The Glory of Resurrection Power
We come to the celebration of Easter from all different places of belief. Some of us are saying, “Yes, Jesus is Lord. Let’s sing and shout, ‘Hallelujah!'” Some of us are saying, “Yes, we know it’s Easter; I guess we ought to go to church.” And still others are not sure what to say, except that there may be a place of hunger that you hope may find fulfillment in a word spoken in the liturgy, in something that God does to pry open a place of your heart.
After all, Jesus is the only one who has the audacity to say, “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25b). And the invitation to come to him is the same, regardless of what we are enduring, regardless of what we are enjoying, because he is the one “unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known” (Book of Common Prayer, p. 323).
The Prodigal Son
Two stories remind us of this truth. The first is the Parable of the Prodigal Son, where the prodigal creates a drama of what he wants to say to his father once he gets home. He’s in the wrong and he knows it. He’s trying to create a way to find favor again with his father, and he doesn’t know how that’s going to go.
And so he shows up and begins to give his speech, “Father, please forgive me. I’ve sinned against heaven and earth and against you. Please make me one of your hired servants, because honestly, that’s all I deserve.”
But before he can get all of that out of his mouth, the Father says, “Stop. Wait.” He’s snapping his fingers; he’s calling his servants: “Get the robe. Get the ring. We’re going to have a party. Kill the fatted calf. My son was lost, but now he’s found.”
For some of us, that’s not how we would expect to be received, especially if we’re in the position of the prodigal son. Despite everything that would seek to convince us otherwise, that’s actually what it’s like to come to Jesus. That really is a picture of what God the Father is like. And none of that – God’s mercy, God’s love, God’s forgiveness – is in any way dependent on the caliber of my behavior.
The glory of the gospel is that regardless of where you’ve been or what you’ve done; regardless of what I did or what I have done, God breaks through. And God brings joy where we deserve no joy. God brings mercy where we deserve no mercy. And he does all of this because he conquered death. If that weren’t true, none of the rest of it would have been true at all.
The Good Thief
This brings us to the second story that captures the heart of Easter, the story of the thief on the cross, the “good thief,” as he is called.
It’s the end. Both of these men are dying. They are, in fact, suffering a horrific form of torture that we can only begin to imagine. The very fact that they even had a lucid conversation says something about the grace present in both of them, because technically all they should have been able to do was groan, gasping for breath they pushed against the nails.
And yet in the midst of that, the good thief turned to Jesus, and said, in essence, “I deserve to be up here. Everything that I did qualifies for me to be on a cross right now, enduring capital punishment.”
He was telling Jesus, “I have nothing to commend myself to you at all. There are no grounds for you to even begin to pay attention to me, much less listen to what it is that I want to say in this hour of profound suffering.” And yet something he saw in Jesus gave him the capacity to add in the face of this unspeakable death: “Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingdom” (Luke 23:42).
He doesn’t know how Jesus will respond. And yet the scripture says that Jesus looked at him, and these unthinkable words came out of his mouth: “Today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43).
This represented far more than this man could have ever even begun to have asked for. Paradise, the place of eternal rest and security, the place where there is no pain or grief, where God wipes away every tear from every eye. It was not about a hoped-for possibility of the future, but right now. Today.
All that you are experiencing right now, it’s stopping. Today, you are going to be with me in paradise. Today.
And what we see in the Resurrection proves the fact that what Jesus said to the good thief was true. I don’t know whether you’ve ever seen any pictures of what is called the Harrowing of Hell, where Jesus, down from the cross, into the grave, uses that epoch of time to break down into hell, to set captives free. There are often pictures of that harrowing that show Jesus throwing open the door, the hungry souls waiting to escape. And the good thief is right there in the midst of it, also being welcomed into the gates of paradise.
Resurrection Power
You see, the testimony of that wonderful, incredible story is that the power of God in resurrecting Jesus from the dead is available to anyone. It is available to even the saints, like the story of a Russian Orthodox monk, living in Germany, who opened his monastery to Ukrainian refugees against the order of his superiors.
But it’s also available to the worst of sinners, to whom Jesus would respond the same way if that sinner cried out to him in genuine repentance: “Today, you will be with me in paradise.”
No matter where we are on the continuum, we are invited to cry out to him. We are invited to receive from him. We are invited to be able to open our hearts to things we could never imagine were they to come from anyone else. God’s infinite resources are without measure.
And that’s only true because Christ has conquered death. He has gone beyond the limitations placed on humans by time and space, and that makes his power so much more than anything else we can consider. It’s more than the power of spring or new life that we love to celebrate at this time of year; it’s a seismic change in the way the universe operates. It’s God conquering death, closing the gates of hell and, out of that, changing the very depths of what it means to be human.
Child of God, you now can become an heir to the kingdom of heaven because of what we see in Jesus.
Child of God, you do not have to remain lost even if you feel entirely abandoned, because no matter what you’re enduring, one who is stronger than all of it will carry you into everlasting life because death has been destroyed.
You who know the power of the evil one, the forces of the demonic that rack you with fear, that speak unspeakable things into your life, I want to say to you, beloved, that Jesus closes and shuts down that voice because hell can have no power in the life of a child of God.
You who are tempted to either trivialize the holiday or allow your own perfectionism to overwhelm you in wanting everything to be “just right for Easter,” know that there is another way, and it is the way of Jesus. Today, in Christ Jesus, you are forgiven.
Come and find rest in him, because fear is broken in the name of Jesus.
Come and find mercy in him, because perfectionism is broken in the name of Jesus.
Come and find life in him, because criticism, gossip and legalism are broken in the name of Jesus. Beloved, some of you have felt all of that in church, and I want to tell you that that does not look like the risen Jesus Christ.
Come and know freedom here. Come and know mercy here, because his mercies are new every morning. Be one who, like the good thief, knows you have nothing to justify your request except that which comes from a God who wants to hear from you.
“Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom. Lord, remember me.”
I promise you: He will hear. He will remember. He will speak that same word to you: “You will be with me in paradise.” And even now, you will know the peace that passes all understanding.
Christ is risen. There is freedom. Alleluia.
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This post is an adaptation of Bishop Brewer’s sermon on Easter Sunday, April 17, 2022, at the Cathedral Church of St. Luke, Orlando.
Unless otherwise noted, scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.