Sermon by Tom Are Jr. | March 31, 2024 | Fourth Presbyterian Church

Easter Sunday
March 31, 2024

Eternal Life is Long Enough, but It Is Not Big Enough

Tom Are Jr.
Interim Pastor

Genesis 3:1–7
John 20:1–18

This is a good news day. Do you need some good news?

It’s a good news day because resurrection is not just about life eternal; it’s about redemption. God’s love does not just last forever; it changes us.

I think we spend our whole life becoming the person God intends us to be. I don’t mean becoming a butcher or baker or candlestick maker. I mean the spiritual person that God intends for each of us. There is a version of ourselves that is a lot like Jesus, and we spend our lives pursuing that self.

Joe Moll taught me this. Joe was small, quiet, and one of the strongest men I’ve known He looked fifteen years older than he was as he did his best to destroy himself with alcohol. But he dried up, and he ran a halfway house run by the church I served in Florida. On any given night there were twenty-four men living in that suburban house, fighting to put their lives back together. Many of them failed. But every day Joe was there, inspiring and cajoling these men into a new tomorrow.

I asked him what kept him going. He said, “Tom, you have to remember that buried down in each one of these guys is a better man struggling to come to the surface. It takes a redemptive love to bring that better man to life.”

Easter happened because God’s love is a redemptive love. It doesn’t just last forever. It changes us.

A couple years ago, the New York Times reported that their most frequently read article for the year was entitled “Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person.” It was written by Alain de Botton. He says we are all complex human beings who appear normal until someone knows us. He offers advice to those going on a first date: do not try to impress one another with how put together you are; that’s inauthentic. For a more honest self-reveal, he suggests something like, “I’m crazy like this. … How are you crazy?” (Alain de Botton, “Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person,” New York Times, 29 May 2016).

Well, if that is your lead, I don’t know how likely a second date will be, but I think I get why so many people read his article. We know how complicated we all are. Our lives are a collection of beauty and brokenness. Of blessings and injuries and flaws. Francis Spufford, in his book Unapologetic, writes that, despite our best intentions, “it’s our active inclination to break stuff, … even relationships we care about.” He continues, “Wherever the line is between good and evil, between acceptable and unacceptable, between kind and cruel” we are going to walk on both sides of that line, and not by accident (Francis Spufford, Unapologetic: Why, despite Everything, Christianity Can Make Surprising Emotional Sense, pp. 27, 33).

We are complicated, which is one reason resurrection is such good news. Because it’s not just about living forever; it’s about redemption.

Mary didn’t recognize the risen Jesus. She thought he was the gardener. Some have said her eyes were blurry from weeping. Maybe. But others also had trouble recognizing the resurrected Jesus. Luke tells us that Cleopas and his friend walked with Jesus all afternoon on their way to Emmaus and they didn’t recognize him. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, says one of the strangest features of the resurrection appearances is they began as an “encounter with a stranger” (Rowan Williams, Resurrection, p. 75). This one who had been with them for three years was somehow different now.

Mary was restless. Haunted by all she had lost and by what she could not forget, she was unable to sleep. She, like others, had hoped that Jesus, who had changed them, would change the world. She hoped that Jesus would make the world more gracious, more just, more mature. But on Friday she stood there in the crowds, as the government had used the mother of all punishments: crucifixion. Fear and hatred won again. Humanity lost again. She grieved because she knew that this world would always be a world of crucifixion.

We see it all the time.

There is grief in Israel, with enough dead to fill this sanctuary more than thirty times, and so many of them children. Anything honorable died some time ago. Because of the arrogance of one man, war in Ukraine continues into another year. Gun violence is commonplace in our streets. The coral reefs are bleaching. And we are in an election year that is not likely to be shaped by our better angels.

We are a complicated people in a complicated world. There is much to grieve.

Before sunrise Mary carries her broken heart to the tomb. Who knows why she thought that would help; sometimes it’s just the place you need to be. But when Jesus speaks to her, she thinks he’s the gardener. Some say she didn’t recognize him because she was in shock. That makes sense. But the truth is I have known many carrying fresh grief who for a moment thought they had seen their loved one in a passing car or rounding the aisle at the store. I would find it just as reasonable had Mary stumbled upon the gardener and thought it was Jesus.

If I understand the text, she didn’t recognize him not because of what was going on in her, but because there was something different about him.

Dr. Victor Dzau is the President of the National Academy of Medicine. The Academy has launched the “Grand Challenge in Healthy Longevity.” It funds research into extending the human life span while keeping bad knees and hearing loss, not to mention weak hearts or fading memory, from eroding quality of life. They aren’t just contemplating a few years. The boldest among them are asking, Can science make death optional?

A few years ago Norman Lear invited some friends over to hear the healthy longevity pitch. His living room was filled with Silicon Valley types and Hollywood glitterati. Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the co-founders of Google, were there. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, was there. Goldie Hawn had done some research and asked questions about glutathione; some call it the “God molecule.” Like the rich man who came to Jesus asking what must I do to inherit eternal life, the room was jammed with powerful folks wanting to learn from the scientists the secrets of healthy longevity (Tad Friend, “Silicon Valley’s Quest to Live Forever,” New Yorker, 3 April 2017).

Dr. Joon Yun, who runs a health-care hedge fund, said aging is like a code in the human genome. The code can be hacked, and we can end aging. Dr. Aubrey De Grey, the chief science officer of a Silicon Valley research foundation, asserts we can retool our biology and stay in our bodies forever.

I don’t know how that strikes you, but I got to say, this sounds like the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard of. Just because we can doesn’t mean we should. I’m all for extending life span a bit. Living to a ripe old age is everyone’s long-range plan. I get that, but making death optional is terrifically foolish, not to mention amazingly arrogant — to suggest what the world needs now is me, more of me.

Now, you might reasonably point out that it’s an odd day for a preacher to speak disparagingly of eternal life. I mean, after all, isn’t Easter about eternal life? Wouldn’t God celebrate if science were able to make death optional?

No.

No to all of that.

Easter is not about eternal life. Eternal life is not big enough.

We read part of the story of Adam and Eve. The story of these mythological parents of ours names the two big problems of our lives. The first problem is that humans are finite. We have a beginning, and we have an end. All creatures die. It’s true of monarch butterflies, of stars in the sky, of great whales in the sea, and even of the earth itself. There was a beginning, and there will be an end. We die.

The National Academy of Medicine is dreaming of changing that reality. And maybe they will. And if successful, it might be greeted as fantastic news — except that death is not our biggest problem. The other problem named in the story of Adam and Eve is the problem of sin. That’s not a word that carries much meaning for us these days. But Frances Spufford names it. It’s our constant tendency to mess stuff up, even the stuff we care about. The truth is we are complicated. Our lives are a mixed bag — our own form of crazy.

Resurrection is not just about eternal life; it’s about transformed life.

I think we spend our whole lives becoming the person that God intends us to be.

Jesus was convinced there is a version of us who would go the second mile and turn the other cheek. A version of us who would forgive seventy times seven and love even the enemy. There is a version of us defined by joy and grace and undying love.

And I think we spend our whole lives pursuing that self.

And over time we draw closer. We do. Sometimes in ways that can only be described as transformative.

See if this makes sense.

When I was eight years old, baseball was my life. I played second base, and in those days you could play Little League without it being a lifestyle choice.

At eight years old, I thought school was a waste of time.

I thought sisters were a creation flaw.

I thought Pop-Tarts were real food.

And I thought I would play professional baseball.

At the age of sixteen, I got my first guitar. It was a very secondhand Yamaha, steel string. I played it every day.

I was long past my baseball playing days. The glove was stiff from lack of use.

When I was sixteen, I thought school was something I would be finished with soon. How much more could there be to learn?

I thought girls were God’s greatest invention.

I had hair past my shoulders and about as much ambition as an aardvark.

Every day after school I would go to Baskin-Robbins and get a mint chocolate chip milk shake. I thought that was real food.

I’m in my sixties now.

I still love baseball, but it’s not important.

I’d go to school a little bit every day if I could. For the first time I’ve begun to worry that I won’t have time to read all the books I want to read before I die.

Just having a few moments with my kids at our table or a few moments with this congregation at this table — I’ve learned that’s what food is for.

Why am I telling you this? Because there is a mystery here. I look back at those earlier versions of myself and both at the same time I am that eight-year-old boy and I am not him at all. I am that sixteen-year-old acned kid and I am not him at all. I am transformed from who I once was.

Of course you are too.

We are all becoming. Pursuing the self that God intends us to be. And resurrection is God’s last act of love to fully bring you to life, you as you have always been and you as you have never been before. You will live, but that which burdens you, that which injures you, that which saps the life from you, that is what dies. And you emerge a gracious, joyful, fully alive you.

She didn’t recognize Jesus, not right away, because resurrection changes us. Because the love of God always comes to us where we are, but it never leaves us as we are. Resurrection doesn’t just extend life; it transforms us. For God’s love is not simply eternal; it is redemptive.

And for a world as complicated as ours, for a people as complicated as we can be … that’s really good news.

So, until that resurrection day, we do as we always do: we keep pursuing that person God created us to be …

I told you this is a good news day.