Easter Sunday 04/14/1968

About 1290 years before the birth of Jesus, a very insignificant people, the Hebrews, one of the many peoples in the ancient Mediterranean area, made a miraculous escape from slavery. The great world power Egypt, and how great you can begin to see if you look at the past few issues of Life magazine, has made of this people its servants. Among other things, setting them to work long hours building the huge granaries for which the empire was famous, Perhaps some of the great cities also.

But under the leadership of a man named Moses (itself an Egyptian name), incredible as the story is, this people gained their freedom, set out for a new land, and for years figured prominently in the history of the Mediterranean world.

This people spoke, and their descendants today still speak, of that all important event as, The Exodus. As a people then and now, the ancient Hebrews and their descendants, world Jewry today, still nurture their life from that ancient event. In spite of the cruel manner with which they have been dealt in subsequent history.

To those who lived and live that history their deliverance was no accident.

It was not due to the super generalship of Moses.

It was not due to the cunning of these former slaves.

Rather, then and now, the Hebrew people gave thanksgiving for their deliverance from human bondage to the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and Joseph.

The mysterious other, who began Creation in the first instance. He who called Father Abraham and gave to him the promise that in his seed, all the nations of the Earth would be blessed. He the Lord. He it is, who has set us free. And set us free to be his people in the world, for the sake of every other man and woman and child, and every other nation!

Their interpretation of their deliverance was a renewal of the Covenant between the Lord and them. The Lord setting them free from human captors, and setting them free to be his servants to all the world. The fate of all men, is what is involved in the first Exodus.

Now we need not take too much time to detail how this freed people failed miserably to be the Servants of the Lord God Almighty to all the nations. We need only remind ourselves that at the time of the birth of Jesus, the Hebrew people were once again a subject people, under the heel this time of the Romans.

To delve into the failure failure of the Hebrew people to be a saved and saving people is to lay bare the failure and fault of every man. What prevented them, and what prevents us from being saving persons, serving people, is the fear of death and the awareness of guilt.

These are the human hang-ups. A man cannot be sure that his days here are only a prelude to something better in another world. He can be sure that one day, death will present him or her with a whole new ballgame. Everything that we do, everything that we seek to possess, we do and we possess, to try to convince ourselves that we will never die.

I'll live on in my children. I’ll live on in my property. We live by many illusions, but the illusion of illusions, is the way everyone kids themselves that they can cheat death. Or we are all so aware of the good that we didn't do, and the evil that we did do, that we carry a bag of guilt that is always bending us low. We are frozen people. The Hebrews were frozen people. Frozen by the thought of death, and years of accumulated guilt.

And then there came another of their sons, the Jew Jesus of Nazareth. Heir to the same promises, a son of the same Covenant. Of being a saved and saving person. A Jew who in all things... in all things…. trusted. Even his cry of anguish on the cross was a cry to my God. My God.

Easter deals with his resurrection. His release from the bondage of the grave, again not by his own cunning, but by the power of the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and the prophets. Raised by God's power, this new man of God, in whom now it is declared. There is no distinction between Greek and Hebrew, foreigner or savage. slave or free man.

In the first Exodus the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob free a people from human bondage to be a freeing people. In raising Jesus from the dead, the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God and father of our Lord Jesus Chris,t has set everyone free from death and from the burden of their own guilt.

As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive.

Thanks be to God who gives us the victory, in Christ I can no longer die.

While we were yet sinners, Christ died for the ungodly.

In Him we have the forgiveness of our trespasses.

We have been set free now, to be that freeing and saving people. “Having been to the mountaintop”, we can dare to descend into the valley there. To give our lives, in enabling all persons to learn what ought to be, according to the plan of God.

The Covenant of the Lord’s peace, and good will with all men, has been sealed and signed by his resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

I point you to the the bruising, promising, and fast moving events of our day, as results of the raising of Jesus from the dead. That in our day, all people are being called to participate in a fuller measure of life, than any generation has been allowed to know. We can live with our hang ups about death and grief, knowing that those are not the final words about our life. That the fitting cry for our age is not, “stop the world I want to get off”, but “life is busting out all over”.

For ancient prejudices between people to be overcome.

For the joining and mutual enrichment of once separated cultures.

For the beautifying and care of all earth’s children and all earth’s scenery.

For pushing on to worlds yet undiscovered.

To each of you this day I declare.

You have been raised with Christ.

You have been forgiven in Christ.

You are the heirs of all the promises of God, to be a saved and saving people.

Let death no longer crimp your style and rob you of life.

Take vast comfort from the knowledge that Jesus died to save sinners.

Be not afraid, join the human race.