Who Needs the Resurrection?

  A sermon on Acts Mark 16:1-8 by Dwight A. Moody Providence Baptist Church, Hendersonville NC   The Empty Tomb appears in the gospel as a footnote to the crucifixion. But in truth and in history, the resurrection and all that it portends is the final phase of the Christian Worldview. In the beginning, God Created the world. But from the beginning, the world in its physical, social, and personal dimensions has been broken and Corrupt. God has been on a mission to Redeem the created order, sending the one and only Son to live and die for us and with us, to launch a movement of love, justice, and peace. God has Elected you and me and a million others to join in this gospel work, to join this movement, this Way of Jesus Christ. And one day, this Beloved Community, this kingdom of God, will come on earth as it is in Heaven. This is the hope that is prophesied by the resurrection of Jesus. This is the future that is set in motion by the Resurrection. Read the text. The earliest of the four Gospels is the one named for Mark. In chapter 16, he describes that first Resurrection Day. Scholars think all that is left of his Easter story is these 8 verses. This stands in stark contrast to the 88 verses he requires to tell the story of Crucifixion. Matthew is similar; there are 105 verses in that gospel devoted to the crucifixion and only 15 to the resurrection. How can we account for this disparity of space? Why so much more attention to death than to life, to the cross than to the empty tomb, to the suffering Savior than to the Risen Lord? The answer must be this: in this life we know much more about death than we do resurrection. We see all around us crucifixion, violence, and decay, and not nearly enough about renewal, and rebirth, and resurrection. Death we know, Resurrection we need. Depression we know, celebration we need. Failure we know, success we need. Weakness we know, strength we need. Dying we see, living we desire. Every day our newspapers and news feeds are full of stories like the crucifixion. Just this week, six workers were on a bridge in Baltimore harbor until they were thrown violently into the bay. Innocent mothers and families are huddled for their lives in Gaza refugee camps. Homeless people are camped in every warm park in America. Prisons are full around the world. Political prisoners are murdered by gangs and governments. We know death and destruction. Our accounts of these things are longer than those in the gospels. Resurrection is in short supply. There is not enough resurrection in the world today; not in public life, not in congregational life, not in personal life. II. The Resurrection of Jesus is the fulcrum upon which all gospel turns. Resurrection is the core meaning of good news. If you have good news to share, there is always some form of resurrection in your story. If you survived COVID, there was an element of resurrection power; if you salvaged a friendship, there was some resurrection power involved; if Ukraine defeats their Russian enemy it will because God sent some resurrection power; if that mother walking from Venezuela with her three children makes it to the Rio Grande, it will be because God Almighty beamed on her some resurrection power. Here is how Resurrection works. Everywhere there is the power of death and decay. Naturalists have a word for it: entropy. That means that the world is running down, running out, running to the end. It will all end, the poet wrote, “not with a bang but with a whimper.” Pushing back against this power of depression, defeat, and death is another source of Energy. We call it God. We call it Spirit. We call it Life. We call it Resurrection. This power of life and love is everywhere, like sunshine. And like sunshine, sometimes it beams broadly, everywhere, evenly; and sometimes, it is focused, concentrated, lasered (we say). You can do this yourself with a simple magnifying glass, focus that beam of sunlight to a pinpoint, enough intensity to start a fire. Laser light is now everywhere, in every field and often in every home. You can own a device that projects a thin, powerful beam of light to achieve some result. Amateurs with laser lights have caused problems when they beam it toward airplanes in the sky. In other words, you can gather light that is normally dispersed evenly over an area and concentrate it in one powerful stream to do something irritating or something amazing. Energy focused like this gets results. The spiritual world is like this as well. Love focused like this transforms people. Joy focused like this generates celebration. Knowledge focused like this heals people and discovers wonders. Power focused like this heals the sick, changes the mind, forgives evil, and raises the dead! This focused power is what I mean by Resurrection Power. I’ll tell you who has had some of this resurrection power directed toward him this week: Mr. John Rapp.  He went into the hospital at 5:30 Tuesday morning and underwent triple bypass surgery and the installation of a heart valve. Four days later, John was home! God sent some of that laser power through the hands of those surgeons, nurses, and technicians. We give thanks to God! God used this kind of focused energy when God called creation out of nothing. God used this kind of lasered power when the sea was parted so the Hebrew people could walk to safety. God focused this kind of available energy on the body of Mary and generated in her womb the baby Jesus. Jesus exercised this kind of intense and focused power. We called him a wonderworker, a miracle worker. He cast out demons; he healed the leper; he forgave the sinful; he welcomed the outcast; he rebuked the self-righteous through the focused power of spirit energy. God focused this kind of power on that dead body laying in that borrowed grave and raised Jesus from the dead. The history of human life on earth and the history of the gospel movement is replete with illustrations of this kind of lasered energy. It is mysterious, it is amazing, it is wonderful. Ruby Bridges had this power when she stepped off the school bus praying the Lord’s Prayer as she integrated public schools in the South. It is what we need today. We need more of this resurrection power. II. The world needs this resurrection power, don’t you think? Where there is violence, we need a beam of high-powered resurrection power. In Gaza, and Mexico, and Ukraine, and Nigeria, we need a big dose of resurrection power to shock somebody to their senses. Where there is poverty and disease, we need resurrection lasers to discover cures, to mobilize wealthy nations and people, and to generate the will to set aside personal and national ambitions to serve the least of these. Where there is depression and sadness, we need the resurrection version of joy and hope. Our theme here is Sing for Joy and Live with Hope. Living out this motto is to live in resurrection power. People tell us there is a global pandemic of depression. We need empathy, we need medicine, we need friends, we need therapy; but most of all we need resurrection. This church needs the resurrection, don’t you think? We came very close to going the way of 4,000 churches a year: shut down, end of the line, goodbye Jesus. We have a big vision but a small cohort. There are great needs all around us, but our money and personnel are limited. Tonight, there will be more people lined up for a hot meal next door in the Providence House than are seated in this sanctuary eager for the bread of life. People are tuned in from a half dozen states, eager to hear what we sing and pray and preach. But last week, when Josh went down with an injury, we had to scramble to get our show up and running. We need this church.  Henderson County needs this church. You need this church. And this church needs a fresh dose of resurrection power. Beam us up, Scottie! May the force be with us! Fill us with your Spirit. Whatever our lingo, all of us need to say to God and to one another, “Here am I, send me. Here am I, fill me, Here am I, use me!” You need the resurrection, don’t you? There are many other things you need: friends for a time of trouble, music to give voice to the joy we feel, animals to love us without question, and books to take us to a thousand places we would not otherwise go. But you also need resurrection, to give you hope in times of despair, to give you strength to survive and thrive, and to take you beyond this life of success and failure to the place where the river of life flows from the throne of God, where the tree of life flourishes all around supplies leaves for the healing of the nations, and where Jesus moves among all of us as we live together in beloved community. Who needs the resurrection? Every time you forgive somebody that has done you wrong, you are using that resurrection power. Every time you stand up against injustice, you are using that resurrection power. Every time you put aside your own dreams and desires to care for somebody who is sick, or wounded, or dying, you are using that resurrection power. Who needs resurrection power today? I do. I need strength for this gospel work with you. I need forgiveness for the shortcomings and failures that have punctuated my life more times than I can count. I need joy to keep going when things around me are failing and falling and frustrating. I need Jesus the Risen Lord to say to me, “Do not be afraid. Keep going. Don’t quit. Open your mind and imagination to all that God can do I have plans for you, plans to do good and not harm.” Do you need a beam of resurrection power in your life today? Ask for it.  Pray for it.  Prepare for it. Wait for it. Desire it with all your heart. Be prepared to do and be with God wants you to do and be. Are you ready for resurrection power in your life? Are you ready to quit some things and start other things? Are you ready to be the person God needs you to be, your family needs you to be, this community needs you to be? This past week, I turned on Tik Tok and listened to the Supreme Court hearing on the abortion pill case from Texas. It was fascinating. All three lawyers presenting the arguments before the Court were women. On April 22, I will again tune in because one of the lawyers on the docket that day is a personal friend of mine. She meets every other week with our Zoom prayer group. Her name is Kelsi. The case before the Supreme Court that day will be homelessness. She represents the plaintiff; the defendant is a small town in Oregon that has outlawed sleeping in public places. It is an effort to push homeless people out of their town to some other city. It is criminalizing homelessness. My friend said this week, “If they prevail, every city in the United States will follow suit to criminalize homelessness. This case is a moral fault line in American culture.” I said you her, “What you are doing is the most important gospel work in America this month: more important than preachers, teachers, poets, and prophets. We need to pray for you.” What my lawyer friend needs, today and every day leading up to that day of oral arguments is resurrection power. She needs a dose of laser energy of the spirit. She needs what only God can give her. She needs resurrection power. God raised Jesus from the dead and God can do amazing things in you and for you and through you. To God be the Glory.