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Cracking the Resurrection Code

Cracking the Resurrection Code

April 16, 2005 [Easter]

Text: Matthew 28:1-10, 16-20 

      What will happen when you mix together baking soda and vinegar?

      If you know this, you either took chemistry or have children.

      I learned this from my “Junior Chemistry Set” when I was around ten. After doing this with some of the boys one afternoon, I double-dog-dared Billy Schwartz to drink this. He did. That night his parents called my parents. Let’s end the story right there.

      According to the laws of science, here’s what just happened: 
 

      CH₃CO₂H   +   NaHCO₃            H₂O   + CO₂ +     CH₃CO₂Na   

      [vinegar]  [baking soda]     [water] [carbon dioxide]  [sodium acetate]     

      An acid mixed with a base, producing a fizzing carbon dioxide, along with water and a salt.

      Such laws govern our natural world. They’re dependable, reliable. You can do this demonstration a million times, and come out with the same result. And once you discover the laws of science, you can use them to create things and make life better. You affirm this each time you flip a light switch, tap buttons on a microwave, turn on a computer, or send a satellite into space.

      Without science, we’re not here. Rather, we’re in caves, rubbing sticks together.

      We live, breathe, and sometimes think, science.

      That’s why the Resurrection sounds like a fable.

      It sounds like a children’s story, something you’d read to a four year old before bed.

      A dead body lives again.

      Yeah, right, sure. And how’s the Easter bunny doing today? And is Santa feeling well?

      Science tells us that when a body dies, that’s it for that body. Organs, deprived of blood and oxygen, are damaged beyond repair in just a few minutes. Cells break down. Bacteria invades the body and the stinky process of decomposition begins.

      We KNOW this. It’s verified by our experience.

      Even in the Resurrection story itself—written in a pre-scientific era—it says that “some doubted.” Did you catch that in the Easter story today? Here is the Risen Jesus, standing among them, and “some doubted.”

      They just KNEW this couldn’t be. They just KNEW there had to be a trick. “Ah, sure, you’re back from the dead, Jesus. But if you don’t mind, we’d like to be sure. We’d like to fingerprint you and take a sample of your DNA. You understand, don’t you Jesus?”

      I don’t think these folks who doubted were mean. I think they were honest, searching folks, simply wanting proof before they committed themselves to something so fantastic.

      They wanted to believe, but their minds held them back.

      They were folks like you and me.

      We would LOVE to overcome doubt. We would LOVE to be able to believe in our heart what our mind says couldn’t happen. We would LOVE to leave this place saying, and BELIEVING, “He IS risen…Jesus IS RISEN INDEED!”

      Well, I think we can do that.

      I think there’s a way to “crack the Resurrection code,” if you will—there’s a way to look at the Resurrection and not dismiss it. There’s a way to look at the Resurrection and say, “Ohhh, so THAT is what’s happening!”

      Believing Easter really took place still involves a leap of faith. But cracking the Resurrection code this morning will, well, give us a firm footing from which to make that leap. 

      The key to cracking the code comes from a story I read a few weeks ago.

      It was from one of the Chicken Soup books, and was written by a doctor.

      It’s an amazing tale.

      This doctor, while doing an internship in pediatrics, treated a teenage girl named Karen. She had leukemia. Eventually, the disease got the better of her. It ravaged her blood system and brain. She fell into a coma. The CAT scan of her brain showed extensive damage. Her eyes were “fixed and nonresponsive.” It was only a matter of time.

      That time came around 3 a.m. He was paged to go to her room. What he found there astounded him. Here’s what he saw, in his words:

Karen was sitting up in bed, [her parents standing on either side]. [Her] eyes, which had been glazed over for 4 days, were now clear and sharp. She simply stated, ‘God has come for me. It is time for me to go.’ She then went around to each of us and hugged us tightly…These were strong hugs, hugs that I kept thinking were impossible. I could only visualize her CT scan and the severe degree of brain damage. How could this be?

Then Karen lay down. But she popped back up immediately…She went around the bed to each of us again, with her penetrating eyes fixing our stares…[She squeezed our shoulders] as she spoke. ‘God is here,’ she said. ‘Do you see him? Do you know him?’ I was scared…I didn’t know what to say. The entire time, I kept visualizing that CT scan. Then Karen lay back down and died—or should I say, she quit breathing and her heart stopped. Her powerful spirit went on living…

I still cannot tell [this story] without feeling overwhelming emotions.

--Chicken Soup Five, “Karen, Do You Know Him?”, Dr. James C. Brown

      What a great story.

      But, like some of the folks on Easter morning, I have to admit: I doubted. It just sounded too, well, fantastic. And before I would share such a story with you, I wanted to verify it. I wanted to talk to the author of it. And you know what name he gave? “James C. Brown.” Right. How about “John W. Smith.” Or “Bob H. Jones?”

      I did some sleuthing on the internet. And finally I did find a Doctor James  Brown. He just happened to be a professor of Pediatric Radiology in the Medical School…at Mizzou.

      I found the number of his department, and called.

       “I feel foolish,” I told the receptionist, “but I’m calling to find out if Dr. Brown is the one who wrote a story that was published in Chicken Soup.”

      She said, “I don’t know, but I’ll put you through to him.”

      Now, tell me: which is the greater miracle—that I found a “Dr. Brown,” or that when I called the doctor’s office, I could actually talk to him! When was the last time you called your doctor, and the receptionist said, “I’ll put you right through”???

      Dr. Brown came on the line. He was, indeed, the one who wrote the story. He said that every word of it was true—it happened exactly the way he wrote it—and that it was a tremendously powerful, moving experience for him.

      And then he said something startling. What he said is the key, I believe, to cracking the Resurrection code. What you’re about to hear is his voice, taped from our phone conversation: …

      Did you hear that?

      “There are other laws out there…maybe even governing scientific method…and they’re not in conflict with each other.” 

      That’s it!

      That’s the key to cracking the Resurrection code. The key to not dismissing—“doubting”—it, but the key to taking it seriously, to understanding it, to believing it.

      YOU REALIZE THAT THERE ARE TWO SETS OF LAWS.

      There are the laws of science, ordained by God. They’re good. They help us manage life. We manipulate them for our benefit.

      But there is another set of laws—laws that are just as sure, and solid, and observable as those of science. This set of laws doesn’t help us manage life: these laws give life. THESE laws, we don’t manipulate—these laws we can only appreciate. These laws give meaning, purpose, hope, strength, direction, LOVE.

      THAT is what Dr. Brown witnessed in Karen’s hospital room. He concluded his story by saying,

“We are, in essence, spiritual beings in a spiritual universe, not primarily governed by Newton's laws, but by the laws of God.”

      My friends, THIS is what Easter is all about! Easter is the bold proclamation that God’s laws are now in effect. That’s what Dr. Brown is saying. And that’s what the angel was saying when he startled the women with these words:

      “HE’S NOT HERE”—The laws governing the natural world have been put in their place. The laws of death, decay, destruction have been overturned. “He’s not here…HE’S RISEN!”—The higher laws of God have taken hold.

      Raising Jesus from the dead is GOD’S SUPREME DEMONSTRATION OF THE HIGHEST OF THE LAWS OF LIFE.

      When the angel proclaimed, “He is not here, he’s been raised,” the angel is proclaiming laws more dependable than what happens when you mix an acid with a base. The angel is proclaiming:

JESUS CHRIST IS THE SON OF GOD.

JESUS CHRIST IS ALIVE.

JESUS CHRIST COMES TO US.

JESUS CHRIST LOVES US AND LEADS US.

NOT EVEN DEATH CAN SEPARATE US FROM HIM.

      Anything, at any time, can now happen—Jesus LIVES. Not even DEATH can keep him away from us.

      In a few minutes you will leave this flower-laced sanctuary.

      You’ll go back to life as usual. Eating meals that were radiated. Going to the doctor and getting vaccinated. Going to school and getting educated.

      Some of you will leave and go back to difficult situations. There are situations where you or a loved one feels chained to the cycle of birth-life-death. You may return to a situation where you feel life has boxed you in—you have no direction, and you have no way out.

      But whoever you are, and whatever your situation, remember what you’ve heard and witnessed here this morning.

      Remember that life is anything BUT usual, from now on. God’s “higher laws” surround your ordinary life. They reign supreme.

      And you WILL, in the quiet [whispered] certainty of your heart, hear the truth of what those Easter women first heard:…

      Science tells us that the sun will set tonight at 7:39, then rise tomorrow at 6:22.

      But even more dependable is the law that says the Risen Christ knows your name, and calls you “my brother,” “my sister,” as he did that 1^st Easter morning.

      Science tells us that a vinegar and baking soda cocktail will give Billy Schwartz big stomach ache.

      But even more reliable is the law that says that nothing can stop the Risen Christ from coming to you and whispering, “I am with you always, even to the end of time.”