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I Am the Resurrection and the Life
A Sermon Preached
by Dr. James Flamming
First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
Easter Sunday, April 16, 2006
Scripture: John 11:25
Since Easter is in April this year it am reminded of a
sixth grade teacher who gave her class an April Fool’s Day aptitude test. Take
that test with me.
Question One: If you take away two apples from three
apples what do you have? The answer is, You have two apples! If you take two,
you have two.
Question Two: A storm comes. The electricity goes
out. You have only one match. You enter a room that has a kerosene lamp, an oil
heater, and wood in the fire place. Which would you light first? The answer: The
match, of course.
Question three: A farmer has seventeen sheep. All
but nine die. How many does he have left? Answer: Nine! All but nine die!
Question four: (This is an easy one.) In baseball,
how many outs are there in an inning? Most people would answer three. But the
answer is six because there are two teams up in an inning.
Question five: How many different kinds of animals did
Moses take on the ark? Answer: None. Moses didn’t take any – it was Noah!
Then the teacher of those sixth graders asked, “Do you need
to listen more attentively? Do you need to pay more attention? Do you need to
understand what it is all about?
I’d like for us to do that with Easter today. For the cross
and resurrection are at the center of the Christian faith. Sometimes we think we
know - but we don’t know. We think we understand - -but we don’t understand.
Have you heard that four line jingle?
When Noah sailed the ocean blue,
He had his troubles same as you;
For forty days he drove the ark
Before he found a place to park.
Some of us have some trouble finding a place to park when
it comes to the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Let me give you your
options. There are four of them.
The first place to park is not to park at all but just
to drive by. This is where most folks are on this Easter Sunday. They have
organized their lives without God. When it comes to Easter and the resurrection,
God is nowhere in the picture. Easter is simply a date on the calendar, Easter
eggs, bunnies, pretty flowers and a parade. It would be like celebrating July 4th
with bunnies and eggs. It would be fun but it would have nothing at all to do
with the birth of our country.
The second place to park is to make Easter a Religious
Holiday. I am glad you are here. I thank you for recognizing that there are
some events that are special to those of us who are Christians: the birth of
Christ, his teachings, his death, and his resurrection. But Easter is more than
a holiday for many of us. It is a holy day that celebrates the resurrected life
we have come to know in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Some years ago a newspaper columnist wrote a column about
this time of the year. I had read her column many times but had not know was a
Christian. One of her assignments was to cover aviation and she had been
traveling through the mid-east. She chanced to sit by a devout Muslim who was
returning from a visit to the place Muhammed is buried. He said he went every
year. He asked if she might be Muslim. She replied, “No, I am a Christian.” To
which he said, “You Christians are strange people. You have no tomb to visit. If
you did you would say the tomb was empty. Why would you visit a tomb that has
nobody in it? You don’t have a holy place to visit do you?” The veteran
columnist had never thought of it just that way before. Finally she said, “No,
we don’t have a place to visit. We believe Jesus Christ is alive and well and we
talk to him every day. But you are very perceptive. We don’t have a tomb to
visit. We believe Jesus visits us every day of our lives.”
A Third place to park is to push the resurrection to the
end of life. Resurrection is all about heaven.
This was Martha’s viewpoint in John 11:23-25. Jesus says,
“Your brother will rise again.” Martha says, “I know he will rise again in the
resurrection at the last day.” Jesus says, “I am the Resurrection and the Life.
He who believes in me will live even though he dies, and whoever lives and
believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
I don’t see Martha answering right away. She thinks. She
looks at the ground. She moves her hands like a person thinking. Then all of a
sudden the light dawned. She realized that the resurrection was about Jesus, not
about what happens at the last breath. Jesus had said, “I am the resurrection
and the life.” Life was wrapped up in him. Her reply is one of the most
penetrating in the Gospels: “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Christ, the
Son of God, who was to come into the world.”
Peter Kreeft, a wonderful Roman Catholic scholar, has
written a book in which he speaks of heaven as the great hunger of the soul. I
have some trouble with that. The great hunger of my soul is to experience the
presence of God on a daily basis. It is not about the end of life. To make the
end of life our goal is to make the resurrection of Christ a destination instead
of a constant presence. We become destination people instead of journey people.
Life becomes only a dress rehearsal for heaven. I don’t believe that. Jesus made
the resurrection present tense. “I am the resurrection and the life.”
I told you once of a story my friend Dr. Guy Greenfield
told me. When he was a freshman in the seminary he rented a room from Mrs. W.T.
Conner. W.T. Conner was the outstanding Biblical Theologian in his day. After he
passed away Mrs. Conner was left with little to live on. So she rented some
rooms to seminary students. Guy was one of them.
One day when Guy was coming in from class Mrs. Conner was
swinging on the porch swing. As Guy walked up the steps to the house she said,
“Guy, do you have a minute.” “Sure Mrs. Conner.” Guy sat on the porch railing.
Mrs. Conner said, “Yesterday I was sitting right here when suddenly, W.T. was
sitting right where you are. It was he, alright. He said, “Don’t worry, honey,
it is all going to be all right.” Then he was gone. I sat here for the longest.
Nothing like that has ever happened to me before. Guy, what do you make of that?
Guy, a 21 year old freshman replied, “Mrs. Conner, I don’t know what to think.
What do you make of it?” Mrs. Conner was quiet a while and then she said, “I
think the veil between this life and the next is a lot thinner than I thought.”
Don’t make the resurrection the last chapter of life. Make
it a daily presence.
A fourth place to park is to make the resurrection
present tense. Jesus said: I am the resurrection and the life. Resurrection
is active in the little victories and the little deaths we experience.
Notice how Jesus joins Mary and Martha in their grief.
John 11:35. Only two words: Jesus wept. He is at the grave
of his friend and tears flowed. Jesus wept only three times as recorded in the
Gospels: in Gethsemane, over Jerusalem, and at the grave of Lazarus.
When they divided the Bible into chapters and verses for
the first time in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, why would they list
one verse with only two words? I believe it was because of the impact it had on
their lives. Just think – the Son of God participated in the same sense of loss
and grief we feel when we lose someone close to us. And I believe the Lord
stands with those of you who have lost loved ones in recent days. His risen
Spirit stands with you. Your tears become his as well. Jesus wept.
But Jesus also communicates with us. We call it prayer. But
sometimes it is just random chatter in the presence of the Risen One.
Resurrection Life can happen anywhere.
Some time ago I received a phone call from a young man who
had been with our sons when they were in Nashville. I had lost track of him so I
was delighted to hear his voice. He explained he was in town to lecture at VCU.
I responded with a bit of surprise, “You are lecturing at VCU?” It turned out he
has done some things with graphic art that has put him at the top of his world.
He asked, “Could we have breakfast together.” We did. I said, “Jimmy, tell me
how you are doing.” He told me his story. He went through a period of doing all
of the wrong things for all the wrong reasons. He wound up in alcoholism. One
night an accident threw him into a ditch flat on his face. When he came to, in a
ditch with mud all over him, he realized he had hit bottom. He had never prayed
but that night he learned. He cried out to God and asked God to help him put his
life back together. He said to me, “God was there. God was there with me in that
ditch. I knew it. That was the turning point. I still have to go to A.A. But on
that night I gave my life to Christ and asked him to do with me what I had
completely failed to do.”
The Lord is risen. He is here. Why not let the Lord Christ
come to you. He is alive and well. He loves you. He has a big time purpose for
your life.
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