen, said this:

3He was despised and rejected by men,

a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.

Like one from whom men hide their faces

he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

4Surely he took up our infirmities

and carried our sorrows,

yet we considered him stricken by God,

smitten by him, and afflicted.

5But he was pierced for our transgressions,

he was crushed for our iniquities;

the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,

and by his wounds we are healed.

Do you know the forgiveness of sins that Christ offers? Richard Foster, a great spiritual writer, in his book on prayer, writes that early in his ministry he was speaking with an older gentleman who was very, very troubled. Back in WWII he had been in a situation where he was commander of a small unit. He knew that it was a hopeless situation, but he kept having to send one man after another to try to fight the enemy. Most of the men in his command met their death. He and a few others escaped. Throughout his life, though, he never could get over that. He had a guilt and a shame. He just never could forgive himself. He kept thinking, if only I had done something that could have saved them. Have you ever had that happen to you? There is something from the past that keeps haunting you. It is a guilt. It is a struggle.

Richard Foster didn’t know any better than just to pray that Christ would do something about that. He prayed for him. He prayed for the healing of that painful memory. As he felt led to pray for him he put his hands on him and said, “And Lord, may he have a good night’s rest tonight, as a sign that You hear this prayer.”

He saw the man a week later. He was looking just fine. From that first night, that sleep came to him. That is what happens when we truly know the hope of the Resurrection—the experience of the forgiveness of sins.

Will you let Him bring forgiveness in your life? Peter certainly knew forgiveness. Peter denied his Lord, as did the others. He denied Him, but Christ …… (tape change)

… in the book, Learning to Say Goodbye, it talks about going to visit a grave with one of her friends whose husband had died, and taking her daughter with her. When they got to the grave the daughter of her friend did an unusual thing, she thought. She turned a cartwheel over the grave. She thought this was a little sacrilegious and didn’t know what to think of that but she saw her friend just smiling. She said, “You know, Liz hadn’t done that since her father died.” It had been several months. She reflected on that and she thought that it wasn’t irreligious. There comes a time to do cartwheels again, and there comes a time when we need to go on, and the one who has gone on to Heaven would want us to live again.

It is the good news today of healing of our sorrows. It is the good news for the hope of the problems that we face today, those things of which we are afraid. Sometimes we have fears and we wouldn't tell anybody about them. I remember one time, growing up—I have two older brothers and an older sister and it was Easter Eve, and I shared a room for years with my older brother, four years older than me—and I was a little bit nervous about the Easter Bunny, I’m ashamed to admit, but I really was. I had noticed over the years that the Easter Bunny didn’t have as big a budget as Santa Claus, but still I looked forward to it. But there was something about the bunny coming to see us, well, I was a little bit nervous.

I asked brother Mark, “Well, what does he look like?”

“Well, he looks like a rabbit. He’s a bunny.” I just assumed he had seen it.

I asked, “Well, how big is he.” He paused a little bit and said, “Well, he’s about the size of Dad.”

Now, my father was only five foot seven, but to me, that was gigantic, so I didn’t sleep well that night, but he came anyway. I like chocolate bunnies and if you believe in the Easter Bunny, he will come. I’ll just let you know that.

Sometimes our fears, though, are bigger than that. We take them to the Lord and the Risen Christ, as the Apostle Paul said,

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection ….

The Resurrection is more than eternal life in the future; it is eternal life right now. Christ comes to live in us.

You know, one of the problems we often face is sickness. Her name is Carol Setterburg. Her story was in Guideposts. Life was going just great for her until one day she got stung by a bee, which was no big deal. It stung, but then her hand began to swell up and then she had trouble breathing, and finally she called her friend and all she could get out was “come.” She ended in the Emergency Room; she almost died from this bee sting.

She told them in the Emergency Room, “I’ve never been allergic to bee stings.”

“Well, you are now, and so you have to keep this kit with you, and you have just a few minutes to give it or else you could be gone.”

She had been sick for several months. She had been tired, headaches, gone to doctors. They couldn’t figure out what was the matter. Finally one of the doctors pointed out, “You know, it just seems like your immune system is working against you.”

Finally, after a lot of prayer, and after seeing about forty different doctors over a year—can you imagine how discouraging that would be, to get one opinion after another—but finally an Immunologist said, “It is your immune system. What has happened is, it’s just working against you.”

And she began to think, well, what would I do for a friend who has been traumatized, because that is basically what her immune system was, and it had a lot to do with her sixteen hour days and four hours sleep, but she just thought, that’s the way I have always been, and it was hard for her to realize that maybe she needed to change her lifestyle. But she began to take good care of her immune system.

She went back to see a doctor the next month. “I don’t know what you are doing, but keep doing it. You are a lot better.”

In writing thirteen years later an article that hope is the answer, she notes that when people are going through sickness, hope that Jesus Christ is still the Great Physician is one of the great needs. You don’t always know how the end is going to come. You don’t always know how it’s going to turn out, but to know that the Lord still loves you, He’s going to help you, makes such a tremendous difference. It is hope for the problems that we face today, but it is also the hope of eternal life. What a difference it will make today if you believe that you will live forever.

On that day, they didn’t have that hope. When they went to the tomb, they expected a dead body; they found an empty tomb. The stone had been rolled away. Two angels told them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead. He is not here. He is risen. It is just as He told you.”

Peter is bending over. He runs in there. He goes away wondering what had happened. Jesus appeared to His Disciples. He appeared to two men on the road to Emmaus who were very discouraged that Jesus had died. And He began to open up the scriptures to him, like Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22, and many others that said that this Messiah would be crucified, would die, but would rise on the third day. And as they went through this Bible study on the road, their hearts burned within them because they were in the presence of Jesus Christ, the truth of the Resurrection was beginning to dawn on them. Hope was being awakened.

I think of Thomas, who—if the truth be known, is like many of us—has his doubts on this Easter morning. We hope Heaven is real, but are just not sure. Thomas was one of those “seeing-is -believing-people” so Jesus appeared to him. “Thomas, see the nail-pierced hands. See my side where they pierced me.”

He said, “My Lord, and my God!”

Has He appeared to you, the Risen Christ? What is the evidence? Well, you certainly have the evidence of the Apostle Paul in his letters. So many times he speaks of the Resurrection. In the great 15th Chapter of First Corinthians he says,

This is why the Apostle Paul would write: For me to live is Christ, to die is to gain.

Throughout his letters you could see the tension of his desire to depart and be with Christ, but for this world it is a whole lot better that he remain here to proclaim the Risen Christ. He knew that this One that he met on the road to Damascus was not someone who lived a just long time ago and was a great preacher and teacher and healer. He is someone who is alive and lives today.

What is the evidence? You certainly have the scriptures. You certainly have the ministry of the Apostle Paul. One of the greatest evidences to me is the changed lives of the Disciples. They were afraid. They ran. They denied Him. When they saw the Risen Christ, when the power of the Holy Spirit came upon them on the day of Pentecost, they were courageous and bold and proclaimed that Jesus was alive. Even if threatened with imprisonment, it didn’t matter. You know those twelve Disciples. We know that Judas did go out and hang himself in remorse for what he had done. Of the other eleven, John is the only one who lived to old age, and that exiled on the Isle of Patmos, which is fortunate because we have the Gospel of John and First, Second, and Third John, especially the Revelation that he received on Patmos. Those other ten died violent deaths. Why? They weren’t afraid to die. They knew that He had risen and was alive.

Do you know this truth today, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ? How do we receive it? By faith in Him. By faith in Him. By grace through faith, you have been saved. It is not your doing. It is a gift of God.

There was a young man who grew up in a parsonage, the rectory. His father was an Anglican Priest, Samuel, who wrote a book on Job which didn’t enjoy a wide circulation. He grew up in a big family. He almost died when he was six years old. There was a fire. Arsonists didn’t like the Wesleys. Somehow they remembered that John wasn’t out and they formed a human ladder to get up there to him when they saw this little six-year old boy up in the house. He said he was a “brand plucked from the fire.” His mother—all mothers say their children are special—especially knew that he was special. God had rescued him for a reason. And oh, he tried to be godly. He tried to be good. He was in the Holy Club at Oxford. Great student, a pious young man. He came to Georgia as a Missionary. He wasn’t very successful, but on the way over, he realized that he had a fear that he knew in the past that he had, but you know there is nothing like facing death to know that you really are afraid of it. The boat almost went down. A terrible storm at sea, and he was petrified, as were most of the other people except the Moravians. The Moravians were singing hymns. The Moravians were praying. The Moravians were fine. He couldn’t believe it.

He asked Peter Boehler, “Why is this? Are people not afraid to die?”

“We’re ready to go.”

“Can you be that way?”

“Oh, yes. That’s the gospel. It’s Christianity.”

Well, this experience of assurance of everlasting life would not come to him until he went to a prayer meeting at Aldersgate Street at thirty-five years old. A lay person is reading Martin Luther’s commentary on the Book of Romans about the change that God works in the heart, and he “felt his heart strangely warmed.”

That could happen to someone today. Maybe in the singing of the Hallelujah Chorus, maybe tonight as you talk to the Lord. But his heart was strangely warmed. You know, he wasn’t content just to go Heaven. He wanted a whole lot of other people to go to Heaven with him. He was a ball of fire. He preached in the fields—even though he didn’t want to. He preached that the common people heard him gladly. He organized people in spiritual growth groups called Classes and Societies. In fact, when the Methodist revival came to England many said this is why they didn’t have the Revolution that France had. Why did it come? Because a man’s heart was changed. It was warmed. The power of the Resurrection came into his life and this young man who had feared death….. You know how he died? Eighty-seven years old, preaching up to the end, he became sick. He was sick for about a week. When they gathered around, he was in and out, singing hymns. “I’ll praise my maker while I have breath,” and then he would go out for a while. Then he would come back. It was a holy moment, just reading about it. Gives you goose bumps. He said, “Best of all, God is with us!” Then he dies. He finished well. He said goodbye well. Let us pray.

Lord, we thank You today for the hope of the Resurrection. O Lord, we pray today that this Great Truth, the central fact of the Christian faith, would be implanted in hearts and minds by faith today. Thank you, Lord, for the glorious hope for the Resurrection of eternal life with Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.