“The Winners”         Easter Sunday         April 16, 2006

When Jesus was alive on earth, many people followed him because they had hoped he was the one to save the work. They thought he would bring justice to the poor, feed the hungry, and heal the sick. His message of the coming of God's kingdom has a powerful impact on people. But when the authorities heard this threat to their power, they convicted him of treason and blasphemy, executed and buried him in am matter of hours. They shoved his body in the tomb so quickly, they did not even give him a proper burial.

After the Jewish Sabbath was over, three women, close friends of Jesus, walked to the tomb early in the morning, long before sunrise. They were hoping to anoint his body, even though it should have been done before he was buried. They lost a dear friend, and even more, the hope of the message of the coming kingdom of God. They came trying to figure out what went so terribly wrong for them.

I know that feeling, and it isn't good. The game was over. The coach entered a sullen, utterly quiet locker: "I just want you guys to know that I am real proud of the way you played this afternoon," he said. "Real proud. We didn't win, but we did prove to a lot of people what we could do. It was a moral victory."

On the way out that evening, with autumn sky now dark, the second string tackle turned to the quarterback and asked, "What's a moral victory?" The quarterback said, "It's what a coach tells you when you lose the game."

If you can't fool a seventeen year old football player about failure, who can you fool? When the scores are recorded in the book, nobody ever talks about "moral victory." When it comes to winning, there are no "moral victories." Now I know these’s some who say, "It's not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game." And in some situations, that may be true. But it’s not true in football, or the world we live in.

We live, and Jesus lived, in a Vince Lombardi kind of world, where winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing. A coach remains a coach only when the win loss record is in his favor, or he will be fired. A corporate president can’t tell the shareholders, "Well, we lost six million this year but we're calling it a moral victory." He’ll be gone in a week.

Do you know failure? It's that sinking emptiness in the stomach when you look down the list of grades on the final exam. There is your number at the very bottom.

Failure. It's like the time a physician returns from the operating room and says to the family, We did everything we possibly could do." It's packing up and moving from the house to separate apartments, packing last the book of wedding pictures that won't be viewed again because they're too painful. Failure.

What to do with failure? One response is cheap rationalization: ‘It was a moral victory. Jesus was a good person, a great teacher, and he’s better off now. Too bad he got himself in so much trouble with the authorities, or they never would have crucified him.’ That’s the kind of cheap talk you hear when people give up on the power of God. It’s nonsense, of course, and the resurrection proves that God, who gave life to the world, is stronger than the human forces of death. And people will not accept ever cheap rationalization when it comes to live and death.

I remember, as a young pastor, a woman named Nancy who had lost her husband in a tragic accident. She said, "Pastor, don't say any of that poppycock like ‘he’s better off now,’ or any of that other cheap stuff. He's gone! God took him away from me." She knew the power of death, and didn’t want any cheap preacher talk. She needed the good news that God is stronger than the forces of evil and death.

Failure. Defeat. How do we respond in the face of it? The women were going to work out their grief the only way they could. The stone that cover the entrance to the tomb could not stop them from trying to perform this sacred ritual.

But when the arrived, much to their amazement and their fears, the stone had already been rolled away. And inside was a young man in a white robe who told them. "Do not be alarmed. He is not here. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you."

Why is Peter singled out? Because in Mark’s gospel, the disciples are dense, and never understand Jesus’ message. The central story is The Parable of the Sower. It says that a farmer sowed wheat by slinging the seed all over. A very few of the seeds took root and matured to make more wheat. The story means that the kingdom of God is like a good harvest.

But even with the good harvest, some of the seeds fell on rocky soil, which "when they hear the word, they immediately receive it with joy. But they have no root, and endure only for a while; then, when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away" (Mark 4:16 17). Peter and the disciples were like those seeds who took root in the rocky soil, Jesus gives Simon the nickname, Rock, or Peter. I don't think Jesus meant this in meant in flattering terms. He's the rock who exemplifies the disciples' constant denseness to the Gospel. And he’s the one who denied even knowing Jesus at his hour of trial.

So what became of dense disciples like Peter? Jesus forgives them by showing him the resurrection, which covered up Peter’s sin of denial and lack of understanding. The young man tells the women to go and tell his disciples and Peter to go home, north to Galilee, and there they would meet Jesus again, the Risen Christ, just as he promised.

My point is simply this. When God resurrected Jesus, forgiveness was offered even to those who have a very dense, rocky faith. That’s something I need to tell you and you need to know. Yet when the man in white told the three women to tell the others, Mark’s gospel ends with the words, the three women said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid. What were they afraid of?

Of course eventually, they did tell others, by the power of The Holy Spirit. In the short time before his ascension, hundreds of people saw the Risen Christ. They told others, who told others, who told many others, and within 400 years, the whole Roman Empire adopted Christianity as the official religion.

At that time, the pastors and bishops burned up the other gospels like the gospel of Judas, which has drawn so much attention lately. The reason was that these other stories of Jesus portrayed Jesus’ cross and resurrection as some kind of magic, as if Jesus did not really die. Others said Jesus was only human, just another good teacher. In the fourth century, the bishops decided to keep four gospels that maintained that Jesus was both fully human, and fully divine. And by the power of the Holy Spirit, we know those who made that decision were right.

On the testimony of these gospels, by the power of the Spirit, and with the help of the writings of Paul, I can tell you this. When we were baptized into Christ’s death, we were also baptized into his death, so that we will rise with him in the next resurrection. God has given us the final victory over death and sin. Jesus Christ forgave our sins, our doubts, even our dense and rocky faith. Now all we have to do is live as resurrected people, and tell others the good news. Nothing, not even death, can separate us from God’s love in Jesus Christ. Jesus told them to go and tell others about this. We are winners because he lives!

My question is, are we willing to do that? How much is it worth to tell others? There was one fellow who decided to auction his soul on E-Bay. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal on March 9, Hemant Mehta, a 23 year old DePaul graduate put his soul up for auction on E-Bay. His Ebay aution said, “Perhaps being around a group of people who will show me the ‘way” could do what no one else has been able to show me? ‘Evangelicals bid, eager to win a convert. Atheists also bid, hoping to keep Mr. Mehta in their camp.’

The wining bid was $504.00 submitted by Jim Henderson, a former evangelical pastor who now now runs a Christian website called off-the-map.org. I think it’s interesting reading. Since Henderson cast the winning bid, his website is swamped, he has appeared in various places in the national media.

Mr Henderson flew to Chicago, and met with Mehta in a bar, and struck a deal. For his $504.00, Mehta agreed to go to 10 or 15 services of his choosing, and write about it. (Sounds like the sermon maps I give our confirmation student.) Mr. Mehta is also agreed to offer comments on their website, and to the pastors of the church’s he visited.

He first went to mass at an old Catholic Church, and stumbled through the mass, standing and sitting, trying to follow the liturgy. He gave the church and the pastor a rather poor rating. He went to another service where the preacher kept railing against the fools that Paul wrote about in his letter to the Galations who doubted the full divinity of Christ. The preacher never explained it’s relevance to the congregation. Mr. Mehta wrote this was not fair, because that no one was there who shared the Galation’s view to defend them. Some of the pastors are offended by his comments, but at least one thanked him for his honesty.

I wonder, if Hemant Metha visited here today, what would he say about us here at Grace Lutheran. Is my preaching clearly telling the meaning of the cross and resurrection. Is our worship a proper tribute to the Lord of life? Would he see us faithful believers who have died to sin and resurrected in the living body of Christ? Are we telling others about Jesus Christ? That’s what Jesus has asked us to do. Let us give thanks, honor and praise to him. Let us go and tell others of the victory he gave us in his resurrection.

Amen