Easter: The Resurrection of our Lord

Luke 24:1-12 (Hebrews 12:1-11, Isaiah 43:19ff)

A NEW CREATION COMES TO LIFE
Paul Swartz - April 3 & 4, 2010

The Lord God said, “Look, behold, I make all things new.”

That phrase is found throughout the whole Bible. In Isaiah 43 we read, “I the Lord God am doing a new thing in your life. Can’t you see it? Can’t you perceive it? It is like a bud springing forth from the ground. It is like a small crocus poking its head through the dirt. I the Lord God am doing a new thing in your life. Don’t you see it?”

That theme is woven throughout the whole Bible. God says, through Jeremiah, “I will make a new covenant with you. I will place in you a new heart. I will give you a new spirit" (Jer. 31:31). The Apostle Paul says the same thing when he writes, “If anyone is in Christ Jesus, they are a new creation. The old has passed away; the new has come” (2 Cor. 5:17). You come to the end of the last book in the Bible and you hear God speaking from His throne: “Behold, I make all things new” (Rev. 21:5).

Paul Tillich is a famous American theologian whose writings were required reading in seminary. One of his most famous books is entitled, “The New Being,”  a series of sermons. In one of those sermons he asserts:  “If you want to summarize the message of the Christian faith, you can summarize it in two words. It is the message of the…"new creation." God who sits upon the throne says, “I make all things new.”  And isn't that a longing within our hearts. Don't we wish we could do some things over again? Have another shot at it? Start from scratch? At least have a second chance? I’m sure there are 62 basketball teams that would love to have had a second chance!

But, what does that really mean? How do we translate that word? How do we understand that phrase? "I make all things new.”  In our lesson, the writer refers to our resurrected Lord as the "author and finisher" or the "pioneer and perfecter" of our faith, and that thought sparked an idea for this Easter Message.

I sought out a business that specializes in restoring old furniture. I asked the owner of Second Chance Furniture Refinishing, “What goes into being an excellent restorer of old furniture?” He answered me immediately, without hesitation. “Imagination. Creative imagination. You have to see past all the layers of paint, chips, past the mars and scars. You have to look past all the faults in the wood and the broken pieces. You really need to be able to "see" the piece of furniture as it was in its original beauty. Your eye and mind has to have imagination, and you actually get kind of excited about the possibilities that you see beneath the surface."

"Then," he said, "you have to have time and energy. Not a little bit of time and energy but a lot of time and energy! These things don’t just happen overnight. It takes time. It takes disciplined energy. The miracle, the transformation, doesn’t happen immediately, just at the snap of a finger. It takes the commitment of time and energy. It takes patience and devotion."

"Third," he says, “Love is more important than skill.” You need to love the piece of furniture and its possibilities. The skills aren’t that hard to learn:  The skills of using the right solutions to strip it. The skill of choosing the right sandpaper and the correct tools. The skill of fixing a broken hinge. These skills are important but not as important as loving the possibilities you can see in the furniture.”

What a neat conversation with a wise man who understood Easter.

So on this Easter day, I want to talk with you about refinishing old furniture. Standing before you here in the sanctuary today, is an old chair. I don't need to tell you it has seen better days! It's all scarred up...scratches, nicks, missing chucks of wood, wobbly legs. It's unsightly, and most of us would probably just pitch it!

You see, in many ways, our lives are like this old chair, are they not? Our lives become corroded and coated with layers of junk and old cruddy paint, worn out varnish. We carry around a lot of baggage, junk, and cruddy stuff. There are layers of anger and bitterness and cynicism, where there is little joy in our lives. Through the years, we have collected innumerable habits. We have become critical, petty and short-fused about everything. We give into shallow and materialistic values. We get on the non-stop treadmlll of self-gratification…of seeking success, thinking we are just one acquisition away from fulfillment, one achievement away, one thrill away, just one relationship away; we want to go buy this and that and we’ll have it made. There is layer after layer after layer of crud that has accumulated in our lives.

But not only do we have crud. We also have enormous scars. We get scarred immensely by life. We all get hurt deeply. Scarred by childhood memories. Marred by physical accidents and emotional disasters. We know what scars are. I don’t know one family in this parish who has not been scarred deeply by life.

We not only have crud on us and scars in us. There are broken pieces on the furniture that need to be fixed. So also in life. Things get broken in life. Broken families. Broken marriages. Broken dreams. Broken relationships. I also don’t know anyone who has not been broken by life or will not be broken sometime in the future.

Easter proclaims that God is in the restoration business. Through the death of His Son, He has done something about the crud, the scars, the breaks, and hurts in our lives. His greatest desire is for us to experience new life, to leave the bitter and hurtful past and through His embrace and love know the freedom and joy that His forgiveness and acceptance alone can grant. A NEW CREATION COMES TO LIFE!

You see, the whole purpose of Jesus’ life was to restore human beings to their original beauty. When you think back on Jesus’ life, His whole purpose was to restore people to be healthy and loving. The woman at the well, the sick man lowered down through the roof by his four friends, the rich young ruler. You think of every story about Jesus and His earthly life, and you see Him restoring people to health, to wholeness, to goodness, to happiness. That is what Jesus was into! Having been a carpenter—being a furniture maker—creating the original pieces, Jesus is now in the restoration business, not throwing people out because of their brokenness, scars, mars or crud. He was about giving people new life. Jesus was restoring human beings, and in their restoration, those people found new life!

So how does God restore us? What does God do to restore us? Let me first ask you a question about this chair sitting here. Does this chair have the power within itself to restore its self? Is there anything this chair can do to restore itself to its orginal beauty? What a dumb question. No! Restoration is something that happens to the chair. In other words, we don't change ourselves, but God get inside of us and changes us.

Remember that song Mary Magdalene sang in Jesus Christ Superstar? She sang, "I've been change, just really changed." She didn't sing, "I changed." A Christian never says, "I changed myself." A Christian always says, "I've been changed." When God gets inside of you, when the Holy Spirit is active within you, and you connect with Christ-followers, you experience restoration taking place. Unlike Dan, the furniture restorer, who must have an imaginative eye to see the possibilities in this chair, God knows our possibilities. After all, He created us for a purpose. God sees past the crud, sees past the scars, sees past the brokenness and sees the original divine intent He had in mind when He first thought us up and brought us into life. Lovingly, He begins the process to remake, to re-finish us, so that we become new people.

So He goes to work on us, most often through others He enlists as His tools. He begins by stripping off the old crud, paint or varnish. He strips off the old anger, cynicism and hatred and all the bad habits we have developed.  This all takes time, more time than we want it to. As the writer of Hebrews says, “it isn't much fun undergoing the discipline of re-finishing.”  Our temptation is to want to forget this cleansing step and just have God put on the new coat of paint or a new layer of varnish.

Next, God gets out His sander and goes deep into the wood to get out the deep scars, the painful memories and hurts in our lives. Gradually, over much time God heals those inner scars. How? I don't know. It's like trying to explain a miracle. If you can explain a miracle, it is no longer a miracle.

Then, God sets about fixing the broken stuff in our lives. Like the professional furniture restorer said, love is more important than skill. God knows where we are most broken in our lives and God helps us and provides the assistance to put life back together again.

Think for a moment if this chair had feelings: What might it be thinking or experiencing as it were dipped in strong solution, sanded, and worked on? Later, of course, it pays off handsomely, because God doesn’t stop with the stripping. God starts then to put on a layer of beautiful stain for color. And layers of grace and peace. And layers of joy and happiness. And layers of love and affection. And then He applies a protective finish which allows the luster that comes from deep within to shine through our lives. And when God is done with us, He says, “I make all things new.”  I restore that which is old, beat-up, corroded and scarred into someone new. And so it is, that we are re-finished into new people, just like this "refinished" chair!

The man at Second Chance was right: Imagination was needed to see past all the painted crud and scars. Much time and energy was needed to get rid of the crud and scars. Not a little time and energy but much time and energy. Love was more important than skill. Loving the possibilities was crucially important in restoring a chair like this.

When God says, "I make all things new,"  this is what God means. God takes that which is old and makes it new. God would not take this chair and throw it out in an incinerator or a garbage heap. That isn’t the way God works! Thank goodness He doesn't throw us away, cast us aside! What God means by “making things new”  is not making a new chair, but taking that which is corroded, scarred and broken down and restoring it to its original pristine beauty. That is what the phrase means, “I the Lord God will make all things new.”  

Have you ever wondered why there are so many “re” words in the dictionary, especially in the Bible? These are the words that begin with the prefix “re” meaning "again" or "anew." Resurrection. Rebirth. Restore. Renew. Reconciliation. These words talk about God "returning" us and creation to its original purpose and beauty. In the resurrection, the tomb isn’t really empty, it’s filled with possibilities beyond our imagining, as we are filled with new life to live in God’s amazing and restorative grace.

When Dan loaned these chairs to me, he said he could not think of any better place for them to be on Easter. He also assured me that he would be praying that their message would be a blessing to you.

Well, I guess there is one major difference between Dan, the owner of The Second Chance Furniture Refinishing shop and our risen Lord: Dan, as creative as he is, is still limited, and with Christ all things are possible. And best of all, in Christ, there are "second chances" time and time again, so great is His love for us!...so valuable are we to Him. Through His death and resurrection A NEW CREATION COMES TO LIFE....thank God, for our sakes, time and time again! A blessed Easter!    AMEN!