Finally - after the threat of having a white Easter, it looks as if the snow is finally disappearing... for a month or two, at least. And all kinds of interesting things are starting to come to the surface. Biked past an unmentionable piece of something coming through a snowbank earlier last week that reminded me of an incident at our home a few springs ago.

"Hey, Dad. Brandy got another one. We found it in the backyard."
Our dog had caught another squirrel. The little fuzz ball was another in a long list of victims to meet a swift end as punishment for the crime of trespassing into Brandy's domain.
Kind of a shame, but then there's a good side to everything. This too. The kids found the lifeless body, suffering from a severe case of rigor mortis, sometime after the dastardly deed. And it helped to expose them to the one big inevitable, irreversible event of life, namely death.
"It doesn't move. Come on, dumb squirrel....
Oooh, gross. It's stiff.
Let's hammer a nail into it, haw haw haw."
"Hey dad, when is this squirrel going to wake up?"
"It isn't. It's dead. We'll bury it into the ground and it will turn into dirt. It will never run or chatter or wiggle its tail again. It's dead."
"Oh....
....well, then we might as well throw it in the garbage."

The death of a squirrel. Just a small event in the life of our household, and yet one that helps illustrate one of the most powerful principles or rules that govern our entire world. It is this:
There is an irreversible trend in our world from wholeness to brokenness, from order to disorder, from symmetry to chaos, from life to death.

If you ever doubt that fact, check out the room of a teenaged boy some time. You can spend 16 hours working to vacuum it, polish it, spray it down with Lysol, and clean up all of last month's dirty socks but I guarantee that within a week - maybe even 2 days - you will never be able to tell that anyone had tried to clean it up at all.
Or check the condition of your car. From shine to rust. From smooth running to clank and clunk. From $20,000 investment to junk yard tow-away.
You can vacuum the floors at home this week. But by next Tuesday, it will need doing all over again.
 
 

It's not just this way with the physical world. It happens in communities as well. Take a church fellowship that gets along well, participates in various projects, prays and lives together. If the leaders of the congregation simply allow things to coast, to move along as they have in the past, the end result will be decay. People will become disenchanted. Groups will lose momentum. Enthusiasm will disappear. Fighting and bickering will flare up.

Decay. It's all around. And not just out there. We experience it right within our own lives and bodies. Basically it is so that from the moment of birth we begin to travel the road to death. For some of us it arrives quicker, more tragically and suddenly than for others. But for all of us it DOES arrive.
We begin to experience aches and pains in our joints. The hair grows grey. The energy that once allowed us to work 14 hour days simply isn't there any more. Visits to the pharmacist grow more frequent.
We look at the funeral announcements and suddenly discover that the person mentioned was our age. And we realize that we don't have the control over things which we so arrogantly assumed we had when we were eighteen. Life is sliding downward, and there is no way we can stop it.

order to disorder.
structure to chaos.
life to death.
That's simply the way it is.
Ever since the Fall into Sin in Paradise, and the introduction of that alien force of evil and death into God's perfect and good creation,
this is simply the way it is.

And we know it.
So we write our wills and take out life insurance.
We lower our expectations.
We bury loved ones when they die and leave the cemetery without even the slightest glimmer of hope that we will, through some strange occurrence, bump into them again someday.
It just doesn't happen that way.
Life goes to death.
And death is the end of the road.
Period.

So the kids disposed of the squirrel.

Which is precisely what the women expected and counted on so many years ago when they trudged to the tomb for a farewell look.
It had been a violent weekend for them, a cruel one. Death had come crashing down on their hopes. Irreversibly life had been swallowed up in death.
It was now Sunday morning and time to try and smooth over the rough edges, to try and calm some jagged nerves, to grieve in a quiet place.
But what greeted them! I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; He has risen, just as He said.

Can you possibly imagine the shock?
How would it be if you were returning to the church from the cemetery after burying a loved one. Your mind is numb with grief -
"How could it be? What will we do? If only...."
You step in the front door and there she is, expecting your arrival and pouring coffee for you. With her peculiar little grin and twinkling eyes, there she is!

Awe, can't imagine it. Impossible!! Against all odds!!

So it was for the women as well. Impossible. Against all odds.

But angels.
Stone rolled back.
An empty tomb.
That Sunday, in the quiet of the morning mist,
the irreversible trend to which we all have grown accustomed,
the irreversible trend from life to death
the irreversible trend that has been here since the fall
the irreversible trend,
against all expectations,
was reversed.

Jesus rose from the dead.
Physically.

He that once was dead now is alive again. It was not, as some might want to argue, waking up from a deep coma. It was not a staged event. It was not a recovery from a state of shock brought on by loss of blood.
He was dead. The soldiers, who knew what dead was, said so.
Now - He is alive.
The grave is empty.
People have seen him and given solemn testimony to that fact.
Hundreds of people.

The resurrection is a fact of history.
 
 

And with that fact we can somehow begin to sense that all these other events which so much a part of history:
my own decaying health, the mess in my sons' room, the rust on my car, the death of the squirrel, and my own tendency to doing evil instead of good.

These events are now somehow affected, altered by this one stupendously great event.

Death no longer is the stronger.

Something new, something absolutely new, has broken onto the earthly stage.
And yet in a way it is not new. It is a renewing. It is a healing of what was gravely ill. Creation was ill. It had been poisoned with chaos and death when our first human parents disobeyed God and fell into sin. Sickness, brokenness, pain and death - aliens to God's good created order - were injected into the scheme of things.
The fever of death had the world in its grip. But on that first Easter Sunday the antitoxin was injected. The fever's great and awful grip was broken. Recovery was on the way. Hope was born where despair had reigned.

Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?

Can you sense it?

My friends, we celebrate today. Oh, how we can and DO celebrate. For what happened in that graveyard on that first Easter morning is not some strange and isolated event. It is the first of many such events. It the beginning of something new and great that will change the course of history.
 
 

It is the beginning of the victory of life over death.
New life, eternal life.
Life for you and me, for all who will accept the truth of the seemingly impossible events of that First Easter Morning; for all who will accept that Jesus is alive, really truly alive and that he is the one who can lead us to eternal life.

Tell me, what is life without Easter?
Is it not the experiencing of a great sense of despair? For what is the point of striving to do anything significant when in the end it is all destined to decay to nothing anyway?
Is it not the shouldering of an ever-growing burden of guilt? For we all make mistakes and hurt people and contribute to the decay and destruction that occurs in life, and there is nothing to stop that or counter-balance that?

What is life without Easter?
Is it not one horribly large tragedy? For the child you lost, the parent you grieve, the friend taken in so untimely a death, are gone forever - never to be seen, never to live again.
Is it not one great exercise of pessimism? For the downward trend is inevitable. The great wheel of universal life is slowly grinding to a halt. The spring on the cosmic clock is slowly unwinding. Pollution is increasing. Human problems intensify. We seem destined to face the end with not a bang, as the poet said, but a pathetic whimper.

But celebrate my friends!
Celebrate as you have never celebrated before!
For we have Easter....... Very, very real.

And so there doesn't have to be the sense of despair, the ever-growing burden of guilt. Life isn't one horribly large tragedy, or a great exercise in pessimism.

Jesus has wrestled death and sin and Satan to the ground. He has won forgiveness for all the guilt and wrongs that we have done. He has opened a path to eternal life for all who will follow him.
And he has sent his Holy Spirit to walk with his children, his followers, his believers. That Spirit is a guide, a helper, a friend, a guarantee that one day the trend which was started on Easter Sunday will swell and become the norm.
It will completely swallow up death and evil and decay. They will be stopped in their tracks - forever.
It is the day that will be ushered in when Jesus, risen from the dead, returns in glory. It will be judgement day when, with a mighty roar, the cosmos as we presently understand it will be swept away. A new order will be introduced. It will be life. There will be a heavens. There will be an earth. But it will be purified. It will be Easter for everyone and Easter everywhere. All life. No death. No decay. No sin. Just pure, godly, wonderful life.

Oh, I can't wait! Can you?

And until that time we can carry on in hope.
FOR EASTER IS HERE!

We can go back to our work knowing that this Jesus, who is bigger and stronger than the forces of destruction and evil, is alive and watching over us, even now. He is guiding us and caring for us. We are not on some slippery slope to nowhere!
FOR EASTER IS HERE!
We can know that the things we do to try and bring some order and healing and hope into life are not done in vain. Jesus sees us do them. And he knows we do them in anticipation of the day when he will make all things new. And he blesses those things we do. He guides the results. And he builds on them. He considers them as being done to him, and for him. And he, the living Christ, smiles as we do them.
FOR EASTER IS HERE!

We can make those trips to the cemetery without despair. We can face the greying of our own heads and the weakening of our own bodies without a sense of hopelessness, for we know that for the believer in Jesus death no longer has the final word.
It has become but a door to a greater and richer life, life in the very presence of God, eternal life!
FOR EASTER IS HERE!

The unthinkable has happened. The irreversible has been reversed.
Life is ours!
For Jesus' sake!
AMEN.