The Fire of Easter

Because a story of a fire is hard news. It is the kind of story, it's the kind of thing that never gets old. When somebody says fire, you know that there's something happening in this world that has amazing consequence. And so it gets your attention. There's fire to Easter. Christians maintain. You know the difference between hard news and soft news is when Matt Lauer tells you to stay tuned because there's a very important gardening tip coming up in a few minutes. And hard news is when they, you know, start saying day 26, day 27 if something is going on. There's a very real sense in which it's an old story. Christians on this day want to say to everybody, you know, day 730,000. Christ is risen and it's news and it's news that you need to think about and that you need to take seriously. There's fire in it. I submit that for a thinking person, you cannot dismiss all this talk about the resurrection of Christ and the movement that has followed Him. There are serious questions behind it. There are serious issues behind it that need to be considered by a serious person. I don't believe those things can be dismissed. With the typical flippancies, that's just not my tradition. Or I've never been a person given to faith. There's a fire and fire demands everybody's attention. Now, what's the fire? Well, I want to say two things about Easter this morning. First of all, the scriptures we've read this morning, the story the church has been telling for 2,000 years tells us that the story of the resurrection of Christ is uniquely historical. But it is also uniquely hopeful. It's uniquely historical but it's also uniquely hopeful. Now, when I say uniquely historical, the accounts we've read, verse Corinthians 15, the Gospel of John, basically tell us that hundreds of people witnessed Jesus Christ be crucified. Suffering wounds that, by most assessments, would have been mortal before His crucifixion, but certainly killed by professionals witnessed by hundreds of people. And then hundreds of people who would be just as skeptical of the dead rising, if not more so than many of us, claim that they saw Him risen from the dead. Now, the account we read from 1 Corinthians 15 is very early. That particular book is probably written around AD 54, some 20-something years after the time that these events were to happen. And there's an interesting thing in the text because basically the Apostle Paul is claiming that Jesus Christ rose. And for a period of six weeks or so, there were hundreds of people who had interaction with Him. And He sends out this circular letter, naming names, and actually saying there were over 500 people who had interaction with Him. And they stake their credibility. By the way, what do you buy it or not? You have to at least admire the moxie of the man. He basically says, it wasn't that long ago, hundreds of the people are still alive, of all sorts of walks of life. They come from all sorts of social strata, most of them Jews, yes, but also Gentiles, people in Caesar's household, there are hundreds of them go and talk to them. Now obviously you and I can't do that. But isn't it interesting that in its first public document, the Christians say, check it out for yourselves. Go talk to the witnesses and ask them what they saw. Because what they claim is not to have encountered a sickly figure who showed us his bravery of strength after surviving this terrible ordeal. But Jesus Christ possessing a new body, the same identity, but a transfigured, glorified body. No longer is sought by weakness, no longer in any way representing decay or death, but transfigured into glory, and that possessing properties that frankly just blew people's minds. And so the early Christians willingly say, go talk to people who saw this. Talk to the people who encountered this. Now there's a very stunning aspect, I think, to this uniquely historical background to the resurrection and to this. It's the sociologically stunning fact that at least a community of 10,000 of the first followers of Jesus were Jews. Now why is that interesting? Well, I don't know if you've ever met a Hittite or a Babylonian. You know, hi, I'm from Italy. Really, I'm a Hittite. You don't generally do that. You don't come across Sumerians, but there are Jewish people everywhere. I'm sure there are probably Jewish people here this morning. You meet Jewish people all the time. Why is it that you encounter Jews? Walk a Percy, great 20th century novelist. This is one of the themes of a lot of his book. Where are the Hittites? There are no Hittites, there are no Emirates, but there are Jews. And one of the reasons that has to be said is they are historically the most tenacious people there are when it comes to preserving their identity, rituals, the traditions that make them distinctive. And this, by the way, is what makes the resurrection of Jesus Christ so difficult to explain. Because you have a community of 10,000 Jews in Jerusalem that become followers of Jesus who take their most precious traditions and allow him to completely alter them for years, for centuries. They have sacrificed in it a bit. It has been their belief, their great stories celebrate people who die rather than compromise the nature of those sacrifices. And yet, after the resurrection of Jesus, there are thousands of them who stop doing that because they believe that the sacrifice that God has ultimately accepted has been offered. Whether you buy that or not, you have to just stop and look and say, wow, isn't that amazing that that happened? These are people who for 1500 years had regarded the Sabbath as a holy day. And again, many people had died rather than violate the sanctity of that day. And yet, by the thousands, they begin to observe a new day because they believe that the true rest is not from the creation, but from the new creation. They believe they saw born when they saw there was in Christ. And not only that, but the social codes of exclusivity and diet, preservation through exclusivity gets turned on its head as the movement very, very early on, all of a sudden becomes, in terms of the history of the world, the most inclusive movement of history. Because all of a sudden, identity is purely based on knowing and believing in Jesus, not your race or your ethnicity. Belonging is simply a matter of hearing the hard news and accepting it. Now, how do you account for that happening? It's a very, I think it's a very serious question to say, how does something like that happen? Yeah, this really struck me. I used to live in New York City. And while I lived there, there was a prominent Jewish leader in New York City named Menachem Schneerson. He was the leader of a sect of Judaism called the Lubavitchers. And there were many of them who believed him to be the Messiah. And there was a lot of excitement in the Williamsburg Brooklyn neighborhood. I lived in Manhattan, but this was just off in Brooklyn. People who believe that this man might well be the Messiah. Now, the rabbi would walk. Once a year, he would walk across Brooklyn Bridge. And he would walk into Manhattan, go to Times Square, and he would hand out dollar bills as, you know, clearly make him a popular leader. I could start to get my ratings up if I did something like that. But he would go hand out dollar bills. Now, he died a few years ago. And one day, I'm just, you know, I pop on the news, New York One News, and I see hundreds of people gathered around his grave on the third day. And it was because they said there were many prophecies that said that the Messiah would be raised on the third day. Well, you probably would have heard had he been raised. It didn't happen. But it really, for the first time, it hammered me with the reality of what it would take to get a movement off the ground on these terms. Because basically, what is claimed is if you put it in those terms is that the rabbi, in fact, was raised that his followers saw him. He did walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. And for six weeks, you could go meet him in Times Square. And there are still people living who can go and tell you about it. It wasn't just us Jews. Go talk to Mayor Giuliani. Go talk to the D.A. They all saw him too. That is that the terms of the movement is that it was witnessed and it was seen. And I would venture that you, and frankly, I don't push it farther than venture. I challenge you to explain the movement in any other terms other than then it happened. Far greater minds than yours or mine, not to insult you. Far greater minds than yours or mine have gone in incredibly skeptical, say, we cannot account for this movement short of the fact that it is uniquely historical. Now, by the way, you can accept its hystericity. You can even believe he rose again from the dead and not following. But it's difficult to explain the movement short of hystericity. I read with amusement several years ago, a historian at Yale University and then Wayne Meeks is a historian of religion. And he was trying to account for the early Christians and he writes this in one of his books, never in so short a time has any other faith or for that matter, any other set of ideas, religious, political or otherwise. Without the aid of physical force achieved so commanding a position in such a short time in such an important society. The more one examines the factors that seem to account for the extraordinary victory of Christianity, the more one is driven to search for a cause underlying them all. It is clear that at the very beginning of Christianity there occurred a vast release of energy unparalleled in history without which the future course of the religion is inexplicable. Now this morning I just want to challenge you on this point of a uniquely historical. Jesus is the central historical figure. He is in the history of the human world. He's the central historical figure. And there is a historical fact that is claimed that has affected its belief and the abuse of that belief has frankly affected everybody's life. You are an irresponsible person if you do not at least give it some of your attention to consider its credibility, a challenge and look at it. It's uniquely historical. But here's the application. It's also uniquely hopeful. Easter Resurrection is not the hope that says well here's a great story about life overcoming death. Hope springs eternal. No. The apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 makes it clear. He says if this didn't happen we're idiots. Please don't patronize us and say it's nice that you have a myth of rebirth. We all need those. For me it's green tea, but for you it's resurrection. No. Basically if it's not true we're deluded. There really is no hope. This is all there is. And frankly it's available tears. But it is uniquely hopeful. Let me tell you what I mean by that. And again I want to talk about fire because for the early Christians the resurrection of Jesus wasn't just about him. Because Jesus clearly identified himself with us from the day of his baptism. He said though I am divine I have come to take your place I identify with sinners. And so he made it clear throughout his ministry as a way of saying that why come to do I come to do for you and what they saw very clearly is they saw him go down. They saw what all of us are going to experience in our life tears despair rejection. You're going to take one way or another some worse than others but he took it in the worst case scenario. But he made it clear all along I'm doing this for you. And when he was resurrected that truth you see that's what that's what brought it home. It was that when he was resurrected he was saying and this is for you I have overcome it I am the first fruits. And in first Corinthians 15 that was the word we just read a few moments ago when he said that Christ was the first fruits of the resurrection he says that three times in that chapter there's another word the Apostle Paul uses it's the word down payment it's the same idea the first fruits of harvest the down payment of of a great redemption of a great treasure. What is that great treasure he's talking about nothing less than the renewal of everything the resurrection of everything of everything being made right. There's a wonderful passage in the gospel of Matthew chapter 19 verse 28 where Jesus Christ talks about what he calls the renewal of all things. He says that when the son of man comes to his glorious throne speaking of this future time when I come to reign when I come to my glorious throne it will result in the renewal of all things. And he uses a word there I'm not a Greek quote or trust me but he does use an interesting word there it's the Greek word talent Guinness which means Genesis again. He says when the new Genesis happens when everything is made new that will happen when I come to my throne. Now I was just reading a theologian name said Claire Ferguson a Scottish theologian and he said Jesus borrowed that's the one time that verse appears in the Bible. And he said Jesus is borrowing a word from the Greek philosophers and what he's doing is that the stoic philosophers believed the universe we see is at a present place. And therefore just like cosmologists today who said the universe is expanding is going to die the stoic said you know what it's obviously dying look at mine. But there's hope and their hope was that when everything finally totally burns out the universe is reborn with fire. And so they had the hope of fire and the fire was the talent Guinness there was going to be a great renewal the stoic said in which the entire universe will be reborn. That's going to burn up again but it's okay because in the cyclic view of the world you know maybe you'll look out and catch it in an early cycle. The universal be reborn but what Jesus Christ does is he takes their concept and he makes it his own and he says not when a renewal a paladin going to see a happen he says when the son of man comes to his glorious throne that will be the renewal of all things this is very important to understand how this ties to Easter. When will everything be made right when will everything be made new when the son of man comes to his glorious throne what is the fire I'm talking about what is the fire that the stoic's dreamed about that Jesus claim for himself it's the fire of the true king coming to rain. Jesus is saying that when I come to my throne let me tell you something the prophet said it the mountains are going to dance the trees are going to clap their hands the rivers are going to say. Every potential you can think of will be reached every dream you ever ate for will go from black and white to color it will all be realized when I sit on my throne that will be the renewal of everything. There's a great story I'm reading the Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien with my voice and I'm doing that because I don't want the movie that's coming out next year to ruin it for him. And we're reading it and the greatest compliment the other day my my son said this is so much better than Harry Potter. I just I imagine the corpse of Tolkien cracking a smile as I said that to him but there's there's a great part in the story the third book is called The Return of the King. And in the return of the king this little hobbit if you know these little hobbits little furry-footed creatures who like riddles their little hobbit named Sam Gamgee. And a great battle takes place against evil and the dark towers destroyed and basically the true king comes to the throne. And when the king returns when the king comes to his throne Sam wakes up and when he wakes up he's in a new world he's never seen before. And when he wakes up he doesn't understand and he looks to his companion Gandalf the wizard and he says to Gandalf. Gandalf what has happened to the world is everything sad going to come untrue. That's what it's all about. Is everything sad going to come untrue? That's what the pal in Genesea is. That's what the promise of Christ is. You see it's not that it didn't happen but that a world that is not just perfect is actually becomes more glorious for having once been sad and is no longer sad. A world that was not just boringly perfect but a world that saw bravery and sacrifice and faithfulness in the death is made more glorious but the sadness is gone. The brokenness is gone. Every brokenness mended. That's the promise. Now you have to understand what could change the 10,000 of Jerusalem. What could make Romans throw their careers away? I'll tell you what it was seeing in Jesus Christ the first fruits that down payment of everything you ever dreamed of. Because in his body they saw the stuff of the renewable of all things. In his body they saw the first promise, the first real taste of what Jesus Christ claimed would happen. When he came to his throne if you will a down payment that was in truly cosmic terms the big bang that begins the fire of renewal for the whole universe. Now I can imagine some people saying okay that's very nice and symbolic but yeah that sounds like pie in the sky stuff for later. Some day everything is going to be great so hang in there. No because this is why I think Easter is so uniquely hopeful because it's not just a message of renewal in the future it's a message for now. People who come to entound begin to realize pretty quickly that I watched a lot of Star Trek growing up and I think one of the reasons is I'm totally fascinated by the concept of time travel. In fact I will often read science books and that sort of thing because I'm just interested in the whole aspect of time travel. By the way Stephen Hawking says it's impossible because great scientific theory he says because it would mess everything up very profound. But what is envisioned here if you will in the New Testament is a sort of time travel that's real. Now it's not the sort of it's not Star Trek time travel it's not you going into the future but biblical time travel is exactly the other way around the future coming to you. It's sort of anti time travel because what the Bible says is that when you become a believer in the risen Christ he the king the true king who will someday come to his throne and renew all things with the fire of his beauty. He is poured into your life now and even though you still you're still a mess and the world is still a mess your life changes now and you begin to experience the beauty of the king the power of the king now not just later. See time travel is true. The kingdom incurs it comes in it breaks in it will shatter whatever holds you don't underestimate it because the king lives you see because Easter is true not only do we look forward to the renewal of all things but we believe that you can drink it now and you can taste it and you can know his reality because he lives. Now if the fire Easter is true if the fire is true it's very important that you take it seriously and that you're not living that you're not ignore it and so I just want to make some application you know if you decide to play the lottery because of your profound commitment to public education. You go out there and even though this implies that perhaps you never took math seriously but you play lottery and you just happen to be one of those people who gets the 365 million. When is your life change when you get the checks and installments I would say your life changes when you get the first check because you know it's yours but it starts now well that's exactly what it means to be a Christian a Christian is someone who becomes persuaded of the uniquely historical character of who Jesus Christ is what he came to do I place my faith in him I received my first check in this life I begin to see his reality in my life. Now what can you expect if this is true and you open your life to him well first of all if it's true don't underestimate the newness of the fire of Easter don't underestimate the newness of the fire. Now I say that because I know there are people who come to church on Easter Sunday and at some level there may be a little bit of guilt and at another level they may be a sense of you know I've been trying to do some things with my life I've been trying to you know there are things I've been wanting to see. I've been wanting to see happen and they're just not happening maybe a relationship or a career things that just aren't right and you're thinking maybe God can help and I just want to tell you that that is so spiritually clueless and I'll tell you why I'll be nice about it okay. It's spiritually clueless because if Jesus Christ is the king who will Sunday sit on his throne and rebirth the universe how can you possibly think he's going to enter your life and simply further your agenda listen the newness he brings is a newness that will completely give you a new agenda he won't just make your personality stronger he's going to he's going to come in and change you there are people who hear the truth of Christ they hear the message of Christ and at some level they go you know I wouldn't mind having that but I can't touch this or I'm concerned about following him because he might demand this as long as he doesn't put his finger on listen if you're going to have the king in your life the one who's going to make everything new in the universe you have to drop your conditions. You want the newness you have to open yourself up to the reality that the risen Christ who is going to be the big bang of the new universe is going to be a big bang in your heart as well and therefore you have to drop your conditions for him. Secondly don't underestimate the newness secondly don't underestimate the power if all this look if this isn't just decorations and flowers but if it's reality behind it all don't underestimate his power. You know this is frankly another evidence of the unique historicity of Christianity is when you just look at the stories of the people who actually believe the gospel and the difference that made in their life in this world look at the lives you know I mean if you were a graduate student psychology you could write dissertation after dissertation about some of the mess of people you read about in the New Testament. You know these are some complicated individuals Paul you know Peter these guys I mean they're very different but they're complicated okay they've got if we're dating them you would say they have issues alright they are people with issues and yet the risen Christ he brings the newness into them and he remakes he takes a harder religious fanatic and turns them into a servant filled with joy. He takes a man who can't keep his mouth shut and he turns them into a shepherd who feeds people's lives with life giving truth and he's not just doing that then for the last 2000 years there's story after story the person who is so incredibly arrogant nobody can stand to be around them has a change and they become a humble person or a person who is who absolutely lacks any sense of self becomes inexplicably bold. How's that possible the newness enters them and there's a power there that cannot be underestimated so you see if the king is real if he's going to come to his throne and you can know the king now you got to drop your conditions but you've also got to drop your pessimism and I'll say one last thing and it's that you can address if you're going to if you're going to have the newness of the king in your life don't underestimate the community that he's going to do. I'm calling you to as well listen there's there's a newness there's a power but there's also a new community and there are some of you who go aha here's the come to church line listen go to another church okay this isn't about me and it's not about us but Jesus Christ came into the world to create a new people that this this life of the kingdom that breaks into this world now is something that is lived out in community. There are there's a presence of this living Christ among people loving and serving one another their entire different ways of thinking about power of thinking about yourself about your money about your sexuality all these things that frankly represent the values unleashed the power of a kingdom. You can't do that on your own you need to be doing that in community with other people so you got to drop your radical individualism if you want to know him you've got to open your life to his people some meaningful way there's a fire there's a fight there's news about a fire but there's also a renewing fire that has entered the world that will someday make all things new that right now can make you new. Can I tell you something interesting about all the resurrection stories I was rereading the resurrection stories during Holy Week and the one thing I notice is every time you read about the resurrection and the new testament you know what people do they run when the when the women hear the news what do they do they panic and they run when Peter and John when they hear the news they run even later the disciples on the road to Emmaus what do they do when Jesus shows them who it shows them who he is they run what do you do when you know there's a fire that you're not supposed to do your run he is risen run to him let's pray oh Lord our God father of beauty and glory who has entered this world that rebelled and turned against you but in the person of Jesus Christ began to turn it back toward you and promised a renewing of all things I pray that the newness the power the beauty of the present life of Jesus Christ would become a reality more and more for every person here on this Easter we pray this in Jesus name Amen.