Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
April 12, 2009

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

A couple of Sundays ago one of our members asked for a prayer during our time of prayers of the people for a friend who was feeling overwhelmed by her mortality, by the reality of death. She was having trouble dealing with that final reality of human life. I don’t know about you, but I sure don’t have any trouble understanding the struggle that troubled soul is having. I’ve been where she is. I’ve been there within the past two weeks, what with the reality of the death of our sister in Christ Betty Stewart, of my father’s recent life-threatening conditions, and our member Manny’s life-threatening condition and difficult surgery. Beyond that, what passes for news among us is often nothing but a list of deaths, always sensational, whether by natural disaster or criminal act. As I was driving to Eugene to be with my dad almost two weeks ago as he faced risky surgery I too had the thought: There’s just too much death!

I imagine that Jesus’ friends and disciples must have been thinking much the same thing on that first Easter morning so long ago. Their friend had been crucified by the Romans, snuffed out in the prime of his life as a threat to public safety and to the power of the Roman Empire. And he had been so much more than a friend. He had inspired them, and even more than that. He had shown and taught them about God in a whole new way. He had taught them that their religious authorities were wrong when they said that what God wanted from them was ritual purity and animal sacrifice. He had told them that the authorities were wrong when they called them sinners, and they knew that he was right. He told them that poor, marginalized people like them are God’s special favorites, and he said it with such authority and with such power that they knew that he was right. And there was even more about him than that. He had seemed to them to be in some mysterious way the very presence of God with them. He had seemed to be life itself, life the way God intends it to be for all people. But death had claimed even him. The Romans had killed him. He was dead. About that there was not a shadow of a doubt. His body had been prepared and laid in a tomb the way dead bodies always were. Death had won. He was gone. There was just too much death.

That truth must have seemed overwhelming to those friends of Jesus’ whom we call the Disciples. They just have thought: How could someone like him die? All humans die, of course; but he had seemed so different. He had seemed so divine. How could death claim even someone like him? At least it’s easy for me to imagine that some of them had thoughts like that. I have thoughts like that. If Jesus was, as we confess, the Son of God, how could he die?

Well, for us he was the Son of God. He was, as John says, the Word of God made flesh, nothing less than God present in the world in the person of Jesus. But all of that doesn’t mean he wasn’t human. He was human. He was fully, completely, authentically human. As human as you are. As human as I am. And that meant that some day he would die. It didn’t necessarily mean that he would get crucified, but if he hadn’t been crucified he would have died some other way. All humans die. All creatures die. That’s why we are sometimes overwhelmed by that feeling “There’s just too much death!”

Then it happened. Then the impossible actually happened. All of a sudden he wasn’t dead any more. His faithful Disciple Mary Magdalene and the other women had gone to the tomb to do what was customary to do for a dead body, to anoint it with spices. But they couldn’t perform that sacred act because—he wasn’t there! The tomb was empty! He had risen! He had risen from the dead! Later, as we read in other Gospel accounts, the Disciples saw him. They spoke with him. They ate with him. He was different somehow. Resurrected not merely resuscitated as his friend Lazarus had been. But it really was him, and he really wasn’t dead any more. He had been dead, and now he wasn’t. Death hadn’t won after all. He had died, but now he lived. It wasn’t possible, it was just true. They were left to ponder what it could possibly mean. Christians have been pondering ever since what it could possibly mean. We too are left to ponder what it could possibly mean, what it does mean for us here this morning.

Here’s one thing that I think it means that seems particularly important to me this morning. With us humans it indeed often seems that there is too much death, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ shows us that, while that certainly is how it seems to be with us humans, it’s not how it is with God. With God it’s just the opposite. With God there isn’t too much death, there is too much life. With God there is too much life to let death have the last word. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ says specifically and in the first place that there was too much life in Jesus for death to have the last word. But remember that Jesus was fully human. So the Resurrection of Jesus Christ says that there is too much life in us for death to have the last word. That’s because we are made in the image and likeness of God; and in God there is life, way too much life for death ever ultimately to overcome. We see too much death. There is no doubt about that. The ultimate reality, however, is that there is too much life, too much life with God, for death ever to have the last word.

That doesn’t mean that death isn’t real. Of course it is. We all know that; butt it does mean that death isn’t the end that it so strongly appears to be. It means that with God life ultimately defeats death, not the other way around. I’m not going to try to tell you how that works or what life after death looks like. I believe that what our ultimate life with God looks like remains for us mortals a mystery. We don’t and can’t know what it is because no human has ever experienced it and returned to tell us about it. We can’t know what everlasting life with God is like, but we can live in faith that death is not the end. We can trust our loving, gracious God beyond this life as we trust God in this life. We can trust that there is too much life in God for death ever to have the last word. We can trust that that is true because we see it in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. We can trust that that is true because in Christ’s Resurrection we see that in God is life.

God is life. In God there is too much life for death to be the ultimate reality. Death isn’t the ultimate reality. God is the ultimate reality, and in God there is life—abundant life, overflowing life, unending life. In God there is too much life for death to overcome it all. In God there is so much life that with God life never ends, not Jesus’ life, not our lives. Of that truth Easter is God’s great sign and seal. And we can live with our mortality. We can live with the reality of death, even with the reality of what seems to be too much death. We can live. We can truly, fully, authentically life because in the Resurrection we see that God is life. With God we have unending, unconquerable life.

Too much death? No. Not really. Not ultimately. Rather, too much life. So much life with God that death is never then end. That’s what Christ’s Resurrection means. That’s why we celebrate. That’s why today is the most festive day in the Christian calendar. That’s why in the face of all the death we see we shout with joy: Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Amen.