Easter Is...

A sermon preached by Dr. James Flamming
Pastor, First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
Sunday, March 31, 2002

Text: John 20:26-29

          It was the evening of the first Easter. The disciples were together, bound by an invisible rope called fear. The doors were closed and locked.  Why? Their leader had been crucified. By anybody’s calculations, they were probably next. The doors were shut. The doors were locked.

Now our Lord has a huge task before him. In the next forty days he is going to have to convince them he is truly alive, risen from the dead. Furthermore, he is going to have to give them a crash course in what to do next. The learning curve was steep!

Easter is Security

But, the first need our disciples evidenced was the need for security. They were scared to death. Fear is an awful immobilizer. If these are the people in whose hand Jesus is going to leave his Kingdom, he has got to take care of their fear.

The late Charles Schulz has Charlie Brown and Peppermint Patty leaning on a tree on a beautiful spring day. Peppermint Patty says, “Chuck, what do you think security is?” Charlie Brown says, “Security? Security is sleeping in the backseat of the car when you’re a little kid, and you’ve been somewhere with your mom and dad . . . and its night-time. You’re riding in the car and you can sleep in the backseat and you don’t have to worry about anything. Your mom and dad are in the front seat and they’re doing all the worrying. They take care of everything.”

  Peppermint Patty smiles and says, “That’s real neat!” But then Charlie Brown begins to get this serous look on his face and he raises his index finger and says, “But it doesn’t last. It doesn’t last. Suddenly, you’re grown up and it can never be that way again. Suddenly, it’s over - and you don’t get to sleep in the backseat of the car anymore. Never!”

 Peppermint Patty gets a frightened look on her face and says, “Never?” Charlie Brown nods and with authority says, “Never.” Stricken with the harsh realities of grown up living Peppermint Patty says, “Hold my hand, Chuck! Hold my hand!”

 Jesus did a lot of hand holding in those early hours and days of the resurrection. For forty days he breathed confidence into the hearts of the apostles, teaching them how to teach and how to interpret the Old Testament. But the first item on their agenda and ours, and on old Noah in the Old Testament was to paint a rainbow in the sky. God said, “I know you are there and what you have been through. But what you think is the end, is just the beginning.”

Easter is Transformation

By the time of Jesus’ ascension, these disciples will be a changed bunch. They have changed from freshmen to seniors in the Kingdom in a very short time. But it all begin when huddled in fear in the room with locked doors, Jesus walked right through the doors. Their security was not in those locked doors, but in the One who said, “I am the door.”

 Ernest Campbell told of a family he knew in which there were two brothers. The younger of the sons had a dread of open doors. The older of the two brothers turned his cheers to jeers when he heard of the phobia of his brother. When his brother would close the doors he would open them up, much to the consternation of everyone. So they put locks on them. The older brother threatened, “One day I will lock you up in a room with all the doors open.”

 On that day of days, our Lord didn’t open doors, he walked right through them. John reports so simply, “Jesus came and stood among them.”

 If you were writing the music for a screen play depicting this moment how would you score it. The Hallelujah Chorus? No, for right now, that is too loud. The Hallelujah Chorus comes later. How about a line and tune from Phillip’s Brooks’ Christmas Carol, “How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given.” In the quietest words John reports,

“Jesus came and stood among them.”

 You ask me, “How did he do that?” I shake my head and say, “I don’t know.”

 But Jesus says to Thomas later in the chapter, “Because you have seen me, you have believed, blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

 I fit into one of those who has not seen, yet believed.

 So, have I experienced anything like this, this Jesus walking through closed doors. Oh yes. It usually happens before sun up. I will have risen to do my quiet time. Like I often tell my discipleship classes, “I have my Daily Appointment with God in the morning rather than the evening not because I am a morning person, but because if I wait until the end of the day I spend all of my time apologizing!”

 Often I begin that early morning time with the Lord by asking the first question God asks in the Bible: “Where are you, Adam?” “Where are you, Jim?” Sometimes the dawn breaks and everything is wonderful. I know what the day holds and I know I can handle it. As Browning wrote: “God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world.”

 But sometimes I wake up feeling as if my heart is locked in a room with closed doors. The troubles of the world, the worries for my church and my family, the fears I have for the future of my nation and the future of my children and grandchildren, the responsibilities of my day, are all on my shoulders when I wake up. I am locked in a room of my mind with the doors shut.

 Right now you are expecting me to say that I pray my way out of it. I will tell you right now I can’t pray my way out of it. I have tried every method of prayer I know of and I can’t pray my way out of feeling I am locked in a room with the doors closed.

And, I can’t think my way out of it. Nor can I adjust my moods. Friends, I can try to rearrange the furniture of my inner life all I want to, and there is no answer. I am like the disciples, locked in an empty, joyless room. The only light I see is a ray of sunshine which is spelled, responsibility. That is not bad. Some of our best work is done when we simply give ourselves to the duty of the present moment. But to go day after day with no energizing factor but our responsibility is to head for burn-out and even despair.

 So I begin with the Adam question: “Where am I today, Lord? I will be honest with you, Lord. I am empty. My Inner Oughts have been beating up on me all night. I am in no shape to be Pastor to your people today. You can change me Lord, with your touch, with your presence. And I want to be changed. But right now my heart is like a closed room with all the doors locked.”

 Now it is time to wait. No talking, just waiting. No planning, just waiting. I am not comfortable waiting. I even feel guilty just waiting because I am not doing something. I mean, there is so much to be done and here I am waiting on a Presence that may never show up. My mind wanders and I bring it back to waiting for the Lord. My mind wanders again and I have to bring it back to waiting for the Lord.

 (You know, I am so glad those disciples were not like saints in that room with locked doors. That means there is room for me in there too.)

 Sometimes I just have to go on. Sometimes those are my most productive days. Maybe the Lord gives us some of these for confidence builders.

 But most days, after I have waited, like the quietest whisper, in his own time, he is there. In his hushed, gentle way he has walked into my life. The doors have been locked but he has walked right through them. I have not seen him, heard him, touched him. Yet, I would put my whole life on the fact, he is there, alive and present in that part of me we call the heart. His presence brings the healing, the hope, the joy, the certainty, for the day. It is amazing. I am a man of words and can not find syllables to embrace it. In most ways I am the same man I was fifteen minutes ago - in the same room, on the same day, and yet, the me that was before he walked through the closed doors, and the me I am after he walks into my life, feel completely different. Maybe I can explain it the same way they did, “It is the Lord.”

 What was it my friend the Apostle Paul said to the Philippian believers? “My goal in life is to know him, and the power of his resurrection.”

 I have not shared this with you today to suggest this is the way it will happen to you and inside you. We are all different. There is no assembly line with God. But I want you to know this: It still happens. He still walks through locked doors. But it is not likely to happen unless you find time to slow down, to listen, and to wait.

Easter is Shared

One more thing. Our Lord does something else typical of who he was and how he lived. Having experienced the resurrection he now reaches out to share it, to share it with us.

 My little sister taught first grade for thirty-five years, most of it in the same classroom. So any article about first grade teachers catches my eye. James Moore tells about a first grade teacher who at the beginning of the year had been given the largest class she had ever had, over thirty first graders. She told the Principle, “I can’t teach thirty first graders.” He said, “We have no choice. Do the best you can.”

 One day it rained. No, it poured. No playground time. No recess. No chance to work off energy. The children were absolutely wild. She tried every trick in the book to no avail.

 It was still raining when the children were to go home. So fifteen minutes before the bell would ring she began the arduous task of getting the right rain coat, the right rain hat , and the right rain boots on the right child. Finally she had them all ready to go except for one little boy. He had a pair of boots that were just impossible to get on. No zippers, no snaps, no hooks, no buttons. So she pushed and pulled, yanked and tugged, until finally they slipped on. She let out a sigh of relief. It was done.

 Then the boy said, “Teacher, you know what? These boots ain’t mine.” The teacher wanted to cry or scream but she did neither. She said a quick prayer, took a big breath, pushed the hair back out of her face, and began to try and get the boots off. Then the little boy said brightly, “These boots ain’t mine. They are my sisters. But she lets me wear them!”

 Easter is not ours. It is the Lord’s. The resurrection is not ours. It is His.  But our Lord does a wonderful thing. He lets us wear it. He lets us wear the daily energy and presence and the power of the resurrection here on earth. When death comes, whether to us or to those we love, he hands us his Easter boots. He kneels down and straps them on our feet. Then he stands us up and says with a twinkle in his eye, “Come, follow me, and when we get to the other side, I’ll show you how it all fits together.”

 Easter is about my Lord Jesus. And if you two don’t know each other, maybe it is time for you to get together.