The Hope of Easter// My Redeemer Lives, Part 2

Christianityworks Official Podcast

By about this time of year any little bit of a break we might have had over Christmas and New Year is but a dim distant memory. We’re back in the grind and we’re looking forward to our next break – awesome! But surely there’s more to life than that.

HOPE MATTERS

Hope is a beautiful word, four letters, just one syllable, there’s a clear, pure ring to it, isn’t there? HOPE. I don’t know how your year is going so far, what just three months in but for most of us there have been some ups, there have been some downs and underneath it all that constant incessant grind that we all call life, the daily ritual.

I know there are some people on the London Tube with their headphones on listening in to this message today. I know that there is a farmer on his harvester listening in on his local radio station in Australia, in the US and in other places. I know that there is a man in Chicago down at the local gym probably tuned in to the podcast as he is most days and I know that there are refugees in camps wondering what the next day will bring, gathered around their radio’s listening to today’s message all over the world, all different circumstances.

Some good, some not so good, some downright awful, I know that so here as we head into this Easter time, Berni drops the word ‘hope’, pure, clean, crystal clear hope, what does it mean to you right now given where you’re at, what’s going on in your life? Hope.

My year so far has been a bit of a mixed bag, isn’t that always the way? Some great things, a short holiday with my lovely wife in January, awesome and some tough issues to grapple with here too in the ministry called Christianityworks that I’m privileged to lead. But the most constant thing, it’s like a drum beat that never stops, is the daily rhythm of the grind.

Up early each morning working on radio programs, dealing with staffing issues and all that comes with running an organisation that produces radio and television programs around the world. And for me, as I participate in this daily grind, punctuated from time to time with some delightful days and some dreadful days.

Here’s what this beautiful clear word hope means to me. It means that just around the next corner, just over the next rise there’s something more, something better, something that is really worth looking forward to, much more than my next holiday or next trinket or bauble that this world may have to offer. A solid hope, a certain hope that one day the trials and tribulations of this world will be over and that I’ll get to spend eternity in the presence of Jesus.

It doesn’t matter who we are, what sort of life we’re leading, how rich or poor, north or south, east or west, our lives maybe, I believe that we’ve been hand crafted to hope for something in the future, I believe that there’s something innate inside each one of us that no matter how much we may delight in or despise this particular day, there is that something that reaches out to the future looking forward for, well what exactly?

Something better, something more, something beyond, something utterly delightful, you know it, don’t you? You often dream of the future, you hope for this and that. The young woman hoping for her prince charming to ride into her life. The middle-aged man hoping for release from the yoke of the mortgage that drives him to work these long hours under so much pressure. The hope of a frail, elderly, lonely woman whose joints are racked with arthritis hoping for deliverance from this world.

No matter what stage of life we’re in we’re always hoping for something. The sad thing is that we sometimes, often times, place our hope in things that simply can’t deliver what we’re looking for. I happen to enjoy technology, I like the way smartphones have revolutionised my life, sure. But I look at the hysteria, the overnight queues, the cheering and the waving that accompanies the release of certain brands of smartphones, it seems they always put it on the evening news these days as though somehow this idolatry is newsworthy and I shake my head. Surely life has to be about more than the next iPhone release, doesn’t it?

Might I ask you, what are you hoping for right now at this moment? What is the hope that is in you that keeps you going through the grind and through the dark days and through the fun days even?

Paul the Apostle was put on trial for his very life, his judge, the Roman governor, had the power of life and death over him. And in his defence this is what he says, Acts 24: 15 and 16.

I have a hope in God that there will be a resurrection of both the righteous and the unrighteous. Therefore I do my best always to have a clear conscience towards God and all people.

When it came to the point of life and death Paul was bold enough to tell the judge that his hope was in God, his hope was in the fact that there will be a resurrection of both the righteous and the unrighteous and it is that hope that drives who he is, what he thinks, how he behaves.

I wonder how different the life of so many people would be if instead of hoping for the trinkets that this world has to offer, instead of placing their hope in things that can’t deliver and will in any case pass away – they placed their hope in the resurrection of Jesus which is a forerunner to their own resurrection one day.

If this life is all there is, then it ain’t all that much. If I live until I’m eighty years old then I have just under nine thousand days left to go. It’s not a lot when you think about it. If I placed my hope in the here and now, well the here and now is going to be done and dusted in just under nine thousand days, not much of a hope, is it?

But if the certain hope of the promised resurrection that Jesus ushered in on that very first Easter some two thousand years ago, if that’s what I place my hope in then that’s real, that’s forever, that’s a hope in the one thing that matters, a life eternal in His presence.

As the drum beat of the daily humdrum pounds away in your ears what hope brings joy to your heart? What hope drives you to feel and to think and to act? Is it the right hope? Is it delivering you what you’ve been looking for? Well, is it?

LIVING IN FEARFUL DAYS

There have been days in my life, and I know you’ve had days like this too, where I’ve woken up after a fitful night’s sleep with a knot in the pit of my stomach; with a sense of fear and dread so deep, so unavoidable, that I felt paralysed; unable to function; unable to face the world; unable even to see the faintest glimmer of hope for the future. Can you remember the last time you experienced that feeling? It’s just awful, isn’t it? You wouldn’t wish it upon your worst enemy.

I don’t know how you celebrate Easter, but back in the days leading up to that very first Easter, there wasn’t all that much celebration going on. In fact, if you were one of those twelve disciples, celebration was the very last thing on your mind. What was dominating their thinking was fear: Gut-wrenching, that knot in the pit of your stomach, will-I-be-crucified-too kind of fear. Jesus had been warning them for some time now that He would be crucified. Matthew 16:21:

From that time on, Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on that third day be raised again.

That seemed utterly bizarre to the disciples. I mean, they’ve seen Him do amazing miracles. They’ve seen those up-close. They’ve listened to sermon after powerful sermon, where He spoke not just His wisdom into life on earth, but with authority about the kingdom of heaven like nobody else. Jesus, this Jesus, captured? Crucified? Suffering? ‘No way!’ says Peter. In fact (Matthew 16:22-23):

Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying: ‘God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you!’

But Jesus turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind Me, Satan. You are a stumbling-block to Me, for you are setting your mind not on the divine things, but on human things.’”

I doubt very much that your reaction or mine would have been all that different in the face of the evidence that pointed to this Jesus being the real deal, the very Son of God, would it? And yet as the days drew closer to the time when Jesus would be betrayed and crucified you could feel the fear in the air, that the plot to assassinate Him was unmistakable.

It hung in the air and the disciples weren’t just confronted by the possibility of complete disillusionment of the idea of that Jesus, their Jesus, their miracle-working Jesus being crucified of all things. But in their minds, in their hearts gripped with fear they were wondering, well will I be next? Will they nail me to a cross too? Well it’s the sort of thing that the Romans do. What if I get caught up in this, what if I’m nailed hands and feet to a cross?

Then the chief priests and elders of the people gathered in the place of the high priest who was called Caiaphas and they conspired to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him. (Matthew chapter 26: 3)

All they could see and feel, these disciples, was the fear. It’s almost like they hadn’t heard the rest of the prediction from Jesus, they couldn’t hear it because they were afraid.

While Jesus was going up to Jerusalem he took the twelve disciples aside by themselves and he said to them, ‘See, we are going up to Jerusalem and the Son of man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes and they will condemn him to death. Then they will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified and on the third day he will be raised up’. (Matthew 20: 17 – 18)

See, I see a lot of myself in those disciples. How about you? We’re driven by and large, you and I, by self-interest, and there is no greater motivator than self-preservation, is there; than saving your own skin, and on those days when we’re afraid, that’s all we can think about.

As we celebrate Easter this week, in a way that would have been so incredibly foreign to those fearful quivering disciples, I wonder how much your own self-interest obscures the powerful life-transforming message of hope that is Easter. I wonder.

The sad thing is that it’s especially in those dark places on those dark days that we need the peace and the hope that only Jesus can bring which is why He spoke these words to the disciples not long before the end came, John 14:27. Jesus said:

Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives, do not let your hearts be troubled and do not let them be afraid. (John 14:27)

The message of Easter is a double-sided message: Two sides of the one coin. It’s a message of freedom from the past, and hope for the future. It’s a message of forgiveness, and a message of a glorious future.

Some years after the terrible events of that Passover the Apostle Paul put it this way, part 1 – the message of forgiveness and grace. Paul wrote:

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace that he lavished upon us. (Ephesians 1: 7)

That bloody spectacle on the cross was all about paying the shocking price of my rebellion against God and yours. Through the suffering of Jesus we receive mercy, through the suffering of Jesus on our behalf, the punishment that we so richly deserve has been lifted from us and just a few verses later Paul talks about part 2 – the message of a glorious inheritance, the message of hope that can dwell in you and me, should dwell in you and me if we believe in Jesus. Ephesians chapter 1, verses 11 to 14.

In Christ we’ve also obtained an inheritance having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will so that we who are the first to set our hope on Christ might live for the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the Gospel of your salvation and had believed in him were marked with a seal of the promised Holy Spirit. This is the pledge of our inheritance towards redemption as God’s own people to the praise of his glory. (Ephesians 1: 11–14)

And it’s that message, that certain hope that takes the fear away.

NON POMP AND CEREMONY

Each year at Easter, on Good Friday and Easter Sunday the world’s evening news services beam images of the Churches Easter celebrations from around the globe right onto our television screens and invariably those images look something like this: they’re filmed in big lofty imposing cathedrals packed full of the faithful, there are processions of crimson clad clergy following a cross down the aisle. There are choirs covered in red and in white singing hymns and songs. There are Church leaders preaching a message to their flock.

Of course not all of us celebrate Easter like that but that’s the image we seem to project out into the world. But Easter is a time for both solemnity and celebration and that somehow what goes along with that is some considerable pomp and ceremony.

Now the abundant use of the colour red in the clothing of many clergy, harkens back to the shedding of Jesus blood, that’s what it’s meant to symbolise. But as I look at those images on my television screen year after year I wonder whether the impressions I get aren’t more about the apparent regal nature of the Church than the sacrifice of Jesus.

And frankly, I despair at many of the messages I hear preached by the religious elite. They talk about world peace or poverty or they apologise for the abuses of the Church which it seems, in recent years, are many. And I wonder sometimes whether as a whole as the body of Christ we somehow aren’t missing the point and the point of that first Easter during that fateful Passover celebration two thousand odd years ago had little, in fact no, it had nothing to do with the trappings of Easter that somehow we seemed to have heaped on the commemoration and the celebration.

Please don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking the different traditions and the way they choose to commemorate and to celebrate, traditions are in many a respect are good things that is unless and until they displace the central meaning of the thing it is they represent.

That first Easter didn’t have any sense of pomp or ceremony about, in fact Jesus, well for Him it was a lonely time, an intensely painful time, a time when He suffered alone for you and for me. After He celebrated the Passover meal with His disciples and washed their feet and predicted that His betrayer was in their midst.

Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane and he said to them, ‘Sit here while I go over there and pray’. He took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee and began to be grieved and agitated. Then he said to them, ‘I am so deeply grieved even to death, stay here and stay awake with me’ and going a little further he threw himself onto the ground and prayed, ‘My Father if it’s possible let this cup pass from me yet not what I want but what you want’.

Then he came to the disciples and he found them sleeping and he said to Peter, ‘Could you not stay awake with me for one hour? Stay awake and pray that you may not come into a time of trial.’ The spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak. Again Jesus went away for a second time and he prayed, ‘My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink of it, your will be done’.

Again he came and he found them sleeping for their eyes were heavy. So leaving them again he went away and prayed for the third time saying the same words. Then he came to the disciples and he said to them, ‘Are you still sleeping and taking a rest? Look, the hour’s at hand, the son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners, get up, let’s be going, my betrayer is at hand.’ (Matthew 26: 36 – 46)

See, Jesus wanted His friends to be praying with Him in His hour of anguish and yet instead He wrestled with His fate alone in the dark. During His trials, there were several of them, none of His friends came and supported Him. No one stood up for Him or gave a good report about Him, NONE of them and at His arrest.

While He was still speaking, Judas one of the twelve arrived and with him was a crowd with swords and clubs from the chief priests and scribes and the elders. Now the betrayer had given them a sign saying, ‘The one whom I kiss is the man, arrest him and lead him away under guard.’

So when he came he came up to him at once and said, ‘Rabbi’ and kissed him. Then they laid hands on Jesus and arrested him but one of those who stood near draw his sword and struck the slave of the high priest cutting off his ear. Then Jesus said to him, ‘Have you come out with your swords and clubs to arrest me as though I were a bandit? Day after day I was with you in the Temple teaching and you didn’t arrest me but let the Scriptures be fulfilled.’

All of them deserted him and fled. A certain young man was following him wearing nothing but a linen cloth, they caught hold of him, they let the linen cloth go and he ran off naked. (Mark 14: 43 – 52)

Jesus was alone and on the cross He hung alone, suffered alone, He died alone. Where was the pomp, where was the ceremony? There was none. Why am I sharing this with you? Because this Jesus understands suffering, He understands loneliness, He understands you and what you have to travel through because He’s been there and He’s been through much worse.

Formal Easter celebrations? Great, fantastic, awesome but if sometimes you’re left with that hollow feeling at Easter, as though what’s going on around you doesn’t really resonate with where you’re at then come with me and meet this lonely Jesus, this suffering Jesus, the Jesus who was rejected and spat upon, the nailed Jesus, the gasping Jesus and remember He did this for you, for you He did this to set you free from your bondage of sin.

And as you’ll see over the next couple of days, He did this to bring you a certain hope through His resurrection. Romans chapter 6, verse 23.

For the wages of sin is death but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

So, if the pomp and the ceremony perhaps haven’t been connecting with you, forget about them, and rest for a while with Jesus: In the midst of the suffering; in the midst of the deepest inkiest blackness imaginable, you can claim this Scripture for your very own. 1 Corinthians 6:14:

“God raised the Lord, and will also raise us by His power.”

Isn’t that just so awesome? When none of the Easter pomp and ceremony connects with the deepest longings of your heart, Jesus does! The One who suffered and died for you, and the One whose dead body received life again in that lonely, empty tomb.

You see even the resurrection bit, even the bit where hope entered this world because death could no longer hold Him down, the death of my sins and yours that you and I so richly deserved, even in that most amazing moment in all of history where Jesus came back to life, it took place alone in the darkened tomb, away from the glare of the spotlights, away from the adulations of the crowds, away from the sight of any human eye.

The dead body of Jesus came to life, colour returned to His cheeks, His heart started to beat again, He started to breathe again and the resurrection body of Jesus was ready to show the world that He came to bring us hope.

I compare the two, the pomp and the ceremony of the traditional Easter celebrations of today and that amazing transaction of grace and hope that took place in the midst of extreme loneliness for Jesus. And I know which one I prefer, I know which one connects with me deep in my heart, I know which one brings hope into me – it’s Jesus.