As Thunder to Lightning: Why Jesus had to rise from the dead (Acts 10:34-43)

³⁴ Then Peter began to speak to them: ‘I truly understand that God shows no partiality, ³⁵but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. ³⁶You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all. ³⁷That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: ³⁸how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. ³⁹We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; ⁴⁰but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, ⁴¹not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. ⁴²He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. ⁴³All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.’ 

I miss lightning and thunder. Having grown up in Texas it truly is an odd thing to live in an area with such little rainfall and no thunderstorms. In Texas, every kid learns how to be a meteorologist and knows how to roughly calculate how far away lightning is - sound travels roughly 1 mile in about 5 seconds. When you see the flash of a lightning bolt, you can start counting seconds until you hear the thunder and then divide to see how far away the lightning struck. If it takes 10 seconds for the thunder to roll in, the lightning struck about 2 miles away. Despite my childhood environment, however, I’ve been here so long now I’ve become acclimated to it in surprising ways. A couple of years ago I was visiting a friend in Houston, TX which is an area known for spectacular thunderstorms. We were driving in his car and an amazing bolt of lightning lit up the sky right in front of us – I was immediately hypnotized by it and then the clap of thunder hit like an explosion of TNT and I  responded in a way that shocked me – I screamed like a little baby. I was terrified! I had forgotten that the beautiful play of light always had that other effect. I had forgotten that lightning always brings thunder. This Lenten season we have focused a lot on Jesus and his teachings – they were like lightning – big, bright, beautiful, and even dangerous! But friends, if his life and teachings were like lightning – illuminating who God is and God’s mission for the whole earth – then get ready for thunder that is equally amazing and terrifying. He simply couldn’t stay in the grave, death couldn’t have the final word over his life. Like thunder is to lightning, He had to rise.

       1.      He had to rise because he was dead.

Admittedly this is not the most difficult or obtuse point to make but it strikes me as an important historical one. It has become fashionable for some to argue that Jesus wasn’t really dead after the ordeal of the cross but almost dead, resuscitated, thereby allowing his followers to claim that he rose again. Peter, however, reminds us that “They put him to death by hanging him on a tree,” and if he were talking to any possible detractors he might add, “and by dead, I mean dead – not breathing, not moving, lifeless, you know, dead! We may be ancient people before modern medicine but we’re not stupid!” It sort of reminds me of that great dialogue in the movie The Princess Bride between one of the heroes, Inigo Montoya, and the Wizard, Miracle Max, as Inigo begs Max to bring his friend, Westley, back from the dead.

Miracle Max: He probably owes you money huh? I'll ask him.

Inigo Montoya: He's dead. He can't talk.

Miracle Max: Whoo-hoo-hoo, look who knows so much. It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there's usually only one thing you can do.

Inigo Montoya: What's that?

Miracle Max: Go through his clothes and look for loose change.

Well – Peter and all of the writers of the New Testament argue that Jesus is that kind of dead – “look-for-loose-change-kind-of-dead.” And it’s important to remember who killed him – the Romans.

The Romans were brilliant architects, engineers, mathematicians, doctors, and especially killers. They were a vicious and violent occupying force that kept the peace with brutal efficiency. They were gold star, A+ killers and had been killing people for a long time. Their empire attests to this fact. And make no mistake, they enjoyed killing messiahs. They killed a lot of them.

What’s so interesting, however, is that even after Jesus’ death Peter still calls him, Jesus Christ - which means Jesus the “messiah”. We’ve already heard how Jesus had intentionally represented himself as the messiah and by all practical appearances, he was a failed one, who had been executed by the Romans.  He had claimed a title that demanded evidence that appeared to be absent. He had not won a decisive victory over Israel’s political enemies, nor restored the Temple.  He had not brought God’s justice and peace to the world; the wolf was not yet lying down with the lamb, as Isaiah had prophesied.  But the early gospel writers declare over and over that Jesus was Israel’s Messiah; Paul regularly calls him the Christ. What sort of event would have to happen for first-century Jews to make such a claim?

Nobody said this about any of the other self-proclaimed messiahs that had been killed. Nobody said it about Judas the Galilean after his revolt that ended in failure in AD 6.  Nobody said it of Simon bar-Giora after his death at the end of Titus’s triumph in AD 70.  Nobody said it about bar-Kochba after his defeat and death in 135.  On the contrary, when messianic movements tried to carry on after the death of their would-be Messiah, their most important task was to find a replacement. The fact that the early Christians did not do that, but continued, against all precedent, to regard Jesus himself as Messiah, despite outstanding alternative such as James, Jesus’ own brother, is evidence that demands an explanation.  That’s thunder which means there had to have been lightning. Moreover, they redefined messiahship itself, and with it their whole view of the problem of Israel – not the Romans (Peter is preaching to a Roman soldier) but sin and claimed that everyone, not just Jews, could find peace with God because Jesus had risen – even the ones who killed him. What, other than the resurrection, could have prompted such a claim?

                 2.      He had to rise because he was right.

Jesus’ death was not a mistake but was to be expected in a violent world which does not believe that this is God’s world. And many sought his death because they didn’t like the world that he described and his place in it. Jesus’ message was a fundamental reevalution of what the world should be – a reversal of fortune – an exalting of the humble, a critique of the mighty. We find it in his teachings about sinners being forgiven, the poor being blessed, the religious symbols and hierarchy being overturned. His death aimed to prove him wrong, to label him cursed. So the resurrection is a must in order for him to be right, it encourages us take up Jesus’ teachings and actions with confidence. Because He can’t still be dead and his understanding of the world still work, he can’t be left in the ground and the sermon on the mount make any sense – a world where he can forgive sins, welcome prostitutes and eat with them, a world where the poor are to be blessed, the last are declared first, a world where violence is to be rejected, and all of creation is promised to be redeemed. The resurrection is vital to Christianity because Jesus’ message can’t be separated from his victory over the grave. 

Already by the time of Paul, our earliest written witness, the resurrection of Jesus is not some solitary oddity of faith but woven into the very structure of Christian life and thought – baptism, forgiveness, ethics, and the future hope for both humans and the whole cosmos. Paul will agree with the intent of Jesus’ killers, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile” (1 Cor. 17). A dead Jesus is a fool-hearted idealists, a failed revolutionary – one whose message can’t stand because he didn’t call us to be good, he came declaring that God’s kingdom had come. His message was not so much that we can make the world a better place – if so, then his death wouldn’t change much. No, his message was “I have come to declare that God’s work of redeeming the world is now beginning in me – I am that work! I have done it.” According to Peter, the Gospel message is primarily about believing in Jesus not simply repeating him. The Gospel was his work and his alone on our behalf. That’s why he was the “I am” and that’s why he are told to believe in him.

Story about Ian Mills and basketball – “Guys, I can play. I’m good.” Ian wasn’t saying, “Basketball is fun and I like to play.” That would be true whether he was good or not. He was saying, “I'm good.” And that demands proof that only Ian can provide. Likewise, the resurrection of Jesus are his credentials that you can put your faith in him. That you can take him at his word and you don’t have to be afraid. Even when we aren’t healed, still struggle, the resurrection is that pledge that in the end all will be made right.

What would you do with your life if you weren’t afraid? The Resurrection is about your life more than your death. It’s not primarily an after-life reality but an embodied life lived with an inevitable hope. If such an event has happened in history, then history is not a closed system of immanent cause and effects. God is powerfully at work in the world in what may defy common sense, redeeming the creation from its bondage. If the resurrection has happened, then your life can be tethered to no one less than almighty God.

                 3.      He had to rise because God wants peace for you. 

The resurrection reveals the sheer toughness and persistence of God’s love. When we have done our worst, God remains God – and remains committed to being our God. The resurrection reveals that no matter what people do, God still stands, still wins, still redeems, remains the same as he always was and always will be.

This resurrection story is not ours. This is not how Hollywood would have imagined it. There are a hosts of revenge movies which reveal how we want to tell the story - The Crow, Kill Bill, Payback – all filled with characters who are double-crossed, almost dead, or killed, who come back to enact a vicious vengeance on all of their persecutors. Hollywood’s version would have demanded a Jesus who wanted blood, a sort of heavenly-Clint-Eastwood ready to make things right. But Peter tells a different story. Jesus preached peace, he says, worked for good, healed all who were oppressed, and “everyone” who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name. For Peter, the resurrection is a story not first and foremost about Jesus but about God. God is the subject of this Gospel – he shows no partiality, preaches peace, anointed Jesus, raised him from the dead, commanded them to preach, and ordained Jesus as “judge of the living and the dead.” As I’ve stated before – this God who loves us, who shows no partiality, is the one who sent Jesus and told him what to do, what to say. And we should note that it was not this God who killed him, who wanted his death – the Romans did that. This God can’t be the vengeful overlord so many have made him out to be because this Gospel was his plan all along. Resurrection means more than that you can’t kill God. It also means that you can’t make him hate you. He wants peace for you.

On Easter we are reminded of how God thinks of us, what God has done and is doing, and we are reminded who we are. We are not a people who from every continent, from every class, who have gathered for the past 2,000 years to shout, "The stock market has risen. It has risen indeed." We've not gathered to say, “my grades have risen”, or “my political party has risen”, or “dude, the surf has risen”, or “the value of my home has risen.” None of these secure our futures, change our lives, or give us hope. There has truly been only one hope that has held human beings in the face of difficult times of poverty, of disease, of pain, of hardship, of death itself: “Christ is risen.” And when that truth sinks in, when that reality hits, when those words are spoken, when the lightning lights ups the sky, there can be only one thunderous response: “He has risen indeed.”

Benediction:

Christ has risen / He has risen indeed.

No go out into the real world that awaits resurrection

Where goodness is stronger than evil

Love is stronger than hate

Light is stronger than darkness

Truth is stronger than lies

You need not be afraid.

Amen!