He Is Risen, Indeed!

Well, top of the morning to you, it is a Resurrection Day 2026 Easter around the world. In some places it's already been and we're now here in the United States. Around the world thousands of leaders and services are and we're proclaiming he has risen and hundreds of thousands are responding he has risen indeed. What an amazing moment, defining moment in world history and in one's personal history if you believe the story. I believe the story and here's some thoughts I had on it, the joy of reflecting on this moment three years ago. This is April 9th, 2023. He has risen indeed. Hello again friends, it's Dick Foth and it is stories from the road on Easter Sunday, 2023. Well, to be doing a little bit more theology, a little more God talk, maybe we do another podcast, but for the God talk, let me start with October 1990 people's magazine and they were interviewing Larry King who back in the day was a big name in broadcasting both on radio and television. He was the consummate interviewer and someone asked him what his fantasy interview would be and he said, Jesus Christ, I would ask him, Larry says, if he believed that he was born of a virgin because whatever the answer it changes or reinforces the world. That's kind of a cool question for me when I heard him say that because if Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary resurrection from the dead should be no problem. For some that's an idea or a fantasy or weirdness, but for others it's a fact, for 2,000 years it's been a fact for many others. Easter Monday, which is interesting, Easter Monday is a holiday in 116 nations celebrated by better than 2 thirds of the people in the United States. It's a part of an institutional thing. It's part of the fabric of a lot of people's lives, it's tradition. But do you celebrate Easter is a different question because it could be a spiritual question or Easter bunny question. It's a different question than, do you believe that Jesus of Nazareth, who some believed to be the Messiah, was executed by the state 2,000 years ago in Jerusalem? And three days later physically rose from the dead. That's a very different question. And the net effect of that many believe, like me, like I believe this, is that all people every individual can experience forgiveness from their sins and have a new mind and heart. And life forever in the glorious presence of the Creator of the universe. You say, wow, that's a leap. To think about human beings and then resurrection from the dead, it sounds ridiculous. Sounds impossible. Well, some Jewish folks in Jesus' day believed in a general resurrection for all people at the end of time. But the one we're talking about here with Jesus and that impact, that's one of a kind. There is this fellow in the New Testament who's called the Apostle Paul. He was Saul, but he was a religious guy who believed that people who thought about the resurrection of Jesus were worthwhile killing. So he was what we would call a religious terrorist in our day. And in writing to a church in southern Greece, and you've heard me talk about this before, in Corinth, which is a party town, he puts out a case for the resurrection. This is what he says. Now brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preach to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel, this good news, you're saved. If you hold firmly to the word I preach to you, otherwise, you've believed in vain. For what I received, I passed on to you as a first importance that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to seephus, that's Peter, and then to the twelfth. And I'm skipping a few verses just for the sake of the reading here. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, you're still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep or died in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitted. I find that a fascinating statement. So the question is, okay, so Jesus was raised from the dead, what's in it for me? It's a pretty narcissistic thought, but most of us have self-interest along the way or somewhere. Well, this text suggests that Jesus' resurrection is a prelude to ours. He goes on, Paul goes on in verse 50 to say, I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. Notice the perishable and herethy imperishable. Listen, I tell you a mystery. We will not all sleep or die, but we will all be changed. In a flash in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet for the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. And then this classic statement, death has been swallowed up in victory. Where O death is your victory, where O death is your sting. Now that's a perspective. Resurrection overwhelms death, if the resurrection of Jesus is true. It sets up another moment down the road. For us, that's where celebrating. That's what I'm thinking. On Easter Sunday. There's a fellow, not just any old fellow, his name is Entomus Wright, and he's the former Bishop of Durham in England. He, a lot of folks read him today, scripture scholars, a teacher, and he has some interesting thoughts. And I have this book that he wrote sometime back, called Surprised by Hope, rethinking heaven, the resurrection, and the mission of the church. I just want to read you just a few of his thoughts about the resurrection. Listen to what he says. No first century Jew, prior to Easter, expected the resurrection to be anything out of the large scale event happening to all God's people, or perhaps to the entire human race, as part of the sudden event in which God's kingdom would finally come on earth as in heaven. There's no suggestion that one person would rise from the dead in advance of that event, okay? Then this thought, notoriously, the accounts of Easter, he's talking about the New Testament now, do not fit snugly together. How many women went to the tomb? How many angels are men? Did they meet there? Did the disciples meet Jesus in Jerusalem, regallally, or both? And so on. And if you, who are listening, if any of you, have read the Jesus story through the Gospels, you see this is true. But surface discrepancy, he says, do not mean that nothing happened. Indeed, their reasonable indication that something remarkable happened, so remarkable, that the first witnesses were bewildered into telling different stories about it. If you're in the legal system, if you're in the police force, you know that eyewitness accounts of the same event, very greatly depending on where you were standing, what you heard, how much attention you were paying. One of the strange feature of the stories is more often marked upon, and that is the presence of the women as the principal witnesses. In all four Gospel stories, front and center of the first witnesses, the first Apostles ones, if you would, were females. Female first stories we find in the Gospels. I just think that's not only fascinating for that day and age when women were not paid so much attention to, if you will, it's front and center in the good news story. And final thoughts from NT, right? Are the challenge is in fact the challenge of new creation. To put it at its most basic, the resurrection of Jesus offers itself to the student of history or science, no less than the believer of the theologian, not as an odd event within the world as it is, but as the utterly characteristic foundational event within the world as it has begun to be, the claim advanced is of this magnitude. Jesus of Nazareth usheres in not simply a new religious possibility, not simply a new ethic or a new way of salvation, but a new creation, a new creation, the power and glory of the Most High God, setting us free to know and to be with Him forever. So over the centuries, millions have come to know that freedom and that hope. I have no clue, by the way, who I speak to at this moment, but have you ever considered the possibility of being like a new creation? Well, let me give you a snapshot of two people who did. One was named George. George Handel was the German fellow living in London in the 1740s. He was depressed, he was broke, he was a musician. He was cut off from his friends, but this moment in his life in those days happened that in a few days he wrote an oratorio, which back in the day was a musical presentation that told a story, not unlike Fiddler on the Roof that Ruth and I got to see in Denver a few days ago, but it's that kind of presentation. And one part of that oratorio that he wrote in 1742, grabbed folks and people today still pick up on it. It's called the hallelujah chorus. It's first performed in Dublin on the east coast of Ireland and the Irish sea at the new music hall in Fishamble Street at noon on April 13, 1742. Six years later, 1748 on the west coast of Ireland out in the Atlantic, it's a huge storm. It was March the 10th, 1748, and a ship was foundering, it was about to sink, and a 23-year-old sailor schooled in faith at his mother's knee years before up to the age of seven. He thought his life was over. His name was John. John Newton was his name. 10th of March says Newton is a day much to be remembered by me. For on that day the Lord came from on high and delivered me out of deep waters. And he records this, as Newton hurried to his place at the pumps trying to save the ship. He said to the captain, if this will not do, the Lord have mercy upon us. His own word startled him. This was the first desire, he said. I had breathed for mercy for many years. That moment would become a lifelong journey that would bless the world. So the words to the hallelujah chorus were sung in April of 1742. 30 years later, in 1772, John Newton penned these words to amazing grace. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, it saved a wretch like me, he was a flavor. I once was lost, but now I'm found was blind, but now I see. To his grace that taught my heart to fear and grace my fears relieved. How precious did that grace appear, the hour I first believed. And now tilting toward resurrection day, the last two verses. Yay, when this flesh and heart shall fail and mortal life shall cease, I shall possess within the veil a life of joy and peace. When we've been there, 10,000 years, bright shining as the sun, we've no less days to sing God's praise than when we first began. And to those sentiments, I say hallelujah, which means praise God. By the way, it's a Hebrew word that's become universal across language and cultures and nations. It's a blessing word. I've never heard anyone cuss by saying hallelujah. Hallelujah is the absolutely right and delightful response to the resurrection of Jesus. I have two favorite Englishmen. I have several, but these are two of them. J.B. Phillips, who was a pastor and London back after World War II, and N.T. Wright from Durham. J.B. Phillips in paraphrase and scripture says that hallelujah means three cheers for Jesus. And N.T. Wright in writing about Easter Week says Easter ought to be an eight day festival with champagne served after morning prayer or even before with lots of hallelujahs, extra hymns and spectacular anthems. That's it, this resurrection Sunday. If you want to respond to any of the thoughts just shared, just add a comment on social media or send us a message on our website and we'll include the link in our show notes. So the dick-foath, signing out on this Easter Sunday morning and declaring he is risen. Oh, and imagine yourself, if you will, in Fishamble Street music hall in Dublin on April 1742. For the first time in history, you're hearing this. Oh, and these are the days of the day, the days of the day, the days of the day, the days of the day, the days of the day, the days of the day, the days of the day, the days of the day, the days of the day, the days of the day, the days of the day, the days of the day, the days of the day, the days of the day, the days of the day, the days of the day, the days of the day, the days of the day, the days of the day, the days of the day, the days of the day, the days of the day, the days of the day, the days of the day, the days of the day, the days of the day, the days of the day, the days of the day, the days of the day, the days of the day, the days of the day, the days of the day, the days of the day, the days of the day, the days of the day, the days of the day, the days of the day, the days of the day, the days of the day,