Christ Lutheran Church: Welcome

The Life Ring

The Life Ring

Luke 24:3

Easter

April 16, 2006

Rev. Dave R. Garwick

Yesterday I was working on this sermon when I got a phone call.  It was about the first person we prayed for a few minutes ago.  A church youth group had been on an outing in Bloomington.  They had been playing soccer and the ball got kicked into the lake, not all that far out.  One of the chaperones, who had just returned from duty as a medic in Iraq, jumped into the lake to get the ball.  The wake that he made and the wind kept pushing the ball just a little further and a little further out just beyond his reach.  Within seconds the frigid water caused him to lose control of his arms and legs as the kids on shore watched him drown.  That happened on Friday afternoon and twenty-four hours later his classmates from the U were still at the lake waiting for his body to be found.  One of our kids, Mark Boyadjis, his former roommate, was there.

Seeing a person you love die is bad enough.  But when the body is missing that is another hurt all over again.  Just ask the families of over 1,000 World Trade Center victims for whom not a trace has ever been found.  The reason we are here today is because two thousand years ago people also saw a man die.  And when THEY went to see HIS body, "They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus," (Luke 24:3).

In this earthly realm, when a body is missing, we know there is a good explanation.  We look day in and night out for days on end until we find the body.  Or we wait in the sure confidence that it WILL surface sooner or later.  Or, we accept the scientific explanation for why it will not be found.  But there is always an earthly explanation.  In the case of Jesus' missing body, Pontius Pilate suspected that the apostles would try to steal it.  This month another book has come out with the theory that Jesus never actually died, but that He simply passed out and that four battle tested Roman soldiers couldn't tell the difference.

Ever Jesus' closest friends who went to the tomb through there must be some common explanation for the missing body.  Mary Magdalene was reduced to tears.  She thought that the grounds keeper had moved Jesus to another location.

But the person she was talking to was not the grounds keeper.  It was Jesus himself.  Jesus who had died.  He who had actually died was now alive, standing there right before her and talking with her.  And when Mary went to tell the apostles as Jesus had instructed her, THEY did not believe her, because what she was saying sounded like nonsense to them.

When we see someone we love die, we expect a body.  For many people, this is psychologically necessary in order for the person to believe that their loved one is actually gone, actually dead.  We may even stand vigil for hours at a lakeshore until the body is found.

But when the apostles were on a lakeshore after Jesus' body had gone missing, He came to them in that very same body to eat with them to show them that He was no longer dead and the He was NOT a ghost or a figment of their imagination.  They knew for sure that He had really died and now they knew for sure that He was really alive.  No tunnels of white light or séances with the dead to convince them that there might be some wispy alternative dimension of existence for the specially enlightened.  Jesus was not living on just as a memory in the hearts of those who loved Him.  The dead body, the missing body was fully Jesus himself in the flesh which gave them hope that now, for the very first time, resurrection from the dead with never-ending life IS reality.  Well, at least for this one guy, Jesus.

But how about everybody else?  How about for the rest of us?  When that youth chaperone died and his body was still missing, you know what the Youth Director of that church said on camera?  I expected to see someone totally falling apart in anguished tears and self-recrimination.  She was clearly upset but not crushed, very sad but not in despair, deeply hurt but not destroyed.  She said exactly what OUR Youth Director, Vicki, would say, "But we know for sure that God is in control."  So what does THAT mean in a tragedy like this?  That means the Resurrection.

The point is, the Resurrection did happen to Jesus.  So, He has become the life ring for every single person who is in deep water and who believes in Jesus enough to hang on to Him.  HIS Resurrection is yours if you cling to Him, so that your body will also go missing one day from the grave, when He brings you to life that never ends, where "He will wipe every tear from [your] eyes, where there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, (Rev 21:4)

And you know what?  THAT promise is what can get you through the drownings in this life as well, whether you're a youth director of a Korean Baptist congregation, or a Ford worker in St. Paul who is about to lose a career, or a student who has been turned down, or a heartbroken person who has been betrayed.  There IS life after the Cross for those who are joined to the Resurrected One of Easter.

That is why we say, "Christ is Risen!"  (people respond with, "He is risen indeed!).