"The People of God Given Hope"
March 31, 2013
THE CHRISTIAN FEAST OF THE PASSOVER
Acts 10: 34 - 43/Psalm 118: 14 – 29/Colossians 3: 1 - 4/Luke 24: 1 - 10
His Eminence
The Most Reverend Archbishop Loren Thomas Hines D.D.
Archbishop of Manila
and
Primate
of the
National Church in the Philippines
and
the Territorial Church of Asia
International Communion of the Charismatic Episcopal Church
This early morning, just about dawn, the women went to the tomb. They were taking with them the spices which they were going to anoint the body of Jesus. It was a tradition in the culture that if you could afford these things, these were given to you so that your body did not decay in a manner that was distorted.
The women were concerned because when they saw the last acts of Christ, He was dead. They had gone to the tomb and they saw the stone rolled in front of the door of the tomb. They were wondering how they were to get this huge stone rolled away so that they could administer spices to Christ. As they came to the area of the garden where the tomb was, they noticed that the stone was already rolled away. They began to be a little anxious and concerned. As they went inside the door of the tomb, they noticed first the body was missing. You can imagine the concern and the anxiety that came upon them because the clothes of Christ which He was wrapped in were there, but the body was gone.
Suddenly, there appeared two angels that asked them the question, “Why are you seeking the living among the dead?” If you went to a tomb, would you not expect to see a dead person especially if that person had been buried there previously? Yet, the angel asked them, “Why did you come here? Why did you seek the living among the dead?”
It is a question that requires each of us to evaluate and answer in our own lives, “Why do we seek the living among the dead?” The angel then reminded the women that they had been told that on the third day, He would rise up. After they were reminded, they remembered, “Yes, He has told us this,” but they did not believe it. They had not taken that into account in their lives so they went to look for that which was not to be. Christ had said, “He would rise on the third day.”
It was women who had been left and told the others. I believe that this is an act of God’s compassion because in the Garden of Eden, it was the woman who took the fruit and led the man, by his own will, into sin. Now, it was women who were going to make the proclamation. The question that comes to us today, in our celebration, why are we so happy? Why are we so excited about what happened on this day, perhaps two thousand years ago? Can we identify with this to a point wherein it sets us also free or are we also looking for the dead instead of the living?
When Christ came, Scriptures says that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. His purpose was to identify with man. His purpose was to become like man. Christ was coming down to the level of man and taking upon His image, His life, living as man lived in this world. He was taking the identity of man for a purpose. There was a goal, a program and a plan set by God.
Christ had to identify with man. He went through much of man’s life. He came as a baby. He had to grow, develop and mature as a man would do. He had to learn in the same manner that others had to learn. He had to apply His efforts and His energies into labor as He worked with Joseph, His father. In all of these things, He absorbed in His very being manhood, humanity.
Christ did not sin but He became like man. Scriptures clearly show us that the purpose and the plan were set. If you went through the week, you saw the actions of Christ before His crucifixion. We saw Him correcting and addressing situations. We saw Him, out of His heart, reaching out to those in need. He was healing the sick, ministering to others in their need. He was setting a course and a direction.
At the Last Supper, He shared with the disciples the plan. They were in a confusion and debating who was the greatest among them. Jesus took off His robe and washed their feet to say to them, “The greatest among you is the servant of all.”
This was an attitude that was implanted in His being. His whole purpose of coming was to be a servant to man. In His servant-hood, taking upon the image of man, He was going to set man free. He was going to bring new life to man. After He shared the Last Supper with the disciples, the Scriptures tell us He went to the Garden of Gethsemane where He was in prayer. He was ministering out of His heart to God, a concern for mankind. John 17:20-21 was the prayer that He prayed in the Garden. Perhaps, most of us think of the prayer that He prayed asking the cup to be taken from Him and saying, “Not My will, but Thy will be done.”
John tells us that Jesus was concerned. He carried compassion. He carried an anxiety for those left behind. He prays to God and He ministers to God on behalf of mankind. He asked God to provide for man. Christ’s prayer, “I do not ask in behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may be one; even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they may also be in Us; that the world may believe that Thou didst send Me. And the glory which Thou hast given Me I have given to them; that they may be one just as We are one.”
These few words of the prayer are the heart’s desire of Christ. He was becoming one with humanity. He was one with the Father. He was bringing one into unity, in oneness. In that unity, He was taking that oneness to the Cross. He was becoming what man was. 2Corinthians 5, “He became sin.” He identified where man was. His purpose was coming to reunite, to reconcile God with man. In order to do this, man had to be freed from sin and freed from the results of his rebellion.
Christ takes that into His own being. Scriptures says that we were with Him when He went to the cross. He chose us. It was He who made the choice, not us. In the last day of His life, they all turned against Him. They betrayed Him. Even His closest turned against Him. They denied Him. He went to the cross alone. Even on the cross, you hear Him speaking out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me.” He was doing this for us. There was this separation because He had become the sin of man. We became one with Him.
Scriptures tells us that we were there on the cross with Him. We died with Him. It was that which He provided for us that we could be free. This is why the Cross is important to us. It is here that He paid the price for us. It is here that He took our sin and brought new life to us. He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf that we might become the righteousness of God, in Him.
God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them. Christ was the one paying the price in our behalf. Christ brings this new life to us. Christ died, paying the price of our sin. We have died with Him; and if we have died with Him, we also are resurrected in Him. When He was resurrected, He was resurrected without the sin. He had paid the price for the sin; it was gone. He was resurrected in righteousness and holiness. He chose us so that we can also walk in that righteousness and in holiness.
Ephesians 2 says, “We are His creation, His workmanship, created by Him.” It is not our work. It is not what we have done, but it is Him. 2Thessalonians says that it was God who chose us for salvation. It is not ourselves. We did not make the choice; He did this in our behalf.
In the Old Testament, He calls us His chosen people. As the God of His chosen people, He pays the price to set us free and to deliver us. This is why Easter is so important to us. It means so much to us because our sin, our iniquity. All that we had was in Him and He took it to the cross – so painful was it, so difficult was it for Him.
Isaiah says that man was not able to look upon His countenance because of the distortion of the sin that it brought to Him. His wounds, His scars, His bleeding, His crown, all of these painful things that were brought upon Him was the result of our iniquities. He bore them for us. He took them so that we would not have to take them.
We see the example when He was hanging on the cross with the two thieves. There was the one mocking Him, and the other with a mild form of faith that said, “Father, Jesus, when You come into Your kingdom, remember me.” Jesus spoke to him and said, “You shall be with Me in paradise this day.” Jesus knew what He was doing. He understood. He possibly did not understand in the flesh the pain, the total humility that would be His because we see this in the Garden. He cried out, sweating in blood, “Father, isn’t it possible for this to be taken away? Can I escape this cup?” Then He said, “Not My will, but Thy will be done.”
On the cross, you also see the suffering that He went through, crying out, “Father, why have You deserted Me? Why have you betrayed Me? Why have you left Me alone? At the end, His last words, showed the intensity of the sin – showing the magnitude of the rebellion that was upon His shoulders, showing the pain that He was suffering because of what He had taken upon Himself. This was not His sin. This was the sin, the iniquity of the whole world – all from Adam to whoever will be. He was carrying it all.
In the gospels, it said that Christ cried out with a loud voice. It was a suffering, an anxiety that was showing the pain and the intensity that perhaps was saying, “I can’t take anymore.” At that moment, Christ He asked for help. He had a confidence in His Father. He trusted His Father. He knew that His Father would not betray Him. He, through His Father, had turned His back. Even in the midst of all this confusing things that He was feeling, He knew the Father would not betray Him. He came to this point in His life and said, “Father, into Thy hands, I commend My spirit. I can’t do it alone. I need You. I depend upon You. I trust You.” Christ was saying to us, “How often we think we can handle things on our own. How often we think that we’ve got everything under control.” How foolish we are!
We need the Father. The Father is the One who protects, who provides, who oversees and sets course and direction. We have lost this image in society today. The fathers had become almost useless. But God was setting the imagery for us, and Christ was putting His whole trust, His whole confidence in His Father.
Christ said with a loud voice, whether it was meant so that everyone would hear or whether it was out of His emotional frustration and anxiety and almost at a point of giving up, “Father!” He called Him, “Father,” recognizing and identifying His relationship with God, His dependence upon God. “Father, into Thy hands, I commend My spirit.”
Christ had your pain. Christ had your sin and our iniquity. It was weighing Him down. It was causing anxiety for Him in His flesh life but He knew the Father and He knew Him in such a way that He understood that He would take care of Him and He would not betray Him.
For you and I, this resurrection, this new life is for us. We are a chosen race. He did it for us. He said in John 15, “You did not choose Me. I chose you.” He chose to take our sin, our iniquity, our failure, our rebellion and He chose to pay the price to deliver us and set us free. 2Peter He says, “Make sure, be certain that He has chosen you.”
We must keep our faith in Him. We must establish our confidence in Him because God has chosen us for salvation. It was not our choice, but His. We are His chosen people. A people formed by Him for Himself.
This is why He says, “As often as You take this bread and drink this cup, proclaim His death until He comes.” Why are we proclaiming the death? Because His death was our deliverance. His death was our freedom. His death was our life. His death was our strength and our healing. It was our all in all.
Galatians 2, “I have crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me. The life that I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and delivered Himself up for me.” Here is our freedom. Here is our new life. It was not what we can do or what we cannot do but it is what He has done. He doesn’t fail. He is a God of excellence and perfection.
A mother, who faces a child with a fever, is anxious because if the fever become excessive, it can do damage. Sometimes, the mother panics and becomes anxious to get the fever down. She does things to bring down the temperature. In reality, the fever is not the problem. The fever is a result of the problem. If only we would find the problem and solve the problem, there would be no fever.
Many times, we address the symptoms rather than addressing the cause. This helps us understand why that when Christ had paid the price on the cross for our sin, why did He have to go to hell? Here was the source and He had to destroy the source. The source has been destroyed. For this purpose, Christ has been revealed to destroy the works of the devil.
Christ arose on the third day, making a declaration and a proclamation, “It is finished! It is all over. You have been set free. You have been delivered. Your sins have been wiped away. You restored back to Your Father. You have been seated with Him in heavenly places far above all principalities and powers.”
This is where we sit today. In our own lives, we must grasp the understanding and let it become a reality in our lives. He did this for us. This was His gift to us. When He ascended on high, He gave gifts to men. He delivered all of those in the past to perhaps those have been left out if there was only the cross and forward. No, He reached back.
This is God. God is not a respecter of persons. What He does for one, He will do for all. He redeemed those who had been lost before. He went back to get His brother and His mother. He now was the Son of Man and so He went back to redeem them and to restore them.
This is the perfection of God. As Peter’s writing says, “We are to proclaim the excellence of God.” Excellent! Sin has lost its power. Death has been destroyed. This is the power of our God. He does not do things half way. He does things in excellence and in perfection.
Easter is a day of declaration – a time of proclamation. We are to remember and declare His death until He comes because it is in His death that we were given life. In His death, sin was taken away and we were wrapped in righteousness and holiness.
We are a blessed people because of God. This day is the proclamation of God’s love. It is a proclamation of His power. Nothing has survived other than life and love. Love has conquered and brought fullness to us. This is the greatness of our God. This is His provision. It is expressed to us in fullness in Colossians which tells us that in Him, we have all that He has and it belongs to us because we were made one with Him. There is one Body. This is the Body of Christ. Whatever the Head has, the Body has and that is us.
This is the hope that we have. This is the joy of Easter. This is the excitement of Easter. We can’t understand it. It is a mystery but it is the work of God on behalf of you and on behalf of me. We worship Him; we thank Him; and we bless Him for His love.
LET US CONTINUE OUR REFLECTION
WITH
CARDINAL OF HOLY MOTHER CHURCH
AND
VENERABLE PRIMATE
OF THE PHILIPPINES
THROUGH
THROUGH
THE WORD EXPOSED
MATTHEW 28:16-20+MARK 16:15-20
