"He is risen" -- Matthew 28:6
And what a sunrise this was after
these dark days of disaster and hopeless defeat! It was "like some sweet
summer morning after a night of pain." Love had been weeping amid the fallen
leaves of her own tender hopes. All her joys were silenced like the songs of
wounded birds. Love had been peacefully anticipating the coming of an endless
summer, and lo! Here was winter, in dark and merciless severity! The great
Lover had seemed to be the very fountain of life, with quickening vitality
which nothing could destroy, and yet the fountain had been choked up in
Gethsemane and Calvary! "We trusted that it had been He who should have
redeemed Israel," but the shining, welcoming pool proved to be only a mirage;
hope withered in disillusionment; and the brutal majesty of material force held
the entire field.
And so all the disciples were in a mood of
deepest and darkest depression. The light had been cut off from their minds.
They were in the dark. The taste had gone out of their lives. Everything had
become stale and profitless. Simon Peter was gloomy with despondency and
haggard with remorse. Two disciples were walking in the twilight to Emmaus,
"looking sad," communing about the awful and sudden eclipse in which their
hopes had been so miserably quenched.
In every life the light was out. Mary Magdalene
started at the "early dawn" to carry spices to the grave, but there was no
dawning in her spirit, and the roadway was wet with her tears. Even in the
heart of the Magdalene there was no vigil burning, like uncertain candle in a
dark and gusty night. No one was anxiously watching on the third day, with
eyes intently fixed upon a mysterious east. No; death reigned, and wickedness,
and hopelessness, and no one was looking for the morning!
And then came the cry, "He is risen!" The Lord
is alive. His tomb is empty! He has shaken off death and its cerements, and
He has marched out of the grave! Think of that trumpet note pealing through
the late night. Think of that great burning light streaming through the
darkness, kindling life after life into blazing hope again -- now the
Magdalene, now Peter, now John, now the two journeying to Emmaus, now Thomas,
until the entire disciple band was a circle of light again. It was an almost
unspeakable revolution. "The people that sat in darkness have seen a great
light!" "The Lord is risen indeed!"
Now what did the apostles find in the
resurrection which made them give it this weighty and unfailing emphasis? What
was its practical significance? What did it mean? First of all, it meant
this, that Jesus of Nazareth had been clearly manifested to be the Son of
God. Before this wonderful morning the disciples had been the victims of
uncertainty, chilled by cloudy moods of doubt and fear.
But with the resurrection the uncertainty ends.
It is not only that the immediate darkness passes, but the troublesome mists
are lifted as well, and the Master emerges as the clearly manifested Son of
God. "Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen
upon thee!"
Now, it is with that trumpet note that St. Paul
begins his great letter to the Romans. It is well to remember this, because
the letter to the Romans is largely concerned with sin and the guilt of sin,
and with the sacred ministry of emancipation from its stain and power. And
yet, on the very threshold of this mighty book, it is the eternal Sonship of
the Lord which is proclaimed, and this in association with the fact of His
resurrection from the dead.
Here is the big-lettered placard we meet as soon
as we address ourselves to travel this fine and bracing mountain road: "Jesus
Christ . . . declared with power to be the Son of God . . . by the resurrection
from the dead." Not, you will notice, "declared to be the Son of God with
power"; the power belongs to the declaration, the proclamation, the trumpet.
Before the Easter morn the trumpet had seemed to
the apostles to give an uncertain sound; there was either a trembling in its
notes or a trembling in their ears; but now, with the resurrection, all
uncertainty had gone, and the trumpet rang out its glorious blast, firm and
rich and clear. "Declared with power to be the Son of God by the resurrection
from the dead!"
What else did it mean? In the power of the
resurrection the apostles saw a vast reservoir of spiritual energy for the
quickening and emancipation of the race. This was their reasoning and
their faith, that the Lord, who had emerged from the grave, and had thereby
vanquished death, had the power to vanquish all death, whether it enthroned
itself in body, mind, or soul. This was their faith, as this was their
evangel, that in Christ we, too, can rise out of death into newness of life,
that, just as He walked out of that tomb, we, too, can walk out of the grave
and graveyard of our own corrupt past, and in vigour and sweetness of being
become alive unto God.
"I hold it true
with him who sings
To
one clear harp in diverse tones,
That men may rise on steppingstones
Of their dead
selves to higher things!"
Ay, but those lines omit the evangel. It
is true that man can take his own dead self, and stand upon it, and use it as a
step into a larger life of blessedness and sacrifice, but the energy wherewith
to rise upon the dead self is only to be found in "the power of the
resurrection."
That is Paul's gospel, and there is no other.
We rise with Christ, we are risen with Christ. Because of the Lord's Easter
morn we may pass out of our three days of death and corruption, and may rise to
the "higher things," and have our own Eastertide "in heavenly places in Christ
Jesus." That is what the apostles found in the resurrection -- vitality enough
to quicken all the dead, whether the corruption be in body or in soul. "In
Christ shall all be made alive."
And surely we have a wonderful symbolism of all
this in the mystic movements of the springtime. If anyone would be besieged by
suggestions of the resurrection, let him look about in garden and in field, and
he will see the quickening glory. Spring is ever a gracious time to me. Never
do I so intensely feel the pressure of the quickening Spirit as when I see the
black hedgerows bursting with their flooding life into green and tender leaf.
Never do I so realize the surging, encompassing energy of God's resurrection
communion when the dominion of winter is breaking and the time of the singing
of birds is come. "In Christ shall all be made alive!"
I would have the resurrection power flow into my
dead affections, and make them bud in tender sympathies, and gentle courtesies,
and all the exquisite graces of the heart of my Lord. And I would have the
resurrection power pervade my dead conscience, and make it act with hallowed
sensitiveness, with fine scrupulous feeling of the sacred and the profane. And
I would have the resurrection power possess my mind, and make it fertile in
noble ideals, in holy purpose, and in chivalrous resolution.
Wherever there is death where there ought to be
life, let there come an Easter dawning and the springtide of our God. And that
possibility is just the apostolic evangel, and it is born in the light and joy
of the resurrection of our Lord. Again and again I would say, "In Christ shall
all be made alive!" "Verily, verily, I say unto you, the hour is coming and
now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that
hear shall live." "Because He lives, we shall live also!"
And, last, to the early apostles the resurrection
had this further significance, that in it right was manifested as the
ultimate might. It had seemed to the apostles as though the truth had been
defeated, that it had been overwhelmed by hordes of wickedness, and that amid
the laughter and ribaldry of its foes it had sunk in complete and final
disaster.
But on the Easter morn the truth emerged again.
It snapped the cerements of the grave, and reappeared almost before the
laughter of the enemy had ceased. "Vain the stone, the watch, the seal!"
"Truth crushed to earth shall rise again!"
I say that the apostles laid hold of this as one
of the primary significances of the resurrection, the vital tenacity of the
truth, the indestructibility of the right, its sure and certain resurrection.
If we cannot permanently bury the Christ, we cannot permanently bury the
Christlike; if One emerged from His temporary grave, so assuredly will the
other. Right is the ultimate might, and all the forces of Hell cannot gainsay
it.
It may seem at times as though truth is a frail
and fragile creature, a tender presence in a tempestuous day, and men may take
her, and scourge her, and crucify her, and bury her in a sealed and guarded
grave; but, as surely as right is right and God is God, that buried frailty
shall reappear in invincible majesty, and shall incontestably dominate and
command the affairs of men.
That is apostolic teaching; and, therefore,
written in this faith we have that wonderful ending to Paul's great
resurrection chapter in his letter to the Corinthians. Have we marked its
culmination? "Wherefore," he says, in the closing verse, when he has just
taunted the beaten forces of death and the grave, and sang anew the praises of
the Lord, "wherefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmoveable, always
abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is
not in vain in the Lord." Do we mark the force of the succession? He
seems to say, "Your Lord emerged from the grave in irresistible strength and
glory. There were no bonds strong enough to hold Him. He broke them all like
tender threads. There was no grave mighty enough to imprison the truth; all
the stones were rolled away!
So shall it be with the truth in our life and
service. It shall not go under in endless defeat. Our strength shall not be
spent for nought, precious water easily spilt upon the ground. Every bit of
truth shall live, every bit of chivalrous service shall abide for ever."
"Wherefore, be ye steadfast, unmoveable."; go on living the truth, speaking and
doing the truth, even though immediate circumstances crush you like a
juggernaut -- go on -- there is resurrection power in the truth, and it shall
reappear and surely conquer, and your labour shall "not be in vain in the
Lord."
And so it is true, what we learned in childhood,
for the Easter morn confirms it, "Kind words can never die, no, never die!"
And so it is true what is said by Oliver Wendell Holmes, "Truth gets well if
she is run over by a locomotive, while error dies if she scratches her
finger."
"Truth crushed to
earth will rise again,
The
eternal years of God are hers,
But error wounded,
writhes with pain,
And
dies amid her worshippers."
"He is risen!" And in our Lord's
resurrection is the pledge of the resurrection of all that shares His nature.