Once there was a guy in Scotland—we’ll call him Ian McGregor. After a long evening in the pub, Ian took a shortcut to his house that took him through a dark cemetery. He accidentally fell into a freshly dug grave. Ian tried to climb out, but discovered the hole was too deep, so he just decided to wait until the morning, when someone would undoubtedly come to help him out. So, Ian sat down in the corner and covered himself with his coat, and went to sleep. Sometime later, he was awakened by the sound of another guy who fell in the other end of the grave. The second guy didn’t see Ian in the corner. Ian watched as the man tried and tried to climb out of the grave. Finally, Ian said, “Stop your tryin’, Ya canna’ get out.” But you know, that guy jumped all the way out of that grave![1] Most of us have never fallen in a grave like Ian, but we do have our own ruts we fall into—ruts of thinking, habit and addiction, of busyness, darkness and despair—and we may feel powerless to get out of them. Instead of living our lives, we may feel like our life is living us. I have Good News for you today: Easter changes everything.
Easter changes everything, especially prayer. There comes a time when a prayer is answered. A while back, I watched an amazing movie about prayer called War Room. In it, an older woman named, Clara, begins working with a younger woman (Elizabeth) to teach Elizabeth how to pray for her family. And they pray and they pray, and sometimes you think nothing’s happening, and then wham! things just start changing! One of my favorite scenes has Clara getting the news that God is really doing amazing work in Elizabeth and her family! So what does Clara do? She prays of course! And as she prays, she dances, and she claps and sings, and she laughs out loud. That’s an Easter prayer, the prayer of joy. In a sense, Easter is the answer to all our prayers, the joy of a surprise that shouldn’t be, but is.
Easter changes everything, including our thinking. N.T. Wright tells the story of “A rich old [alum who] gives to a college a wonderful, glorious painting that simply won’t fit any of the spaces available in the college and that is so magnificent that eventually the college decides to pull itself down and rebuild itself around this great and unexpected gift, discovering as it does so that all the best things about the college are thereby enhanced within the new structure and all the problems of which people had been aware are thereby dealt with.”[2] Why would anyone turn their lives upside down for a weird, perhaps impossible, idea like “resurrection?” Because resurrection is more than an idea. Bruce Larson said, “The events of Easter cannot be reduced to a creed or philosophy. We are not asked to believe the doctrine of the resurrection. We are asked to meet this person raised from the dead. In faith, we move from belief in a doctrine to a knowledge of a person. Ultimate truth is a person. We meet him. He is alive!” If the resurrection is real, then we can truly have hope. If the resurrection is real, and Jesus is not dead, then what Jesus taught is not just on target, it’s life-changing. As N.T. Wright points out, “Hope, for the Christian, is not wishful thinking or mere blind optimism. It is a [way] of knowing, a [way] within which new things are possible, options are not shut down, new creation can happen.”[3] Easter is living a life of possibilities with this Jesus who still comes.
Easter changes everything, but especially the way we live. “A venerable, old sage once asked his disciples, “How can we know when the darkness is leaving and the dawn is coming?” “When we can see a tree in the distance and know that it is an elm and not a juniper,” ventured one student. “When we can see an animal and know that it is a fox or a wolf,” chimed in another. “No,” said the old man, “those things will not help us.” Puzzled, the students demanded, “How then can we know?” The master teacher drew himself up to his full stature and replied quietly, “We know the darkness is leaving and the dawn is coming when we can see another person and know that this is our brother or our sister; otherwise, no matter what time it is, it is still dark.”[4] Easter reminds us that the Son has risen, and calls us to see clearly that we are indeed brothers and sisters. Each of us falls into a pit from time to time, and each of us is tempted to just give up and wait until things get better. The startling news that we can’t get out, clearly isn’t true, as the second guy who falls into the grave finds out. Jesus came to be with us and show us the way out of our pits. Like the guy who leaps out of the grave, we may be tempted to just go on our way; after all, we are no longer in the pit. But Jesus calls us to turn back around, and help the person who still cannot get out. An anonymous Christian once wrote,
“With wounded hands
Our exiled God, our Lord of shame
Before us, living, breathing, stands;
The Word is near, and calls our name.
New knowing for the doubting mind,
New seeing out of blindness grows;
New trusting may the sceptic find
New hope through that which faith now knows.”[5]
Easter changes everything. He is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
[1]From a sermon by David Dykes, “Words of Life,” August 9, 2010. www.sermoncentral.com
[2]N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (Harper Collins, 2008).
[3]ibid.
[4]Richard Foster, Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1992), p. 249.
[5]Easter Oratorio, quoted in N.T. Wright, op.cit.