The Lord is Risen! He is Truly Alive!

Happy Easter everyone, and as we begin this most joyous of seasons, we are also beginning a new message series which we will be calling “Groundbreaking.”

We usually describe an event as “groundbreaking” if it is something that has never been done, seen, or perhaps even thought of before. It is new, pioneering, and innovative. It might be something that changes history or shapes culture. It might be something that redefines the way people live and act and work or relate to one another. Think of the Gutenberg printing press, the American Revolution, the Wright Brothers, the first man on the Moon, and Steve Jobs introducing the iPhone. All of these were groundbreaking events.

Easter celebrates the most groundbreaking event in history. An event that was truly groundbreaking in every sense of the word. Billions of people all around the world this morning are gathering to celebrate a Jewish carpenter from an obscure village who lived 2,000 years ago. Think about that. Think about the life of Jesus of Nazareth. He never wrote a book. He never held political office. He never starred in a movie. He never invented anything. He never traveled more than 30 miles from his hometown, and yet, here we are this morning celebrating his life. How is that even possible? How do we even know the name Jesus of Nazareth? By all logic in any reasonable standard, he should have receded into the obscurity from which he briefly emerged. 

The historian's test of an individual’s greatness is what did he leave? Did he start people thinking along fresh lines with a vigor that persisted after him? By that standard, regardless of what you might believe or think about him, Jesus of Nazareth certainly stands first. He's had more influence on history than any person. And it all comes down to the event we celebrate today, the groundbreaking event that is Easter. It all began one Sunday morning.

Before we get to Sunday, lets take a look at the previous Friday, the day that Jesus was beaten and bloodied and then nailed to a cross as punishment for trumped up charges by people who were jealous of his success. He died an agonizing death for sure. Two wealthy, well-connected friends requested permission to secure his body. They cleaned and anointed it and then bounded with burial cloths as was the custom of the day. And then they placed Jesus' body in a tomb, a cave really carved out of a rock secured with a giant stone at its entrance.

The following day, Saturday was the Sabbath Day in which pious Jews would not have traveled or done other work. So for that reason, and perhaps partly out of fear, Jesus' friends and family stayed away. They stayed out of sight, privately mourning his death and the end of their hopes and dreams in him, which brings us to Sunday morning. Mary Magdalene, came to the tomb very early while it was still dark. She saw this stone was removed from the tomb. It's the gospel of Mark that tells us that she assumed someone had rolled the stone away, the obvious assumption doubtlessly suggesting foul play. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple whom Jesus loved, that's John and told them they have taken the Lord from the tomb and we don't know where they have put him. 

Peter and John ran to the tomb. They both ran, but John ran faster than Peter and arrived first. He bent down and saw the burial cloth there, but he did not go in out of respect for Peter, who was the leader of the apostles. When Peter arrived, he went in and saw the burial cloth there and the cloth that covered Jesus' head, not with the burial cloth but rolled up and placed separately in a separate place. 

If someone had moved the body, the cloths wrapping the body would have gone as well. But there they were and neatly arranged, deliberately placed and folded. A grave robber would hardly have taken time to unwrap the body much less neatly and deliberately arrange the cloths. The scene just didn't make any sense.

Then John went in, John saw, John believed. He sees the same scene that Mary Magdalene and Peter saw, but John comes to a conclusion about this confusing scene and he does so very quickly. He concludes, Jesus is risen from the dead. As a conclusion, that's inconceivable. It's absurd. People don't do that. People don't rise from the dead. The idea of defies logic and reason and sense and science, but it didn't defy his experience because John had an experience. He had a relationship with the living, loving Lord Jesus, and on the basis of that relationship, he was able to believe. 

Besides the empty tomb, there is another nagging fact that historians and theologians really cannot explain. The nagging fact is that the Apostles went on to testify not only did they see an empty tomb, but they saw the risen Jesus. They had absolutely no reason to make such a contention. They didn't profit by it. In fact, just the opposite. Their lives were threatened. They were bullied and beaten. They were persecuted and imprisoned. Eventually, all of them would die for it, but they refused to change their story. Far from it, they insisted on telling others and it was their intention to tell everyone. 

The followers of Jesus didn't rally around his death; they rallied around his resurrection. They began to spread that message, the message that he was risen from the dead and that was their core message. Only as people rallied around that core message, did they begin to embrace the rest of the Christian message, a message that's filled with groundbreaking concepts and ideas, groundbreaking concepts like the idea that that women and children have value. In the ancient world, women and children were treated like property. Men could do with them as they liked. But Christian shared the groundbreaking teaching of a risen savior who valued and welcome children, who invited women like Mary Magdalene to follow him and, and learn from him and serve on his team. Other rabbis didn't do that. Nobody did that. It was groundbreaking. Groundbreaking ideas like caring for the sick and lifting up the poor. In the ancient world, if you were sick and poor, you were out of luck. But Christ's followers share the groundbreaking message that caring for the sick and lifting up the poor are high values that we should all hold. Groundbreaking ideas like the idea that individuals have dignity and value apart from their power or position or property independent of tyrants, free from everybody, whoever you are, has dignity and worth.

On the day after Jesus' death, it looked as if whatever small mark he might've made on the world would rapidly disappear on that Friday and Saturday. His closest friends and followers walked away, frightened and alone and convinced that he was finished, that he had failed and that his message would fade because that's what happens, doesn't it? Normally, when someone dies, anyone, their impact on the world begins to lose influence over time. Jesus inverted that. His impact grew after his death. The resurrection proves that Jesus was who he said he was and he could do what he said he could do. Because if you can predict your own death and engineer your own resurrection, I suppose you can pretty much do anything. 

Here's another thing he said he could do. He said that because he could rise from the dead, we could too. His friends and followers can follow that same pattern from death to life. And that's why Easter's groundbreaking for everybody. You know, the mortality rate in this country still hovers around 100%. Death is inevitable, and that's the bad news for sure. But the good news is this, you and I have nothing to fear. We have no need to fear of death when our life is linked to Christ in a living, loving relationship that simply characterized by daily conversation with him. Your role and mine is simply to believe and receive, to believe in the truth of the resurrection and to receive the gift of life that he gives to us. It's given in baptism.

In a moment, I'm going to invite you to stand and do something that we do every Easter Sunday. We're going to renew the promises that we made in our baptism, promises to believe and to receive, and then we're going sprinkle you with the water of baptism, the Easter water. The resurrection was the most groundbreaking event in all the human story, but it's entirely up to you to receive it into your story.