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YOU CAN’T FIX WACO WITH A SLOGAN

It was a beautiful April Wednesday — like I hope you’re enjoying today. Just about nine years ago, and at 9:03 in the morning, Central Daylight Time, a meeting was just starting of the Oklahoma City Water Resources Board. A tape recorder was running, and happened to pick up an event from across the street.

*** Tape from Oklahoma City Bombing, Track #16, :41 - 1:17] ***

Yes, friend, the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building happened on April 19, 1995, which, of course, was exactly two years after the tragedy in Waco, Texas, where 86 Branch Davidians had died in the flames following the botched raid by ATF agents.

And we look back at these twin moments of horror and death for two reasons. First of all, because we mourn the innocent deaths. One hundred sixty-eight fatalities in the Oklahoma City blast. Nine of them children. And in the Waco holocaust, many who perished that day were either guiltless victims because they were underage children, or people whose guilt was mitigated by the fact that they were duped by a mad cult leader named David Koresh.

This week is our radio countdown to the celebration of hope this coming Sunday as the world remembers Easter and Jesus’ victory over death. And I’d like to remind each of you who are listening that what Jesus did at Calvary — and how He came out of that tomb on Sunday — means that even the unbelievable pain of Oklahoma City can and will be fixed again. We mentioned yesterday that the irreversible BLOCKADE of death, the FINALITY of death, was broken at the Cross. Jesus broke that blockade; He proved that in Himself, the finality of death was NOT final. Funerals are NOT the end; memorial services there in that Oklahoma City gymnasium are not the final act for those 168 innocent victims.

In his book, The Jesus I Never Knew, Philip Yancey, who writes so glowingly about the “reversing” of death’s power, says this:

“Easter hits a new note of hope and faith that what God did once in a graveyard in Jerusalem, He can and WILL repeat on grand scale. . . . Against all odds, the irreversible will be reversed.”

I like that thought of “grand scale.” Two thousand years ago on a Sunday morning, ONE Man came out of the tomb. And what immeasurable joy that brought to those who loved and followed Him! Imagine, then, when the Oklahoma City cemetery is bombarded by Jesus’ resurrection power, by the awakening blast from His trumpet, and 168 human trophies come springing back to life. And multiply that by a million, by a hundred million, in military cemeteries and backyard plots around this entire, sin-ravaged planet! Yancey quotes from the poet, John Donne, who is forever known for this line: “Death, be not proud.” And then Philip adds:

“God WILL NOT let death win.”

But friend, I’d like for us to actually take it a bit deeper this Wednesday. Does Easter mean even MORE than the return of our friends, the resurrection to life for that little baby the fireman brought out from the rubble? And you ask: “How in the world could it mean MORE than THAT? That would be everything!” True enough. But think with me about the “bit more,” if you will. Because you and I aren’t dead; we’re alive. We were spared the twin tragedies in Waco and Oklahoma City; those April 19's left us relatively unscarred, and now on THIS April Wednesday, we have our own lives to chart, with our own decisions and destinies to cope with.

And if it weren’t for the Bible teaching about Easter, about the PROPOSAL that a human being, a Teacher, named Jesus Christ came out of His own grave on a Sunday morning, then what would we do with this thing called Christianity? Here’s what I mean: you and I are flooded, every day of our lives, by philosophies. Christianity. Buddhism. New Age ideas. Plato. James Dobson. Garrison Keillor. This very second, you’re tuned in and listening to me tell you what I think. And every single day, we have to say to ourselves: “All right. Am I going to run my life by all this STUFF that I’m hearing? Will I do these things?”

And friend, if Jesus Christ was just one more of the Teachers — and please don’t put me within a million miles of that list I just gave you — but if Jesus was just a Teacher who lived and then died, you could say: “Okay, I’ll try that Golden Rule business, I guess. And . . . . ‘turn the other cheek.’ That’s not so bad.” And you’d maybe EDGE your life, perhaps, a few degrees closer to the principles we often call “Christianity.”

But now listen. If Easter is true, if Jesus Christ didn’t just live and teach, and then die . . . but if He’s living AGAIN, right this very moment, April 7, 2004, what does that mean? Well, then that means the things He really said were true. ALL of them true! Every teaching, every word, every command. Including places where He tells us He’s the Son of God. Where He claims to rule from Heaven’s highest throne. Where He asks us to let Him be Lord and Master of our lives.

Philip Yancey, who writes with such passion about the joy of the Resurrection, actually does a U-turn and makes an interesting confession regarding all this. Notice:

“In many respects I would find an UNresurrected Jesus easier to accept,” he says. “Easter makes Him dangerous. Because of Easter I have to LISTEN to His extravagant claims and can no longer pick and choose from His sayings. Moreover, Easter means He must be LOOSE out there somewhere. Like the disciples, I never know where Jesus might turn up, how He might speak to me, what He might ask of me. As Frederick Buechner says, Easter means ‘we can never nail Him down, not even if the nails we use are real and the thing we nail Him to is a cross.’”

Do you get the import of that? Some of our staff members have served as missionaries in Buddhist countries and have come to us with a great love for those wonderful people who follow that chosen leader. But no one ever talks about Buddha being the “(quote) Resurrection and the Life.” Buddha was a wise and gifted spiritual man who gave the world some incredible teachings. But . . . you could pick out some and try them, and lay others to the side if they appeared irrelevant to your life and your needs here in the year 2004. Like buying birthday cards at a Hallmark store; you’d just purchase the ones that had meaning for you and your chosen loved ones.

But IF Easter is true, then we just do not have that option with Jesus, do we? First of all, because He’s God. EVERYTHING He says is true; EVERYTHING is real and authentic and BINDING. Secondly, He’s around NOW. He’s available to interact with you NOW, to love you NOW, to direct your life NOW. Talk about a double whammy — and a wonderful one, if the Word of God is true.

There’s a sobering other-side-of-the-coin, thought, if Easter is real . . . and it’s brilliantly captured in a Christianity Today article by Loren Wilkinson, who teaches at Regent College, in Vancouver, B.C. Here’s what he writes:

“Part of us would be more comfortable with Jesus as a wise teacher than the One who conquered death. Because IF Jesus conquered death, then we have to take very seriously what the whole story of the Bible says death IS for us: the wages of SIN. It would be easier for us to think of the Resurrection as something like the return of spring, a symbolic way of saying that the same thing will happen again and again — including our own sin, which may bring a kind of death with it. But maybe sin too will be healed by time, as the wounds of winter are healed by spring. The historic reality of Jesus’ resurrection, however, underlines the inescapable REALITY of our own sin.”

What he’s saying is this. Friend, sin isn’t just a seasonal little problem we have, where the arrival of spring can melt the coldness of our hearts. We’re not going to OUTGROW sin if enough time goes by. Jesus didn’t just HAPPEN to die because a Galilee jury made a mistake. He died because sin is evil, because sin kills, because, as God Himself tells us, the wages of sin is death! He died for us, not because Oklahoma City was just a bit of psychological imbalance expressed in a two-ton fertilizer bomb. No, people died that April 19 because of sin. Because sin is real. Because sin leads to death. And the Resurrection of Jesus on Easter Sunday tells us that Jesus Christ, who lives TODAY, is determined to beat both death AND the sin which always causes death.

So with Jesus, you get LIFE. But you also get a Lord. And Master.