Easter: Why All The Fuss?

Millions upon millions of dollars are spent each year in advertising trying to get people to associate with one brand over another.  Super Bowl Sunday is famous not just for the pigskin, but for the usually very creative and extremely expensive commercials that are shown.  All to get us to choose one brand over another.  Marketers want us to wear their label for all the world to see.

                The cross of Christ is certainly one of the most lasting symbols in human history.  Once a symbol of inhumane torture, it is now worn by millions as a sign of faith and hope.   What is it about the cross that has commanded such market share in the lives of so many over the millennia?  What follows is a recollection of the key things the original audience understood about the cross, and the subsequent resurrection as well. 

Let’s make a deal: What do I have to do to get God on my side?

One frantic unemployed parent searches for a job and as he does makes God an offer: help me land a job and I’ll give up my bad habits, start going to church, and eat a page of the Bible every day for breakfast.  What he’s really saying is, “I’ll sacrifice what I want in order to gain your favor.” 

A realtor prays before she shows a house that, if sold, will give her the commission she needs to keep her own mortgage from defaulting: “God help this deal go through and I’ll make a big offering with the commission.”  What she’s really saying is, “I’ll sacrifice a little cash to get God on my side.” 

A woman has a streak of bad luck – a fender-bender takes her car out of commission, she gets jury duty, and her health insurance premium is getting raised 20%.  She thinks that God is getting after her because she hasn’t made it to church in forever and has made some mistakes that she knows probably ticked God off.  What she’s really thinking is, “if I would have sacrificed some time for church and given up some indulgences God would not have done this.” 

A guy struggling with a pornography addiction discovers he has cancer.  Surely it is God’s wrath – if he only would have sacrificed his porn, God would have laid off his wrath toward me.  What he’s really thinking is, “God is judging me because I was unwilling to sacrifice my dark desires for his acceptance.”
During Jesus' ministry, he encountered a man born blind.  Everyone assumed it was a sign of God's wrath (John 9).  But Jesus had something else to say about it.

Our ancestors used to offer animal sacrifices to win God’s favor – to make them right with God – to purify them in order that their worship – their lives – would be blessed by God.  It was an old version of Let’s Make A Deal.  But the early Jesus followers understood that something shifted when Christ endured the cross…

Hebrews 9:13-14 (New Living Translation)

 ¹³ Under the old system, the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a young cow could cleanse people’s bodies from ceremonial impurity. ¹⁴ Just think how much more the blood of Christ will purify our consciences from sinful deeds so that we can worship the living God. For by the power of the eternal Spirit, Christ offered himself to God as a perfect sacrifice for our sins.

Let’s Make A Deal may make for a moderately interesting game show, but it stinks for faith, and the cross is letting you know that that show is cancelled.  When Jesus healed the blind man, he was making a statement that he had authority to cancel the power of sin that keeps us out of relationship with God.  The cross took it to the next level.  The cross says you can’t get God to love you more than God already does – infinitely, completely, unconditionally.

Broken Dream: How can I ever make amends with God?

One of the most famous stories of Jesus involved a woman caught in the very act of adultery (John 8).  She was brought before Jesus, thrown at his feet in the middle of a sermon.  There was no denying her wrongdoing.  She blew it.  She certainly hurt herself.  But she also hurt the guy she was with, even if he didn’t know it yet.  And she hurt his wife and kids.  He was as guilty, to be sure, but we don’t know anything about him.  All we have is the woman.  She must have felt absolutely miserable and ashamed.  Her actions caused many dreams to crumble that day.

                God has made an incredible creation.  It was and is God’s dream.  It is beautiful and wonderful to behold, and is designed to work incredibly well in harmony.  When we blatantly disregard the best option and choose poorly, we begin destroying that dream which ultimately is everybody’s dream.  When we hurt people around us, when we abuse the world in which we live, when we destroy when we could redeem, it’s another ding in the dream, taking some of the beauty away.  Sometimes we don’t even know we’re doing it.

                Intuitively, I think we realize this along the way, and it causes some anxiety.  We realize we’ve offended the very God of everything, and we’re not sure how to make peace with God, who holds all the cards.  The earliest Jesus followers saw that the cross addressed this as well…

Colossians 1:19-20 (New Living Translation)

 ¹⁹ For God in all his fullness
      was pleased to live in Christ,
 ²⁰ and through him God reconciled
      everything to himself.
   He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth
      by means of Christ’s blood on the cross.

Another way to think of the cross is to see it as God making peace with us, which we could never do on our own.  The woman thrown at Jesus totally got this, because in the face of demands to stone her, Jesus demanded that the sinless among them be the first to throw the rock.  Nobody did, and Jesus told the woman she was not condemned.  Peace had been made, given to her by Jesus.  This alludes to an incredibly deep love that God has for us and all people.  On God’s end of things, there’s peace between you and God, and when we look at the cross, we can believe it.

Guilty as charged:  How do I get an acquittal when I know I’m guilty?

A student cheats on a test to stay on the Honor Roll.  An employee fudges his expense report to pad his wallet.  A wife finds herself in an affair.  A man sits in a jail cell with the weight of murder on his conscience.  A man spirals downward in his addiction as he tries to cope with the gravity of his situation.  Not only has he hurt himself, but his addictive behavior has cost the future of his children, and seriously damaged his wife.  A man wakes up one day and realizes that he has never really given a thought to the plight of the poor.  He has enjoyed all the comforts that his money can afford, without considering how he might be able to make life better for many others if his apathy wasn’t so strong.  All feel horribly guilty.  All have no doubt that God sees them as guilty, too, which adds to their despair.  God may love other people, but not someone like them.  The earliest Jesus followers felt this way, too, and discovered that the Christ on the cross event spoke to their dismay…

Romans 3:23-24 (New Living Translation)

 ²³ For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. ²⁴ Yet God, with undeserved kindness, declares that we are righteous. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins.

In ways difficult for us to fully appreciate, the cross was a statement of acquittal.  We are free to go.  God is far more interested in helping us move forward than defining us by all the wrongs we’ve committed.  There were two other men hanging on crosses the same day as Jesus (Luke 23).  One of them, recognizing who Jesus was, asked to be remembered, which was really a plea for mercy.  Jesus told him plainly, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.”  Our hope is not in what we can offer as our own defense – that would be absolute failure.  Our hope is in God’s mercy and love.  Because of the cross, we can stop self-defeating talk, and rid ourselves of the idea that God is desperate to judge us.  Instead, we can live with freedom every day.

Enslaved to the Script: How can I lose an old identity?

Adulterer.  Drug addict.  Alcoholic.  Workaholic.  Sometimes we feel enslaved to the system we find ourselves in.  In families, you’re the first born leader who must always perform and lead.  If you’re the youngest, you’re the clown.  If you’re in the middle, who cares?  Try to mess with these deeply entrenched roles, and you’ll meet resistance.  Or maybe it’s a school dynamic or social dynamic.  You feel like you can’t measure up to the latest fashion trends.  Or you’ve been labeled a jock or a nerd or a stoner or a slut or a nobody.  When you’re labeled, it feels like you’re on rails and can’t get off.

                There was a woman Jesus encountered in his ministry who lived with her labels in a small village every day.  Her community reminded her in lots of subtle and not-so-subtle ways who she was, and what she was (John 4).  She was stuck – a slave to what others said she must be.

                The earliest Jesus followers struggled with these same things.  When they considered the cross, they realized another really important facet…

Ephesians 1:7 (New Living Translation)

⁷ He is so rich in kindness and grace that he purchased our freedom with the blood of his Son and forgave our sins.

Whatever form of slavery we experience, that we think so defines us, we get a huge message from God when we think of Jesus dying for the cause on the cross.  It’s like God is saying, “You are so much more than whatever has enslaved you.  You are first and foremost mine.  I am doing this so that you know how far I am willing to go to show my love and commitment to you.”  The earliest Jesus followers found a new identity.  They no longer identified themselves by their labels they earned or were put upon them.  Their lives were changed as they walked in a new awareness of who they really were – affirmed by the event of Christ on the cross.

Death in all its forms:  How can I live without fear?

Have you ever heard of the term helicopter parents?  These are parents who hover over their children at all times to makes sure nothing bad happens to them.  Ever.  It’s natural, of course, to protect your kids, but sometimes we can become so fearful of whatever looms around the next corner that it goes beyond healthy.  For some people, it’s a undercurrent of fearing the worst.  For others, it’s paralyzing.  The ultimate fear, of course, is death itself.  We spend billions of dollars just to make sure we don’t look like we’re nearing death – holding it off as long as possible.  But death comes.  Sometimes in our sleep after a good long life.  Sometimes completely unexpectedly.  Death is a scary thing.  People have been freaking out about it forever, including the first followers of Jesus.  When they looked at the cross, and the subsequent resurrection, however, they saw something really helpful…

2 Timothy 1:10 (New Living Translation)

¹⁰ … He broke the power of death and illuminated the way to life and immortality through the Good News.

John 5:4-5 (New Living Translation)

⁴ For every child of God defeats this evil world, and we achieve this victory through our faith. ⁵ And who can win this battle against the world? Only those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God.

Instead of being the arch enemy that can never be overcome, they saw in Christ a victory over death itself.  One man named Lazarus who we’ve looked at carefully the last couple of weeks was actually dead and then brought back to life by Jesus – after four days in a tomb (John 11).  You can be sure that he wasn’t too concerned about death after that experience – God could handle it.  Whatever your worst fear is, including death, Jesus was and is saying, “I can handle it.”

So, the cross as a brand has stuck through the ages.  And now you know why.  Christ’s event on the cross was a massive statement that addresses many of our most challenging questions in life.

Other than the obvious point that Jesus has victory over death, is there more to the resurrection than we thought?  Or is Easter overrated?

The Resurrection…

It’s not a new idea – happens all the time all around us.  Our stage this morning is full of Easter lilies.  Lilies are popular around the world in literature as well as gardens.  They are a symbol of death and resurrection.  You place a dead bulb in the ground in the fall, and in the spring, new life emerges.  Jesus spoke quite a bit about this reality of life coming from death, and that one must precede the other.  Our bodies live this pattern all the time – we each have a new set of skin every week or two, without paying a dime to plastic surgeons or Mary Kay.  If any of you have eaten today, you subtly celebrated this reality, too.  Nothing you ate was alive when you ate it.  Vegetables, meat – all of it dead, and all of it producing life in you.

For John, it was the sign of a new era.  There was a deep significance for one of the Bible’s most profound writer’s.  John was a deeply theological devotee of Jesus.  In the book which bears his name, John recounts Jesus’ ministry, organizing it around seven signs leading up to Jesus’ death.  Seven was a number of completeness.  In the Bible’s first book, Genesis, the creation account was spread of seven “days”.  John included the biggest sign after Jesus’ death – an eighth sign.  For John, an early follower of Jesus and leader among the earliest Christians, John saw the eighth day as a new beginning, the start of a new age, a time when new creation could begin to emerge.  For those who learned the ways of Jesus, they experienced just how true this resurrection was.  The resurrection was a story for everybody to latch onto, and it worked.

It informs how we live everyday, and is a daily pursuit.  None of it really makes much difference, however, if we don’t do anything with it.  All of the things the cross and resurrection mean are forever present and will never go away.  But whether or not any of it has any bearing on your life or creates any fruit worth eating is up to us.  Jesus modeled with his very body the cycle of death and life, and he invites us to apply the principle in our life every day.

Do you have life totally nailed?  Great.  You are free to carry on in your perfection.  It’s a real honor to be in your presence.  But for the rest of us who know there are parts of our lives that are out of synch, not in rhythm, and out of tune with God, and therefore not producing the best life has to offer, we can act.  It starts with a simple acknowledgment and acceptance of the invitation before us.  It means saying yes to the new reality that is celebrated today.  But it also means letting some things in us and about us die so that the new can be born.  Jesus said it’s like being born again, and he’s right.  New life.  New day.  Death has no power.  Life wins.  Every day is a new opportunity to follow the Spirit of God into the next chapter of better.  How do you respond?

For further reading, I highly recommend Rob Bell's book, Love Wins, in which he raises some provocative questions and offers great insight into the beauty and fulness of the work Jesus Christ came to do.  You will likely recognize his influence in this blog, particularly regarding the resurrection.