The Best Words You Will Ever Hear

Christianity is this - a dead man got up from the grave and lives. Period. Without this, Christianity is not a good idea or method of keeping people under control with all the ‘morals and mores.’ Friedrich Nietzsche, the famous atheist, in his book Twilight of the Idols, says it well, “When one gives up Christian belief [here he means the story of God’s incarnation, death, and resurrection] one thereby deprives oneself of the right to Christian morality… Christianity is a system, a consistently thought out and complete view of things. If one breaks out of it a fundamental idea, the belief in God, one thereby breaks the whole thing to pieces: one has nothing of any consequences left in one’s hands… Christian morality is a command: its origin is transcendental… it possesses truth only if God is truth - it stands or falls with the belief in God.”

The Bible itself is even more convincing on this argument. St. Paul says it like this, “If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead… If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins… If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.” (I Corinthians 15:12-18). What Nietzsche, following the logic of St. Paul, understood is that Christianity can never serve as merely a system of morality. St. Paul says we are futile liars and fools to be pitied if we try to skim off the morality of Christianity and never deal with the person of Jesus.

It is even worse than that - Christianity as a moral system without Jesus’ atoning sacrifice is then the worst form of cruelty ever inflicted upon mankind. Clearly the morality that Christianity upholds is nothing less than beautiful. But without Jesus it is a cold and sterile beauty. We admire it from afar but we know that, for people like us, who even on our best days cannot even begin to keep the commandments and statues of God, it will only condemn us. It exposes us for the flawed people that we are, grabs us by the throat, and accuses us by exposing all of our imperfections and flaws. It shines a spotlight on a thousand imperfections; it holds up a mirror that shows the distortions and shortcomings. Then, next to the standard that Christianity holds up as a system of morality and perfection, we are left gasping for air.

Christianity is about a dead man who got up from grave and lives! In his book Engaging God’s World, Cornelius Plantinga, Jr. says it like this, “…on the third day, in a spectacular miracle, Jesus Christ rose from the dead and changed the history of the world. The first message of the gospel, a message with power to straighten the spine of every believer is simply this: ‘The Lord is risen. He is risen indeed!’ Preaching, sacraments, evangelism, Christian social action - even worship on Sunday instead of on Saturday - all center on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. To the desperate and the bewildered, Christians say, ‘The Lord is risen.’ To the doubter, Christians say, ‘The Lord is risen.’ To the martyrs who sing to God while their enemies set them on fire, Christians say, ‘The Lord is risen.’ To poor people in Bangladesh, or Honduras, or Turkey, who suffer first the indignity of their poverty and then the desolation of being blown out of their houses by hurricanes or washed out by flood, all because they are too poor to build anything on habitable land, to all these people, Christians says, ‘The Lord is risen.’ …Proclamation of the resurrection of Jesus isn’t nearly everything Christians have to offer the world, but it’s the platform for everything they have to offer.”

St. Paul was so adamant about this, so convinced of this, and so concerned that the people would get the idea that Christianity was some kind of new moral code that he would say, “I determined to know nothing among you except Christ and him crucified.” Are we that concerned? Or is Christianity just a system to give you a comfortable life, just a morality that is fashionable among people who live in the suburbs and are, for the most part, conservative. Everyone is conservative in the suburbs, whether they believe in Jesus or not. But morality has no power to change you, comfort you, woo you, inspire you to do better, love you, rebuke you, and deal with you personally as a human being. Christianity as a moral system will not fill the deepest needs of acceptance and belonging that only come when we believe, with all our being, that Jesus Christ was put on a cross to pay a debt we could never pay. Because for some reason known only to God, he so loves people, he would destroy himself so that we could know God personally.

There are no more glorious words that you will every hear or speak than those of the ancient liturgy on Easter morning. They are said antiphonally, pastor and people, back and forth, like an echo. It is as if it is not enough for a minister just to declare it. No, this is so monumental and these words are so good that they have to be tasted - savored. They have to come from the lips of everyone in the service. Everyone has to participate in this moment, this glory, this assurance that it really did happen; we really are going to live forever, our sins really won’t condemn us. And so the words of the liturgy guide us to say what is true, what is always true, but which time, circumstance, and familiarity dull - the words on which Christianity stands or falls and the words on which our hope and peace rest. These words that have give life and rest for people though out the ages. “Alleluia! Christ is risen.” Declares the minister and the people respond, “The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!” These words are the first words in the story of redemption that God is writing. They are our hope and our glory. This is Christianity, miss this and you miss everything.