April 11, 2004

Happy Easter!

Have you ever been so caught up in a book that you just had to flip back to the ending to see how the story comes out?

I remember an episode of the TV show MASH when they were so desperate for something to read and there was only one murder mystery book in the camp. So they ripped the book apart chapter by chapter and gave them out to people to read. People were having fun guessing who done it. But then something horrible happened. When they started to read the last chapter, the very last page, the one where the detective reveals the name of the killer, was missing. They ended up calling from Korea half-way around the world to find out the end of the story.

I have a confession to make this morning. I still haven’t found time to go see the movie version of “The Passion,” but I read the book. And I did flip to the back to find out how the story comes out. Guess what? We win!

If you would like to read the back of the book, too, I refer you to Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, specifically Chapter 15, in which Paul goes on the offense and writes a stirring defense of what was then a brand-new idea: that this man Jesus Christ had been put to death, and yet rose from the dead and will live forever. Debate was raging among these new believers about whether such a thing were possible, and if it were possible, how could it happen to everyone who believes in what Jesus preached, too? But if it didn’t happen, Paul writes, if Jesus did not rise from the dead, then we who call ourselves Christians are the most pitiable of men, for we have been fed the biggest lie of all.

Yet it did happen, Paul argues. It happened because the first Adam was a man of dust, but the new Adam, Christ, was a man of heaven. All humans are like the first Adam, because we all will die. But we also bear the mark of the new Adam, the one who died for our sins, and the body that he assumed when he rose is perfect, imperishable. That’s what it will be like for us. Listen to what he says: “We shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.

“For this perishable nature, our weak bodies, must put on the imperishable, and this mortal nature, our deaths, must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”

In other words, don’t be afraid to go through your own passion, as Jesus did, because we already know that a happy ending awaits us.

This morning as we celebrate the resurrection of the Lord I want to share with you some stories I haven’t shared with anyone except Robin. My dad was walking across a field in France in February 1945 when he was hit in the head by a piece of German shrapnel. One inch deeper and he never would have come home from the war. But he did come home, although he had a plate in his head and a fistful of drugs he had to take every day for the rest of his life to prevent seizures. Those drugs, I’m convinced, changed his personality and made him moody and angry all the rest of his life.

So my mother, who had sent him off to the war as a happy-go-lucky, warm-hearted, romantic man and bore him one baby girl before he left for Europe, was confronted with this stranger. My mother had a deep faith in God and a stoic determination that came from growing up in the Depression. She had three more children, but she and my father fought more or less all the time, and between the fighting and carrying for four small children she was exhausted.. She had a talk with her parish priest, who convinced her, talked her into having a fifth child, told her that all babies are a gift from God. That fifth child was me.

It was only two years later that polio struck our household and my two brothers and I came down with various levels of the disease. Can you imagine the burdens that fell on her then? But the earliest thing I can remember my mother saying to me, through the endless trips to hospitals, even as I was being fitted for tiny leg braces and crutches, she said “God never gives you more than you can handle.”

When I got to be a teenager those words grew faint and distant from my ears. I went through a lot of struggles, a lot of pain and a lot of self-pity in those years, but none more so than when I would try to date. I got turned down a lot, rejected a lot, plus there were a lot of doors that were closed to me. For example, I always wanted to be an actor. I just have that gene in my makeup. But directors would say to me, “I can’t cast you in anything, you just don’t fit the physical type.” More rejection. More frustration. Yes, I considered suicide more than once. Those were the days when I was a heavy drinker. There were so many times back then that I cried out to God in anger and despair, “God, it would have been better if my father had been killed in the war. It would have been better if that priest had never talked my mother into having me. It would have been better if I had never been born. Why don’t you just let me die?”

God heard my cry then, and he gave me an answer. I can’t pretend that I heard his answer, but he gave me one. He said, “I don’t have death for you, I have life for you.”

There was a lot of growing up ahead. Robin came into my life and next year we will celebrate our 25^th wedding anniversary. There were a lot of ups and downs in our relationship, and a lot more pain I had yet to experience, but through it all the Lord was leading me on to something wonderful. Something meaningful. Our God is a master potter. By that I mean that he can either mold us if we are willing, or break us and recast us if we are not, but one way or another he can make something beautiful of our lives, just like the old song.

I want to tell you that God broke and recast me a number of times. Who knows? Maybe he isn’t finished yet. But I have faith that the God of miracles will make the end product beautiful. In the musical Fiddler on the Roof the humble tailor Motel Kamzoil wins the hand of his beloved, Tzeitel, and he sings “Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles, God took a tailor by the hand, stood by his side and miracle of miracles, led him to the Promised Land.” And he adds, “But the most miraculous thing of all is that out of a worthless lump of clay, God has made a man today.” That’s me. That’s what God has done for me.

What’s this got to do with the Passion, you may ask? Throughout his time among us, Christ was acting as a role model for us. In his love, in his forgiveness, in his patience and caring, he was modeling how we should live. The same thing was true in his passion and death, the way he was obedient to his father’s will even unto death. He was modeling for us then, too. And you might say, “Wait a minute, pastor, I don’t have to be crucified. I don’t have to die the way Jesus died.” Maybe so, but the Gospel of John tells us that each one of us must have their own times of passion, their own times of pain and weeping in life. We all will have troubles, and most of all of us will have big time troubles. And every last one of must confront our great enemy, death, maybe confront it in great pain and loneliness and even despair. So yes, it’s true, we all will face our own passion.

But on Easter Sunday, too, Jesus was modeling for us, letting us know about the joy that awaits us on the other side of our own personal passion. Listen to what it says in John 16: (read John 16:20-22).

I heard a great story this week and I want to share it with you. A pastor was in the habit of wearing a boutonnière, a little red flower, on his suit coat every week for services, and one Sunday he was greeting people after church when a little boy came up to him and asked, “What are you going to do with your flower?” The pastor asked, “Why do you want to know?” The boy said, “If you’re just going to throw it away, can I have it?”

The little boy explained that he came from a broken home, and he had lived with his mother for awhile after the divorce, but then she got a boyfriend, and she told the boy he would have to go live with his dad. And he lived with his dad awhile, but then he had a baby with his new wife, and he said the boy would have to go live with his grandma. “My grandma is real nice,” the little boy said. “She makes me treats and tucks me in at night. I’d love to give her a flower and tell her I love her, so can I have your flower?”

The pastor had tears in his eyes as he took the little boy’s hand and said, “No, son, you can’t have my flower, but you come with me.” And he took him up to the front of the church where church members put fresh flowers every week. “Your grandma deserves a whole bouquet of flowers. You take these to your grandma instead.” And the little boy’s face just lit up with joy as he took the bouquet in his arms. “Wow. I just wanted one flower. This turned out to be a great day.”

My brothers and sisters, I don’t know what pain you are dealing with this morning, but I have a reasonable assurance that everybody is carrying some cross. To you I say that this really is a great day. Our passion is not over yet and won’t be until Jesus finally welcomes us home, but I’ve read the end of the book, and because of what happened on this morning 2,000 years ago, guess what? We win! All praise and glory to the Lord Jesus Christ.