FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, ATLANTA, GEORGIA

Sermon by Dr. George Bryant Wirth

Easter Day

April 16, 2006

A VISION TO GUIDE US

FROM THE BOOK OF REVELATION – THE NEW JERUSALEM!

(Hope and Healing)

Scripture: Luke 24:1-12, Revelation 21:1-6

INTRODUCTION

Over the past 16 years, people have asked me why we don’t have an Easter sunrise service here at the church. My standard answer has been that we encourage folks to attend the ecumenical, city-wide sunrise service at Stone Mountain so that we can celebrate the resurrection with other Christians, and then come to our worship services at 8:30 in the chapel and 9 and 11:15 in the sanctuary. That has been my response to the question about why we don’t get up early here to worship the Lord on Easter Day.

But to tell all of you the real truth, I am not an early morning person, and haven’t attended or led an Easter sunrise service since my senior year at Princeton Seminary, when that 6:00 AM celebration was rained out by a huge thunderstorm. It was a mess – we were all drenched and covered with mud and I vowed that I would never do that again.

However, at the age of 58, having been a late night person most of my life, I am trying, really trying, to become an early morning person…because, not only is it healthier for mind, soul and body – it is also the time when the earth is waking up and some amazing things are happening.

A young Scotsman, who was an early morning person, decided to spend the Easter weekend in London. It was his first visit to that city, and when he returned home, his friends in Edinburgh asked him “How did it go? And what were those English people like?”

The young Scotsman shook his head and said “It was terrible, and the English are dreadful people. I was up at 5 o’clock on Easter morning and the people in the hotel were banging on my door, pounding above the ceiling of my room and shouting ugly words at me. They are a rude and inconsiderate bunch of heathens, and there isn’t one single Christian among them.”

“Well, what did you do about it?” his friends wanted to know. The young Scotsman smiled and replied “I just went on playing my bagpipes!”

I

On this Easter Day, we have come here to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We don’t have bagpipes, but the music rising up from this sacred place is grand and glorious. So let the sun shine through these windows, let the Easter lilies bloom, let the tympani drums pound and the trumpets sound, and let us lift up our hearts in joyful praise as we proclaim that our Lord was raised up from the tomb and is alive and at work in this world today! The Lord is Risen! He is Risen Indeed!

The 24^th chapter of the Gospel of Luke says that

On the first day of the week, at early dawn, the women went to the tomb, taking the spices which they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away, but when they went in, they did not find the body…Two men (could they have been angels?) stood by them in dazzling apparel…and said “Why do you seek the living among the dead? Remember how He told you, while He was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and on the third day rise.” And the women remembered Jesus’ words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven disciples and to all the rest…But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. (Luke 24:1-9, selected verses)

That is the finale of the resurrection story in Luke, which sounds a note of disbelief among the disciples. The original version of Mark’s Gospel ends like an unfinished symphony with the women fleeing from the empty tomb in astonishment and fear (Mark 16:8). And Matthew and John conclude their Easter stories with haunting background music of apprehension, bewilderment and doubt (Matthew 28:4-10; John 20:19-25). Even some of those who saw the risen Christ with their own eyes were not convinced that He was really, truly alive (Matthew 28:17).

The truth is that what happened that first Easter weekend in Jerusalem took some time to sink in to the minds of Jesus’ followers and friends. And just as it was then, so it is today: the journey of faith from the head to the heart is often a long way. These great mysteries of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, alongside the theological affirmations of His atonement for our sin, His ascension into heaven, and the assurance of eternal life forever with Him – all of that and so much more can never be understood completely by anyone.

In fact, when all is said and done – when we have read the Bible, studied the texts, listened to the sermons and Sunday School lessons, and prayed for a spiritual sense of direction – when all is said and done, it finally comes down to faith. Either we trust that the gospel is true, commit our lives to Jesus Christ, and seek to follow His will and His way in everything we say and do – or we don’t. For all of us who have embraced the Christian journey of faith, it seems to me that we’ve got plenty on our plate to deal with, right here and right now.

II

And that is why I wonder about the growing number of Christians and others who are so caught up in the ongoing conjecture concerning the end of time, the “left behind” movies and literature, the predictions regarding the rapture and Jesus’ second coming, and the renewed interest in the apocalypse and the Book of Revelation.

Time magazine ran a cover story about all of this several years ago, entitled: “The Bible and the Apocalypse: Why More Americans are Reading and Talking About the End of the World” (July 1, 2002). During Easter week of 2004, the Christian Century magazine did the same, with these words on their front page: “Left behind? Prepare for judgment, the end is near, Jesus is coming.”

To be sure, some folks are fanatical about all of this. Marj Carpenter, former moderator of our Presbyterian Church, tells a story that describes a pastor and a member of the congregation standing by the side of the road on the lawn in front of the sanctuary. They were pounding a sign into the ground which said:

“THE END IS NEAR: TURN AROUND NOW

BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE!”

A car sped by and the driver rolled down the window and shouted out loud “Leave us alone, you religious nuts!” Within seconds, from around the curve, they heard screeching tires and a big splash. The pastor turned to the church member and said “Do you think the sign should simply say ‘BRIDGE OUT’?”

Well, I think that we in the mainline church do need to say something about this apocalyptic resurgence which is sweeping across our nation. We had better not deny it, because the estimates are that more than 30 million people are into it. And let’s not make the mistake of laughing it off or ignoring it – there are people sitting in the pews of our own churches who want to know what it all means.

And that seems to be our calling and our conviction as Presbyterians in the Reformed Tradition – not to run over the cliff with the lemmings, but rather to discern the meaning of these things, to learn from the scriptures how we can apply God’s truth in our lives, and to ultimately rely on His sovereignty and the guiding Spirit of Jesus Christ to show us the way He wants us to go.

So let’s discern that we are living in what W. H. Auden once called “the age of anxiety,” where people are fearful and worried about their security in a world threatened by terrorism and religious fanaticism; wars and nuclear weapons; global warming, hurricanes and tsunamis; and economic instability and inter-racial inequality which comes ever so close to us in this city as we are working constantly and finally making progress to provide shelter, food, clothing and employment counseling to thousands of homeless people on our streets.

So when people are full of anxiety and insecurity, they are vulnerable to foreboding and fatalistic predictions about the future. Now some people say that is what the Book of Revelation is all about – the end of the world as we know it, and an eschatological escape for Christians before this planet is ravaged by Armageddon. There are those who believe and predict that it will happen soon, and that Jesus’ second coming will set it all in motion.

III

Christian friends, I have read and re-read the Book of Revelation a number of times, and I confess there is much in these last chapters of the Bible that I do not understand. But I must tell you today, as I have tried to convey in this Lenten sermon series focused on “A Vision to Guide Us from the Book of Revelation,” that the Lord’s final words to us in scripture are not threatening words of destruction and despair, but rather encouraging and grace-filled words of healing and hope.

When the risen Christ gave His vision to John who was exiled on the Island of Patmos in the Aegean Sea, that vision began with words of hope and healing to the Christians in the seven churches of Asia Minor who were suffering under the persecution of the Roman Emperor Domitian. Last summer, fifty of us took a First Century Voyage to those ancient churches, now in Western Turkey, and to the Island of Patmos on the Aegean Sea.

What we saw, heard, discerned and learned in those sacred places convinced me to come back and preach about the courage and conviction, the love and loyalty, the passion and power, the suffering and servanthood of those early church believers whose faith helped them overcome fear and whose repentance led to renewal of their faith in Jesus Christ.

Sadly and tragically, some of them denied and deserted Him, just as the disciples did when Jesus was arrested, tried and crucified in Jerusalem. And that is a warning to us today to stand firm and hold fast to what we believe, even when the culture around us is going the opposite way.

But the final vision which the risen Christ proclaimed in the 21st chapter of Revelation, pointed those first century Christians and all of us ever since toward healing and hope – the hope of a New Jerusalem, coming down from heaven, not shot through with terroristic bombings and oppressive occupation – but rather a holy city offering hope to all people, “a city of God” as John and St. Augustine described it, where Jesus Christ would reign and wipe away the tears and the pain of all who suffer and mourn.

And if we listen ever so carefully, if we open our eyes to what God wants us to see, the final vision is not despair or destruction. Just the opposite – the final vision is healing and hope:

“The former things have passed away,” saith the Lord. “Behold, I make all things new!” (Revelation 21:4-5)

CONCLUSION

Do you believe that today? If you do or if you want to, then lift your eyes to the Rose Window above and see the risen Christ in all of His power and glory. The images in this window, dedicated in May of 1992, are taken from the Book of Revelation:

The risen Christ, seated on a rainbow (Rev. 4:2-3), with the river of life flowing from His feet (Rev. 22:1) and the rays of the sun shining all around Him (Rev. 1:16). He is holding the Book of Life with the symbols of God’s everlasting presence, the alpha and the omega – the beginning and the end (Rev. 1:8). And surrounding Him are the angels playing their instruments in praise and adoration.

It is my hope and prayer that not only on Easter Day, but every Sunday, every time we worship in this sacred place, that this window always reminds us that the risen Christ is the center of our life together, and He has promised to guide us and walk beside us in our journey of faith.

“Twenty centuries have come and gone, and He is still the central figure of the human race. All the armies that have ever marched, all the navies that have ever sailed, all the parliaments that have ever sat, and all the emperors and kings that have ever reigned, have not affected the life of the human race on this earth as much as this one solitary life.”…The life, death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ!

The Lord is Risen! He is Risen Indeed! Thanks Be to God!

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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