Easter Service
"Love is as strong as death" (Song of Solomon 8:6)

1 Cor 15:50-58, 1 Cor 13

Hidden in the Hebrew Bible there is this beautiful saying: "Love is strong as death" - the implication being of course that "love is in fact stronger than death".

If we only could believe that!

If deep down within us, if deep down, where the voices of the media and the voices of friends become silent, when even our own words and thoughts fail us, if deep down we could believe that the guns in Iraq, the deaths of the tsunami, the tragedies in the our cancer wards, yes our own personal struggles with life - that they will not have the final word on the stage of life.

If we can believe that there is a reality that is stronger than death, and if there is good reason for that faith, then we can look each other in the eye and say with confidence to each other: "Happy Easter!"

That, my friends, is the Christian message that we celebrate with all Christians today: that there is something stronger than the estranging, the isolating, the dehumanising forces of death.

The estranging power of death

You see: death does not only happen at the end of our physical life. Death means isolation, estrangement, loneliness. The knowledge of death gnaws in our subconscious. We try to ignore it, but we can't.

Of course: Death is the end of our human life here on earth; it is the end of our time; it is the end of our personal story as it is lived in time and space. I visited a good friend in the cancer ward last week. I was upset because meaningful memories had bound us together. He whispered: "The better part is still to come."

Now I know of course that the sceptic inside and outside of us cynically smiles: it is all wishful thinking; ; it is weakness; it is the projection of our inability to accept life's limitation.

We may be like Nicodemus who came to Jesus by night. He came out of a night that was more than darkness. He came out of the night of his own search for life. He had an education. He had success in earthly terms. He was religious. In the encounter Jesus diagnoses with the eyes of love. "Nicodemus, you must be born from above." You must experience a new reality if you want to have access to the mystery of life. "God" must become more than a word to you. "What does that mean," Nicodemus gasps, "can I enter a second time into my mother's womb?"

You see, Nicodemus had no room in his thinking for God, for Easter. It was all: what can I see? What can I prove?

But there is another dimension to life: the experience and the demonstration of a God who is love.

A journalist asked me this week: was Jesus raised "bodily"? What should I say? I could have said yes, but will he understand that there is a body that is not flesh and blood? Because we know with the apostle Paul that "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God." Does God have a "body"? Of course, but it is a body that is concomitant with God's being. It is a body of love.

Love

Allow me please to say a little more about the power of love as the central reality of our faith in Christ. I want to demonstrate it from Paul's great Easter letter to the church in Corinth.

In the beginning of that letter Paul emphasises what we celebrate on Good Friday. The cross, or better, the crucified Christ, as the centre of faith.

When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified. (1 Cor 2:1f.)

For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. (1 Cor 1:22-24)

And then at the end of the Epistle the triumphant confession of Easter. We read about it earlier in the service.

... Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. (1 Cor 15:20)

The "first fruits"? Are there others to come?

Listen, I will tell you a mystery! ... "Death has been swallowed up in victory." "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" ... But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Cor 15:51-58)

So, the beginning of the letter speaks about the Cross and the end of the letter speaks about the Resurrection.

But what does it mean when we translate Cross and Resurrection into life? The apostle speaks about the power of love. What the ancient Hebrew Poet dreamed has become a reality with the resurrection of Christ from the dead.

Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. (1 Cor 15:58)

The power of love

What does it mean?

The apostle spells out the meaning of death and resurrection as he speaks about the power of love that is stronger than death.

He compares the power of love to other expressions of our faith: charismatic prayer; good preaching; theological insight; sacrificial social concern - all important, all worthy of praise, but if they are not grown in the soil of love, if they are not built on the power of love - thy are empty, hollow, plastic.

Love is God's great gift to us. We are accepted where it counts. We know it as we grasp it. It holds us as we try to hang on. It grows as we share it with others.

Love creates life. Easter is the celebration of life over the forces of death. That is the reason why Christians can never be satisfied with the status quo. Easter has begun a process carried by the conviction that love is stronger than death. That is the reason why we cannot be satisfied until the Aboriginal people have the same life expectancy than we have. That is the reason why we cannot be quiet when people are dehumanised in our detention centres. Justice is the practical outworking of love that is stronger than death.

Love is bound to the being of God who "is love". It is not an illusion. It is grounded in an act of God that has set a new process into motion.

A process was begun with the resurrection of Christ.

When you are on a modern Cruise Ship you feel the vibration when the motors are started and the journey begins. But soon as the ship goes out to sea, you get used to it and then you don't feel it any more.

But the motor works and the vibrations are there, whether you feel them or not.

We shall have to walk into cancer wards again; we may shed tears; but underneath is the conviction that this is not the end.

We shall continue to witness acts of hatred and violence, but we shall not resign to them, because we are carried by the conviction that at the centre of life, in the heart of God, there is peace and love.

We shall continue to experience injustice in our life and around us but we shall not resign to it because God has raised the prince of peace and of justice from the dead and thereby said "yes" to our struggles.

We shall have to struggle with the knowledge that we all have to die.

But, my friends, whether it is our personal struggle, whether it is the economic death of the poor and disadvantaged, whether it is the ecological death of our surroundings, there is a silver lining on the clouds of life. God will be God. And because "God is love", therefore not death but love will have the final word to say because "love is stronger than death." Happy Easter!

Thorwald Lorenzen, 27/3/2005.