By Rev Kenneth Mtata
Psalm 118: 1-2, 14-24
Judges 4: 17-23, 5:24-31a
Revelations 12:1-12
And in addition from the Epistles:
"May (you) receive that inner illumination of the spirit which will make you realise how great is the hope to which he is calling you... and how tremendous is the power available to us who believe in God. That power is the same divine power which was demonstrated in Christ when he raised him from the dead." (Ephesians 1:18-21 JBPhilips)
What we call Easter Sunday is an artificially time-bound, one day celebration of an event that in fact took weeks and months, maybe even years for Jesus’ closest followers to fully comprehend and grow into. And so our Easter meditation continues as we too seek understanding of what the resurrection means in real terms to us in our time and place today.
The Swiss theologian Karl Barth once delivered a sermon entitled “Threatened by Resurrection”. If you are wondering what he meant by that you have only to look at the abundance of evidence in the New Testament that the resurrection was a very dangerous thing. After Jesus’ body was taken from the cross and buried the chief priests went to Pilate to ask for security at the tomb to ensure that his body remained buried. A sealed heavy stone and the temple police were not enough, so Pilate gave them a contingent of armed Roman soldiers saying “Make the tomb as secure as possible” (Matt 27:65) - religion and state combining forces to protect themselves against the threat of resurrection. In the account recorded in the Book of Mark, when three women carrying spices arrived at the tomb and found it empty “they fled... for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid” (Mark 16:8). Even though they were told by the angel: “Don’t be alarmed... he has risen”, they were terrified into silence, sensing that if word got out in the streets of Jerusalem about the disappearance of Jesus’ body there would be chaos. The Book of Luke tells us that even after the disciples came face to face with the risen Christ they remained locked in their secret room, knowing that the resurrection put them in even greater danger than they had been in before. Years later Paul was commissioned by the risen Christ to take the message of salvation to the wider world. On multiple occasions people listened with curiosity to his words, but as soon as he spoke of the resurrection they became so enraged that they tried to kill him. Threatened by the resurrection.
Why? Because Easter turns everything completely upside down. Life is God’s inextinguishable gift to the world. Life is growth, expressed in the freedom to create, in renewal and healing, in abundant generosity and love. Life is boundless. In Jesus’ own words, whoever believes in God’s Son as the divine gift of love to the world finds eternal life. Where there is no growth, death prevails. The powers of this world fear that which they cannot contain, control, manipulate, suppress and diminish in an effort to preserve one-sided interests and so they commit the great sin of attempting to commandeer and extinguish God’s gift of life by whatever means possible. The obscenity of the cross on Good Friday was that these forces of death appeared to have killed even God himself. The glory of Easter is that God’s gift of life has absolute victory over death.
Is the threat of the resurrection still felt today? Governments have with ease made Easter Sunday a public holiday. It is the one day of the year when everybody shows up at church because that is what is expected. Children look forward to chocolate rabbits and marshmallow eggs. Easter Monday finds us celebrating a day off from work, when we light up the braai stand and make merry. Easter has become arguably the most placid and enjoyable celebratory day of the year. Have we lost touch with the original upside-down turning, revolutionary impact of the resurrection? Does our concept of the resurrection threaten anything at all in our world today?
In his sermon Barth suggests we have softened the resurrection and altered it to fit our imprisoned human condition because we are loathe to stand eye to eye against the hegemony of death under which we exist. We recognize that our condition needs change and we long for it, but we want change to come as gently as possible. “Resurrection (is) not progress, not evolution, not enlightenment,” Barth says, “but a call from heaven to us: ‘Rise up! You are dead but I will give you life’. That is what is proclaimed here, and it is the only way the world can be saved.” Resurrection is like a lightning bolt breaking through our helplessness. Resurrection drives us to surrender all those protective walls we have been using to defend ourselves against the stark, crystal clear, compelling truth of the victory of life over death. Resurrection does not allow us to remain huddled in the safety of our upper room begging God to do for us what he has all along been asking us to do for him.
As a young child I learned the greeting that we customarily exchange in our church on Easter morning:
- Kristu amuka!
- Nesu tamukawo naye!
Those few words were foundational to my understanding of my relationship with Christ as I grew up. Today’s verses from Ephesians assure me that when I commit to walking with him as his disciple, that very same power that raised Christ from the dead is available to me. It sounds impossible! But if we go back through the Gospel accounts of Jesus' teachings and healings and the stories of the growth of the early church in Acts and we re-examine them in light of the resurrection we see that indeed the power of the resurrection is not something confined to the Son of God in one special historical event, but it is also offered to us every single day. “Rise up! You are dead but I will give you life.” How much greater is God's gift to us than what we have so far agreed to accept!
Today April 18th we celebrate Zimbabwe’s day of independence, a great milestone on our historical calendar. But as Christians more is expected of us than mere celebration. We are the people of the resurrection. It is not enough to proclaim to the people of Zimbabwe once a year that Christ has risen, because in fact the resurrection cannot be adequately expressed by the spoken or written word, nor does the mere speaking of the word change anything. If the victory of Christ is to break through all the various forms of death we experience in our society it must be lived. And it can only be lived when we develop a resurrection attitude. We need people who have been so utterly transformed by their encounter with the risen Christ that their very7 approach to life defies the forces of death and boldly translates God’s alternative word of life into the most practical forms. Are we those people?
Let us pray:
O Lord our God, we thank you that we are not left in despair at the cross but that you have shown us the victory of life over death. We pray that the eyes of our hearts may be illumined so that we know with complete confidence that when you call us to your service you open up to us the same power that raised Christ from the dead, that we too may defy the forces of death that hold our communities and our nation hostage and may offer the word of life. On this Independence Day we pray for the power of the resurrection to take hold in Zimbabwe and we give ourselves to you for your work of transformation. Our thoughts are with those families who have lost loved ones in the recent Chipinge bus disaster and those who are recovering from injuries, and all others who are today in mourning, that even in the depth of their sadness they may discover that the sting of death has forever been conquered by the gift of eternal life. Amen
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