Easter Homily 2021

Although there are numerous religions in the world, with all sorts of differences in doctrine, there is one consistent belief that every human being has at a practical level. We all believe that we will not die. Sure, we know that death is coming. We see it happening all around us. We just don’t believe it will happen to us. You can tell this just in the way we live. For one, in America particularly, we despise aging. We put on anti-aging cremes, make-up, and endure plastic surgery. We take pills to try and get our intimacy back or reclaim our youthful vitality. We also hide away the darkness of death, whether it be in the food that we eat or in the hardship of losing a loved one. Just in the last 80 years we have sanitized our food system to the point that children today have no idea that their chicken nuggets were once a living, breathing animal. When we talk about our own death, we don’t even have a word that describes it. We speak of “middle-age”, “retirement”, “senior care”, but we can’t bring ourselves to say what comes after that. When we talk about death, we call it “passing away”, or “moving on”, or “crossing over”, but rarely does anyone call it what it is.

While we don’t want to believe that death will come for us, it is the truest, most universal fact of human existence. Hebrews 9:27 says, “It is appointed to man to die once, and after that comes judgment.” Death is the coldest, hardest fact that we face, and this fact shapes our whole life, whether we know it or not. We may try to escape it, try to prolong it’s coming, try to gloss over it, but in the end, death will come. The wisest man to ever live, King Solomon, at the end of his life, considered this very fact, and his conclusion was that the inevitability of death means that all of our efforts in this life are ultimately vapor. In Eccl. 1:2-4, Solomon says, “Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.” His point is that all of our efforts to extend our lives, to prolong death, to somehow escape the inevitability of it - all of that is pointless.

Solomon goes on in Chapter 2 to say that men tend to try three different paths in escaping the inevitability of death. First, some men pursue wisdom, because they believe in that wisdom they will somehow find the cure for death. Some people think that the wisdom of right living will do this for them. Others, especially in our day, think that if we can just unlock the right keys to the universe, then we can escape death. Today, there is great hope placed in technology and science, with some even believing that computer technology will one day be able to capture our consciousness and allow us to transfer our mind from one body to the next. As a computer engineer, let me just say that this is absolutely ridiculous!

But, not everyone takes the path of wisdom. Solomon says that another route men take to try and escape death is the path of self-indulgence. Many think, if life is useless, then why not just live it up. This too is a popular notion in our day, as many of us live as existentialists, believing that we make our own meaning and purpose in life. Some even believe that the more indulgent and weirder you can be, the more likely you are to live forever in the following you create. So, people pursue “Insta-fame”, preening and prancing for every like they can get on Instagram, TikTok, or SnapChat.

There is a third path that Solomon gives. He says that some pursue immortality through their work. They think that if they can just gain enough wealth, just build enough of a brand, just develop enough recognition or power then they can live on through the work that they leave behind. You see this in the aspirations of some great businessmen who hope to be able to leave their wealth to their family and live on in that way. You see it in the way we treat the things we own, whether it be land or possessions. Honestly, I wonder if some people don’t hope, just a little, that their children will fight over their inheritance just so they can be remembered for a little while longer.

Solomon’s ultimate conclusion is that, whatever path you take to escape death, it is ultimately useless. If you gain all the wisdom in the world, so that you understand the deep dark secrets of the universe, what good does it do you when death comes? If you indulge in every pleasurable thing so that you hold nothing back from your desires, two things will ultimately happen: you will find that your desires are dulled by your own indulgence so that nothing truly fulfills them, and you will find that your indulgences will own you. And after all is said and done, you will die, your pleasure will end, and you will be forgotten. If you toil building your empire or collecting your things so that your children will have something to remember you by, you will still die, and who’s to say what they will do with the inheritance you leave? You won’t be there to control it, and who knows - they may squander it all in reckless living and you can’t do anything about it!

If you live for this world, trusting in your own wisdom or pleasure or work to help you escape the inevitable judgment of death, you are living a life that is ultimately meaningless and doomed for a terrible disappointment. But, there is another way to live, and we find that in the passage we read from Psalm 16. David says that the way to preserve your life is to lose it in the Lord. He starts his Psalm by saying that the only way that his life can be preserved is by taking refuge in and placing his hope in the Lord of heaven and earth. The result of that hope is that the Lord protects him, instructs him, and makes his heart glad. 

But, the ultimate blessing that comes from hoping in the Lord is found in verses 10-11. The Psalmist says that the Lord will not abandon him to the grave or let him see corruption. Not only that, but the Lord’s way is the path of life and in him are pleasures that last forever. How is it that David can have this hope in resurrection, this hope of eternal life, when life under the sun is all uselessness? How can he have this hope when there is no way to gain eternal life through wisdom, pleasure, or work?

Paul explains how in Acts 13:34-39 – “And as for the fact that he raised [Christ] from the dead, no more to return to corruption, he has spoken in this way, “‘I will give you the holy and sure blessings of David.’ Therefore he says also in another psalm, “‘You will not let your Holy One see corruption.’ For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep and was laid with his fathers and saw corruption, but he whom God raised up did not see corruption. Let it be known to you therefore, brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and by him everyone who believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses.” Jesus Christ is the one righteous man who fully hoped in the Lord and waited on his purpose. Jesus Christ is the only righteous man who lived a perfect life, and because of that perfect life he was condemned by sinful men to die on a Roman Cross. But, in Jesus’ death, he died the death that you deserved. He died for you, so that you could be forgiven of the false hope that you have placed in worldly wisdom, or the delight that you have taken in sinful pleasure, or the expectation you have for your useless works. And, in the resurrection that Jesus Christ brought about on that first Easter morning, you have the only hope of escaping the inevitability of death. Jesus says, in John 11:25 – “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.” The hope of Easter is the hope of Psalm 16, that there is a way that God has provided through which we can escape death. That way is found only through faith in the Son of God who died for our sins and rose again to defeat death for us.

Friend, today is the day of salvation. Today can be the day in which you turn away from your hope of escaping death through your own wisdom, through pleasure, or through your own works. Today can be the day that you trust in Christ for your salvation and know the hope of true life in him. Won’t you trust in Christ today?

Brothers and sisters, on this Easter, we draw near to God through his Son, Jesus Christ. We draw near as we remember his sacrifice through the Lord’s Supper. But, this table also looks forward to that final resurrection that is to come. So, we observe the Lord’s Supper, not as remembrance of a good leader who died and was buried, but as a reminder that our Savior lives. And, because he lives, we will live too.