Our Sermons

Bible Passage: Psalm 118
Pastor: Pastor Schlicht
Sermon Date:  April 4, 2021

Easter joy is not like any other kind of happiness. It is not the result of a personal decision. It is not the payoff of success nor the reward of good health. It isn’t gained through happy relationships or even a stroke of luck. No, human experience does not produce Easter joy. The joy promised in the Bible comes from elsewhere, from outside the frames of our expectation. Just ask Mary Magdalene who, through tear-stained eyes, could not recognize Jesus as he stood before her that first Easter morning. Easter joy comes when least expected, when it is so far from possibility that the very idea of it seems worthy of laughter and scorn. In the Bible, specifically the Psalms, joy is often seemingly unreasonable, impossible considering the circumstances. Easter, particularly, promises us the gift of joy in the teeth of death itself. It’s almost absurd.

The appointed Psalm for Easter day is Psalm 118, a startling hymn of thanksgiving even as death appears imminent and inescapable. Enemies surround the psalmist like a swarm of bees, nations rise against him. He describes being pushed to the edge of a precipice or cliff, about to fall. Yet all of a sudden he says, “My strength and song is the Lord… I will not die. No, I will live, and I will proclaim the works of the Lord.” Somehow his weakened and desperate position has set the stage for God’s power and he is joyful. Then he says this: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This is from the Lord.” (118:22-23). 

Jesus uses these words about himself multiple times. He says that he is the stone the jewish leaders rejected when they were constructing, if you will, their faith, but they missed the most important piece. And yet he knows that this is the Lord’s doing; he knows that his rejection by his enemies becomes the very circumstance that allows him to fulfill God’s plan of salvation. This would lead to his cross. As he goes on to state: ‘This is the day the Lord had made; let us rejoice and be glad in it” (118:24). Psalm 118 is part of what are called the Hallel psalms, Psalms 113-118, traditionally sung after the celebration of the Passover. So when Mark records that Jesus and his disciples sang hymns after the passover before they headed out to the garden of Gethsemane, Psalm 1118 would have been their final song. “This is the day the Lord has made, Let us rejoice and be glad in it” hits a little different as Jesus heads out into the darkness to be abandoned, betrayed, denied and arrested.

It is a stark reminder to me that Easter joy cannot be based on probability or favorable circumstances. It must be a joy that is found in the darkest places. It must be able to not just withstand the hard times, but transform them into something with a purpose. You can see this at work in life if you have eyes to see. Through extreme pain and difficulty, children are born. We don’t take joy in the suffering, but we notice the purpose of these labor pains in the joy of a newborn baby. A flower must wilt before it drops a seed. If Jesus didn’t truly die on Good Friday, we’d have nothing to celebrate today.

Modern life does a good job of escaping  the reality of death. Unless it happens in our own family, or someone close to us, we can live a long portion of life without grappling with our own mortality. Sure people die in movies or video games, but those don’t bother us. If anything, it is just a cheapening of what actually takes place in death. We also don’t bury our own family members anymore, instead they are cremated or done up with make-up to preserve a look of peace. I’m not saying that our burial practices are wrong, just that they allow us to avoid lingering with some of the worst parts of death that, up until the last 100 years, people had to bear on their own. The sick and aging are not usually seen in public. And if you’re on social media, your friend group is catered to your own age demographic. Tiktok only has teenagers, Facebook friends age together, and instagram’s algorithms favor the brightest and best that humanity has to offer.  Getting real about death is, of course, bad for sales too. If you manage to distract yourself, you can be convinced that a lot of temporary things will fulfill your long term happiness. You need to buy more, watch more, do more, whatever it is, just don’t think about where this life is heading. 

This avoidance of mortality, this denial of death robs people of Easter Joy. Because Easter Joy is meaningless unless there is a need for it in the actual life we live, and for the last few decades there has been operating in our culture the secular belief that there is no such cause. A world indifferent to its need for the resurrection is not just indifferent to the resurrection; it’s a world hostile to that possibility. The mockery endured by Christ on the cross is a clear expression of that hostility. “If you are the Son of God, come down and save yourself!” They were thinking of temporary life and trying, unwittingly, to deny themselves eternal salvation that Christ would accomplish precisely by staying on the cross.” We need to understand the necessity of death if we are to have Easter Joy. 

In 2015, Psychology Today published a study on the final meal requests of inmates sitting on death row. They looked at every state and about 50 years worth of records. They found some interesting things: The average caloric intake of the final meals was 3,000 calories and 2.5 times the daily recommended amount of fat. Which makes sense, if you’re going to die, you don’t need to worry about your weight, right? They also found that out of the 50 states in the past 50 years no inmate had ever ordered a vegetarian meal, makes sense also when steak was the number one requested food next to pizza, burgers, and chocolate milkshakes. But here’s the interesting part. Do you know what the most commonly requested meal was? Nothing. Many people, facing their execution, chose no meal at all. I think that’s why Psychology Today was interested. The question is “Why?” There were actually many recorded answers to this question. The best one I think was from a 3-time murderer from Louisiana, who said, “Every steak is gonna be tough when you know it’s your last one.”

Death ruins our ability to truly enjoy life. And for those with the foresight to consider it before their final day, it also looms like a dark shadow. Because ultimately it’s only a matter of degree. Imagine we put on your favorite comedy, the movie that always makes you laugh. If you received a lethal injection halfway through, knowing that before the credits roll, you would sleep and never wake up, how much laughing would you do in the last half of that movie? Now, if you go home and watch that movie today, you won’t die before the credits roll, but whether it’s today, tomorrow, or 40 years from now, the shadow of death will darken every step you take. No, when we consider death there are really only three options: “Distraction, Despair, or…Joy.” 

As absurd as it seems, joy is what God unashamedly holds out to those who trust in Christ as their cornerstone. Because of Jesus’ physical resurrection from the dead, God holds out that same promise, the same expectation, the same joy for those who, as the Bible says simply “fall asleep” in Christ. Easter joy is not a warm blanket to comfort us when the thought of death bothers us, it is a celebration of victory through death! Easter joy doesn’t attempt to gloss over hardship and sin in this world. It states the absurd, that the joy of forgiveness and life walked through the door of death! It states that, in light of God’s eternity, that there is joy and purpose in every day he has made, regardless of how terrible it may seem. And isn’t it true? That what should have been some of the worst moments of your life were simply the door to God’s grace? 

My friends, this Easter, set Christ as your cornerstone. Make him not just a part of your life, but the most important part of your life. Measure every decision and every dream from his Word and set your desire on him. He has already passed through death to life and he promises that since he lives, you also will live. Dare to believe and true Easter Joy is yours in Christ Jesus! Amen.