The Hour of Triumph
More important than the date of Easter on your calendar is the event of Easter in your life. From Jesus' resurrection in Matthew 28:1-10 we learn that every hour of every day The Hour of Triumph is yours in resurrected living for the "new you" and the moment of your dying breath will be The Hour of Triumph for you that will begin your resurrected life forever. March 23, 2008.
Can you believe it’s Easter? On March 23? There’s still snow on the ground and this week’s weather makes us even more skeptical about the arrival of spring. Why didn’t we just renegotiate the date of Easter a few weeks into April or May? Good question. Here’s the answer: because Jesus rose on a Sunday the early Christian church wanted to keep the celebration of Easter on a Sunday every year but the Julian calendar in use at the time made that difficult so Pope Gregory adjusted the timetables using a formula stipulating that Easter would be the first Sunday following the first ecclesiastical full moon that occurs on or after the day of the vernal equinox, remembering of course that according to the Gregorian calendar ecclesiastical full moons are not identical to astronomical full moons because they do not account for the full complexity of lunar motion. Huh? I don’t know about you but I have enough confusion in my life without trying to compute an algorithm to figure out the date of Easter. Just tell me when it is and I’ll post in my calendar. Even if it’s March 23. I’ll trust the experts.
Exactly. That’s the message of Easter. Sometimes we get confused about the meaning of life, the journey of death, and how we’re supposed to triumph over troubles Monday through Friday. Quite frankly, it gets a little complicated wondering if we’re supposed to listen to Oprah’s views or The View’s views, believe the democrats or republicans, and listen to the advice of parents or friends or anonymous bloggers. That’s why each of us is here today. To turn to the expert – God. He is the only one who created each of us, giving us life and, more than that, a purpose and plan in this world. And the resurrection of Jesus Christ proves he is the ultimate answer to death. Today we won’t be disappointed or confused to hear more from him about this event on our calendars we have scheduled as Easter, The Hour of Triumph.
Resurrected life forever
The Bible has a reason, beyond introductory information, for recording the exact time of the first Easter when Jesus rose from the dead “after the Sabbath, at dawn, on the first day of the week.” To put it differently, God in his Word is politely stating, “Told you so!” Jesus had previously promised, “After three days I will rise again” (Matthew 27:63). The passing of time doesn’t just tick tock by the persuasion of the clock or arbitrarily ebb away like sand through an hourglass. God created time when he brought the universe into existence, he defined a day as a 24-hour evening and morning, and then he showed off in Old Testament times when he made the sun stand still in the middle of the sky! God promised that a certain amount of time would pass between his death and his resurrection from the dead, specifically, three days. And sure enough, on the third day God rose to life, despite so many who mocked him. Even when he was dead, God had power over time!
You’d need more than your two hands to count the number of lessons to learn from the true Bible story about Jonah, and one of them is this: the Lord God is in control. Nature is not in control. Jonah is not in control. Fate is not in control. God targets Jonah’s getaway ship with a laser-guided storm. God commands a unique fish to swallow Jonah whole, miraculously keeping him inside its belly for three days without drowning or digesting him. Such divine interventions lead Jonah to speak the prayer, “Salvation comes from the Lord” (Jonah 2:9). He said that, by the way, before the fish spit him out. Jonah was still in the fish’s belly when he finally acknowledged that God really does know what he’s doing, can do whatever he wants, and will do everything it takes to deliver repentant sinners from our sin-stubborn mocking that would run away from him if it continued.
That’s really what it is when we tell God he can’t do what he says he can do. We’re mocking him. We may as well stick out our tongue and plug our fingers in our ears when we tell God he can’t forgive a sin that bad, he can’t get me out of this trouble, he can’t make use of me for any meaningful purpose in this life like he uses others, he can’t tell me what to do, and he definitely can’t get the weather right. Oh, he can – and he does! God chased down a reluctant Jonah, changed him during a three-day seminar inside Hotel Fish, and then used him and his new courage to face off with the most powerfully wicked king in the world to save an entire city. God challenged death to a winner-take-all competition for your soul and he won. God always does what he says! God always gets what he wants! Here’s the good news. God wants you to live forever in heaven and says that when you believe in him, and you die, you will be there. “Whoever believes in me will live even though they die,” Jesus promises (John 11:25). It’s not a good idea to mock the God who controls the weather, time, death, and life.
Like Arthur C. Clarke, the famed science fiction writer who died on Wednesday. He once denigrated religion as “a necessary evil in the childhood of our particular species” (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/obit_clarke). He later wrote, “Absolutely no religious rites of any kind, relating to any religious faith, should be associated with my funeral.” Clarke was a visionary author with more than a 100 books about space, science, and the future, including “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Sad to say, contemplating the cosmos brought him no closer to God and to certainty of life after death. Clarke arranged to have DNA in the form of a strand of hair sent into orbit, hoping that, “One day, some super civilization may encounter this relic from the vanished species and I may exist in another time.” May? You have a brighter future than this big-time author when, instead of mocking God, you give God credit for being in control of time and intervening in The Hour of Triumph so that your life will last forever. Believe that when you die on this earth your soul will live on, in heaven with Jesus; more than that, when Judgment Day ends this world forever, your body will be resurrected by God from the dead and join your soul in heaven forever. You will exist in another time! Not because of the science fiction dream of some possible future DNA technology but because of the intervention of God who created you, crucified his Son for you, forgives you, takes delight in you, and wants you with him. Trust him. Love him. Live for him. The Hour of Triumph at Easter means your resurrected life forever, and your resurrected living now.
Resurrected living now
Two times we hear in the Easter account, “Don’t be afraid!” and each time it is spoken to followers of Jesus who are faced with choices and challenges. I wonder sometimes if we are more afraid of living than of dying – more afraid of the choices we must make, the challenges we must take, and their consequences in our lives than of the eternal destiny on the other side of a brain tumor or a fatal accident or flatlining on the operating table. Does living for God scare you? Maybe the better question is what does living for God scare you from? Living for God can scare people from taking their faith to the work place, or from doing what is right when it won’t be rewarded, or from regular church activity and attendance, or from the sacrificial giving it takes to work at a Christian marriage.
Just ask Les Cheveldayoff how hard it is living for God. Les gets crucified six times a week. It’s not that he has a bad job, it’s – well, getting crucified is his job. He gets resurrected six times a week, too, so it’s all good. Les portrays Jesus at The Holy Land Experience, an interactive living history park in Orlando. Ruggedly handsome with long, wavy, brown hair and beard, smiley eyes, and six-pack abs, Les is the modern day prototype of Jesus. “The key to playing Jesus isn’t to be different. The key is this: be yourself,” says Prof. Richard Beck of Abilene Christian University, who also portrays Jesus in a passion play. He continues, “You are never closer to being Christ-like than when you are at your best … when you are feeling compassionate or generous or merciful … I don’t think we are doing people favors by making the image of Christ something only super-spiritual saints are capable of. Sometimes being Jesus is just listening over coffee” (http://www.homileticsonline.com/, “Being Jesus,” March 23, 2008).
Those of us who look nothing like Jesus can, with resurrected living, be very much like Jesus. Doing what is just. Giving charitably to the work of the church and those less fortunate than we. Admitting our fears and facing them with a resurrection faith in God. Serving humbly when asked to take a low position, or without being asked. Talking passionately about God. “Don’t be afraid.” Don’t be a spiritual tourist who visits the church scene like it’s some surreal theme park, separating that part of your life from real everyday living. The resurrection of Jesus transforms you from watching Jesus to being Jesus. Portraying him each day. “You have been raised with Christ,” the Bible cheers (Colossians 3:1). In The Hour of Triumph on that Easter day you were there. You were dead and buried and then raised with Christ. The “new you” is compelled to make Christian decisions each day of the week by the partnership of the divine power of Christ. The “new you” praises God out there as robustly as you praise him in here. The “new you” wants to make resurrected living more of a passion in your life each day and will pursue it Sunday after Sunday after Sunday and every day in between. “Don’t be afraid!” Of dying. Or living.
Easter Sunday is rarely celebrated on March 23 (as a matter of fact, the earliest that we can possibly celebrate Easter is March 22). Most of the people living on this planet weren’t even alive the last time Easter was on March 23 – in 1913. And the next time the world will celebrate Easter on either March 22 or 23 will be over 200 years from now, so this is the earliest you will ever celebrate Easter! More important than the date of Easter on your calendar, however, is the event of Easter in your life. Every hour of every day in your decisions and behavior The Hour of Triumph is yours in resurrected living for the “new you.” And the moment of your dying breath will be The Hour of Triumph for you that will begin your resurrected life forever. Alleluia! Amen.
Preached at Grace Lutheran Church, Milwaukee, WI (http://www.gracedowntown.org/) on March 23, 2008
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