Risen from the dead

Romans 6: 1 – 23

Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday morning, 23 Mar, 2008 (Easter Sunday)

THERE’S ALWAYS a double risk at Christmas, Easter and New Year that I will fall into the old preacher’s trap of repeating something I said before, and possibly better.

That is why I sometimes like to go outside the traditional passages for these times of the year, and see how something else in the Bible relates to the events we are celebrating.

Which brings us to this morning’s passage, which seems more focused on the events of Good Friday than of Easter Sunday.

Jesus had been on trial before the Sanhedrin, the great Jewish court, since around 9 pm on Thursday evening. After an all–night session, at around 6 am the next day, they bound him, and took him to the official residence of the Roman Governor, around 1 km away across the city.

After a preliminary hearing, Pilate sent Jesus back to Herod, not far from the High Priest’s residence where Jesus had been the previous night.

Herod got nowhere with Jesus. He expected Jesus to perform miracles for him, do some exciting tricks, but Jesus refused. So Herod sent him back to Pilate.

Pilate resumed the hearing, but it was not straight–forward. The issues were clearly about Jewish beliefs, not Roman law. Pilate could find no crime to convict Jesus of.

Pilate could see that this case would not have been brought if the Jewish leaders had not hated Jesus. He certainly knew something about Jesus, because Pilate’s wife knew of him and warned Pilate not to have anything to do with condemning a righteous man.

So Pilate realised that Jesus had a popular following. He thought he would get himself off the hook and let the people judge. He knew how hard things would be for himself if the priests sent a message to Caesar that Pilate hadn’t dealt with someone who claimed to be the King of the Jews.

So Pilate offered the crowd either Barabbas, a terrorist leader, or Jesus, the religious leader.

He didn’t realise that the mob in his courtyard was largely supporters of the priests. They yelled for Barabbas. Pilate had lost his last opportunity to do right.

So he had Jesus lashed with a studded whip, and handed him over to be crucified.

Close to Pilate’s residence, not far outside the city walls, was a hill. The soldiers drove Jesus through the city to that hill, and, around nine am, 12 hours after he had been arrested in the garden, they nailed him to a cross.

That afternoon, around 3 pm, after crying out, “It is finished!” Jesus died. Three hours later, a soldier thrust a spear into his side to make sure he was dead, and they took him down from the cross, handed the body over to his friends, and laid him in a borrowed tomb.

Three days later, the rumours started: the miracle–worker who had been crucified on Friday was alive again!

But this is Easter Sunday: why should I talk about the crucifixion on a day when we should celebrate his rising again?

The first reason is that, without dying, Jesus could never have come back to life. That is simple logic.

But it is also a principle of life. Without dying, you and I can not return to life either. Spiritually, this means that, without dying to sin, dying to self, dying to the demands of the world, you and I can never rise to newness of life.

This is the principle that Paul confronts us with in Romans 6.

He writes,

 ³ ...don’t you know that all of us who were baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into his death? ⁴ We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

Here’s Paul’s point: baptism is the concrete act of that inner dying to the old ways; it is the definite symbol of rising to be in Christ forever. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that it is baptism itself which makes the change, as though there were some magic in the water. What makes the change is your acceptance — and mine, of course — our acceptance of what Jesus himself has done on our behalf.

Baptism is the outer sign of an inward change.

The reason why Paul speaks in this way of baptism is because it is a shorthand way of reminding the Romans of everything that baptism implied.

In those days, every believer was baptised by immersion as soon as they professed faith in Jesus Christ.

I had the privilege of visiting Europe last year and seeing many of the great churches in Italy, and I was impressed by how many had a separate building where baptisms were performed, a building suited for total immersion, because that was the way it was done.

So Paul could remind the Romans of their baptism, and they knew that he was talking about everything that baptism implied. He was using a common rhetorical device called metonymy, which means, "name–changing”, where you call something by the name of some part of itself or something associated with it. You could see an aircraft coming in to land and say, “I can see our wings coming now.” That’s metonymy. You could see Jay driving along, and say, ”There goes young white Ford.” That would be metonymy, too. You are really talking about Jay, but you refer to his car as though it were himself. That’s metonymy.

And Paul writes of baptism as though it were the whole of repentance, conversion and faith.

He wants us to remember that we repented, we had faith, we were converted, and we were baptised, and all these things link us indissolubly to the death of Jesus. He died in my place: his death is my death. Therefore, just as he was raised from the dead, so I am equipped and appointed to living a new life myself.

The second reason why we should talk about the crucifixion on a resurrection Sunday is that, if we remember that Christ truly died, we will not be led astray by any silly theories about what happened on that resurrection Sunday.

There was an article in Friday’s Herald by Dr John Dickson. He wrote:

...while mainstream scholars disagree on many things about the life of Jesus, there is a very strong consensus that the basic narrative of the Gospels is historically sound.

Take the question of Jesus’ existence. (Richard) Dawkins may have his reservations; so might (French phiosopher, Michael) Onfray and (journalist, Christopher) Hitchens. But no one who is actually doing ancient history does. I contacted three eminent ancient history professors this week and asked if they knew of any professional historian who argued that Jesus never lived. They did not. Professor Graeme Clarke of the Australian National University was happy to go on the record as saying: “Frankly, I know of no ancient historian or biblical historian who would have a twinge of doubt about the existence of a Jesus Christ — the documentary evidence is simply overwhelming.”

The history of Jesus is trustworthy.

And, although Dickson says that historians can’t really pronounce on the factuality of the resurrection, he says they generally concede that something remarkable happened which persuaded the early believers that Jesus was alive again.

I believe we can go further than that.

How did Peter, who denied the Lord three times on that crucifixion day, become the leader of that Christ–centred, Spirit–drunk band of Christians, unless he had really met the risen Lord?

How did Saul, the murderer, become the great church–builder? How did the destroyer of Christians become the great apostle of Christ? — unless he truly did meet the risen Lord Jesus on the Damascus Road.

How about Jesus’ brother, James, the one who once wanted to put Jesus away as a madman? How did he become a Christian without having seen the risen Christ?

These people were not fools. They would not have claimed to have seen Jesus alive unless they had done so. Nor was this mass hysteria. There were no masses, except for the over 500 at one time who saw Jesus alive.

And that mass sighting was after the ones and the twos and the twelve at a time.

Of course, some people claim that it was a simple case of body–snatching. But here lies a difficulty, because it is very hard to think of anyone who would want to snatch the body.

The Jewish leaders certainly wouldn’t have done it, because they were at some pains to make sure that the body wasn’t taken. They remembered that Jesus had been accused at his trial of claiming to be able to rebuild the temple in three days if it were destroyed. But the witnesses couldn’t agree among themselves because it was widely understood that Jesus was referring to himself and his own resurrection.

They asked Pilate for a guard on the tomb because they said he had claimed that he would rise again.

So, not the Jewish leaders.

And not the Romans. They had no interest in creating any questions, rumours or suspicions among the people. They might have hated the manipulations of the High Priest and his supporters, but they weren’t about to cut their own throats to make things hard for the Jewish leaders.

So what about the disciples?

You have heard what had been done to Jesus. He was a lost cause as far as the disciples were concerned. They had seen him dragged like the dogs’ meat back and forth across the city. They had seen no displays of power before the Sanhedrin or Pilate. They had seen him whipped, beaten, humiliated. Why would they have wanted to defile themselves during the Passover by touching the body in any way? This corpse was the symbol of a failed hope. Even if they had been able to penetrate the guard, why on earth would they have wanted to?

The most ingenious proposal is that Jesus never died, merely fell into a deep coma. Then, in the cool of the tomb, and under the influence of the odour of the embalming spices, he recovered, pushed away the stone, and let himself out.

But consider the facts. 33 hours without sleep, three gruelling trials, two beatings, a whipping bad enough that some people died of their whipping before they got to the cross, several cross–city hikes, and then the progress out to Calvary carrying a cross weighing some 70kg. Then the hours on the cross, slowly suffocating, and finally the spearing into his pericardial sac — the sac around his heart.

According to this theory, then he removed around 40kg of spices and bandages, rolled away a stone which four striong women couldn’t shift, overpowered three armed soldiers, and strolled out on a meet and greet with his disciples. Ingenious, but nonsense!

John’s account of the flow of water and blood from Jesus’ side is pretty good evidence that all heart activity had ceased. However, if Jesus had survived and recovered, he would have recovered as an invalid, a man who would be returning to health for months, a man who would have survived as a physical wreck. He would not have survived as someone who could say, “I have overcome the world!”

Jesus is not just alive, he is now alive, and we can meet him and know him.

I have a third point as to why we need to talk about crucifixion on the resurrection day, though, and it is this. The resurrection of Jesus makes Judgment a foregone conclusion.

John 3:18 says,

Whoever believes in him is not condemned; whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

Acts 17: 30, 31 says more starkly,

³⁰ In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. ³¹ For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.

Let me speak first to us who are Christians.

How shall we escape judgment? If judgment is sure for those who have refused to yield to Christ, how can we, who claim to know him, expect great rewards? Judgment extends to service as well as to salvation. We might be saved, but how far do we serve?

We are changing, and I am glad of it. But let us never presume on our salvation, and think that forgiveness is licence to live for ourselves and not for the risen Lord.

When we pray for conversions, but do so little of the work of evangelists; when we fail to serve our brothers and sisters, when we see injustice and fail to act, where do we stand in the face of judgment to come?

Jesus says,

I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.

This word applies to so many today. Does it apply to you and me? It is up to each of us to examine ourselves, so that we will not have to be judged.

But God also makes a promise which is as true for us as it was for Israel 3000 years ago:

If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and forgive their sins and heal their land. (II Chr 7:14)

Let’s determine, from this Easter Sunday, to seek in all ways to walk in newness of life!

But how much worse will it be for those who still reject Christ? Your sins and mine nailed him to the cross — there is no excuse. The only difference is whether or not we repent and turn to Jesus, trusting his promise,

Whoever comes to me, I will never, ever drive away.

The supreme sin is refusing to let him be our Lord and Master. That was the point of crucifying him, so as to wipe out Jesus’ claims to be King of the Jews. But his claim to Lordship still stands, because he, himself, stands again!

Those who refuse him as Lord are bound to meet him as judge.

Lately the world is patting down the earth on the Church’s grave, but we aren’t yet done with. Even now there are signs of life. Resurrection is coming for the Church: are we ready to be part of it? Now is the time for all people everywhere to repent and let the life of the risen Jesus be part of our lives.

Jesus is alive! Let us follow him, and share in his resurrection, too.

AMEN

(Based on a sermon first preached Fairfield, 14 Apr 1974)

© Peter R. Green 2007. Permission is granted for quotation in full for non-commercial purposes provided that authorship is acknowledged and this copyright notice is displayed with the text. Portions also copyright The Bible, NIV (Zondervan Ltd.)