Let me throw some concepts at you real quick: Hot and cold, tall and short, north and south. Football teams in Gainesville, FL and winning.
What do all of these concepts have in common? They’re all polar opposites. They are words or ideas that are so diametrically opposed to one another that they are the very definitions of an antithesis.
Especially that football example. I mean…yikes.
When it comes to Easter, however, we are going to be talking about what is perhaps the single best example of an opposing pair: Life and death.
Before we get into it, I want us to stop for a second and think about the whole whirlwind of events surrounding Easter. Traditionally, people start celebrating Easter a week in advance by looking at Palm Sunday. I’ve written at length about Palm Sunday before, but I’m sure you remember it as the day when people waved palm fronds at Jesus as He triumphantly entered Jerusalem.
Palm Sunday kicks off what we often refer to as “Holy Week,” which then ramps up a bit with Maundy Thursday, the celebration of Jesus at the Last Supper. Maundy Thursday leads into Good Friday which leads into Easter Sunday.
So there was a whole cavalcade of crazy happenings around Jesus in Jerusalem that week. On Sunday, He was hailed as the conquering Messiah who would save the people from Roman rule. Thursday night, He celebrates Passover with His followers before, later that very night, He is arrested, accused, and beaten.
Early on Friday morning, Jesus is run through a laughably unjust trial as He is paraded in front of the religious leaders, Herod, and Pontius Pilate. When the grave miscarriage of justice is over with, Jesus is whipped and disfigured, all before being handed a massive wooden beam and told to carry it up a hill to HIs own death.
Imagine being one of the followers of Jesus in this moment, watching the man you’ve come to believe to be the salvation of the world dying on a cross. You knew He was the messiah. When you were in His presence, you could sense the love and power that emanated from Him in every word He spoke.
And now He’s just dead.
Sure, you’ve seen Jesus raise people from the dead before. And that was pretty crazy. But how can someone raise themself from the dead? It can’t be done! This is it!
On Friday afternoon, the sky goes dark and the earth shakes. Jesus gives up His spirit. The temple veil is torn and dead people start getting up and walking around in town. Lots of crazy things happened.
Roman officials even claim that the man they watched die was probably telling the truth about Himself.
Then comes Saturday, where nothing much happens. I can imagine that the Disciples and the other followers of Jesus are easily experiencing their darkest day right about now. We’ve all lost loved ones, we’ve all experienced some pretty harrowing times. We know what it means to despair.
And despair is certainly the only word that can even come close to explaining their emotions that Saturday.
But, as preachers are often known for saying, Sunday’s coming.
But very early on Sunday morning the women went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. They found that the stone had been rolled away from the entrance. So they went in, but they didn’t find the body of the Lord Jesus. As they stood there puzzled, two men suddenly appeared to them, clothed in dazzling robes.
The women were terrified and bowed with their faces to the ground. Then the men asked, “Why are you looking among the dead for someone who is alive? He isn’t here! He is risen from the dead! Remember what he told you back in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be betrayed into the hands of sinful men and be crucified, and that he would rise again on the third day.”
Then they remembered that he had said this. So they rushed back from the tomb to tell his eleven disciples—and everyone else—what had happened. It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and several other women who told the apostles what had happened. But the story sounded like nonsense to the men, so they didn’t believe it. However, Peter jumped up and ran to the tomb to look. Stooping, he peered in and saw the empty linen wrappings; then he went home again, wondering what had happened.
Luke 24:1-12 (NLT)
Like I said a moment ago. What a whirlwind! After everything that’s happened, now there are women running around screaming that Jesus has been risen from the dead.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Jesus honored some of the women who followed Him in this way, but that’s another story for another day.
“You said Billy’s not dead? Shoot! I owe that guy money!” (Photo by Bobby Mc Leod on Unsplash)
Now I would grant you that there isn’t an easy way to hear that someone you thought was dead is actually alive again. A few months ago, I wrote about a friend of mine whose death I learned about a few years after the fact. That was a gutting moment. Now I imagine the exact opposite thing happening, thinking someone was dead but finding out they aren’t.
Again, there’s no easy way to learn this information, but I think going to their tomb and finding it empty is certainly one of the more shocking ways to find out that, as Mark Twain supposedly said, the rumors of their demise were greatly exaggerated.
The part of this passage that has always stood out to me the most, though, is what the angels say in v. 5. “Why are you looking among the dead for someone who is alive? He isn’t here!”
Imagine that you have plans to meet a friend for lunch one day and you run to the cemetery to meet them. You just start walking around shouting, “Joe! Hey, Joe! You here?” Maybe start tapping a few headstones and asking if anyone has seen Joe.
That would be weird, right? Unless your friend is a groundskeeper at a cemetery, then why would you go looking for them there?
It makes no sense. Kinda like looking for Men’s Final Four banners in Knoxville. (This may be the last day I ever get to make that joke, so I’m gonna take advantage of that.)
What the angels are saying here in this moment is nothing short of miraculous! Jesus has been categorically shifted from death to life. We are used to movement from life to death. That’s natural. What’s really not natural is moving the opposite direction. God is reminding us here that He is in control of everything, even the seemingly immutable laws of reality that bend to His very will.
But there’s something else that we need to think about here.
The angels ask the question one way, but I want to twist it around a little bit.
Why do you seek life among the dead?
As followers of Christ, we have been given life. We have spiritual life. We have been categorically shifted from death to life.
My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Galatians 2:20 (NLT)The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life.
John 10:10 (NLT)
Jesus came so that we might have life. These passages are just two examples from the New Testament where we see talk of life and death in direct contrast to one another. There are plenty more to choose from.
So why do we seek life in the things of death that are better left alone? We have hope in Christ, we have life in Christ. We are dead to those things.
You say, “I am allowed to do anything”—but not everything is good for you. And even though “I am allowed to do anything,” I must not become a slave to anything. You say, “Food was made for the stomach, and the stomach for food.” (This is true, though someday God will do away with both of them.) But you can’t say that our bodies were made for sexual immorality. They were made for the Lord, and the Lord cares about our bodies. And God will raise us from the dead by his power, just as he raised our Lord from the dead.
Don’t you realize that your bodies are actually parts of Christ? Should a man take his body, which is part of Christ, and join it to a prostitute? Never! And don’t you realize that if a man joins himself to a prostitute, he becomes one body with her? For the Scriptures say, “The two are united into one.” But the person who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him.
Run from sexual sin! No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body. Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.
1 Corinthians 6:12-20 (NLT)
Now I’m not necessarily focusing on sexual sin here, but obviously the message in this passage still rings true. Especially the words at the end, reminding us that God bought us with a high price. The price that God paid for us was the death of Jesus Christ.
Imagine this for a second. Jesus is resurrected. He has died and come back to life. And He just…keeps sleeping in the tomb. That’s it.
He doesn’t go anywhere. He doesn’t do anything. He doesn’t appear to the Disciples or talk to people. He just lays around.
It’s a silly image, but I fear that many of us treat the life we’ve been given in Christ the same way. We have been raised to spiritual life so that we can live abundantly as Jesus said in John 10:10. And yet…we don’t.
“I do not treat the grace of God as meaningless. For if keeping the law could make us right with God, then there was no need for Christ to die.”
I want to throw one more passage out there, and we’ve already come very close to referencing it. I posted Galatians 2:20 earlier, but the very next verse has an incredible message, too. Shocking, I know.
In Galatians 2:20, Paul talks about living an earthly life by the power of God because He has raised us to life. In Galatians 2:21, we are reminded that the grace of God is powerful and meaningful.
I know these passages are from two very different parts of scripture, but I want us to put them together for a second.
“God has bought you with a high price, so do not treat the grace of God as meaningless.”
I don’t play around with the Bible lightly, so believe me when I say that I think these two ideas go together very well. We have been bought with a high price. Jesus endured torture and brutal execution on the cross so that we could have life, so we cannot treat the grace of God as meaningless.
Earlier, I mentioned that this week is called Holy Week. There are a lot of different ideas and concepts that people have when they think of Holy Week, but the thing that always comes to my mind is pressure.
Pressure to be holy all week.
Of all weeks in the year, I am especially cognizant of my sin during Holy Week. Big sins, little sins, they all stand out a little bit harsher in my mind this week. The reality is that we can’t live perfect, holy lives. It’s not possible. Again, that’s why the grace of God matters.
But are we going to make a habit of living in the cemetery? Are we going to keep seeking life among the dead? Or are we going to get up out of the tomb and live in the power of Christ?
If you are a follower of Christ, let this be your encouragement as we go into Easter. Do not treat the grace of God as meaningless, because He has bought you with a high price. It is our responsibility to worship the Father and to share the powerful Gospel message of Jesus Christ, His death, and His resurrection that brings hope to the world.
If you are not a follower of Christ, then let this be your encouragement as we go into Easter. You don’t have to stay in the tomb, either. If you feel like you’ve been living an empty life, like you’ve been living a bland existence, then you can embrace the life that Jesus Christ wants to give you.
If you feel like nobody loves you, just remember that God paid a high price for you, so you can experience the powerful grace of Jesus Christ. That’s the message of Easter. And it really is a matter of life and death.