Scary dream with a happy ending…
Bishop Tom Wright, said something really insightful about happy endings after death in this year’s Lent book on the Gospel of Mark. In the reflection for Easter Sunday, he was talking about the empty tomb and what the angel said: “You are looking for Jesus. He is not here; he is risen.” And Tom said, “Easter is meant to be a surprise. It is certainly not a ‘happy ending’ after the horror of the cross, though, sadly, some churches treat it like that. Mark 16 doesn’t read like a ‘happy ending’. It reads like a shocking new beginning.”
What we’re going to be exploring together over the next few weeks is just that; how the new shocking beginning of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead impacts all of us. One of the ways the New Testament speaks of this risen life of Christ in us is “new creation.” It’s a recurring theme. We are an Easter people and we are being made new.
The book of Genesis says that God created the heavens and the earth in six days, and on the seventh day he rested. The fact that Jesus was raised on Sunday, the first day of the week, is significant. It means that God has finished resting. He’s gone back to work! The new creation has started. He is at work today bringing new things into being in Christ.
If you are a Christian, you are a new creation. Christians are brand-new people on the inside. You might say, I don’t feel it this morning, but it’s true. You tend to really feel the difference when you are a new Christian. There’s a surge of joy. There’s a sense that you’ve come home. You feel brand new. You feel cleaned up and that life suddenly has a whole new purpose and meaning. That’s the Holy Spirit at work in you. It’s what we call the excitement of first love (and in fact becoming a Christian does feel a bit like being in love).
But new Christians don’t always stay full of joy. In fact, the euphoria usually wears off. Why? Does it mean that you have lost your salvation because you don’t feel like you did when you were converted? Does it mean that you aren’t a new creation anymore? No. It just means that you are not filled with the Holy Spirit anymore and you need to get filled up again.
But you are a new creation in Christ. You are a new person on the inside. The Holy Spirit has given you new life. You are not the same as you were.
Being a Christian doesn’t just mean that you are reformed or rehabilitated or re-educated or rebranded. It’s much more than that. It’s not about just turning over a new leaf or having a quick life makeover.
You have been recreated. The Bible says you are a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come. You have begun a new life.
I love the story we had read to us from Luke’s gospel and that we saw so beautifully portrayed in the little film clip.
A little girl is terribly unwell. Anyone who has had a very ill child knows just how worrying it is. You just feel sick with anxiety. Most parents would happily trade places with their little ones when they are seriously ill.
So we all know how Jairus felt don’t we? His little girl has been ill for some time. And she just keeps getting worse. He pays the best doctors. Nothing works. He gets a second and third opinion. No improvement…
He is afraid – afraid of losing her, afraid of death, afraid of the unknown.
He is confused; Why her? Why us? Why isn’t she getting better? What’s wrong? Why can’t the doctors fix her? Why isn’t God answering my prayers?
And as he watches her getting weaker and weaker, paler and paler, all the life draining out of her, he feels without hope. “It’s no good. Nothing is working. There’s nothing I can do now.”
Jairus finally goes and seeks Jesus to ask him to intervene. It’s his last shot. Why do we so often turn to Christ, turn to prayer, last of all?
Jesus, of course, agrees to go and see her but he gets a bit sidetracked on the way. And while he is delayed, the little girl dies.
By the time Jesus gets to Jairus’ house, there is an almighty racket going on. This doesn’t really come out in the film clip the way it would actually have been in real life. Loud weeping and emotional wailing were customary when anyone died in the Middle East. And when you look at the news you notice it is still the same today.
A minute’s dignified silence and discreet wiping the tears when someone dies are what we do here. But that is seen as terribly disrespectful and bad-mannered in that culture. In Britain today we pay Funeral Directors to ensure a bit of decorum at a time of bereavement but in those days and in that land you hired women to wail and howl and beat their chests and play mournful pipe music. So as Jesus arrives there’s all this going on.
That’s why, incidentally, they find it really easy to stop crying and they begin to laugh when Jesus says “Stop wailing. She is not dead but asleep.” The fact is they were not emotionally involved – they were just hired mourners.
They laugh. You know how that feels, don’t you? We all know people who just roll their eyes and laugh at what Jesus says, which seem ridiculous to them. Most, if not all of you, have put up with a bit of mockery when people have found out that you are a Christian.
If that hasn’t happened to you yet, by the way, or if it hardly ever happens to you, you’re probably not witnessing enough. But whenever you are ridiculed for believing in Jesus by people who imagine they are more sophisticated than you, just remember – they laughed at Jesus too.
Jesus’ words to Jairus in the middle of the biggest crisis of his life must speak to us as well. Hear the Lord say to you this morning, “Don’t be afraid, just believe. Don’t be afraid, just believe.”
You see, in Jesus’ mind, there is hope, there is promise, there is power, there is always the possibility of grace breaking in and changing everything.
The next time you feel utterly powerless and without hope or afraid or anxious, or confused or bewildered – and especially if that’s where you are today – try and look at your problem from Jesus’ point of view. Try and see your life with Jesus’ eyes. It’s a great viewpoint.
Jairus didn’t come to Jesus for help until his daughter was dead. It was too late for anyone else to help. Have you ever had that sinking feeling that you’ve left something too late? That you’ve blown your last chance?
But Jesus simply goes to the girl and raises her! It’s never too late to ask the Lord to do something new in your life. Even when it seems too late for anyone else to help, the Lord can change everything with a word.
He brings healing in broken relationships that seem beyond repair (and indeed are beyond repair without a miracle from God). I’ve seen it, many times now. For example, about 6 years ago a couple come into my office in Paris, having been away from God for ages, their marriage in tatters. “We’re desperate. Can you help?”
Listen, any two people can find reconciliation and love again as long as they are willing together to put God first. They got back together, they renewed their covenant, they even had another child even though the doctors told the wife there was no chance. They’re still together today and God has blessed them.
If anyone is in Christ there is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come.
God brings profound release from addiction where all rehabilitation programmes fail.
Jackie Pullinger works amongst drug addicts, gangsters and prostitutes in Hong Kong. In her book about her work called Chasing the Dragon she writes this, “I prayed in tongues 15 minutes a day asking the Holy Spirit to help me intercede for those he wanted to reach. After about six weeks of this, I began to lead people to Jesus without trying. Gangsters fell on their knees, sobbing in the streets. Women were healed. We opened several homes for heroin addicts and all were delivered from drugs painlessly because of the power of the Holy Spirit.”
If anyone is in Christ there is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come.
God brings forgiveness and restoration to heal the deepest and most distressing emotional scars.
Remember Gram Seed; never knew his father, in and out of jail for numerous crimes, addicted to drugs and alcohol, living on a bench in Middlesbrough town centre, in a coma and about to have his life support machine switched off. Now a husband, father, evangelist, holding down a regular job and driving a fancy car that he hasn’t even nicked!
If anyone is in Christ there is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come.
Name a situation that looks hopeless to you. It’s not hopeless for God. Nothing is impossible for God. He just says a word and great galaxies, with billions of stars, light years across, appear from nowhere and have their being. He laughs at his enemies.
And the gates of hell start to shake when Christian people, his new creation, gather together and pray with faith.
Our reading from Luke’s gospel probably represents the thing we feel most powerless to stop; death. We all know really that you can’t really fend it off with a vacuum cleaner can you?
Some people I know just cannot cope with the thought of death. They just want to change the subject as soon as it comes up. They live in denial. But death is inevitable, and it doesn’t away just because you ignore it.
But we are a new creation, and death has no stranglehold over us - because Jesus Christ has conquered it.
Death came into the world because people rebelled against God - which is what the Bible calls sin. But by his resurrection Christ smashed the chains of sin and he broke down the doors of death. We don’t need to fear death any longer; Christ has overcome it! The Bible says, “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Some people say to me, “Well, I don’t believe in life after death. As far as I’m concerned this life is all we’ve got, and once it’s over that’s it. We might as well enjoy life while we can, and stop kidding ourselves that we’ll be happier once we die.”
Woody Allen is an atheist. But his fear of death is well known. He once said, “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve immortality by not dying.”
What do you say to someone who says that when we die that’s the end? Maybe that person is you?
Well, last Sunday, millions of Christians all over the world celebrated the one event in human history that assures us that there is life beyond the grave: the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Jesus said, “Because I live, you also will live” (John 14.19).
Think of it this way: How could you ever know - really know - that death is not the end, but that there is something much better after we die? The only way would be for someone to die - and then come back to life and tell us what awaited us after death. This is what happened with Jesus.
Many hundreds, perhaps thousands, witnessed His death on the cross outside Jerusalem, and watched as his body was taken down, after which it was placed in a sealed and guarded stone tomb. But on the third day, the tomb was empty, and during the next 40 days hundreds of eye witnesses saw him alive.
Their lives were totally and thoroughly changed, because now they knew that when they died they would be in God’s glorious presence forever.
Don’t go through life living only for the moment and never understanding why God put you here.
Instead, discover the joy that only comes from knowing Christ. Turn to him in faith and invite him to come into your life. Please don’t leave this building until you have settled that with God!
If anyone is in Christ there is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come.
Let’s pray…
Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 15th April 2012
Acknowledgement: Billy Graham's 'My Answer' for some of the material near the end.
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