Because He Lives
Luke 24:1-12[1]
Today is the day when we celebrate one of the most
important events in our faith: after Jesus gave his life for us all, God raised
him from the dead on the third day. But, let’s face it, that first Easter
Sunday happened a long, long time ago. And, truth be told, for most of us it’s
something we only talk about in church. It’s not really something that impacts
our lives on a daily basis. We may view faith as something that relates to our
“eternal destiny.” But for many of us that feels like a future so remote that
we may not really give it much thought. There are just so many other things
going on in our lives that seem so much more pressing. Some of us may even
wonder how something that happened so long ago and so far away could have much
to do with our “real lives” right here and right now.
Of course, there are many of us who look to Jesus as an
example for our lives on a daily basis. We find meaning in his teachings about
how to live and how to love. But that doesn’t distinguish Jesus from any of the
other great teachers throughout the ages. And the hard truth of this world is
that from a certain point of view you could say it hasn’t really made much of a
difference. There are plenty of people in this world who are still caught in
vicious circles of poverty, violence, injustice, and despair. Right now,
millions of people, tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of human
beings are at the mercy of those who put their faith in ideas like “might makes
right.” In the face of all that, “love your enemies” can feel pretty empty.
But I believe that our Gospel lesson for today points us in
a different direction—toward a hope that never dies, a hope for new life that
makes a difference right here and right now. The story of the women discovering
that Jesus’ tomb was empty doesn’t necessarily in and of itself prove anything.
But there is more to it than just the empty tomb. Whatever you may think about
“angels,” the gist of their message is couched in the question, “Why do you
seek the Living One among the dead?” The point of the question is to make it
clear that the one they thought was lying dead in a cemetery is actually “the
Living One.”
Now, to fully appreciate this, we need to look at the
background of that phrase in the Bible. Throughout the Bible, God is “the
Living One.” He is the one who gives life to all creation, including those of
us who are living and breathing here today. In contrast to the idols made of
wood and stone and precious metals, the “Living” God is the one who is able to
make a difference in people’s lives here and now. I’ll admit that doesn’t
always happen the way we expect, but I will also insist that the God who is
“the Living One” shows up in our lives in surprising ways. I don’t know about
you, but in my experience, those surprises usually come at just the right time.
So when the angels at the empty tomb call Jesus “the Living
One,” the idea is more than just a dead man who has come back to life. Rather,
the idea is that Jesus again shares God’s own life. And the first Christians
became convinced that this was true not primarily because of the empty tomb or
the angels’ message, but because they encountered Jesus as “the Living One”
personally. Those encounters made all the difference in the world for them.
Instead of a tragedy that stole all hope away, the cross was transformed into
good news. The cross shows us not the heartbreaking end of a failed would-be religious
leader, but rather the suffering love of the God-who-is-always-with-us and the
God-who-is-always-for-us. It shows us that not even death can prevent God’s
love from claiming us all.
But more than that, encountering the risen Lord Jesus as
“the Living One” points us to the power of God to bring new life even from
death. That’s not just something that applied to Jesus all those centuries ago.
It’s a promise that the goal toward which God has been working and continues to
work even now is a whole new creation. Although it’s a pretty big concept to try
to wrap your head around, that’s precisely the promise of Easter. It’s a part
of God’s “plan” that I alluded to in our Good Friday service the other night.
God’s plan is not only that Jesus would die to absorb all the vicious circles
of sin and death into himself. God’s plan also includes raising Jesus from the
dead, and in so doing restoring everything in all creation. I believe the plan has
always been to return all of creation to the way it was intended to be in the
first place.
As our affirmation of faith for today puts it, Jesus’
resurrection brings the promise of “a new world … in which God is really
honored as God, human beings are truly loving, and God will … make all things
right on earth.”[2] That may
sound too good to be true, but it’s a theme that runs through the entire Bible.
At the end of the book of Revelation, God declares “now I am making everything
new” (Rev. 21:5). And we see it in the way the Bible ends where it began: with
a whole new garden, on a whole new earth, in a wholly renewed creation. There
the river of the water of life is available freely to all who are thirsty.
There the tree of life is available to all, and its “leaves” are for “healing”
all the nations. That’s where the Bible ends, where it began!
And what makes all this more than just “pie in the sky”
wishful thinking is that God raised Jesus from the dead. In Jesus, “the Living
One,” God’s new creation already breaks into this world. It changes our world
by promising that all the pain and suffering will be turned into good, and all
the death and destruction will be changed into new life. I know it seems too
good to be true. But that’s the promise of what happened on that first Easter!
It still has the power to change our lives right here and right now. One way it
does that is the assurance that Jesus “the Living One” is with us gives us
courage to face the present challenges of our lives. But more than that, as
“the Living One,” Jesus points us to the final hope that we will all share the
life of God with him in the end. We have this hope because Jesus is “the Living
One.” Or, to borrow a phrase from the hymn, we have this hope “because he
lives” in our hearts even now.
Without Jesus “the Living One” and the hope we have in him,
life in this world can seem empty. When all you can see is the vicious circles
of poverty, violence, injustice, and despair, there’s not much left to give
life meaning. But the fact that Jesus overcame even death to become “the Living
One” points us to the promise that nothing, not even death itself, can separate
us from the hope we have through him. Because Jesus lives even now, the new
life that raised him from the dead spreads from him to everyone who encounters
him. And as we encounter the “Living One,” we each take our place and do our
part in spreading that new life throughout all creation until finally God makes
the whole world new again!
[1] ©
2025 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 4/20/2025 for
Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
[2] Adapted
from “The Study Catechism: Full Version,” Approved by the 210th General
Assembly (1998), qq 85, 87, 88.
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