It was a moment of melancholy: I had just been to visit somebody and I knew that it was the last time I would see them. It was the final pastoral visit and my heart was cold. I got into the elevator and went down on to the street. Then I did something I had never done before. I went up to a local street vendor and I asked him if I could have a sausage on a bun. I just needed some comfort food. I really didn’t know what else to do. Maybe if I ate something I would feel better. So, I spoke to the vendor and I picked out the largest sausage that was there – I had my degree of carcinogens for three years – all in one sausage! As the vendor was making it, he looked at me and he said, “Father, you are having a rough day aren’t you?”
I said, “Yes, kind of. But, there is always the Resurrection.”
There was a blank look on his face – no expression, no comment. He continued to make the sausage, and by this time there were other people lining up behind me, so I realized I couldn’t continue a meaningful discussion with him at that point. I took my sausage he had wrapped in foil, and he wished me a “Happy Easter” with a smile on his face. I walked around the corner and sat on a wall and thought what had just happened in that encounter between that vendor and me was highly, highly symbolic.
It was highly symbolic because on the one hand this man was most kind: a vendor to care for a priest and to ask him if he was all right was a most generous thing; to have an expression of joy at the end and to wish me a “Happy Easter” he didn’t need to do, but he did. Kindness! Thoughtfulness! Yet, and yet, no recognition of the Resurrection! I did not blame him. In no way am I criticizing him. I just thought it was highly symbolic of what is a prevailing attitude towards Easter itself, namely that Easter is a time of happy endings, Easter is a time of pleasant myths, Easter is a time of lovely ideas, Easter is a time of beauty and prettiness. But so often there is a disconnect between our love and our passion for Easter and the very thing that makes Easter what it is: the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
As we approach this day, I thought “How do we connect or re-connect.” What is the common understanding of Easter with the power of the Resurrection? Then, it dawned on me, our passage from Acts, Chapter 10. It is a wonderful summary of the connection between Easter and the Resurrection. It is a sermon, a very short one by the Apostle Peter. The crowd that he is speaking to is gathered because of a conversation he had just had.
Peter’s conversation was with a man called Cornelius, a Roman Centurion. Even though he was a Roman and represented the oppressive forces of an invading country, he was nevertheless respected by the citizens of Galilee in Israel, in Judah. So there was this conversation. The Centurion had had a vision, and in this vision he was told to know more about Jesus of Nazareth. So he calls on Peter, one of Jesus’ best known followers to come and tell him. But there is a problem, and the problem is this: the Centurion is a Gentile and Peter is a Jew. In those days and in those times, the two would not mix. A Gentile would not go to the home of a Jew, and a Jew would not go to the home of a Gentile. They were two solitudes living on their own. The Centurion did not want Peter to feel compromised in his Jewishness by inviting him, and Peter did not want to compromise the Centurion. Yet, they came together.
Peter starts this remarkable sermon with this incredible phrase: “There is absolutely no distinction, no favouritism in the Good News of God.” In other words, the message is for everyone and for all times. It is not just limited to a Jew like Peter; it is not limited to the Gentile: it is a message for all. And then, to the crowd that had gathered there, who would be shocked and startled by that radical phrase, Peter starts to make the connection between the life of Jesus and the Resurrection.
This passage is known in some circles as The Kerygma, which is the summary of the Good News of Jesus Christ. The summary is simple, and if you ever want to know just the simple life of Jesus take this Order of Service home with you, take this text with you, put it on your dashboard, put it on your refrigerator, put it on anywhere – the screen of your computer – because there it is in a nutshell! This Jesus, who was baptized by John, who was anointed by the Holy Spirit, who went around healing and doing good, who was crucified and nailed on to a tree, who on the third day rose from the dead, who appeared to witnesses who were chosen to bear witness to what he had done, is now the Lord of the living and the dead. And there it is! For those who believe in this, there is the forgiveness of sins, and in this, there is the peace of the world.
It is a magnificent sermon. So simple, so cogent! But, it connects the life of Jesus with the Resurrection of Jesus. The two are bonded in such a way that the Resurrection is actually in this central, and it is essential. The great Swiss theologian Karl Barth, the greatest of the twentieth century in my mind, said this: “The Resurrection is the indispensable pre-condition of the telling of the Good News of Jesus.” In other words, the life of Jesus in effect does not make sense without the Resurrection. The life of Jesus would simply be recorded in the annals of history, and tucked away on a shelf for anyone to read about: a kind and a good man from Judea, who had his followers. His disciples would have been left to obscurity. They would have been a footnote: a group of fanatics who followed a wandering Jewish prophet in the wilderness: nothing more.
It is because of the Resurrection we are here. Because of the Resurrection, everything changed. But sometimes I feel that even for the most devout of us, when it comes to Easter, it is like the ads at the Super Bowl. They spend millions per minute on them. They bring in all the big name stars, like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ellen DeGeneres, to promote a product. The ads are actually worth seeing even if you don’t watch the half-time show or the game. They are incredible!
I don’t know if any of you remember this year when the little puppy went up and rubbed noses with the great big horsey in the field and the whole world went “A-a-ah!” How many times people have Facebooked that to me over the last few months! It is a beer commercial, but the puppy and the horsey are dynamite! Or Jaguar cars, which have crooks and robbers driving them! Don’t know why you want to buy a Jaguar with crooks and robbers driving them, but somehow it was a hit! You remember the ad. Fifty per cent of people say they remember the ads, but they don’t remember the product! And, how many people remember the ads, but don’t even remember the game itself? I mean, who won? Was it New England with Brady, or was it Denver with Manning? Or maybe it was Seattle, and neither of the famous quarterbacks? Come on, people, it was Seattle who won!
You see, you remember the ad, but you don’t remember the game. That is what Easter is like for us. Easter is sometimes a glorious celebration, but we forget the product that brings it all together. The product is so simple: that Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, was crucified; on the third day, he rose from the dead; there were those who witnessed his Resurrection; had a meal with him; and then he disappeared. In him they saw God taking death and changing it; God taking life and enriching it; God taking sins and forgiving them.
Does it change anything? I think it does. The fact that we are here today, tells me that it has some impact. Some of you might be here this morning like that vendor on the street that day. You are here because of the tradition of Easter. You are here because it is spring, and it is just a nice time to do something holy. Maybe you are here because of the joy that it sometimes brings. Maybe you are here to meet your friends and your family, to exchange Easter eggs and say “Happy Easter.” And if you are, good!
But how sad it would be if you were to leave this not having grasped the full power and nourishment of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead! How sad it would be if all you had was the tradition, when in fact the power is that it is through his death and his Resurrection that the very sting of death is removed! While we are still mortal and still die, because of God’s great love and example in Jesus Christ there is the gift of eternal life. That eternal life is something that lives in us and empowers us and fills us for the rest of our days. Maybe you came for the tradition, but you went away knowing that the one thing that is the barrier between us and God, our sins, have been forgiven by Jesus on the tree and by the empty tomb. Don’t just take the ad, take the product.
Some of you may be here like the advertising executives: you’ve come for the music, and it was great! You have come for the beauty, and it is here! You have come for the splendour and the joy and the emotion of the moment, and it becomes a touching moment when you are in a place like this with people you love. It has a romance about it – let’s be honest! If you have come only for that and have not taken away with you the fact that this Risen Christ lives with you now and always in your heart, that this Christ who was raised from the dead is there to be with you in good times and in bad, that this Lord who promised that “I will never leave you or forsake you” walks with you every step of your way right into eternity, if you do not have that, then you have the ad, but not the product!
I was inspired by our brothers and sisters in Aurora this week. They lost their church in a terrible fire. Our hearts went out to them, and we offered them a great deal of love and support. Last Sunday, from this pulpit, I offered our prayers for them, and I have had letters and e-mails and Facebook notes from members of that church who are deeply, deeply grateful. I have been inspired by what some of them have written. They have written things like: “Andrew, we know that we have lost our building, but we have not lost each other”
“We know that our building is in cinders, but our faith flickers and is alive”
“We know that it seems that we have lost everything when in fact we know that we have lost very little.”
And I thought “Therein lies the real power of faith! Therein lies people who know the product, and not just the ads.”
Some of you are here today because you are disciples. This is because deep down in your heart you are here to reaffirm your faith. You are here to deepen it and to renew it and that from it you are praying for and concerned for the world. You are not just looking at yourself, you are looking at the state of the world and the universe that is around us in all its brokenness and war, in all its violence and insurrection, in all its sadness and death and uncertainty, and you are saying that we have a Word, and the Word we have is the word that Peter spoke to Cornelius, and that is that there is no favouritism to God. The things that we create against each other and the barriers that we build between each other, and the violence that we exhibit against one another is an anathema to our God, who has come in Jesus Christ that the world might have peace, for not only did Christ build the broken relationship between us and our Heavenly Father, he also broke down the very barriers of the things that cause us to be at enmity and at anger. We are here today because we believe in the Resurrection and the victory of God’s peace.
While I sat on the wall, I held the sausage in my hands – it was big! It was wrapped in foil and it was warm. I felt like I needed to hold it against myself. I didn’t eat it for a while. I hugged it! It made me feel warm all over! It sort of gave me comfort at that moment. Then I thought, “How many of us honestly really need the warmth of the light of the Resurrection of Jesus in our lives? How many of us deep down do not want a cold and a hard faith, but we want a living and a vibrant faith? How many of us want a faith that is not a source of division, but a form of attraction? How many of us want to have the sense that Christ is not someone who is distant from us in a book on a shelf or is set in times past, but is part of our lives and in us now?” We need the warm of Christ in our lives.
Who of us really wants only the cold ad, when you can have the whole living faith? That is why Easter ultimately calls us to believe. Amen.