Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to God’s elect, strangers in the world, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood: Grace and peace be yours in abundance. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls. (1 Peter 1:1-9)
Easter's tough on a preacher! I mean, think about this with me for a moment - what do you say that hasn't already been said? What can you say that hasn't already been said? And when I contemplate that dilemma, I find myself finally wondering - is it even necessary to say something that hasn't been said, or should the principle, in the words of an old hymn we sing from time to time, be simply "tell me the old, old story"? The church desperately engages in an ongoing quest for new and exciting and contemporary things but I wonder if perhaps freshness and originality are over-rated concepts – at least on Easter Sunday! At the very least they're probably unrealistic expectations on Easter Sunday, and maybe trying to find something new and original to offer isn't even a good approach. The truth is that maybe the basic old, old story is enough. So it's about the resurrection. Jesus overcame death. Maybe what we do today needs to be nothing more complicated than proclaiming and celebrating that – because, after all, the idea of someone being raised from the dead is probably complicated enough as it is. But still, we're here – and I do have something to say! We heard one of the traditional Gospel passages about the resurrection earlier. I deliberately chose Mark's version to go along wth my “keep it simple” philosophy this year, because Mark's version of the resurrection is the simplest and the shortest. He keeps it simple – so simple that some years after the Gospel of Mark was written, somebody decided to add on a few more verses because it must have seemed too bare-boned, and perhaps it left too much hanging, but we don't really need to discuss that right now. Mark isn't the focus for my comments today anyway. I want instead to move into a later part of the New Testament – the Epistles, we call them; the letters that were written to various communities of early Christians in the years after the Easter event (some of them written even before the Gospels) in an attempt to put flesh on spirit – to give practical advice about the teachings of Jesus and the implications of the story of Jesus. So for today? Resurrection, yes, obviously - but a practical application of the resurrection. The Gospel is what we believe; the Epistles are how we put what we believe into practice and they describe the effect it should have on our day to day lives. Today I ask - how should the resurrection change us? Why does it make a difference? I think that we are different, and I think that the world is different – and all because death could not hold Him!
Truthfully, there aren't that many single events over the course of history that have really changed history dramatically. Great wars get fought, but often the issues that caused the great wars just keep going on and on and on and lead to more great wars. Great people come and go, but their legacies are usually short-lived, often restricted to their own time and place. Huge disasters happen, but the effects are generally temporary. These things are remembered as curiosities. They give jobs to university professors who make a living off lecturing about them, but they don't necessarily impact our day to day lives very much. But then there's the resurrection of Jesus. The effects of that haven't been restricted to one time or one place or one people. Still today, two thousand years after the event, people have their lives changed and their way of looking at life changed by the resurrection of Jesus. You may believe in the resurrection or you may not – but the world you live in is a different world than it would have been had the story never been told, or had it been forgotten; tossed into the dustbin of history; hopelessly mythologized. You see, I don't believe that the resurrection of Jesus is a myth. I believe it happened. I believe there may be mythic components to it (myth being understood as stories that form a way for us to understand the world around us and to organize what we see around us into those understandable bits) but I also believe that the resurrection of Jesus was a real event in history. I believe it happened. I believe that Jesus rose from the dead. The Roman Empire executed many of Jesus' original disciples because they insisted on proclaiming the resurrection, and I simply don't believe that not a single one of them would have cracked in the face of death – but none did, and you can be quite sure that if even one had it would have been remembered by history. But those original disciples died, because they had seen death defeated with their own eyes. They had seen Jesus die, and they had seen Him alive after. All else aside, that's why I believe in the resurrection. The story of Jesus and the growth of the movement that had sprung up around Him doesn't make sense unless there was a real resurrection connected with it. And the world has been changed. I admit that the Jesus movement hasn't always changed the world for the better. The church has done a lot of bad things over the centuries – and still does sometimes, basically because we might be Christians, but we're still humans, and – like all humans – we're not perfect. But as I've said to many people, on balance, I believe that the church (the Jesus movement, if you will) has done far more good than evil and I for one wouldn't want to live in a world where the hope contained in the gospel and in the resurrection wasn't being offered by someone. And that's our job. You see, we offer hope to the world – and to the many people in the world who all too often live without hope, either because they have so little that they can't imagine anything better; or because they have so much that they can't imagine actually having enough. But we as disciples of Jesus who proclaim Him as both crucified and risen offer hope to this sometimes hopeless world. As bad as it might seem, something good is rising out of it. As tightly sealed as the tomb was, the tomb was still empty. As dead as Jesus was, He was still seen alive. A dark as life might sometimes seem, there's always light – because there's always Jesus, who said He was “the light of the world” and who asked us who dare to be His disciples, to be “the light of the world.” And we take up that challenge and that mission. Why? Because death could not hold Him! And if death could not hold Him nothing should be able to hold us back!
But that's history. In practical terms – what about us? What difference does this make to you and me in our every day lives. Peter, I thought, got to the heart of that question in his letter. He addresses his comments to all those who belong to God – not just those who attend church, or to those who pray every day, or to those who do all sorts of good deeds – but to all those who belong to God, and he sums up the power of the resurrection in our individual lives in this way: “in His great mercy He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you ...”
Peter tells us that God is a merciful and kind and loving God who has given us a completely new life – a new birth as he describes it – which lifts us out of hopelessness or despair or grief and which gives us a “living hope” - a hope that will never die or be taken away from us. This hope frees us from fear or uncertainty; this hopes frees us from the power of death itself because it is a hope founded on “the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,” which is the sign and the promise of death's ultimate powerlessness. And if we can claim the promise that death has been defeated as our own, what else is there that could possibly hold us back?
This is “salvation.” That word has acquired a bit of a negative connotation in recent years – partly because the church hasn't always proclaimed it properly. Often the concept is used as a tool to instill fear: “look what's going to happen to you unless you get saved,” or it's used as an excuse for arrogant pride: “look what I have and you don't!” But it's really just a gift of God. I say “just” a gift from God not because it's not important, but because it's really so simple. God has given it to me, and it's intimately connected with the resurrection of Jesus. If we trust that He was raised from death, then we know the power of God to save us from anything. That's “salvation.” Because death could not hold Him, life and all its challenges cannot hold me – and neither can it hold you. You've been set free – not simply to do as you wish, but to live as God desires – in love and at peace and with grace to be extended to all whom we encounter – friends or enemies, rich or poor, black or white, Christian or Muslim, Hindu or Jew, male or female, young or old – because Jesus died for them all. And because death could not hold Him!
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