FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, ATLANTA, GEORGIA

Sermon by Dr. George Bryant Wirth

Easter Day

April 8, 2007

CHRIST AT THE CENTER:

THE GIFTS OF THE SPIRIT – THE GREATEST OF THESE IS LOVE

Scripture: Luke 24:1-12; I Corinthians 13

INTRODUCTION

As many of you know, I’m inclined to begin every Easter sermon with a humorous anecdote, and one of you sent me this story a while ago which I have been saving for today.

It’s about three college sophomores from the same sorority who suddenly passed away and found themselves standing before St. Peter at the gates of heaven. He told them that before they could enter the kingdom, they had to tell him the real meaning of Easter.

None of those students had been particularly religious during their time at the university, but they said they would give it a try. So the first young lady replied “Easter is the holiday where families and friends gather together for a big feast, and after giving thanks, everybody eats a lot of turkey.” St. Peter shook his head and said “Noooo, that’s not the right answer.”

So the second student spoke up and responded “Easter is when we celebrate Jesus’ birth, sing Jingle Bells and exchange gifts.” Again, St. Peter shook his head and said “Nooooo, that isn’t right either.”

Then the third young woman, who came from Punxsutawny, Pennsylvania looked St. Peter in the eye and she declared “Easter is a Christian holiday that coincides with the Jewish festival of Passover. Jesus was having the Passover feast with His disciples when He was betrayed by Judas and then arrested by the Roman soldiers. They put Him to death and then buried him in a tomb behind a huge boulder.”

St. Peter was impressed – “Yes, yes, that is verrrry good” he said.

But she continued: “Now every February, they gather in Jerusalem to roll the stone away. If Jesus comes out and sees His shadow, that means six more weeks of winter.”

Well, we can tell our St. Peter stories with what Christian people in the Middle Ages called “risis paschalis – an Easter smile. And I hope and pray that the Lord will bless us today with a spirit of joy in this place…because the real meaning of Easter according to the Gospel of Luke, is that when they went to the tomb at early dawn on the first day of the week…they found the stone rolled away, but when they went in, they did not find the body…And two men in dazzling clothes (could they have been angels?) stood beside them and said ‘Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen!’ (Luke 24:1-5)

That is the real meaning of Easter. And almost two thousand years later, if we listen ever so carefully, we can still hear those words as they come echoing, echoing, echoing down through the centuries: “The Lord is risen! He is risen indeed!”

I

The theme of our sermons throughout the Lenten season has been “Christ at the Center: The Gifts of the Spirit.” On this glorious morning, as we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we come to the one gift that the Apostle Paul lifted up above all the others: Now faith, hope and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love (I Corinthians 13:13).

We hear those words read at wedding ceremonies today, and oftentimes I think the images that come to mind are romantic and rather mushy. A group of children, from the ages of five to ten, were interviewed by a magazine writer and this is what those kids said about love:

· “Never kiss in front of other people; it’s embarrassing if anyone sees you but if nobody’s looking, I might try it with a handsome boy…but just for a few hours” - Kelly, 9

· “Always hug and say ‘I love you’ every day. It will help your wife forget that you never take out the trash” – Randy, 10

· What is it like to fall in love? “It’s like an avalanche, so you better run for your life” – Jean, 8

· What is the proper age to marry? “Eighty-four, because at that age you don’t have to work anymore and you can spend all your time loving each other at home” – Judy, 7

And as we grow older, our images of love become a little more sophisticated, but not entirely. A young woman had broken up with her boyfriend, but then had second thoughts, so she wrote him this letter:

“Dear John,

I hope that you’ll forgive me for leaving you and I have finally come to my senses. I love you with all my heart and can’t bear to be without you. So, please take me back and know that I will adore you for the rest of my life.

Yours forever,

Jane

P.S. Congratulations on winning the Georgia Lottery.”

You see, sometimes our image of love runs a little thin, and there are other times when it gets downright syrupy, as we all remember from that famous scene in the movie “Love Story” when Ryan O’Neal looked Aly McGraw in the eye and said to her “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”

Those modern day images of love are very different from – just the opposite, in fact – of what Paul had in his mind when he wrote to the church in Corinth. The truth was, they were a congregation behaving badly, fighting with one another about theology, falling away into heresies, and fussing amongst themselves over which leaders were most important and who got to the communion table first and ate the most. Those people needed to say they were sorry, to confess their sins to God and to one another, and to get their act together as followers of Jesus Christ.

II

So after writing about the gifts of the Spirit which the Lord offered to all of them, gifts we have explored during the Lenten season – hospitality, unity, wisdom, knowledge, prophecy, discernment, faith, healing, miracles, and the sacrificial gift of the body of Christ Himself – Paul went on to say: I will show you a more excellent way (I Corinthians 12:31), and in I Corinthians 13, he lifted up the greatest gift of all. Listen again to how Paul described it:

Love is patient and kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude; it does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

And (this kind of) love (which comes from the risen Christ – agape in the Greek, meaning sacrificial, unconditional, eternal love) never ends…

So faith, hope and love abide, these three, and the greatest of these is love (I Corinthians 13, selected verses)

Do you see the difference between our modern day images and Hollywood depictions of love as they are compared to the real thing? That is because the love that Paul was writing about finds its source and flows out of the heart of Jesus, our Lord and risen Savior.

His perfect love casts out our fear (I John 4:18). His unconditional love heals our bodies, souls and minds. His sacrificial love forgives our sin. His everlasting love gives us life, here and forever in heaven. And if that is what you are looking for, hoping for and praying for today, then this could be the moment that you say “Yes” and let His love come into your heart.

For God so loved the world, that He gave us His only Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life (John 3:16). That is the greatest gift of all, and all that we have to do is to believe it and to receive it for ourselves.

III

But there is one thing we cannot do, and that is to completely comprehend it or to factually define it. Have you ever tried to define “love”?

A graduate student in philosophy tried it one evening as he was saying good-night to a young woman he had been dating. Standing there on the dormitory steps, he thought that she might be persuaded by the method of logical premises he had been studying in class. So he began with “Premise #1: We’ve been seeing each other for five months. Premise #2: We seem to be fond of one another. Premise #3: We obviously like the same things” … and on and on he went, until he got to Premise #10, wherein she told him to get off the premises, and said goodbye.

You see, there are no premises or facts that can fully define or adequately describe love, and that is totally true when we embrace God’s love for us through His Son our Savior Jesus. His love is a gift, the greatest gift of all, and what He wants us to do is to accept it, to unwrap it, to enjoy it and to share it with others.

That is also the case as we embrace the miracle of the resurrection. All of this recent commotion about finding the bones of Jesus and members of His family, including Mary Magdalene, in an ossuary over in Jerusalem is yet another foolish attempt to approach the great mystery of our faith through so-called factual premises and scientific research, right down to the DNA and the money they are raking in.

This is not the first time it has happened, and it surely won’t be the last. But sadly, there is some confusion among the four million viewers who watched the Discovery Channel documentary last month about the so-called “Jesus Family Tomb,” as well as those who have read the companion book which is #6 on the New York Times best-seller list.

My major concern is that if such things were true about Jesus, then we would have no reason to be here this Easter morning and I would be out of a job.

CONCLUSION

But to take this recent controversy a little more seriously, let me close our sermon with what I believe is Biblically and theologically solid as a rock.

When that stone was rolled away on Easter Day, and the women and then the men came to the tomb and saw that the body was not there, something happened to them that transformed their lives and changed the world forever. Not only did they see the risen Christ, and speak to Him and hear what He said to them after the resurrection – Lo I will be with you always, even to the close of the age – they also took Him at His word as He ascended into heaven, saying You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be my witnesses, in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). And they went out and gave their lives for the gospel.

Do you see, Jesus didn’t give them a premise to prove. He gave them a promise to keep – that He would be present with them as they proclaimed His name. That is what we still believe, my friends, that the Lord is alive and at work in this world. That is our calling today as Christians in the church. In everything we say and seek to do, Jesus Christ is counting on us to bear witness to His truth: Love one another, as I have loved you. And that is the bottom line. The greatest gift of all – His love let loose in the world.

“The Lord is risen! He is risen indeed!”

Thanks be to God! Amen.