Two weeks ago, Canada mourned the deaths of four Mounted police murdered while on duty in Alberta. Thousands gathered at the funeral of the officers. Thousands more watched the service on television. In that service the father of one of the officers gave the eulogy for his son, and in that eulogy he read these words:
‘So what do we say in a three-minute eulogy? The pain of our loss is beyond anything we could have ever imagined. Over and over again, people tell us that they could never begin to understand the depth of our loss. That is true. But we know of one who does understand and feel our pain because he lost his son, too. It happened when God gave the sinless life of his son at the cross to redeem sinful lives and to purchase forgiveness for us all. Three days later, he raised his son from the dead and conquered death. It is through this event that we have hope. This hope, that’s what’s sustaining us. It’s not an idle wish, but a certainty based on the promise of God. And this hope fills us with eager anticipation and a longing for the time when we shall be forever with the Lord. It is this hope that will ease the pain of our loss.’
Words of hope and life, spoken to a nation stunned by the suddenness of death. But into the midst of death comes a bold declaration that life is stronger than death, and that death itself has been conquered.
That is what we affirm and celebrate on Easter Sunday.
This is a day about life. Already this morning we have celebrated the gift of new life; the life of a new child, and the new life experienced in baptism.
The Bible, in Acts 5:20, says, Stand in the place of worship and tell the people the full message of this new life. This morning I want to proclaim to you a message of life, of new life, abundant and full.
In every day talk, we use phrases and figures of speech that reveal our understanding of life: if something is particularly pleasurable we say to others, ‘You haven’t lived until you’ve experienced this’. If our lives are especially relaxed and prosperous, we say, ‘Ah, this is the life.’ Conversely, if we are overwhelmed with the demands of work, kids, and other commitments to the point where we have no time for ourselves, we say, ‘I don’t have a life anymore.’
We say things like that because we know that life is more than mere existence. To eat and sleep and work and navigate through each day is not the essence of life. There’s a level of life at which greater fullness and joy are experienced. And something in us thirsts for and drives us to seek that. You might call it ‘the pursuit of happiness’. Others might call it ‘the search for meaning’. I call it ‘a thirst for real life’.
We understand life in terms beyond simple breathing and brain activity. So, are you really living? Is there an undercurrent of fullness, of satisfaction to your life? Because that life is what we were created for, and that’s why we all thirst for it.
The story of that thirst begins with our first parents, Adam and Eve, in the beginning chapters of the Bible, Genesis 1-3. There we read how God created the heavens and the earth, sea and sky, plant and animal. God creates a garden, a wonderful paradise. In that Garden God places Adam and Eve. They have been made in God’s image, which means that they alone in all creation, have an affinity to God, a capacity to be like him in some ways, and to relate to him, personally.
Adam and Eve have been charged with the care of the Garden, and the idea is that as their descendants multiply and spread out, the human race will have the responsibility to take care of all the created order. It is not the kind of labour that is toilsome and tiresome. It’s invigorating, the kind of labour that gives satisfaction and a sense of significance.
Adam and Eve have a perfect relationship with each other, they understand each other. There are no barriers between them, no conflict. It’s not a sugary sweet relationship, but a relationship of freedom, connection, intimacy, and depth.
They enjoy that same kind of relationship with God. They know his goodness, they rejoice in his Lordship, and they alone, of all creatures, know the privilege, even as worshippers and subjects of God, nevertheless to be his beloved children and close friends. Their every need and longing is met. It is, quite literally, a perfect world. It was exactly the life for which they were created: a relationship of perfect love with God, lived out through worship, joyful service, and friendship with him.
Love, however, is not love unless it’s freely given, so God created an opportunity for Adam and Eve to choose to love him, rather than relating to God robotically, or by instinct. He isolated one tree from all the others in the garden, and said, ‘Of this tree, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, you must not eat, for when you eat of it, you will surely die.’
You probably know the story: the serpent tempted Eve, saying, in essence, ‘You won’t die if you eat that. God only commanded that because he knows that if you eat it, you will be like him and he doesn’t want that.’ Eve believed the serpent.
Genesis 3:6: When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.
Then what happened? They didn’t die! If you read on, you see that God expelled them from the Garden, told them from now on, survival would be hard work, and childbearing would be more painful. But they did not die. In fact, Adam went on to live to the ripe old age of 930.
So, why did what God said would happen, not happen? Had God lied just to throw a scare into them? Did he mercifully change his mind? Why didn’t they die?
Well, they did.
See, the Bible talks about life the same way we do. Life, in the Bible, is more than eating, breathing, and sleeping. And death, in the Bible, isn’t just what happens when your heart stops beating.
Jesus, in the Gospel of John, defined life this way: This is eternal life: that they might know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.
Adam and Eve knew God. They had a close relationship with him. It was life as it was meant to be lived. It is what humanity was created for. When Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate the fruit, they fractured their relationship with God. When they believed the serpent and disbelieved God, they essentially said to God, ‘We don’t trust you. We don’t think you have our best interests in mind. We’ll do things our way.’ They chose mistrust and suspicion. They separated themselves from God.
And when that happened, in a very real sense they died. They no longer experienced real and full life. Life became mere existence, a struggle for survival. They no longer had the joy of intimacy with God, or even with each other. They had taken their first step on a slippery slope, and the first thing we see them doing is hiding from God. Adam blames Eve for his sin, Eve blames the serpent. They are suddenly ashamed of their nakedness, something they’d never been before. Walls begin to go up. Conflicts arise. And the next three chapters of Genesis chronicle the downward spiral of the succeeding generations. What happened in Eden was not simply a fall from innocence. It was a loss of life.
Something people were created to be – intimates of God – they no longer were. Like a car without an engine, a tree without water, something vital was missing.
Every human being since then has been born into that condition: separated from the God we were created to know, and we, like Adam and Eve, consistently choose to make our own decisions, to do things our way, not God’s way. And our sins keep us from him.
And we feel it. We know something is missing. We know that this is not how it should be. Something is wrong. And we cry, ‘Life has to be more than this!’ So, we get married, and that doesn’t satisfy, and so we get married again. Or we have a career and we gain advancement. But it always seems that – hopefully – it will be the next advancement that will finally satisfy. And it never does. And so we try the social scene. We try drink, or drugs, or thrills, or travel.
We even try church, thinking that religion will do it. And it doesn’t work. We can’t find life. Because life is found only in knowing God. And we can’t get to God. Our sins are an insurmountable barrier between us.
In Ephesians 2, Paul describes this condition of being cut off from God as being dead in sin. So, we continue the pattern set for us be Adam and Eve: doing things our own way, not heeding God. We follow the ways of the world around us, ways that have proven to be barren of life. We seek to gratify ourselves and we’re driven by our desires to please ourselves, even though ultimately we remain displeased, unsatisfied.
The Bible talks about our longing for life in terms of thirst, too. Psalm 42: As the deer pants for the water, so my soul pants for you, O God. Psalm 63: O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you. My soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
We see it all around us: people thirsting for life, and despairing because everything that they’re trying does not bring life. Only God can quench our thirst. In the Old Testament, Jeremiah 2:13, God laments: My people have committed two sins: they have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.
We all know people like that. Maybe that describes some of you. Thirsty people forsaking the God who can quench their thirst, and frantically digging wells all over the place, wells of love, fame, possessions, achievement, religion, health, appearance… wells that cannot hold water. That doesn’t mean those other things are all bad. Marriage is good, family is good, work, even money and possessions and fun are good. But none of them can ultimately satisfy. None of them have the power to give us real life. If we look to those things to satisfy the longing of our hearts, we are asking them to do something they were never designed to do. We’re looking for life in all the wrong places.
This is the human predicament: desperate for real life, and cut off from the only one who can give it to us.
Jesus said, I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. He also said, Whoever drinks the water I give will never thirst again.
This weekend Christians around the world remember the two-fold event of the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth: how at the end of a three-year ministry of teaching and healing, Christ was crucified, buried, and on the third day was raised to life by the power of God. But more than remembering that event, Christians, like the eulogy at the funeral, also proclaim that it is by the cross and the empty tomb, that Christ gives fullness of life.
See, by his death, Christ dealt with our sins, those thoughts, actions and attitudes by which we have separated ourselves from God. On the cross, Christ took upon himself God’s punishment for sin. God has laid on him the sins of us all, the Bible says. On the cross Jesus laid down his life of infinite worth to pay the infinite debt of our sins. By laying his life down Christ offered his life in exchange for us, to ransom us from our slavery to sin. And by dealing with sins on the cross, the way is opened for us again to be restored to God. God was in Christ reconciling us to himself, says the New Testament book of 2 Corinthians.
The Bible tells us two things about the death of Christ:
First, it was sufficient. That is, his death was enough to fully address the reality of sin. The debt has been paid in full. The punishment for sin has been meted out entirely. Nothing more needs to be done. All that remains is for us to believe that and receive it. His death was sufficient.
Secondly, his death was substitutionary. He died in our place. I should have died. I should have borne the guilt of my own sin. You should have. And the punishment for our offenses against the infinite holiness of God is, appropriately, infinite. But the Bible teaches us that God loves you so much that he wanted to save you from a punishment you could not bear. So he sent his Son to die in your place: the innocent dying for the guilty. The Son of God giving his life for the sin of humanity. As he was dying on the cross, Jesus tasted not just physical death but also the harder death of being cut off from God. My God, why have you forsaken me? he cried.
Jesus died that you might have life, restored to a place of intimacy with God, as his beloved child.
How can we be so confident that this is true? Because of what we celebrate today: on the third day Christ was raised to life by the power of God. He is not here, he is risen! the angels said to those who arrived at the empty tomb. Having experienced death for us, Christ did more: he conquered death. Death no longer has a hold on him. He arose victorious and lives today.
The Bible also tells us tow things about his resurrection.
First, it is by his resurrection that he is declared to be the son of God. During his life Jesus made some startling claims about his divinity and his eternity. Having lived and taught and even performing some outstanding miracles, he died an inglorious death. And if that had been all, he would have faded into oblivion. But Jesus rose from the dead. And by his resurrection, all his claims were vindicated. He truly was and is the Son of God, and so we can stake our lives and eternity on his assurances that he came to save us, to give his life as a ransom for us, that he gives life to the full.
Secondly, his resurrection is a sure basis for our hope of life eternal: for the fullness of life on earth as a loved, accepted child of God, and the hope of heaven, life truly with God, with Jesus, eternally, with no more sin or death or pain.
This life and this hope are grounded firmly and unshakably on the cross and the empty tomb, on the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God.
I ask you again: are you really living? Do you have fullness of life? Even as a Christian, you may not be experiencing life if you have let religion or church take the place of God. For all of you here today, life full and deeply satisfying and eternal is available to you in Jesus Christ. All that is needed is for you to acknowledge your thirst for God… acknowledge that you have separated yourself from him – as I have – by selfish or wrong choices, these things we call sins… acknowledge that you are trusting in Jesus to have dealt sufficiently with your sins… and acknowledge again the loving Lordship, friendship and Fatherhood of God. That’s what we mean when Christians say, ‘Believe in Jesus’ or ‘Put your faith in him’. Most especially, it’s what Jesus called being ‘born again’, it is the beginning of the life as we thirst for.
This morning you can be saved by the grace of God, through faith in Jesus Christ.
The Bible closes with an invitation: Come, whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life.
The Bible says, Anyone who has the Son of God, has life. Whoever does not have the Son does not have life.
You have a choice. John the Apostle wrote to his readers and to us: Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.
It’s that simple. Black and white.
What will you choose?
Amen.