My
first experiences with Church were very liturgical. Lots of ceremony
and attention to the calendar and different seasons. Within the
particular tradition I was first a part of, Good Friday was a big deal. We were even pretty serious about Ash Wednesday.
Of all the celebrations in the Christian calendar, these two days are
the glum ones that most people like to skip. Not my tradition. We were
serious about repentance and serious about the cross. Every Sunday
we recited together a Prayer of Confession and although I know that the
pastor shared "words of assurance" after these communal confessions, I
only know this because I recently found an old bulletin stuck in an old
Bible. We were serious about the seriousness of sin.
I
remember that after a few years at this particular church, my pastor
got married to a woman-pastor he was taking classes with at Seminary.
She preached at a different church with a different denominational name.
I don't know what has made this particular memory stick, but every so
often I can still hear him in my head joking during a high-school Sunday school lesson, "My wife's tradition thinks that the most important part of Christianity is the empty tomb, but we know that it's actually the cross because without the cross, there would be no tomb to be emptied."
It's
been several years since high-school now but when I go home for a
visit, my friends and I still always get together. I'm home for Easter
this weekend and today my friends and I reunited to go on a coffee tour
in St. Louis. It has been a long long day and so we decided a few hours
ago that we needed ice cream.
We ended up
sitting at a table in Coldstone and suddenly one of my friends was
talking to me about a girl she goes to school with and a "cool
conversation about faith" that they had recently. "I think that the main
thing keeping my friends at school from believing is that they don't
trust the Bible. They don't think that it accurately recounts what
actually happened in history."
I talked with
her for a little bit about the transmission of Scripture through history
and about extra-biblical sources we have that tell us that 1st century
Christians really did believe the Bible was authoritative and inspired.
Her face turned down and I could tell I was losing her faith that I
could contribute something valuable to the real-life dilemma she's
experiencing. So I stopped.
When Paul wrote to
the Christians in Rome, he was writing to real people with real lives
facing real problems. The Roman church was facing all sorts of cultural
drama. The Jewish Christians who had previously been expelled were
finally returning to Rome. While they had been gone, the Church in Rome
had taken on a uniquely Gentile flavor and now, with the Jewish
Christians coming back, the Roman Church was struggling to reintegrate.
The book of Romans is known for being a logical masterpiece. It's one of
the most complicated Biblical books to understand and is made up of one
fluid (long) argument: God is good, you must trust Him, all you must do is trust Him.
Paul
spends the first seven chapters showing both the Jewish and Gentile
Christians that the ground is level at the foot of the cross. No one is
any better than any one else; all are in need of God's mercy. He
contends that while Israel has been unfaithful to their end of the
covenantal promises of Exodus, God has remained faithful in Jesus. The
real problem is us. It's not the law that's the problem - all of the
rest of the Old Testament shows how it's people that are the problem.
Sin and Death have actually become proper nouns; they are slave-drivers
over us.
Read what Paul writes to the Roman Christians when he finally gets to chapter 8:
...if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of His Spirit who lives in you. Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation - but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live. For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by Him we cry, "Abba, Father." The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs - heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in His sufferings in order that we may also share in His glory (8:10-17; emphasis mine).
In
case you missed it, here is what Paul is saying: the ground is level at
the foot of the cross. You're all hopeless and broken. But God is
faithful! Because of what Jesus did on the cross and because He raised Him from the dead, you
all - Jews and Gentiles - are children of God!!! Each of you can now
have hope that at the end of this life, in which you will certainly
suffer, you are guaranteed to share in Christ's resurrection glory!!!
At
Coldstone, I took a breath and regathered myself. I told my friend,
"You know what. Regardless of what your friends at school think about
whether or not they can trust that the Bible records history accurately,
there are two things they have to decide. What are they going to do
with Jesus - He existed and He is worshiped as a god so there are only
so many options to pick from concerning His true identity - and what are
they going to do with the empty tomb? If they are going to say that
Jesus did not resurrect from the dead, the burden of proof is on them to
explain the empty tomb."
The cross should
certainly be taken seriously. But if we do not take the empty tomb just
as seriously, we are left with an empty religion in which all that is
left for us is suffering and death. The Spirit that Paul points the
Roman Christians to look at as the unifying Source in their Church is
the same Spirit living in Christians today - the Spirit of life Who
raised Christ from the dead!
God takes sin
seriously - of course, that's one reason why the cross is so gruesome
and glum! But hear this: God's end goal was not to merely take care of
sin! God's goal has always been to restore His children to Himself that
we can be with Him where He is, sharing in His glory! From the moment
sin and death entered the Garden, God has been working toward the
returning all of Creation back to the Garden we find in Revelation 22
where we see the tree of life once more, "bearing 12 crops of fruit,
yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the
healing of the nations...And they will reign for ever and ever" (Rev
22:1-5).
So this morning when you read about
Mary and Peter and John running to a garden in which Jesus' tomb stood
empty, I beg you to take the empty tomb just as seriously as my
tradition takes the cross. Remember that sin is serious but that it is
the seriousness of the resurrection that Paul appeals to in order to
unite the Roman Christians. It is the seriousness of the resurrection
that my friend's community at school will have to answer to. The cross
is not the end of the story - God's goal is so much bigger. The empty grave brings a Word of Assurance that death is not the end and does not
get the final word.
Beaten and scorned, He stood accused.
Sin is condemned; Death is confused!
Breathing His last, He took my place.
From slave to Child, Amazing Grace!
In garden tomb, He stirred from sleep.
Eden redeemed, twelve crops to reap!
Out of the grave, He rose again,
Next, it's my turn, for I'm His Friend!
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