NOTE: I am putting my weekly sermons on the church website. It will be on for two weeks (usually posted on Friday) and then placed in the Archives area by date. You can download in a matter of seconds.

Let me know what you think. The church Email is: SLUMC@att.net, Phone: 480.895.8766

April 20, 2003
Sermon: "Countdown to Easter: 3,2,1,0, Alleluia"
Scripture: John 20: 1-18
Reverend Larry Gerber

The body of baseball superstar Ted Williams has been put in a freezer, in the hope that this will give him a shot at new life. Sadly, there are plenty of people who are content with a Cryonics Christ.

New Scientist magazine is offering a cool prize — an extremely cool one — minus 350 degrees Fahrenheit, to be exact. The magazine has been revamped, and to promote its fresh look, the publication is offering readers a prize "to die for": cryogenic treatment, which some people hope will give them new life after death.

The winner will not be able to collect the award until death, of course, and at that point he or she will chill out in a vat of liquid nitrogen at The Cryonics Institute of Michigan. If and when medical technology allows, the winner will be revived to live again.

They hope.

Cryogenics has been all over the news this past year, largely because of the controversy surrounding the freezing of baseball superstar Ted Williams, the "Splendid Splinter," one of the greatest players in history and the last Major Leaguer to bat over .400 in a season.

When Ted died on July 5 last summer, a fight broke out among his children, pitting his oldest daughter against his youngest son. The daughter wanted to have her father cremated and his ashes scattered off the Florida coast, as his 1996 will made clear. But the son and another daughter wanted to put the slugger on ice, arguing that they signed a pact with their father in November 2000, agreeing that their bodies would be frozen. The son had Ted's body carted to a cryogenics lab in Scottsdale, Arizona, shortly after his death, and he remains there today, suspended upside down with two other bodies in a tomb of liquid nitrogen, frozen at minus 350 degrees.

So Williams was put on ice on the off chance that someday someone might be able to thaw him out and spring him loose.

Of course, the opposite was true when Jesus was put on ice. There was controversy around the burial of Jesus. Right after Jesus was crucified, religious leaders swooped down on Pontius Pilate, the local provincial lackey, and said, "Sir, we remember what that impostor said while he was still alive, ‘After three days I will rise again.' Therefore, command the tomb to be made secure until the third day; otherwise his disciples may go and steal him away, and tell the people, ‘He has been raised from the dead'" (Matthew 27:62-64).

But Pilate, who was just about fed up by this whole mess, told these troublemakers to use their own guards to secure the tomb. So they did, hoping that sealing him in a hand-hewn tomb would bring to a close a tumultuous period in Jewish history. Didn't happen.

From that very first Easter morning, people expected Jesus to remain in the tomb. When Mary Magdalene discovered that the stone door had been removed from the grave, she never dreamed that Jesus had walked away. She came to the only logical conclusion: "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him" (John 20:2).

There are two things intriguing here: first — how we tend to put Jesus on ice, thaw him out on special occasions, and then slip him back in the tube — or, tomb. A frozen Jesus is much easier to handle than a risen Lord who makes demands upon our lives.

And second — how we often put ourselves on ice, reluctant to thaw out and serve God and others. Christ on ice: In our more honest moments, we have to admit that we can fall into this trap, because we know that we are attracted to:

• A Jesus who taught about love, but not a Lord who commands us to love our enemies (Matthew 5:44).

• A Jesus who helped the unfortunate, but not a Lord who challenges us to sell what we own and give the money to the poor (Mark 10:21).

• A Jesus who paid visits to the temple, but not a Lord who cleanses and reforms all our traditional practices of worship (John 2:13-17).

• A Jesus who was a friend of tax collectors and sinners, but not a Lord who encourages us to embrace the very people we feel are beneath us (Matthew 11:19).

• A Jesus who supported family values, but not a Lord who predicts that he will cause divisions in families, father against son and daughter against mother (Luke 12:52-53).

• A Jesus who accepted people as his disciples, but not a Lord who challenges us to walk the way of the cross, to lose our lives for his sake, and to find new life through sacrifice (Mark 8:35).

We feel much better about ourselves when Jesus stays frozen in certain acceptable forms, giving support to the ideas and practices and lifestyle patterns that fit us most comfortably.

Many of us are really quite content with a Cryonics Christ. Of course, it doesn't matter what we prefer. It's a moot point. He is risen!
The liturgy proclaims:
Alleluia!
Christ is risen!
Chris is risen indeed!

The glory of Easter is that Christ is alive, bursting the bounds of death and running wild and free through human life. When we try to preserve Jesus as a nice reminder of what a good person looks like, he rips through these limitations as though they were flimsy linen grave clothes. On the day of resurrection, Jesus laughs at our attempts to limit him in any way, and he leads us into a future that only he can control.

And yet, when a crisis comes our way, wheather it be personal or global, we ask: "What Would Jesus Do". If we would stop trying to prove his death and resurrection with material things, such as "We found the shroud that Jesus was buried in", as if we have to prove that he died and was buried, or "We found the empty grave, but material evidence that He was there....." we might be more able and ready to do what Jesus would have us do.

Our faith proclaims that He is risen. And yet, we ask, as if not knowing, "What would Jesus do".

When Peter and the other disciple run to the tomb to see what Mary is talking about, Jesus confounds their expectations by being conspicuously absent (John 20:3-10). When Jesus stands before Mary, he appears in a form that she does not recognize — she believes him to be the gardener (vv. 14-15). When he speaks to her by name, and she realizes he is the risen Lord, he forbids her to hold on to him.

He knows that he must move on, always onward, and eventually on to his Father in heaven. But before he leaves her, he gives her a mission: "Go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God'" (vv. 16-17).

What an amazing and unexpected assignment this is. The command of Jesus to "go" is significant here, since it is related to the word apostle, which means "one sent forth." On a very literal level, Mary Magdalene could be considered the very first apostle, the first one "sent forth" by Jesus to spread the good news of the resurrection!

It is in just such surprising ways that our risen and living Lord moves among us on Easter morning.
This Lord

• is not a comfortable Jesus, one who proclaims a gospel of success and offers himself as a better business partner.

• is not a predictable Jesus, one who fosters intolerance and small-mindedness.

• is not an individualistic Jesus, one who encourages a focus on the self and a neglect of the world's needy. He is, instead, a Jesus who truly challenges our age ... and every age.

The good news of Easter is that Jesus is not on ice. Never has been. Never will be. We do not serve a Cryonic Christ. He's alive and well and moving among us, calling us to follow him on new adventures in faith and to replicate his presence in the world. There's no place in the kingdom for Christians on ice. Jesus wants us to stop being God's Frozen Chosen, and instead be revitalized, reanimated, turbo- charged, super-sized, justified and sanctified children of God! He is risen! Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! Thanks be to God!

Let me know what you think. The church Email is: SLUMC@att.net, Phone: 480.895.8766