Resurrection and life!

[AI translation] This is perhaps the greatest and boldest of the many great sayings of Jesus! Imagine if someone other than Jesus had said of himself, "I am the resurrection and the life" (John 11:25b) - we would laugh at him, we would pity him, we would be offended. There is no shortage of big words, big sayings, big promises on this earth! We have had enough of them! But this is much, much bigger than any human big talk! Only a madman can say such things - or God! And even if it comes from the lips of Jesus, we can either stumble at it, or we can happily take it and build all the hope of our life and death on it. If only all of us here now could truly accept this triumphant Easter gospel in the latter way!And we can accept it with courage, because Jesus was not a man of great words, but of great deeds! What He ever said never remained just words, but became living and real deeds. And Easter is not only a celebration of great words, but also of the most wonderful and divine deeds! On that Easter morning, this great saying of his - "I am the resurrection and the life" - became a living reality, a deed, a real event! Jesus is risen! That is what is so great about Easter, that it is not just a matter of fine words, but of an event, of Jesus confronting the harsh reality of death with the reality of His even harsher life! And in doing so, He gave a charge of divine energy to the words He ever spoke! And I joyfully proclaim to you on this Easter morning the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead! I am not proclaiming a wise saying, a profound idea, a great thought, not even a dogma from the Church's teaching, or a text from the Bible, but a concrete historical fact, an event that happened, an otherwise unimaginable, death-annihilating, life-creating act: the resurrection of Jesus Christ!
"I am the resurrection and the life" (Jn 11,25b) - yes, this means, above all, that He Himself is risen and He Himself is alive! From the deep reality of death, into which millions of people, generations after generations, have been plunged, and from which no one has ever been rescued: Jesus is risen! He, who was also crushed by the eternal waves of death on Good Friday, has risen from the rocky tomb where He was buried, has stepped out and stands in the glory of Easter morning, and says to the astonished people what no one has ever dared to say before or since: "I was dead and now I am alive". (Rev 1,18) I cannot explain this miracle to you, nor can I, but simply, but truly, joyfully, pass it on to you as the greatest good news of all, that Jesus has risen from the dead!
But it is more than that. Not only does Jesus say I am risen and alive, he says more! He says: I am the resurrection and the life! And in this way he makes his resurrection and life the source and foundation of our resurrection and life. His resurrection is not only a resurrection from His own death, but a resurrection from Death! He not only rolled away the stone from His own tomb, but from every tomb! He conquered Death itself, the Death that includes your death and mine. Scripture calls Jesus by this name with such wonderful plasticity: "the firstborn of the dead" (Rev 1,5) In the Bible, the firstborn is the one who opens the womb. And Jesus is the firstborn of the dead because His life opened up death. Jesus opened the closed door of death. He is the first to pass through that opened gate. And He left that gate open for Himself. Jesus is the great Pioneer through death into eternal life. The resurrection from the dead, then, with His resurrection nearly two thousand years ago, was not finished, but had just begun. What happened then, on Easter morning, is not finished, it is only the beginning, which has a continuation. The resurrection is an act of Jesus that is still in progress, not yet complete, still missing something: the resurrection and life of his brothers and sisters. Jesus is now at work to involve us in His resurrection, to draw us into the power of His resurrection, and to make His resurrection and life our resurrection and life!
Listen carefully, Jesus says: "I am the resurrection and the life"! So I am! That is, our resurrection-belief is centred and built on a Self, a living One. Not only on a past event that happened some time ago, but on the doer of that event, of that fact, on the Person who is alive now, risen from the dead! And how great it is! Because that event cannot come to us, that event remains in the past, in the garden of Joseph of Arimathea, where it happened one thousand nine hundred and some years ago! But the living One, the Risen One, piercing through the many centuries that have passed since then, until today, until April 10, 1966, enters here in the church and says: "I am the Resurrection!" And in so doing he makes the great, happy, triumphant fact of the resurrection a reality of today. I am not proclaiming the resurrection now as a beautiful doctrine, but I am proclaiming the Risen One, Who, though invisible, is now here among us in living reality! Who even today looks deep into the eyes of every grieving Martha and says: Look at me, Martha, I am the Resurrection and the Life! I am I! I am here! I am the Resurrection and the Life for you too!
But the Word goes on, like this: "He who believes in me, even if he dies, lives" (John 11,25c). That's what they will say to me, and to you, and to our children! That he is dead! You have probably seen a fish tank full of fish in a shop or restaurant. Every now and then a hand reaches in from above and takes one out. And the rest of them just keep swimming along quietly until... Yes, until it's their turn, all of them. And that's how we swim in the big fishbowl of life. Only we... not as calmly as the fish. We know, we reckon. We know with certainty that one day, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, the dreaded hand will reach down for us. "Hodie mihi, cras tibi" (today for me, tomorrow for you) - we're finished. Today I go, tomorrow you go. Or if you go first, I will most certainly follow. Quite certainly, because even if we are sitting here in this temple now, healthy and vital as we are, sooner or later we will all be in dire need of resurrection!
And let me now call to your remembrance on this Easter morning your loved ones who have already died. The Roman Catholic Church has a special celebration for this: the Day of the Dead. We Protestants celebrate the Day of the Dead on Easter! It's a time to remember the dead. Easter is the best and most comforting time to think of our dead. Oh, what a glorious promise that is: "He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live"! It is the only true consolation in the sorrow of mourning!
"Though he die..." you know that even before bodily death, oh, there are so many kinds of death! Even more terrible than death is living death, or dead life. The death that is present now, here, in this church, in so many forms. The death that looks out through one's cold, unfeeling eyes: the death of a dead marriage, of a dead happiness, or of a dead heart, a dead soul! There is also the death of trust, of hope, of joy, of a smile in someone's heart! There is even the death of God! That is what we say to a situation that seems to be hopelessly lost: it is dead! It cannot be helped! Isn't that what the whole world has often looked like, with its terrible materialism, its love of money, its atomic bomb? And is this not often how our individual, small world looks with its sadness, its sins, its helplessness? Sometimes even the Church: its psalms, its prayer, its faith, can be dead!
And the most terrible death is death after death! The final, the ultimate death! Because there is something after death: judgment! It is written, "It is finished, that men should die once, and after that the judgment" (Heb 9,27).
And what can man do in the face of death? Nothing! Absolutely nothing! He bows his head to it and - he dies! But behold, at Easter, Jesus lifts up again the head that was bowed down in death, and cries to every dead person on earth, "He who believes in me, though he die, yet lives!" Not only for the dead in the cemetery, but also for the dead souls walking in the world, He is the resurrection and the life! "I live", Jesus once said, and added: "you also shall live" (Jn 14,19) Do you hear? This is the music of our future! This is the most sublime music. You will live!
Our dead are alive! We will live too! Like Jesus: forever! What a prospect, what a great future, guaranteed by God in the light of Easter to those who belong to Him! We shall live! Yes, that is the future - but a future that begins today! The eternal life that Jesus says I am: not another kingdom beyond the horizon of earthly life beckoning to us from somewhere beyond the grave, but that eternal life, that heaven can begin right here, right now, even this moment, right now, as you sit here in this temple. How Jesus once said, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life; and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life" (John 5:24).
So in whatever way you are dead, Jesus can make you today a person who has already been raised from the dead, who is alive by the power of Christ's resurrection! He is alive! Of course, this life is a very stumbling life right now, so we can be ashamed of it many times - but it is life, life from Christ, and a little of it is worth more than a world full of death! The life that Jesus gives us through His resurrection is a real life, an eternal, happy life! Not a life full of complaining, sighing, wailing, but a glorious, singing, victorious life. A whole new and different life! A life that means peace of conscience, peace of heart and joy in things, in people. A life full of strength and activity. A life of redeemed children of God. And the children of God will never die again: 'he who believes in me, though he die, yet lives'! (Jn 11,25c) And if there is someone here whose family life is dead, whose happiness or faith has died, whose heart has grown cold, the great Easter promise is also true for him: he will live! He may live! For here is resurrection and life among us. The risen and living Jesus Christ! Today the greatest question of humanity is life or death. An unforeseeable rich development or a terrible mass murder. Look, we who proclaim the resurrection even in the face of an open tomb, who believe in life even in the face of death, are called first and foremost to offer this world threatened with death, this terrified humanity, the good hope of life. And let us pray that our Lord will include in the process of His resurrection the good will of human endeavour to avert the threat to humanity's life.
Who is he who lives, even if he dies? Thus says Jesus: he who believes in me! This is not only a condition, but even more an invitation! Jesus calls you, urges you, urges you to believe in Him! No one is forbidden to believe in Jesus! Everyone is free! What a glorious gospel for dead people! Easter is truly a feast for dead people! "He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live"! So whoever comes to Jesus with his death, entrusting himself to Him by faith, is ALIVE!
Jesus, help me in this,
That my life may flow more holy.
And that I may not come to judgment,
Rise me up to new life!
The power of Your Spirit
The fountain of new life;
So that I may be a living person:
By thy spirit live in me.
Canto 347, verse 5.
Amen
Date: 10 April 1966 Easter.