On February 27th 1991, a mother in a small town in Kansas was doing what she always did on a Wednesday, when the phone rang. It was bad news. Her son, Private Clayton Carpenter, had stepped on a landmine in the Persian Gulf War and was dead. She was shocked and grief stricken. She was angry. Neighbours tried to comfort her but it was of no use. Her loss was too great, the hurt was too deep. Her son would never come home again.
Three days later, she received another phone call. The voice on the other end said, " Hi! mum it’s me Clayton, I’m alive!" At first she couldn’t believe it was the voice of her 23 year-old son over whom she had mourned for nearly three days. She said, "I laughed, I cried, I jumped up and down. I was overjoyed! You just don’t know how much. My son whom I thought was dead, is really alive."
We can only try to imagine what it must have been like for this mother as her tears of grief and loss are turned into tears of unbelievable joy and happiness. What must it be like to be told that a person whom you believed to be dead in actual fact was alive?
Today we are celebrating the most important feast day of the year in the Christian tradition – the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead. We are celebrating the fact that someone who really died, really came alive again. For the women who had stood beneath the cross there was no doubt that Jesus had died. They heard his last words above the jeering of the crowds; they had witnessed his agony and then his death. They helped Joseph of Arimathea get Jesus’ lifeless body down from the cross and carry it to a tomb. They caught their last glimpse of the one they loved as the stone was rolled over the entrance of the grave.
Artists over centuries have tried to capture the pain of those who cared for the body of Jesus. Michelangelo’s sculpture, the Pieta, pictures Mary holding in her arms the torn and broken body of her son. Her expression of grief the same as that of a mother in Israel or Iraq holding a broken child of war, her whole body crying "Why?"
She represents all of us when we are faced with the same cruel reality of death, the pain and sorrow that death brings, the emptiness and the sense of a dead-end that fills our souls. The pain that Mary, and the other women must have felt as they laid Jesus to rest in the tomb must be excruciating. Excruciating is a good word. It comes from Latin which means "from the cross" – it includes pain, agony, despair, in fact any kind of feeling that might be associated with death.
When these same women went to the tomb early on Sunday they found the stone rolled away and the tomb empty. This puzzlement turned to fear as they saw two men with the brightest of bright clothing standing in the tomb.
"Why are you looking among the dead for one who is alive? He is not here; he has been raised." And then with the same excitement and joy that the mother of Private Clayton Carpenter, they raced off to tell the disciples what they had seen and what the angels had told them. "Jesus is alive. He has risen from the dead".
That doesn’t mean there is no more dying. You and I, our loved ones, and strangers in far-off places, will die. Children will still die in bloody conflicts. Cancer and heart disease will continue to take their toll. Old age will still be the prelude to dying.
The sadness sculptured on the face of Michelangelo’s Mary, the Pieta will still be seen on the faces of those who hold a loved one in their arms for the last time. As Mary and the others witnessed Jesus die not in the privacy of a hospital room, but hanging half naked on a cross for all to laugh and jeer at, his death came as cruel blow.
Death hits us hard when someone dear to us passes away or sudden death of someone young, someone whom we thought would be around for years to come. That was the grief of Jesus’ mother, Mary, and all the women who cared who laid Jesus’ body to rest in the tomb.
But Easter morning brings a new light on death and it impact on our lives. There will always be death in this world, but the angel tells the women in Jesus’ empty tomb, he says to us, "You have nothing to fear". The message tells us that even in the cruelest times, there is hope.
When I use the word "hope" I am talking about a certainty, something definite and true. Easter gives us a definite and certain future beyond the grave. The apostle Paul talked about this quite a bit in his letters saying that because of Easter we can be sure that death has been defeated.
Death does not have the last say over our eternal future. Jesus removed the power of death to harm us when he died and then rose again from the dead. Paul said, "The truth is that Christ has been raised from death, as the guarantee that those who sleep in death will also be raised" (1 Cor 15:20). Death is not the end, but the beginning of a glorious new life with God our creator.
Unfortunately, this is not the hope that many people pursue. People in contemporary society live very much for the moment. The house, the car, the overseas holiday, making lots of money are things that consume the time and zap our energy. We live and work as if there will never be an end to the pleasures of this life. We give little thought that all of this will stop the day our heart stops beating. We act as if this life is all there is. Once we die that’s the end of us.
The Danish philosopher Søren Kirkegaard once said that we are like smooth stones. You remember the kind you used to pick up and skip across a lake or dam. The stone would bounce once, twice, maybe three times or more, but then it drops silently beneath the surface gone forever. Is that what happens when we die?
Others have said that when we die its like a candle the flickers and goes out never to be seen again. Its once beautiful light is soon forgotten as the rest of the world go on about living out the rest of their days on this earth.
Still others believe that there is a heaven. A lot of people think there is something beyond the grave but they can’t be certain. Perhaps they remember someone telling them about heaven in Sunday School, or perhaps they can’t bear the idea that when this life is over that’s end of them, they have this vague idea about heaven but don’t know if they will ever get there.
Well! Easter brings the great good news that He is risen. Jesus’ resurrection from the dead has made our own life beyond the grave certain and true. He is Lord and master of death. He has made it possible for all who trust and believe in him to have this life forever. There is no doubt about this. This is certain and true to me.
"Why are you looking among the dead for one who is alive? He is not here; he has been raised." The same question is being asked of us today on this glorious Easter day. Are we still searching for God, are we still searching for Christ in some pseudo, or New Age religion? Or in some humanistic reasoning? To me the answer is very clear.
Life is not a matter of skipping across the surface of a lake like a smooth stone only to end up sinking beneath the surface, gone forever. Heaven is not some vague idea of a place we hope to go to when we die. It is certain and true. Heaven is real. Eternal life is real. Jesus has given us the victory. There is life after this life. Without Jesus’ resurrection Christianity is dead and has no meaning. Therefore, there is no hope of the life to come.
Yes, today we celebrate a victory and hope of life to come. Christ has won the victory for us over the grave and assures us that death will not hold us down. We join with Paul in his shout:
Thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Rev. Samuel King-Kabu
April 11, 2004