THE RISE AND FALL

“THE PLACE TO BE”=

Matthew 28:1-10<= /b>

Cultivate the seed of Easter hope.

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A sermon pr= eached by

Dr. William= O. (Bud) Reeves

First Unite= d Methodist Church

Hot Springs, Arkansas

April 12, 2009—Easter Sunday

We are = gathered here today because in God sorrow stays for the night, but joy comes in the morning. In God tragedy trans= forms into triumph. In God death tu= rns to life. Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed!

Palm Su= nday of 1994 was supposed to be like no other day at Gos= hen United Methodist Church in Piedmont, Alabama. They had put together the biggest production they had ever tried, and the church was packed to see the childr= en perform. Under the leadership= of pastor Kelly Clem, the church had more children than ever, and they were all looking forward to an Easter like they had never experienced before.

Kelly d= ropped her two-year-old daughter Sarah off in the nursery. Her husband Dale, also a pastor, w= as away on a mission trip. Their four-year-old daughter Hannah was in the production. Final preparations were made, and = just as church started, a horrible thunderstorm broke loose. The singers could hardly be heard = over the pounding rain and wind. T= hen hail began to beat on the roof and windows, and Kelly began to think about calling the service off until the storm passed.

Suddenl= y there was an eerie pause in the weather. The air pressure changed, and without warning a stained-glass window shattered into the worshippers. Somebody screamed, “Get down!” just as the tornado hit the church. The ceiling began to fall, then the whole roof lifted off the building and crashed into the center aisle of the church—onto the congregation, onto the children.

As Past= or Kelly lunged toward the pew where Hannah was sitting, a falling brick knocked her unconscious. When she came to, rescue workers were already there, digging people out of the rubble. She saw the nursery room was still standing, and someone held up her daughter Sarah. But Hannah was nowhere to be found= . After several minutes of digging, = Kelly came to a strip of cloth that looked like Hannah’s costume. After a few more minutes, they got Hannah out. She was not breat= hing. Immediately they began CPR, and wh= en they rushed her away in an ambulance, Kelly turned to comfort the people in= her congregation.

Twenty = people died that Palm Sunday morning at Goshen United Methodist Church. Eighty-six were injured, many seve= rely. When Kelly Clem finally reached the hospital that evening, a pastor friend confirmed what she already knew. Hannah, too, had died.

As Holy= Week wore on, the phone at the parsonage kept ringing. Church members wanted to = know if they were going to have Easter services somewhere …anywhere. They were longing for Easter. So Kelly decided they could have a sunrise service at the church. Someone had erected a cross out of two of the roof beams, and they w= ould just meet there and worship on Easter morning. On Thursday, Kelly woke up with a Scripture in her head, and she knew that the Lord was giving that word to h= er to share with her people.

So on E= aster Sunday, 1994, about 200 people gathered on the debris-strewn grounds of Goshen United Methodist Church. As Pastor Kelly stood to begin the service, the sunlight spilled over the horizon and lit up the sky and the faces in the crowd. With her face swollen and bruised = and her arm in a sling, Kelly stepped up to the makeshift podium and said, R= 20;I can’t think of any other place I’d rather be, can you?” Then she began to read the Scriptu= re the Lord had given her: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedn= ess, or peril, or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death, = nor life, …nor things present, nor things to come, …nor anything el= se in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”[1]

When Ke= lly looked up, she saw people with tears in their eyes. But she could tell from the look on their faces that they would go on. And they did. In 1996,= Goshen United Methodist Church moved into a new church building. They built a memorial to the twenty people who lost their lives in t= he tornado. And Kelly and Dale C= lem are still pastors in the Alabama Annual Conference.

On this= Easter Sunday of 2009 in Hot Springs<= /st1:City>, Arkansas, I can’t thi= nk of any other place I would rather be, either.= Can you? We are God= 217;s people. It’s Easter! Christ is risen! This is the place to be. Not just because you look so fine and everyone else needs to see you today. Not just because Mama’s cook= ing dinner, and you have to go to church if you want to eat. Not even because everyone who is Christian who is able goes to church at least on Easter. No, there are some deeper reasons = that make this the place to be today.

This is= the place to be because this is the place where we live in love. Lov= e is the hallmark of the Christian community.&n= bsp; Love is the commandment of Christ. Nothing in all creation can separ= ate us from the love of Christ Jesus our Lord.= We see love in action through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Years a= go there was an English pastor named William Dixon.= As a boy, William had a friend next door, an elderly gentleman who t= ook a special interest in him. One night the Dixon family home caught fire, and it soon became apparent to the neighbors that = none of the family would survive. Suddenly young William appeared at a second-st= ory window, screaming for help. T= he elderly neighbor rushed into the house, bounded up the burning stairs, and grabbed the terrified child. = The only way back down was to climb out the window and slide down the gutter downspout, which of course was red-hot from the fire. The friend severely burned his han= ds, and William was the only one to survive the fire.

A few w= eeks later, there was a court hearing to determine who would get custody of William. The relatives were a= ll fighting over him because he came with a substantial inheritance. Finally the old neighbor stood and= asked the judge if he could have custody of the boy. The judge asked, “What basis= do you have for custody?” = The old man didn’t say a word; he just held up his burn-scarred hands. That day William Dixon went home a= nd lived in the love of the man who had saved him.

If we w= ant to live in love, all we have to do is look for the nail-scarred hands of the O= ne who saved us. The First Lette= r of John puts it so beautifully: “God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the worl= d so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son t= o be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one anoth= er.”= = [2] That’s the Christian message= in a nutshell. If you’re looking for love today—love from God, the love of a community—you’ve come = to the right place.

This is= the place where we find forgiveness. The sacrifice of Christ on the= cross means that atonement was made for our sins. The resurrection on Easter morn= ing is God’s seal of approval on the deal. We have grace—not earned, but given as a gift. We can start over. No matter how badly we have messed it up, no matter how far we have strayed, no matter how we have hurt God and those we love, we can put all t= hat behind us and start fresh in God. The cross wipes our sins away and gives us the power to forgive.

Just la= st month we were horrified to hear of another act of violence in a church. On March 8, Rev. Fred Winters, the pastor of First Baptist Church in Maryville, Illinois, was shot and killed during a Sunday service by a troubled young man. A week after the tragic event, his = wife, Cindy Winters, was interviewed by Julie Chen of CBS's Early Show. Wh= en asked about her husband's alleged killer, Cindy spoke only a message of forgiveness—spoken in Lent, but full of Easter:

I do not have any hatred, or even hard feelings towards him. We have been praying for him. One of the first things that my dau= ghter said to me after this happened was, "You know, I hope that he comes to learn to love Jesus through all of this." We are not angry at all, and we rea= lly firmly believe that he can find hope and forgiveness and peace through this= , by coming to know Jesus. And we = hope that that happens for him.[3]

Today this is the place to be because = we live in love, we find forgiveness, and we overcome our obstacles. The world = is full of trouble. We have prob= lems on every side. From the large= -scale problems of the economy and war and global warming to the personal difficul= ties with family and jobs and stuff inside of us that keeps us from functioning. It’s hard = to have hope sometimes. But that is exactly what Easter gives us. When you are confronted by the obstacles of life, you know you can overcome every one because Jesus overcame the grave.

Bishop William Willimon recalls a comm= ent made to him when he was a college student by the late Rev. Carlyle Marney.<= span style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'> Marney was an unorthodox but inspirational Baptist pastor. Someone in this group of college students asked Marney about his thoughts on the resurrection, and he replied in a gruff manner, “I wi= ll not discuss that with anyone under thirty.”

The students asked, “Why not?= 221;

Marney said, “Look at you. Prime= of life, never have you known honest-to-God failure, heartburn, impotence, sol= id defeat, brick walls, mortality. So what in God’s name can you know of a dark world which only makes sens= e if Christ is raised?”[4]=

Marney was right about one thing: this= world only makes sense if Christ is raised. The tragedies and troubles of this world can only be understood if y= ou throw Easter into the equation. What kind of God would allow children in a Palm Sunday church progra= m to be killed, or a pastor to be shot preaching the Gospel, unless it was a God= who watched his Son die on the cross and then raised him up on the third day? You have to experience some Good F= ridays in your life before you can appreciate the Easter hope. I wouldn’t wish Good Fridays= on anybody, but I don’t have to; they happen anyway. The Good News is, Easter also happ= ened, so we have strength to cope with our problems and power to overcome our obstacles. We have hope.=

We have hope today because this is the= place where we defeat death. Jesus didn’t cheat death= ; he crushed it! The final enemy h= as been conquered. From Easter on, everything is different. The = rules have changed. The battles con= tinue, but the war has been won. We = are more than conquerors. We have= hope that never dies. No matter wh= at troubles afflict us, no matter how far we might stray off the path, there is always a capacity to turn back to God.&nbs= p; We never lose the divine spark of life inside of us. There is always a seed of faith. T= here is always a resurrection waiting to happen. There is an Easter in us that never dies.

Paul Harvey, the great radio commentat= or, recently passed away at the age of 90.&nbs= p; Several years ago, he shared a story on one of his broadcasts about a discovery on a farm just 25 miles from Tokyo, Japan. Workmen were digging in a peat bog= in the area when they discovered the fossilized remains of a canoe that was bu= ried 18 feet deep in the bog. They called in scientists and archeologists who determined that the canoe was so= me 2,000 years old. As they stud= ied this ancient canoe, they found something really incredible. There was a seed buried in the hul= l of the boat, a tiny, ungerminated, dormant, apparently lifeless seed that had = been there for 20 centuries.

They took that little seed and put in a special laboratory and fixed the climatic conditions just right, and then t= hey waited. After four days of round-the-clock observation, the scientists saw a miracle take place. A sprout began to grow out of the = seed! It grew and grew and eventually bl= oomed into a beautiful, delicate, pink lotus flower.

Can you imagine that? A seed that went to sleep in the e= arth at the time of Christ, asleep for twenty centuries, embedded in that canoe while civilizations came and went, generations lived and died, seasons blew= in and out—then after all that time to come back to life and grow and bl= oom into a beautiful lotus flower.

Let me tell you today that you are lik= e that flower. There is within you a= seed of faith, a seed of resurrection, a seed of hope that never dies. It cannot be destroyed by any forc= e on earth because it was put there by the One who made the whole universe. Today you can cultivate the seed of Easter hope. Ask God to help = you grow and flourish and bloom and beautify the world.

Maybe you need to take a first step to= day, to launch your journey of faith by making a commitment to Jesus Christ, the risen Lord, as your Lord and Savior. Maybe you need to make a new step today. The seed of your faith has somehow become buried in the mud of living, and you need to renew your relationship with Christ. Or maybe you jus= t need to take a stronger step today, to grow your active faith in some greater, m= ore significant directions.

A first step, a new step, a stronger step—I don’t know what your need is today. But I do know that if you need to = live in love—the inseparable love of God and the community of faith—= if you need to find forgiveness for your sins or the power to forgive others, = if you need to overcome the obstacles that are keeping you from living abundan= tly, or if you need to celebrate the eternal life that defeats death, you have c= ome to the right place, because that’s what Easter is all about! Amen!

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