The verdict’s in. The word’s got out. The tomb’s empty and the Lord is Risen. LOVE WINS
Boys and girls, thanks for that brilliant summary of the whole story of Easter, especially the part about the cross. It’s really important that we hear that story today because otherwise we leap from Palm Sunday to Resurrection and only the folk who made it to the Good Friday service pause to spend time thinking about Jesus’ death.
But the cross, and the story of what was happening there is what Easter’s all about.
If you look at all 4 gospels, something like 30-40% of the material is about this last week in Jesus’ life, and his crucifixion. In Mark’s gospel it’s more like 50%. One commentator went so far as to describe Mark as a ‘Passion Narrative’ with an extended introduction!
So that part of the story is hugely important. But what does the cross actually mean?
If I were to take a straw poll here this morning, I’m guessing these are some of the answers I’d get:
It’s what makes us right with God.
It’s God dealing with the problem of our sinfulness.
It’s Jesus taking the punishment that should have been ours so that we can go free.
And that’s all true.
The prophet Isaiah – 7 centuries before Christ, spoke of one who was to come – a suffering servant, and this is what he said. (Isaiah 53)
Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
I wonder if that was one of the Scriptures Jesus opened up with the disciples in that conversation we read about this morning?
So the cross is the great transaction that makes peace with God possible for sinful people like you and me. But the thing is, we have to close with that. We have to take hold of it for ourselves. That comes through again and again in the New Testament writings as Jesus’ followers began to make sense of everything that had happened on the cross.
Jesus’ disciple John, puts it this way – “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life”
The promise is for whom? “Whoever believes” – and that’s belief in the sense of trust. In that text there’s an offer, but also a condition.
Peace and life are what God’s offering. But the terms of that offer are surrender. Set down your old way of life; set down your determination to be your own god; set down your pride; set down your weapons. Then, and only then, will your hands will be free to receive forgiveness.
Is that a choice that you’ve made yet? Because according to Jesus, and the weight of the New Testament, it’s that choice that makes someone a Christian and nothing else.
But in truth, that’s not really what I want to speak about today because that description of what the cross is about, is part of the story, but not the whole story.
When we see the cross solely as a bit of sin-management on God’s part, we diminish what it’s really about. Because it’s so much more.
It’s not just about where we go when we die. It’s about how we choose to live in the here and now. Are we going to live according to the ways and means of the world, or the way of costly love exemplified by Christ as he went to the cross? We have choices to make. Are we going to go God’s way, or the world’s way?
Christ was faced with that kind of choice every day of life, but especially in Holy Week.
Look at what happened to him.
He rides into Jerusalem on a donkey, heralded as a king, but the people completely misread the sign. They wanted war, he, peace.
The Pharisees question his authority at every turn, endlessly looking for ways to trap him.
Judas grows dissatisfied with his methods and decides to betray him.
He sweats blood over what’s about to happen to him in Gethsemane, but his three closest friends can’t manage to stay awake and suffer with him.
He’s arrested by the Temple Guard, falsely accused, beaten, mocked and spat at by the religious leaders.
His friends run away. His closest friend Peter denies that he even knows him.
He’s ritually humiliated and brutalised by the Roman guard, flogged to within an inch of his life, and then led through the streets carrying his own cross. He’s stripped naked, nailed to the cross beam, and hoisted into the air in utter humiliation.
The people who gather to watch, abuse and vilify him even as the last breaths seep from his body. At the foot of the cross they gamble for his clothes.
He was questioned, betrayed, deserted, denied, spat on, struck in the face with fists, mocked, stripped naked, insulted, beaten, lied about, falsely accused, convicted, condemned, crucified, scorned, bruised, rejected, hated, stared at, left naked in public to die and finally killed.
And what is his response to everything that happens to him?
Luke tells us that from the cross, looking down on those who’d strained nerve and sinew to put him there, and looking back to everything that had gone before, he prayed “Father, forgive them – for they don’t know what they’re doing”.
All throughout his ministry, Jesus had choices to make.
He had to choose whether to fight evil with evil, or with something else. And in every case, he always responds with love.
When evil’s levelled against him, he never responds in kind. He never fights fire with fire. He never resorts to the ways of the world to overcome the world. His response is always that of love.
And what this miracle of the empty tomb shows us is that no matter how weak or ineffectual the way of the cross looks, in the end LOVE WINS.
The world did the worst it could do to Jesus. But it still wasn’t enough to keep him down. LOVE WINS.
God IS LOVE says the Bible. And if that’s true, there’s only one outcome – LOVE WINS. And the sooner we realise that the only winning ticket in town is the way of God’s Love, the better.
Will you be able to remember that this time tomorrow? When you leave church today, go back home, spend the rest of the afternoon and evening as you see fit, and wake up tomorrow to face the same old same old, will LOVE WIN? Or will you fall back on using the ways of the world to try and overcome the world?
In the passage we heard earlier, Jesus takes the disciples through the scriptures that speak about his suffering to help them understand why the cross had to happen, and then he charges them with these words “You are witnesses of these things”.
“You are witnesses of these things” he says. Not just in the sense that you’ve seen them with your eyes, but if you live and act in the way God wants you to in the world, your life will become a sign to others that in the end, LOVE WINS.
Preparing to leave his disciples Jesus told them “In this world you will have trouble.” – One of Jesus’ promises we’re rather less keen to claim. “But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
The verdict’s in. The word’s got out. The tomb’s empty and the Lord is Risen. LOVE WINS
(with thanks to Rob Bell)
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