RELAX! HE IS RISEN!
April 19, 2009
Acts 4: 32-35
John 20: 19-31
Rev. Dr. Dennis Winkleblack
Prospect United Methodist Church
Bristol, Connecticut
Going through customs as you cross international borders causes a lot of people’s hearts to beat at least a little bit faster – especially if you don’t do it all that often. However, I seem to be especially cursed. Apparently, try as I may, I end up looking like I’ve just committed a crime.
Examples are many. For example, leading a Holy Land pilgrimage in 1986, I came very close to being strip-searched in Cyprus. And then, one time crossing into Canada with our two small children, Diane and Grant, our car was nearly torn apart by the Canadian officials. Only thing I could figure that triggered it was a Bible I had thrown into the trunk which landed on top of everything else. They must have thought it was a cover-up for something evil.
Or maybe it’s just my look. The problem is I get so nervous about custom searches that I try real hard not to look guilty. Which means I end up looking like I’m the leader of a drug-running cartel.
Jeanne anticipates this so she always reminds me to “Just relax! Just relax!” Well, maybe I can and maybe I can’t. But, in just saying those words, my dear wife speaks words that are actually at the heart of the Easter Christian gospel!
How so? Because Christ is risen, we can relax! Because God in Christ has turned the universe upside down, inside out, made champions out of losers, made the first last and the last first, promised everlasting life – a Christian ought to know better than anyone how to relax.
Normally in Methodist churches especially, we don’t spend much time thinking about relaxation. We don’t like to linger long with a faith that isn’t immediately put to work making a difference in the lives and systems of this world. Indeed, ours is not a pie in the sky by and by religion. After all, this active, practical dimension of faith is what attracted many of us to Methodism from another denomination.
The problem, though, is that sometimes in our desire to be action-oriented we find ourselves out of kilter with our faith basics. Sometimes we try to do so much we forget how to just be. Sometimes we forget that relaxing in Christ is at the heart of Christian faith and life.
So, this morning, early in the season of Easter, inspired by a post-Resurrection appearance of Jesus to Thomas, the disciple known for his doubting, known for his inability to relax and trust unless he can see for himself, let’s step back ourselves, if only for these few minutes together and re-connect with a wonderful piece of the Easter gospel message: Relax – Christ is Risen!
Why is this so? Well, let me tell you three reasons why. First, we can relax because our greatest problem now has a solution. What is our greatest problem? Well, don’t tell anyone you heard it in church, but our greatest problem is sin.
One of the favorite New Testament words for sin is a word that means to miss the mark, using archery as a metaphor. You draw the bow, and the arrow speeds through the air, falling to the ground before reaching the intended target. That’s sin.
A new way of understanding this has come in my reading of Eckhart Tolle. Instead of missing the mark, he says what we know as sin is missing the point. Sin – we’re talking capital S sin, not little sins – Capital S Sin means a life that is missing the point.
And this is our lot until we get the point of life which is defined for us in all God did and does in Jesus Christ, who, to use the words of the great Methodist hymn, “breaks the power of canceled sin; he sets the prisoner free.”
With faith in Christ, by seeking to live day by day like Jesus would, the power of sin, the power of evil, the power of selfish preoccupation is broken.
It’s like having bronchitis or something and the doctor gives you antibiotics to take. For awhile you still have bronchitis. But you’re getting better. The power of the disease has been broken. It no longer dominates as it once did. Accordingly, because Christ is risen, our greatest problem – Sin – now has a solution. If we keep on taking our medicine, we’ll get better. So, we can relax.
And secondly, we may relax because our greatest enemy has now been destroyed. What is our greatest enemy? Paul said our greatest enemy is death.
Supposedly in Oklahoma there’s a dirt road with a sign that says, “This road ends in the cemetery.” Well, so do all roads. And we don’t like it. We fear it.
Which is why so many jokes are told about death. They ease the tension a bit. Woody Allen said that “it’s not that I’m afraid of death. It’s just that I don’t want to be there when it happens.”
We fear death and we fear any sign that we’re getting near it. For example, did you know that more money is spent on cosmetics in this country than on all child welfare programs combined. The thing is we want to look better, which means look younger, which means we don’t like to look like we’re aging which probably means we’re more scared of death than we think we are.
Think about it: what would it be like if we could be freed from the fear of death? What if death could be viewed as a normal stage of life – like birth? Wouldn’t that be something?
This isn’t to say that death is to be welcome; not to say life doesn’t matter; not to say we shouldn’t take this earth as seriously as God does who gave his only son so that the world might be saved.
But what would it be like if death itself were not to be feared? What if death were to be understood not as the termination of all possibilities, but as a birth into a new life of unlimited possibilities?
Well, that, you see, is also a message of Easter: We may relax – because Jesus has gone before us to make a new home for us. For as Paul writes, “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting? But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
By his resurrection, Jesus has shifted the focus of our life’s concern from trying not to die – to learning how to live. To live from an empowered, though relaxed center of our being.
A final reason we can relax is that in Christ’s resurrection we have, in the words of another hymn, “strength for today and hope for tomorrow.”
We all have plans for our lives whether we’re 9 or 49 or 90. But while we’re making plans, because we’re stuck with this human condition, we’re, sooner or later, to encounter major stumbling blocks. Maybe it’s a disease or a disability. Or a spouse has a stroke. Or a child has a serious accident. Or we lose our job. Suddenly, all our life’s plans are thrown totally up in the air. How will I ever cope with this?
How? By the power of faith in the God of the resurrected Christ. This is the pearl of great price for many. This is the element of faith in Christ that is for many the very bottom line. When you hear someone begin a sentence by saying, “Without my faith, I don’t know how I would have made it,…” this is what they’re talking about: a living, dynamic power, strength that can transform any bleak situation into one of creative possibility.
“Because He Lives” is a hymn in our hymnal – we’ll sing it in a moment. It’s by Bill and Gloria Gaither. Their inspiration for the hymn was the birth of their son in 1971. They found themselves grateful, of course, but also worried about their son’s future in a world that was so bent on death and destruction.
They decided, however, that with Christ their child could face whatever might come -- because Christ lives. So, they wrote a hymn for their newborn baby. Here’s the first verse: “God sent his Son, they call him Jesus; he came to love, heal, and forgive; He lived and died to buy my pardon, An empty grave is there to prove my Savior lives. Because he lives I can face tomorrow; because he lives all fear is gone; because I know he holds the future, and life is worth the living just because he lives.”
Because Christ is risen and lives, we have power for daily living amidst all of life’s uncertain moments. Knowing this, we can relax.
But we can also relax because not only do we have strength for today, but we have hope for tomorrow. We’re going to spend eternity with Jesus Christ and some very good company.
A favorite story of mine is told about an elderly man dying with cancer.
Visiting the man in hospice, the pastor noticed an empty chair next to the patient’s bed at an awkward angle. “Don’t think me weird, Reverend,” he said, “but a friend suggested that I place a chair next to my bed and imagine Jesus sitting next to me as I talk to him! I’ve not told anyone about this since they might think me strange. But it gives me so much peace to know that Jesus is really with me and that soon I’ll be with Jesus.” The pastor assured him there wasn’t anything strange about it at all.
Several days later the man’s daughter called the pastor and said that her father had just died. The minister asked, “Did he die peacefully?”
She replied yes, that when she left him that afternoon he had had a smile on his face and had told her good-bye. Strange thing, though, she said, he didn’t die in bed, exactly. Rather, the nurses reported he died with his head resting on an empty chair beside his bed.
Because He lives we can face tomorrow. Because he lives all fear is gone; because we know He holds the future, and life is worth the living just because he lives.
Friends, tomorrow we need to get back to work living, loving and working for the sake of the mission of Jesus Christ. Today, though, cherish this good news: Deep down, in the core of our being, because Christ is risen, we can relax, really relax.