Word of Salvation – Vol. 31 No. 09 – March 1986
Living Dead Or Alive Even When Dead
Sermon by Rev. A. I. De Graaf on Matt. 28:4 & John 11:25
Reading: Isaiah 12, Matt. 28:1-4, John 20:1-16
Singing: BoW. H.402, PsH. 233, BoW. H.401, PsH. 357, Bow. H.404
Matt. 28:4
The guards were so afraid… that they shook and became like dead men.
John 11:25
Jesus said to her, “I am the Resurrection and the life, he who believes in Me will live even though he dies…!”
Come with me to that garden outside Jerusalem, on that eerie night between Saturday and Sunday.
The site of a grave, a cemetery.
But it is not quite quiet. There are voices that mutter, there is the clink of armour, now and then the light of the full Passover moon glints in the point of a spear. A Night Watch, more historical than that of Rembrandt…! A soldier obeys orders without talking back but I am sure that – after that crazy order came, to guard a corpse – there must have been quite a lot of muttering in beards of grinning mates. Quite some ribald jokes about “that Mad Galilean,” whom they had to guard in death. Some of them may have been part of the party that crowned Him king… with thorns and saw Him strangely non-violent and pitiful when they had their fun with Him. And maybe some had heard how impressed the Commanding Captain was after doing detail at this man’s cross.
O.K. so he had been a remarkable man. But now he was well and truly dead and gone. And now they had to stand duty at his grave. Boy, one had to do silly things in military service! And especially that second night must have buzzed with their comment: the usual griping about crazy orders, headquarters have gone off their rocker again.
They were Roman Soldiers, says the text, because it is a watch detail given to the Jewish leaders by Pilate. They would not have needed that crusty official’s permission if all they had wanted to post in the garden was their own temple militia.
They did not just want men with sticks there, but the real McCoy: guys with swords and the no-nonsense approach of world conquering troops. Tough guys all right, who had seen a lot of the world.
But one did not have to be all THAT superstitious – tough or not – to find it all somewhat creepy, too. But oh-well, that second night is almost over, and that would be the end also of this silly assignment. Another one for the memoirs, for the story to tell the boys back home when this tour of duty in that bothersome Syria Province would be over. Grave thieves…? My foot! They would not stand a chance against these tough customers. They keep a good eye on the situation. Maybe some hope that some daredevils would try something: that’d be a nice diversion in such a boring night.
But no, there is the grey streak of the first light, the crack of dawn beginning to light up the east, the crowing of the first rooster, the first tweeting of a morning bird…! And then it happens. Then there is suddenly that totally unexpected: That radiant Light and that that violent shaking of the earth.
“Violent earthquake” it says in the gospel text: the kind that would send our needles quavering on the seismographs, at least six or seven on the open Richter scale. A heavenly Form of great power and glory touches the quavering earth and not a man-Jack moves a finger when he walks up to that grave and moves the stone away, seals or no seals, and goes to sit on it as if he doesn’t have a in the world. What happens further they do not see, because says Matthew they shook and BECAME LIKE DEAD MEN.
These, then, are the two points of this Easter morning service: the two ways one can be in the face of this mighty and unique event:
1. MORE DEAD THAN ALIVE …and
2. MORE ALIVE THAN DEAD.
1. MORE DEAD THAN ALIVE
Does not that strike you as utter irony? On that Greatest Morning of Life, when God Almighty moves in to bring back LIFE on a death-contaminated earth, the people who are closest to that action, they who have the first-row box seat as no one else had… are, or become, like dead men: what a terrible contrast.
They thought they were so alive, with all their travel and adventure, with all their perks and chances in that occupied country, the drinking and the eating and the girls and the roaring times with their mates, their brushes with danger and the pride of young and supple bodies in the flower of life… So much they had survived already! Tough men, tough! Yes but when they tried to keep Jesus inside His grave they appeared to be more dead than alive! And later – when they had gotten over their initial shock they would accept bribe money to deny what their very eyes had seen and spread the silly story that thieves HAD stolen Jesus’ lifeless body out of that grave while they slept. Nothing really happened… they would say. By doing that they would stick themselves even deeper into death. And that of course Israel’s leaders did too. They had every reason to believe that report from these battle-hardened warriors that Jesus had risen, and that God had sent His messenger down there on that dawn-brightened spot in that Garden of the Grave. After all, they knew the Old Testament that had predicted this marvellous thing: “Thou didst not leave His soul in hell, nor didst Thou allow Thy holy One to see corruption.”
But they said “no” to it. They said “NO” to the Prince of Life and thus they, too, plunged themselves deeper into death. Bitter tragedy! But it happens. People do that utterly stupid thing… still today.
The gospel writers give their testimony to what God did on that Easter morning, they tell in clear witness – a witness for which some of them even died – what their eyes saw and their ears heard and what their hands touched – that Jesus arose.
God’s marvellous deeds in our poor world’s history. And yet there are even church preachers who then say: “BUT THAT I can’t believe.” and they talk Jesus right back into His grave – or try to do that anyway. But then they too are more dead than alive.
But church people can do that, too. Maybe they do not TALK Jesus back into His grave as those soldiers did, but they LIVE Him back into His grave. They treat Him as if He were no living reality. They replace their living Lord with false securities and other loyalties, they put money in His place to trust in, or they worry their life away as if death were still the last reality in the world… as if Jesus never arose and as if they still lived in their sins. If that is your decision, if that is really your choice, then also of you it must be said – for all the fun you think you have – and for all the property and power you think you hold, that you are more dead than alive and unless God does a miracle to you, you will be dead for all eternity.
You cannot stand by that of grave Jesus where God did that marvellous thing of raising up His Son after He had paid the price for our sin, you cannot stand by that grave without either becoming more dead or more alive. May God give that nobody here in church this morning one day will hear that out of the mouth of God: about you: he became as a dead man, a dead woman.
For you see, it can – and should be the other way around. For that is God’s Gift and message for you on this Easter morning. It can be the other way around: By rising from the dead Jesus made it possible that of people like you and me it will be said forever (and that is point two of this sermon:
2. MORE ALIVE THAN DEAD.
That’s what Jesus talked about with Martha when He was about to raise her brother Lazarus from the grave as a sign of His power: “I AM THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE”
He only could say that because having taken upon Himself our death and thus having made it HARMLESS He would rise Himself. The Father would raise Him. The angel which the soldiers saw was a messenger (that’s what the word “angel” means) messenger from God. The Father would raise Jesus; that angel was a messenger of a God who had been fully satisfied, fully reconciled. “Out you come, My Son, I agree with what You said on that cross: IS FINISHED, it has all been done! Therefore Jesus could add: “Whoever believes, puts his trust, in Me shall live even though he die.” Whoever dies as a believer in Jesus – and who among us might no more be here on earth next Easter? – even then he will be more alive than dead. Because he or she whom God makes alive is truly alive for all eternity. Even on his dying bed he walks with God in that glorious light.
What a tremendous truth that is, what a glorious Easter gift. That beats all eggs we think we can give one another. THAT is paid for by Jesus’ death and no less than THAT is guaranteed by Jesus’ resurrection. This is a truth, a Present from God, which rests on historical FACT, on what God did that morning on this earth. The great turn-around God made happen here. That Event there in that garden is not just a public relations stunt engineered by God to saddle us with a mere IDEA, or THOUGHT or WISHFUL DREAM. God who created real flesh-and-blood people is also the one who gave them a truly down-to-earth flesh-and-blood redemption. And for God to make death and the consequences of our rebellion harmless is as real as taking away the cause of that misery, sin itself.
If we find that our small faith and our poor tottering imagination has trouble to take all that in, never mind! We may ask that mighty Saviour also to do to us ABOVE WHAT WE CAN EVEN PRAY OR THINK. No eye has seen fully yet, and no ear has heard, no heart has yet been able to imagine what God has prepared for those who love Him. For He loved them first.
But something, the beginning of it all, human eyes and ears HAVE perceived. It threw rough and tough Roman soldiers to the ground. And it made timid followers, who had run away and denied Him before, into martyrs and witnesses who gave their life because they could not deny this truth, this mighty Good News of God. God has started, He will also finish. God has begun to roll back death. We who trust this marvellous redemption will not die but live. Live before Him to sing His praises eternally.
Hallelujah;
AMEN.