To talk about the resurrection we have to begin with talking about Creation and our place in it and how good it is. Psalm 8 is a good place to start. The psalmist writes of how wondrous the universe is. What the Chandra and Hubble telescopes show us certainly agrees. He also talks about us humans, how in this universe of wonder, God has chosen to love us each and how in his creation God has made us just lower than gods and given us dominion over everything. We’re important. We’re here to be able to say how glorious God is.
O Lord, our Lord, throughout the earth how glorious is your name,
and glorious too where unseen heavens your majesty proclaim.
On infant lips, in children’s song a strong defence you raise
to counter enemy and threat, and foil the rebel’s ways.
When I look up and see the skies which your own fingers made,
and wonder at the moon and stars, each perfectly displayed;
then must I ask, “Why do you care? Why love humanity?
And why keep every mortal name fixed in your memory?”
Yet such as us you made and meant just less than gods to be;
with honour and with glory, Lord, you crowned humanity.
And then dominion you bestowed for all made by your hand,
all sheep and cattle, birds and fish that move through sea or land.
O Lord, our Lord, throughout the earth how glorious is your name.
(Psalm 8, Paraphrase, John Bell)
In talking about the resurrection, we start with Creation and how good it is and with us and God’s love for us and his purpose for us and then move on to ask, “How can God let death - stinky, rotten, decaying death - be the final word in his very good creation;?” Well, the answer is, “He doesn’t.” Resurrection and New Creation is God’s final word on the matter.
If we were faithful Jews back in the day of Jesus and knew the Old Testament like the back of our hands and even had a good bit of it memorized, we would know by heart many passages where the LORD had spoken and hinted that he would raise the dead, destroy death, and make all things new, and new in such a way that the whole creation is filled with the knowing, knowledge of, or knowability of God like the waters cover the seas. For a faithful Jew back then resurrection was a certainty because the LORD God had promised it. Just as God had really intervened in history to deliver them from slavery in Egypt, so would God really intervene for his creation and powerfully deliver it from its futile enslavement to death.
What they didn’t expect was that God himself would come as a human being and as a human being die and be raised. They weren’t expecting that so when Jesus showed up doing things that only God himself could do (forgiving sins, raising the dead, healing people, and casting out demons) they called him a blasphemer and had him crucified at the hands of the Romans who were very good at that sort of thing. But God raised him.
God the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit raised Jesus the Son from the dead and, as Peter says here in Acts, there were witnesses. Paul in First Corinthians 15 says there were over five hundred witnesses besides the disciples. As a historical fact, the resurrection of Jesus is better attested than even the death of Socrates. It happened. God really raised Jesus from the dead, raised him bodily. He wasn’t a ghost or a spectre-ish mass hallucination caused by grief. Try finding proof that ghosts are real and that such a thing as mass grief leading to a mass common hallucination actually exists. Those things are what stand the burden of proof. Jesus’s resurrection is well attested.
Another proof of Jesus resurrection is that the Holy Spirit continues to come and baptize people with resurrection life, new life, life in the Spirit wherever Jesus is proclaimed. What happened in Cornelius’ house continues to happen all over the world. The impact of this baptism in the Holy Spirit is as powerful as having died and then been raised and given a new life.
Many people have had a brush with death that is reorienting, a real priority changer. But when the Holy Spirit comes upon people it is an utter reorientation of one’s life around Jesus Christ and living for him and his kingdom. It isn’t a matter of simply trying to find time to fit church into your life. When Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit puts his hand you, you start weeding out those things that keep you from living for him and his Kingdom.
This utter reorientation around Jesus and his kingdom awakens us to see the world, see life through resurrection eyes. It’s seeing the world through real hope, real hope that God does love us and does act. It’s knowing that if God loves me and has really acted upon me to heal me, to give me new life, then God will do the same for others and its my purpose now to take the message of new life in Jesus Christ to others for he will move upon them and in them just as he has done with me.
The God who created this universe in all its wonder, wonder which can only point those who see it back to the one who created, is our God and he truly does love each one of us enough to fix our names in his memory and that’s our guarantee that he will raise us from death just as he has raised Jesus. And, since he has raised us now to new life in Christ Jesus through the life-giving work of the Holy Spirit, what else do we have, indeed can we have, to live for.
You know, if we look at this Coronavirus moment in our lives and see it with resurrection eyes we can see a moment of resurrection hope in it. After Italy first went into lockdown, pictures of Venice came out showing the water in the canals clear. Now, even dolphins are swimming in them. I saw pictures just the other day from a small city in India showing the Himalayas off in the distance 200 miles away. The air quality there had been so bad that they hadn’t seen those massive peaks for over 35 years and here they were clear as day. The International Space Station is showing us how huge swaths of the planet that used to look brown from space because of air pollution are now clear. We can’t call Toronto Foggy Hog Town anymore. That looks like hope.
Looking at the big picture, the Corona virus threatens death not only to vulnerable individuals but also to a whole lifestyle that materialistic, consumeristic, warring, impoverishing, the rich get richer, and meanwhile we’re locked down in our homes that are probably beginning to smell like tombs; but, outside, the Creation is renewing. To me, through the eyes of resurrection, that looks like hope coming alive. It looks like a sign from God, a word from the God who raises the dead calling us to hope in him, to come to him and live. Amen.
