John 11:17-27
John 20:1-10

What a strange thing this whole Easter phenomenon is.  It is such high drama because it makes no sense in our realm of reasoning.  Our reasoning is that when we have done something horrible and terrible like reject and turn our backs on God’s love and care for us then, God will respond in kind.  When that doesn’t happen, we are just completely astounded and awe struck.  Easter is so mind boggling because it says what God does when we are in God’s hands. When we are in God’s hands, God will give us more life, new life.  God will raise us out of whatever death we have gone to or caused.
           
It’s just astounding.  And isn’t that at least part of what draws us here today? Why do we show up today? There are many other things we could be doing on this beautiful day. Didn’t we show up this morning because in the midst of all our struggles and frustrations, all our losses and disappointments, all our hurts and rejections, we hope there is something to this idea of resurrection and new life?
           
When all of history had arrived at dusk and the disciples' lives were engulfed in darkness, the remembered words of Jesus must have sounded like tinkling cymbals signifying nothing.  These had been his words of assurance:  "I am the resurrection and the life."(John 11:25).  Jesus had flung out promises and called up hopes that had long been dead, getting them up from unmarked, forgotten graves.  But at his crucifixion there was no evidence of resurrection or life.  Death was pervasive.  Jesus died and was buried and with him were buried the hopes and dreams of many who had been grabbed by his promises and halfway believed them, believed them because they wanted to or needed to or had to in order to survive.  Now their hopes were buried with the one who had raised their hopes.   
           
That seems to describe us, seems to describe the church. According to most reports, the church as we have known it is now on the endangered species list. Participation in church has been on a steady decline. Ask those who have stopped going to church why and you hear a variety of reasons. Because it’s boring.  Because all anyone ever talks about is money. Because I don’t need any more guilt; I have a lifetime supply already.
           
We have lost our consensus about what it means to be Christian. We have lost the language of faith we once had in common or thought we had in common. Is there any denomination that does not have a major fault line running right down the middle of it? Who can blame people for looking elsewhere for God or based on the behavior of churchgoers they know deciding there’s not much reason to look for God at all?
           
Naturally, there is nervousness when membership and attendance decline. Denominations respond to this crisis by putting more tools in the hands of church leaders. Nearly every week of the year I can attend a workshop on organizational management, small group dynamics, conflict resolution, or church growth. I can learn how to use business techniques like market studies, mass mailing, e-blasts, and telemarketing to increase church membership. I can even develop a blog! The intent is to make the church successful or impressive or both.
           
However, there is nothing in the gospel about being impressive or successful.  There is nothing in it about being the biggest or the best at anything at all.  The good news of God shown to us in the life of Jesus is that when the bottom has fallen out from under us—when we have crashed through all our safety nets and we can hear the bottom rushing up to meet us—the good news is that we cannot fall farther than God can reach or catch us. Now, I don’t think we can be too picky about where the catch happens.  Sometimes it happens after the funeral is over, as it did with Jesus, but the good news he brought back to us can never be revoked.  God is stronger than death.  Way past where we can see how it works, God is able to take our weakness, our fear, our trembling and turn them into fullness of life.
           
We may get so excited about this news that we begin to think it is about us. We do tend to be8 narcissistic. Somewhere in the dark tunnels of our minds we turn God’s power to save us into our own power to prosper and a sly kind of triumphalism slips into our thinking and acting. We look to numbers and dollars for signs of our success instead of to the holiness of our life together.  We build theaters instead of churches, where religious entertainment takes the place of worship.  If we are not careful, we may start to sound like spiritual big shots, who speak of God’s power as if it were the power to make us healthy, wealthy, and wise when of course it is nothing of the sort.  The power of God is now and always has been the power to raise us from the dead.  Period.  It is not about us.  It is about God.  Our only role is to stick our feet straight up in the air and admit that without God we might as well be put to bed with a shovel.
           
Now this is a message that can empty a church in a hurry, even on Easter.  Here is the basic message of Easter. I’m delighted to see you this morning.  “My message is brief and to the point.  God is not in the business of protecting us from harm, and no amount of good behavior will keep us safe. For evidence of this, see the cross.  Instead, God is in the business of restoring us to life, which may involve some painful procedures.  If we are willing to go through it and the operation is successful, our lives will not belong to us anymore.  We will be God’s gifts to the world, and our ‘to do’ lists will have no end.  If the operation is really successful, our good works will get us killed.  P. S. Every day will be full of fresh astonishment and we will never, ever get bored.” (Barbara Brown Taylor, God in Pain.
           
It’s not a message that sells very well, partly because it’s not for sale and partly because it runs counter to most human wisdom—which is, wisely enough, about how to make it in this world. The love of God demonstrated in the life of Jesus that resulted in his execution, on the other hand, is about how to stop trying to make it in this world and fall in love with God instead.  It is about God’s power, not ours.
           
Going so far in loving and caring for the world that it got Jesus killed is such a hard, hard piece of the gospel that most of us cannot stay converted to it for long.  It is God’s wisdom, after all.  We believe and then we don’t, popping back into the wisdom of the world, which is about success, numbers, income, prizes.  Our love of this wisdom is a problem for all of us, the whole church, which is always in danger of forgetting whose spokesperson it is.
           
We are the lovers of a God who specializes in turning the world’s values upside down.  We are followers of one who waited tables and washed feet.  We are heirs of one who has power to revive the whole creation, beginning with us, but only if we allow it—by giving up our illusions that we know how to save ourselves and begging God, one more time, to show us how it is done.
           
It is possible that some of our proudest achievements are embarrassing to God, and some of our most dismal failures please God very much.  There is simply no way of telling, since our wisdom is so different from God’s wisdom.  The only thing we can be sure of is that everything we offer up—ailing churches and prosperous ones, people with eloquent speech and those who struggle with every word, all are eligible for the transforming power of God, who loves nothing better than bringing the dead back to life. (God in Pain by Barbara Brown Taylor, pp. 131-136)
           
It was after the resuscitation of Lazarus and some time before the resurrection of Jesus that Jesus made the statement, "I am the resurrection and the life."   
           
Lazarus’ resuscitation was a sign of resurrection, but Jesus was the reality of resurrection.  Easter demonstrates what God does when people are in God’s hands.  Jesus put himself in God's hands and God raised him to a qualitatively new life that no longer knew death.  Resurrection is not a continuation of this life but is the demonstration of a new life.
           
Jesus was an adventurer.  He marched into Jerusalem to offer himself to the city.  He knew he was hazarding death, but it seems he always took chances based on the assumption of more life in store in which to continue the venture.  He staked everything on laying down his life believing the result would be new life.
           
Through the resurrection of Christ God said no to the judgment hall, no to Golgotha, no to the tomb, and no to living on the wrong side of Easter.  The trial of Jesus confirmed the verdict that he was too good to be safe in the hands of people.  We make a mockery of justice when we see our word as the last word on another's life.  We have enough diffi­culty making sound decisions about ourselves.  Why do we think we have the discernment to make decisions for others and about the destiny of their lives?  God said no to the judgment hall where they tried Jesus. That was not the final judgment of this one God had given to the world.
           
God said no to Golgotha where they crucified Jesus.  Death is the cruel enemy of life but people often make it an ally in their expediency to deal with matters that are too difficult to handle.  People were fearful of the change Jesus seemed to bring about and the only alternative many of them were willing to consider was to do away with the change agent.  God's no said that crucifixion is not the solution to deal with one who is too good to be safe.  The crucifixion was not the last word about the one whom God sent, the one who laid out a life like a life is to be lived.
           
To the grave where they buried Jesus, God said no.  A tomb is damp and cold, lifeless.  The grave is our response to death.  What else can we do when someone dies but bury the dead?  There is no other word that human beings can offer, but God is not bound by our finitude.  God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, nor God’s ways our ways.
           
The no of God means that we do not have to settle down in the grim facts of which the cross is the worst of them.  To all of us who would live on the other side of Easter, God says no.  Is that not much of our difficulty?  We attempt to live on the wrong side of Easter.  To try to live on the other side of Easter is to exist but not to live.  God offers us abundant life rather than mere exis­tence.  One of the lasting words of Jesus is, "I am the resurrection and the life." (John 11:25).  As Paul Scherer says, "God's world, no matter how it looks, is not the kind of place where you can finish off the Sermon on the Mount with a hammer and some nails."1
           
To hear the no of God encourages us to say yes.  To say yes to resurrection is to say yes to raising the dead to life that only God can do and it means not only to affirm the resurrection of Christ but also to experience our own resurrection.  If Good Friday is the saddest, darkest day of creation symbolizing what we do with God when we have the love of God in our hands, then Easter is the gladdest, bright­est day of creation symbolizing what happens when we are in the hands of God.
           
Easter compels us to say yes.  It symbolizes a new beginning, another chance.  Maybe it is our second chance or our two thou­sandth.  Easter pushes us to say yes because it is a word about life and death.  Easter says that God shares with us fully all that it means to be human, even the deepest tragedies of our lives.  In part Easter is a way of saying that God refuses to stop loving people like us.  We matter ultimately to God.  Just as we are created in God’s image and God shared passionately and fully our human condition, suffering with us in the midst of history, thus God continues to value us and to love us infinitely.
           
God does not carelessly and idly toss aside created human life.  Easter says the opposite. God takes creation seriously and what God has called into being out of creative love, what God agonized over in the middle of history also is cared for infinitely, even in the face of death.
           
Easter is a lasting word for us.  It is God's way of saying no to false trials, executions, and graveyards.     
           
Grady Nutt said, "When the world shakes its fist and says, Good Friday!  God comes back with dogwood, redbuds, and jonquils; the crocuses and butterflies of life and says, Easter! Easter! Easter!" (Quoted by Welton Gaddy, "We Laughed", The Mercer Pulpit, vol. II, no. 20,  April 11‑12, 1985, p. 11)
           
God said no to crucifixion and Golgotha, no to the worst that could be done.  God said no to false trials, executions, and graveyards.  God said no to the wisdom of the world that thinks it has the last word. God said yes to another chance and another and another.  God has the last word. God say no to death and destruction and yes to life and living. God said yes to bringing the dead to life and yes to living on the right side of Easter and so can we. And so can we. God said yes to Easter and we can too because Easter is about hope and life and living.  Isn’t that why we are here today when we could be doing any number of other things?  Are we not here to say yes to hope and life and living?