EASTER SUNDAY
AT FIDDLER’S GREEN
DR. JIM DIXON
APRIL 7, 1996
JOHN 20:11-29
Eastra was the name of an Anglo-Saxon fertility goddess. She was the goddess of spring. She was the goddess of dawn. The egg and the rabbit were two of her symbols, symbols of new life and fertility. She was honored every year throughout Europe in a springtime festival called Eastra.
Now, at the same time throughout Europe, there was another festival, a Christian springtime festival held every year. It was called Paska, from a Hebrew word meaning “Passover.” Historians tell us that in the course of time a strange thing happened. These two festivals, the festival of Paska and the festival of Eastra, merged and became one festival, combining the secular and the religious, the Christian and the pagan. The name Paska was dropped and the name Eastra retained. Etymologists tell us that our word Easter comes from that word Eastra.
And so it is that in our time people color Easter eggs, hide them in their homes, place them in their yards and children have Easter egg hunts. People buy Easter baskets and put jelly beans in them and chocolate rabbits. Families, loved ones, and friends come together for food and fellowship. All of this is fun and it can all be wonderful but, you see, it has little or nothing to do with Paska, little or nothing to do with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
And so, here we are this morning, gathered in this place to remember Paska, to remember the death and the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ and to celebrate that death and resurrection. I would not be faithful if I did not remind you that Paska, Easter, is not just a celebration but it’s an invitation, an invitation that demands a response. God wants you to respond to the death and resurrection of His Son. He wants you to respond in three ways. First of all, God asks us to respond with faith. He wants us to respond in faith.
In 1917, the Bolsheviks came to power in Russia. They took over the Russian government. In 1918, they made Moscow their capital. They made the Kremlin the seat of their government. Within the walls of the Kremlin there were many churches: the Cathedral of the Annunciation, the Cathedral of the Assumption, the Cathedral of the Archangel Michael. They are ancient churches, each of them more than 400 years old. The Bolshevik Communists took those churches and converted them to museums. Ultimately, Soviet Communism declared that they would eradicate Christianity from the Soviet Union.
Within the Kremlin there is a great hall called the Palace of Congresses. In that hall there is a vast stage. It was Nikita Khrushchev who had declared that the day would come when Soviet Communism would parade the last Christian across that stage and Christianity would fall. Of course, it was Soviet Communism that fell, just four years ago, on Easter Sunday 1992. In the Kremlin in the Palace of Congresses in the Great Hall on that same stage, there was an Easter service, a gospel concert and the gospel of Jesus Christ was proclaimed openly. Since the fall of Soviet Communism, many men and women throughout Russia have come to believe in Jesus Christ and with the fall of Soviet Communism, many other men and women have stood up and said that they’ve kept the faith in Russia despite the opposition. Despite the persecution, they’ve kept the faith.
I’m reminded of a true story. It took place in 1930 when Bukharin, the famous Bolshevik leader who was a great orator, traveled from Moscow to Kiev to address a vast assembly of 10,000 people. His subject was atheism. For a solid hour he unleashed the full arsenal of his argumentation, using argument and ridicule to try to destroy the credibility and the viability of the Christian faith. When he was finished, he looked out on what he believed to be the smoldering ashes of what once was the Christian faith. In arrogance he asked, “Are there any questions?” A solitary man arose and he went up to the stage and he shouted the Orthodox Christian greeting, “Christ has risen!” The vast assembly arose as one, 10,000 people, and like the sound of an avalanche they replied, “He is risen indeed!” That’s how Christ wants you to respond this morning to His death and resurrection. He wants you to respond with faith.
Christianity is still under attack the world over. It’s under attack right here in America. I hold in my right hand three magazines, current issues just released this week: US News and World Report, Newsweek magazine, and Time magazine. On the cover of US News is the cover article, the subject, “In the Search of Jesus.” The cover of Newsweek, “Rethinking the Resurrection.” The cover of Time magazine, “The Search for Jesus.” These magazines have interviewed a plethora of people: secular scholars, religious scholars, and total flakes.
You cannot believe the variety of opinions offered in these three articles, from people who believe that the body of Jesus Christ was taken out of the tomb by wild dogs and devoured, to people who believe that Jesus Christ was born on the moon or people who believe that the spirit of Christ merged with the spirit of Buddha and helped form the Ming Dynasty in China. There are people in here who believe in the resurrection of Christ and people quoted who do not believe in the resurrection of Christ, and it has always been that way and it will be that way until Christ comes again.
You might think it’s all up for grabs if you read articles like that, but it’s not up for grabs. The truth is that those who deny the resurrection of Christ have absolutely no evidence, archeological or otherwise, to support their position. But those who believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ have great evidence. Five hundred people testified that they saw Jesus Christ resurrected and alive. We have the testimony of eyewitnesses. We have their testimony in writing and most scholars admit that those writings date to the middle of the first century. We have the testimony of transformed lives by the power of Christ, the testimony of miracles wrought in the name of Christ, and the testimony of prophecy fulfilled in accordance with the predictions of Christ. We have the testimony of the Holy Spirit who bears witness wherever the gospel is proclaimed.
You see, secular scholarship doesn’t know what to do with the resurrection. Secular scholarship doesn’t know what to do with the supernatural. As far as secular scholarship is concerned, the supernatural is just out of bounds and they approach the data with extreme prejudice. Their interpretation is influenced by the presuppositions they bring to the data, the presupposition that nothing supernatural ever has happened or ever will happen. But you see, only faith can respond to the supernatural. Faith is not centered in the mind. Faith is centered in the soul. It’s centered in the spirit, and God wants you in your soul—in your spirit—to respond today. Faith can be mixed with doubt, but it cannot be mixed with apathy.
The biblical word for faith means “commitment,” and if you would respond to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, then today you must commit yourself to Christ. You must have faith enough to make that commitment, to commit yourself to Christ as Lord and Savior—Savior because He died on the cross for you and by His blood He offers forgiveness of sins, Lord because He has risen from the dead and He is Lord. So He asks us to respond in faith. He also asks us to respond in hope. He wants us to respond to His death and resurrection with hope.
Tutankhamen was the boy king who ruled Egypt from 1347 to 1359 BC. It was Howard Carter, the famous British archeologist, who discovered the burial chamber of Tutankhamen in the Valley of the Kings on April 22, 1922. Prior burial chambers had been discovered, burial chambers of other pharaohs, but those chambers had been ransacked. They had been pilfered. They had been burglarized.
On April 22, 1922, when Howard Carter and his team found that secret passage, that buried entryway into Tutankhamen’s tomb, into the four-room chamber, he was stunned to see for the first time the burial chamber of an Egyptian pharaoh perfectly preserved, preserved for 3,300 years with more than 5,000 precious objects inside, including the threefold casket of Tutankhamen, the innermost casket made of solid gold. Next to the casket, up on a shelf, there was a vase. In that vase was wildflowers. Those wildflowers had been preserved in the dry desert air and in that sealed chamber for 3,300 years. Howard Carter said there is no doubt that those flowers were given by someone who had loved this boy king. Howard Carter said those flowers are a reminder of ancient grief.
You don’t need a preacher to tell you that there’s a world of graves out there. There are millions, yes billions, of graves—each grave, at least at one time, associated with grief. The Bible tells us in I Thessalonians, chapter 4, that as Christians “We do not grieve as others do, who have no hope because we have hope in Jesus Christ and in His resurrection from the dead.” Our grief is tempered with the hope of Christ.
My father died last December and he was a committed Christian. I grieved and my brothers grieved and my mom grieved. We loved him then and we love him now, but our grief is mixed with hope, with the confident expectation that one day we will see my father again even as we will see our Father in heaven and even as we will see our Lord Jesus Christ. This is the Christian hope, and God wants you to have hope today. He wants you to live your life with hope. He wants you to live every day with the confident expectation of eternal life. If we don’t live our days with hope, then we can’t live life as He meant for us to live in this world.
Imagine for a moment that you are camping in southeastern Oklahoma. Imagine that it’s a few decades ago. You’ve driven your car to the campsite. You’re there with some friends. You’ve been fishing in the little river there in southeast Oklahoma and you’ve had many dinners by the campfire at night. But you’ve begun to grow tired of soft drinks with no ice. You just want to have some ice and you remember a little town not too far away where you had gone sometime ago, a little town called Hochtown which is in southeast Oklahoma. You get with your friends into the car and you drive to Hochtown looking forward to the General Store where you remember a whole bunch of soft drinks and a lot of ice. As you drive into the outskirts of Hochtown, you’re amazed. Everything is changed. Everything is falling apart. It’s kind of eerie. As you drive through the streets and there’s potholes in all the streets and you see trash and garbage and litter everywhere. The lawns are unmowed. Weeds are growing in the church yard, the windows are broken in the public school. The paint is peeling off of the houses and many of the houses are abandoned. You find the General Store and it is falling apart too. You go into the General Store and you see most of the shelves are empty. There’s a little bit of food there. You go up to the clerk and you say, “What happened?”
He explains that the government has decided to build a dam just a little bit down river and they’re going to create a new lake, a reservoir called Broken Bow Lake and in just a few years the town of Hocha Town is going to be underwater. In just a few years that town is going to be under water. He said, “People just don’t care anymore. They’ve lost hope.”
Well, that really happened to that town in southeast Oklahoma and it’s really happened to billions of people the world over, people who believe that they’re just going to be buried someday soon by a sea called death. They just don’t care anymore and they don’t have hope.
Maybe you feel like that today and you try to fill the void with material things or with hedonistic experiences or with self-exaltation, but it’s all vanity. God wants you to know nothing will satisfy but Christ and you need the hope that comes only from Christ. He said, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he die, yet shall he live and he who lives and believes in Me will never truly die.” So God wants you to respond today with hope that you might live every day with the confidence of heaven itself and life eternal with Him.
Finally, God wants you to respond with love. In the death and resurrection of Christ, we see the love of God and that love demands a response that we might love God and that we might love our neighbor as ourself.
On April 5, 1937, John Griffith took his 8-year old son named Greg to work with him for the very first time. Greg had never been to work with his dad and he was really excited. John Griffith was glad and happy just to have a job. It was the Great Depression. John Griffith had grown up in Oklahoma and during the 1930s Oklahoma had become part of the dust bowl. There were no jobs. Many of John Griffith’s friends had gone west to California and Oregon looking for work but John Griffith had taken his family east to the shores of the Mississippi River. There John Griffith had found a job as the operator of a railroad drawbridge. So there he was April 5, 1937, with his 8-year old boy Greg, sitting by the banks of the Mississippi right next to the drawbridge. They were having lunch. John Griffith had brought a lunch with him, a picnic lunch. They were sitting there watching the ships go by as the drawbridge was up.
John Griffith was explaining to his son about the boats and the ships and telling him where those boats and ships might be going to distant places, places neither one of them had ever been. They were having a great time together when suddenly there was the sound of a whistle and John Griffith realized that… he looked at his watch and saw that the Mississippi Express was going to arrive in just a couple of minutes. He told his son Greg to stay right there and he ran towards the control tower of the drawbridge. He went to pull the lever that would lower the bridge for the Mississippi Express. It was then that, to his horror, he realized that his son Greg had followed him and his son had stumbled. His son had tripped and fallen down into the gears that control the drawbridge. If he lowered the bridge, he would kill his son but if he didn’t lower the bridge, 500 people would die on that train. He had no time. He made his decision. He pulled the lever and his son died and 500 people lived.
He looked out the window of the control tower. He could see the train going by. He saw little children on the train eating ice cream cones. He saw women in nice dresses looking at the scenery. He saw men in the smoking car reading newspapers. He saw porters carrying luggage. He saw men and women he realized who would probably live and die and never know the sacrifice that he had made.
That story is a true story often told and is generally used as an illustration of what God the Father did for us in offering His Son upon Calvary’s cross, but it’s an inadequate illustration. It’s an inadequate illustration because, you see, Jesus Christ didn’t stumble onto the cross. He didn’t trip and fall onto the cross. The cross wasn’t some kind of tragic accident. He willed to go to the cross. For this He was born. For this He had come into the world because He loves you. He loves you even as God the Father loves you. Nowhere is the love of God seen more clearly than on that cross and in the death and resurrection of Christ because it’s all for us. It’s all for you.
Jesus said, “Greater love has no one than this, that they lay down their life for their friends. You are My friends.” Jesus said, “A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another even as I have loved you.” The Bible says, “We love because He first loved us.” The Bible says, “In this is love: not that we love God but that He loved us and gave His Son to be the expiation for our sins. Brothers and Sisters, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.”
In I Corinthians, chapter 13, the Apostle Paul tells us that there’s only three things that remain forever: faith, hope, and love. These three are eternal and God wants you to be eternal if you would respond with faith, hope and love.
Paska, Easter, is an invitation. It’s an invitation to heaven itself with sins forgiven and death conquered, but we must RSVP. We must respond. Let’s look to the Lord with a word of prayer.