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Pastor G. Michael Rose
April
2000 “He
is risen! He is risen indeed!” Dear
Redeemer Family: An informal survey of preachers shows that the
sermon for Easter Day is widely regarded as the year’s most difficult to
prepare. Why is that? In part, no doubt, it has to do with the awareness that
for a number in the congregation, it will be one of the two times they’ll hear
the gospel message all year. That awareness puts a great deal of weight on a few
minutes of communication. But more likely it comes from the sense that the
message of Easter is simply more than we know how to say. An old story reports that an actor once commented
to a preacher that the difference between them was that actors speak of things
that are not real as if they were, and preachers speak of things that are real
as if they were not. That is probably an unfair assessment, but it does point to
the difficulty not only of preaching, but of speaking our faith in general,
perhaps especially at Easter. The message of the resurrection, however firmly we
may believe it, however real it may be to us, is extremely hard to communicate.
It’s a lesson preachers learn early in their preaching careers. It’s easy to
find illustrations of sin and images of sorrow. It’s even fairly simple to
paint pictures of repentance and forgiveness. But resurrection and new life —
those don’t come so easily. The problem, of course, is that resurrection is
quite simply outside of our human experience. It is impossible, illogical, and
thus, virtually inexpressible. How then do we speak of it? What images can
convey resurrection in a way that does justice to its reality? The scriptural accounts of the events of Easter
never try to explain anything. They simply state what happened, “that he was
buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the
scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:4). They offer no explanation, no apologetic use of
experience. It is simply fact. And this is the foundation on which the faith of
the apostles was built: on fact. This fact, however, is of a remarkable sort. The
risen Jesus appears within history, on ordinary days, in ordinary rooms where
the disciples gathered to eat and to talk. Into this setting comes one who is
human but is not limited by normal conditions of time and space. He eats fish
for breakfast, but also enters rooms where doors are locked. He is just as
always, but also completely different. Can we speak of that which is and make it real?
Only in a limited way. But limitations are the point of this season: our human
inadequacies cannot limit the glory of God. The risen Christ did not abandon his
human body, but rather glorified it. Any image we may use to speak of the
resurrection will fail to do it justice. It is simply too great for us to
communicate fully. But the paradox of the season is that even our poorest
attempts can give some hint of the message of resurrection. The crowning image of Easter is found there in the
joining of human and divine, the promise that “this mortal body puts on
immortality” (1 Cor. 15:54). It
is an image that looks to its fulfillment at the end of time but is also made
real here and now. It says that human life has become infinitely valuable,
because the fact is that the Lord is risen! Amen!
Pastor Rose
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