Easter Sunday Sunrise, 4-12-09, Mark 16:1-8 (series B)
Sunrise services are popular on Easter. We journey with the women, who, it
says in vs. 2, “very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had
risen, they went to the tomb.”
Another reason for the popularity of sunrise services is the nice play on
words here — we celebrate the rising of the SON, Jesus, at the rising of the
sun, (s-u-n.)
There may be more of a connection between the S-O-N and the S-U-N than just
sounding the same.
Have you ever made a model of the solar system for a grade-school
science project?
If you haven’t at least you’ve seen them.
It’s made with styrofoam balls stuck on bent coat-hanger wires.
The sun is in the center with 9 planets.
And that’s about the only accurate information you can get from such a
model!
It’s not the fault of the student, it’s just impossible to scale down
our solar system to styrofoam balls.
Let’s try:
Here’s a 2 inch ball that represents the EARTH.
WHERE’S THE MOON? It’s a ½ inch marble 5 feet away. (That’s a long
coat-hanger wire.)
(Give the NASA scientists credit for brains, and astronauts for courage,
for landing on this moving marble from this moving launch pad, and getting
back again!)
WHERE’S THE SUN? 1/3 mile away! 6 football fields.
You can’t get this styrofoam ball in your mini-van; it’s BIGGER than the
mini-van, 16 feet in diameter.
Well then, let’s shrink the SUN down to 2 inches.
WHERE’S EARTH AT THIS SCALE? 20 feet away. But you can’t put it on a
bent coat hanger.
It’s the size of a grain of salt.
WHERE’S PLUTO? It’s 2 ½ football fields away.
This model won’t fit in your science classroom either.
Ok then; let’s shrink the whole SOLAR SYSTEM down to 2 inches. You can
carry it in your lunchbox.
But you can’t see anything. Even the sun is microscopic at this scale,
a glowing speck at the center.
Pluto is an inch away from the sun. HOW FAR IS THE EARTH? ½ a
millimeter.
HOW FAR IS THE NEXT NEAREST STAR? 2 football fields.
HOW BIG IS THE WHOLE MILKY WAY GALAXY? As big as all of north America!
It takes 100,000 years for a beam of light to cross our galaxy.
Now just for fun, let’s shrink our MILKY WAY down to 2 inches.
HOW FAR IS ANDROMEDA, (the next closest galaxy?) 5 feet.
HOW FAR IS THE FARTHEST GALAXY SEEN BY THE HUBBLE TELESCOPE? 4 miles.
DOES THIS BLOW YOUR MINDS?
We are just little GERMS on a speck of dust in the corner of an average
galaxy in an ocean of galaxies!
The greatest UNDERSTATEMENT ever made is Genesis 1:16: “He made the stars
also.”
That’s all the Bible says about the creation of this unimaginably huge
universe.
The rest of the Bible’s account of creation is about God’s attention to
the details of this little planet — How God lovingly created beauty and life
on this planet (not any others).
(By the way, understanding the vastness of the galaxy shows us the
impossibility of UFO’s and aliens.
God puts all His care and attention into making US, and surrounding us
with beauty and bounty, — all we need to support our lives.
He even calls us His CHILDREN, (us little germs), and promises to take
care of us.
Then we have the appalling AUDACITY to say to this incredible God — “We
don’t need You! You’re not that important to us. We can live on this
planet on our own. We don’t want You telling us what to do!”
CAN YOU IMAGINE SUCH UNBELIEVABLE CHUTZPAH?!
Even worse, we dare to fashion FALSE GODS, things we make ourselves, and say
“This is what made us! This is what I’m going to worship and trust and
revolve my life around. I want to be my own God, and determine my own
life.”
God should have just (blow on hand), and wiped us away.
Instead, He did the most unspeakable thing yet, — He sent His own SON,
who’s just as glorious as He is, Who helped to create this Universe, — He
sends Him down to this speck of dust, and gives Him the flesh of us germs,
and allows Him to be mocked and ridiculed and beaten and tortured by us
thankless little creatures.
He sends His Son to give His life in the most shameful way, just so that
our arrogant sins can be paid for.
WOW!! This should knock your socks off!
HOW CAN THIS BE?! HOW CAN GOD LOVE US THIS MUCH?
It’s something we can’t possibly understand.
The glory of God’s CREATION (which is incredible), pales in comparison
to the glory of God’s REDEMPTION.
We could spend our lives reading and meditating on this Easter story and
still never fully comprehend the indescribable glory of the Son of God
taking on our flesh, our sin, our death, so we can be saved.
WHY DON’T WE APPRECIATE THIS EASTER MESSAGE AS MUCH AS IT DESERVES?
Perhaps it will help us to realize 3 things:
I. REALIZE OUR PLACE:
At the same time that Martin Luther was reforming the Church, a scientist
named Nicolaus COPERNICUS was reforming science.
He challenged the GEOCENTRIC view of the solar system (everything
revolves around the earth),
and proposed the HELIOCENTRIC view (everything revolves around the sun.)
We need that same reformation in our lives, because as sinners we’re always
thinking that we are the center of the universe.
Everything revolves around ME.
People are here to serve my needs.
Even the Son of God should revolve around my life — rise when I need
Him, set when I don’t.
“Go away and leave me alone and don’t shine Your light on my sins,” we
say to Him.
“I’ll come to church when its convenient and comfortable, but it depends
upon my schedule.”
“I’ll read Your Word as long as it says what I like; but put it away if
it makes me uncomfortable.”
Jesus says in John 3:19 > “This is the judgment, that the Light has come
into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their
deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not
come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.”
If you’ve put yourself at the center of the universe, and think that Jesus
is just up there roving around,
ready to shine on you when its convenient, and able to be tucked away
when you don’t want His light exposing your sins or false beliefs, then
think again.
Christ is the center of all things. Our lives are CHRISTOCENTRIC. We
revolve around Him.
He gives our lives meaning and balance and direction.
Just as the earth, without the sun, would go dark and dead and fly off
into the abyss of space;
So also without the Son of God in the center of our lives, we’ll be dead
and lost in the abyss of hell.
And even if Jesus is at the center of our solar system, the center of our
lives, we still may diminish Him and consider Him just a little bit bigger
than we are, (but not much.)
That’s why we also need to:
II. REALIZE OUR PROPORTION:
Remember those grade-school models of the solar system, with the styrofoam
balls roughly the same size, revolving around a sun that’s just a little
bigger? Completely inaccurate.
And yet, that’s often the way we think of our proportion in relation to
Christ.
We imagine ourselves pretty big and important, and the SON much less
important than He actually is.
“Hey, there’ve been other religious leaders. There are other
religions. They all have some value. Jesus isn’t all that important. I
can take pretty good care of myself. I don’t need to worship Him or pray to
Him all that often. My life is on a pretty steady orbit; I’ve got my path
in life all figured out.”
As sinners we are constantly puffing ourselves up to be bigger than we are,
and diminishing Christ to be smaller and less important than He is.
It’s so easy to do because we are so used to every-day life here on this
earth, where everything around us seems so big and important, — our daily
lives, our possessions, our jobs, our friends, our family, our hobbies, our
meals, our grades, our sports,... — we think these are the most important
things in life.
We forget how SMALL these things actually are in reality.
The little things we worry and fret so much about are infinitely small
in importance, compared to the big picture of Who God is, and what He has in
store for us.
That’s what Isaiah describes in our Old Testament lesson > “On this
mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a
feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine
well-refined. And He will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is
cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will
swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all
faces,, and the reproach of His people He will take away from all the earth,
for the Lord has spoken.”
That’s the new life in heaven we have to look forward to. Easter
assures us of that.
All these little things we worry so much about now, won’t matter at all
once we are face to face with our Lord.
Realize His proper place and proportion. Also:
III. REALIZE OUR PROXIMITY:
When we understand the actual scale and dimension of our SOLAR SYSTEM,
we may think, “The sun is so far away; there’s so much empty space in
between us.”
Looking at the first EASTER, it too looks far away and long ago.
HOW CAN SOMETHING THAT HAPPENED 2,000 YEARS AGO HAVE ANY IMPORTANCE OR
IMPACT ON MY LIFE TODAY?
Well, even though the Sun is 93 million miles away, we certainly wouldn’t
consider it unimportant.
It provides our light and heat and energy that everything on earth needs
to live.
It holds the solar system together. Without the sun, our planets would
fly off and be lost.
Likewise, the resurrection of Christ may have been long ago, in a city far
away, but it has just as much importance for your spiritual lives.
If Christ hadn’t risen, we would all be lost and condemned.
Our lives would have no meaning or balance.
We’d have nothing to look forward to after death.
We’d have to face the all-powerful Creator of this universe on Judgment
day — ALONE! With no advocate pleading for us and covering us with His
righteousness.
The resurrection of Christ holds our faith together.
St. Paul writes in I Corinthians 15 > “If Christ had not been raised,
your faith is futile. You are still in your sins.”
So even though what we celebrate today happened a long time ago, it’s
still very close in importance.
Our faith hinges upon it. Our souls depend upon it. Our salvation is
guaranteed by it.
And that leads us to the last thing we need to realize:
IV. REALIZE OUR PRIORITY:
Like Easter, it often seems like God Himself is also very far away.
I’m so insignificant, there are billions of other people fighting for
His attention,
WHAT DOES HE CARE ABOUT MY LIFE?
Again, this is what is so amazing about our God.
Even though we are no more than germs on a speck of dust in boundless
space,
even though there are billions of us on this planet,
We are all LOVED by Him. He knows our NAMES. He knows the number of
HAIRS on our heads.
He is able to hear and answer all of our PRAYERS.
Don’t feel that God is far away and uninvolved in your life.
Don’t feel that His power and influence and the warmth of His love are
unimportant for your life.
St. Paul realized his inferiority as an apostle, when he writes in our
epistle text, vs. 9 > “For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be
called and apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the
grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain.”
It’s by the grace of God that we are what we are — beloved children of
God.
It’s His undeserved, unfathomable love that makes us treasures in His
eyes.
If He has the infinite power to create this incredible universe, He has
the power also to take care of us.
Sometimes it doesn’t seem like He’s taking care of us as well as we want.
It feels like our lives are in turmoil, our bodies are falling apart,
our destiny is nothing more than a hole in the ground.
It seems like that too in the fall season when trees lose their leaves
and plants die to the ground.
But in the spring the sun warms up the earth and calls the plants back
to life — flowers, trees, grass come up new again.
Infinitely more glorious than a sunny spring day will be the Judgment
Day when the Son of God will come back and call His believers back to life.
Until then, we can rest assured that we are important in God’s eyes.
We are a priority in His heart — so much so that He sent His Son to
suffer and die for our sins, and rise again for our salvation.
When we realize these things: our PLACE, with Him in the center of our
lives,
our PROPORTION, with Him and His Word more important than anything else,
our PROXIMITY, with His death and resurrection still powerful and important
to us today,
and our PRIORITY, that by grace He loves us more than we can understand,
realizing these truths will indeed change our lives, now and forever.
IN JESUS’ NAME, AMEN.
Rev. Dan Schoessow
Anderson, TX.
