Return to Sermon Archive  Return to Church Home Page

Text: John 20:1-18

In one of Flannery O'Connor's short stories, entitled A Good Man Is Hard To Find, she sketches the character of an escaped convict known as "The Misfit." The Misfit is on a crime spree. He accosts a family that is out for a drive and one by one he has one of his two sons take each of them out into the woods and shoot them. First he kills the father and son, then the little girl, the mother and the baby. Finally only the grandmother is left.

The grandmother puts forth every argument she can think of to save her life. She first calls upon his sense of chivalry: "You wouldn't shoot a lady, would you?" "I would hate to have to," he replies. She then appeals to what she thinks must be The Misfit's better nature: "I just know you're a good man," she tells him. "Nome," he says, "I ain't a good man." Grasping at straws she encourages him to pray to Jesus for help: "I don't want no help," he says. "I'm doing all right by myself."

Every attempt to dissuade him fails. And in reality she knew that her arguments, her pleadings would not succeed. How did she know? Because of something he had said earlier. He had told her that he believed in a world "where the lame don't walk, the blind don't see, and what's dead stays dead." And in the end the Misfit kills her too.

I can't help but think of this gruesome story on Easter Sunday. The resurrection challenges our basic belief that "what's dead stays dead."

Today I want to suggest that most of us live in a world where the dead stays dead.

Take the point of view of science. In science, life does not come from the dead. A rock does not suddenly stand up and walk away. When a horse dies in the field, it will soon be rotting, not trotting across the field again. Dead things stay dead.

Science challenges our resurrection story. Look in the laboratory - dead things stay dead. Any scientist will argue all day long that virgin births do not occur in humans, and that once you die, you are dead. Science will have none of this resurrection business.

When we see the bones of a skeleton in the biology lab, we know it is not going to live again.

And most of us live in a dead-things-stay-dead world.

Don't give me any ideas about a Polly Anna world with platitudes like everything turns up roses and every cloud has a silver lining. This is a world where people are being blown up with bombs every day. This is a world where tensions are so great that suicide bombers are volunteering every day. This is a world where the bird flu threatens to wipe out whole populations, where hurricanes devastate the Gulf coast, where tsunamis wipe out the coastlines from Indonesia to Pakistan.

And yes, there are "miracles" where cancer seems to disappear, but those walking miracles will also one day die. Every time you tell me of a person who was miraculously cured, I can point to ten who died.

This is a world where children are abused, where pornography is am multi-billion dollar industry, where adults and teenagers are addicted to drugs and alcohol, where friendships erupt in anger and someone gets shot! This is a world where thieves will break in and steal your priceless possessions.

This is a hard, black-and-white world, not some glossy 8X10 color photograph air brushed to take out all the pain and sorrow. This is a world where the dead stays dead.

Or is it? Or is it?

But the Bible talks about a world where the dead do NOT stay dead.

Most of the Old Testament has only a vague idea of the afterlife as a general place of the dead. But there are hints that come late in the writing of it. Daniel provides an example of a Hebrew vision of resurrection: "Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever" (Daniel 12:2-3)

Ezekiel has a vision of resurrection in the valley of dry bones. When Ezekiel was asked the question, "Mortal, can these bones live?" Ezekiel answered, "O Lord GOD, you know." and bone came to its bone, sinews appeared, then flesh. And an army stood up. It was a vision of the resurrection that foreshadowed the resurrection of Jesus.

In the New Testament, resurrection is at the core of its message. Throughout the centuries of Christianity's history, scholars have debated the reliability of the biblical accounts of the resurrection, point out the inconsistencies among the gospels and the claims of Paul. They have suggested conspiracy theories of how the disciples staged the whole thing, using the resurrection to justify their message. Yet, despite their findings that there is no historical proof for the resurrection, many of the most skeptical voices cannot deny that something happened in the days, months, and years after Jesus was crucified that radically changed the lives of those who knew him or knew of his life. At the heart of the New Testament is a gospel of radical transformation, a gospel of resurrection.

Our denomination is founded on resurrection principles. Alexander Campbell wrote that there are "seven Facts that constitute the whole gospel:" the birth, life, death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and coronation of Jesus Christ.

Resurrection language enriches our faith and shapes our lives. If we understand the Easter experience of the first followers of Jesus as a realization that resurrection is always present, if we only have eyes to see and ears to hear.

It is no accident that Easter comes in the springtime. Rebirth shatters the power of winter and new life bursts forth from where there has been only death. Seeds fall to ground, but in the spring they erupt into bloom. The hills really are alive with a profusion of color. For those with eyes to see, resurrection is always present.

A true story is told of two women in a concentration camp. Gerta Klein and her best friend, Ilsie, were together in a concentration camp amid all the suffering and horror. One day Gerta was on a work detail. The weather was terrible and in the midst of all the misery that was going on around her, there she saw it! She never dreamed she would see it. But there she saw it! Right there on the ground! She picked it up and put it in her hand, found a leaf and wrapped it up, and put it in the pocket of the ragged coat she was wearing. All day long she was careful not to let anything happen to it.

At the end of the day when she got back to the concentration camp, there she bore it from her pocket. There as a gift of love, as an expression of compassion, she gave to her best friend, Ilsie, that which she had found and treasured all day long. There she bore it in her hands wrapped in a common leaf. There it was, a beautiful ripe raspberry! The raspberry was the symbol of hope that kept them going in incredibly difficult circumstances. Resurrection is there for those who see.

Resurrection gives us hope. As Jurgen Moltmann argues in his classic Theology of Hope, resurrection hope proves its power "in contradiction to our present experience of suffering, evil, and death." Suffering, evil and death are the norm in a dead-stays-dead world. Resurrection gives hope of triumph over tragedy, of a radical transformation of this dying world.

The volunteer tutor was asked to visit a nine-year-old in a large city hospital. She took the boy's name and room number and was told by the boy's teacher that they were studying nouns and adverbs in class. It wasn't until the tutor got to the boy's room that she realized the boy was a patient in the hospital's burn unit. No one had prepared her to find a nine-year-old so horribly burned and in such great pain. She felt she couldn't just turn and leave, so gathered her courage and entered the room.

"Hi, I'm the hospital teacher," she stammered. "Your teacher asked me to help you with nouns and adverbs." And, clumsily, she launched into the lesson.

The next morning a nurse called the tutor. "What did you do to that boy?" The tutor immediately began a tearful apology, but the nurse interrupted her.

"No, no, no. You don't understand. We've been very worried about him. But since you were here, he's fighting back , he's responding to treatment. It's as though he's decided to live."

The boy explained that he had given up hope, until the tutor came. "I figured they wouldn't send a teacher to work on nouns and adverbs with a kid who's dying, would they?" That hope brought radical transformation. ("Hope in the active voice," Connections, Solemnity of Christ the King, Nov. 1998.)

Resurrection gives us reason to oppose suffering. God is opposed to a world where the dead stay dead; and calls us to do the same. While suffering as a human, Jesus was uncompromisingly opposed to suffering, and calls the church to resist sin and suffering as well. Jesus is on the side of blessing, healing, health, rebirth, life and resurrection.

John Donne wrote a famous poem in the 1500s that said:

DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for, (you) are not so,

For, those, whom (you) think, You do overthrow,

Die not, poor death, nor yet can (you) kill me.

One short sleep past, we wake eternally,

And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:14, "If Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain."

The radical transformation of resurrection tells us there is hope in the tombs of despair, love is stronger than hatred, and that God's "yes" to life is louder than humanity's "no."

I remember reading years ago about a woman who was devastated by her divorce. She became so blue and despondent that she even considered suicide. But finally she left her children with her mother and took a long trip out West to think and pray. One day she found herself sitting, high up a mountain on a rock ledge, just staring at the ground. Suddenly, as she was praying, she realized what her eyes were focused on. She was looking at a small tree that was growing out of the crack in a huge boulder. She wondered at the ability of that tree to grow on a rock! And suddenly she realized, "If God can make a tree grow out of a rock, then surely he can bring something good out of the dryness of my life!" And she got up from that place with hope and resurrection in her heart.

We have a choice in life. We can live like the Misfit of Flannery O'Connor's story - "where the lame don't walk, the blind don't see, and what's dead stays dead." Or we can be people of the Resurrection, a people who believe that hope is never lost. If God had the power to raise Jesus from the dead, then surely he has the power to bring our dead and discouraged spirits back to life again.