Sermons from Moorpark Presbyterian Church

Easter Through the Back Door

by Dave Wilkinson

Ecclesiastes 3:1-14 1 Corinthians 15:17-20

April 4, 1999

Tony Compolo writes, "I belong to a Black church in Philadelphia and we hear some great sermons. I was in a funeral service this year for a friend of mine who was killed in a horrible automobile accident. I will never forget the funeral service. The sermon was going on. And this old preacher got up there and the first thing he did was preach to the congregation for about half an hour. Then he preached to the family for about another half hour and then the last half hour he came off the platform.

The open casket is right there and the last half hour he talked to the corpse. If that isn't weird. So he started off by saying, "Clarence, Clarence, there is a lot of things I should have told you that I never told you, so I am going to tell you now." And that guy just preached eloquently to that corpse.

Before the funeral even starts the woman who was married to the man, went to the corpse. She was crying and screaming and going through the whole bit. She was yelling "Clarence, speak to me, speak to me Clarence, speak to me." Compolo says, "Two guys sitting behind me, one said to the other, "if'n he does. I got the window, you got the door. No response.

But then there we are, and this guy is preaching at the casket. Now you want to hear a tremendous ending to a funeral service? After he finished talking and sharing the gospel with this corpse, he said, "Well, that's it Clarence, that's it. I've said it all." He reached up, grabbed the lid of the coffin and he looked at the corpse, and he said, "Clarence, good night!": And he slammed the lid down. Can you imagine this?

Have you got the drama of this? "Clarence, good night." wham!"

And then he turned on us and he looked mean at first, you know, "Clarence, good night, slam." And he looked at us and we all waited. And then a smile crossed his face and he said "And I know the Lord is going to give him a good morning."

Isn't that great? And then with that the choir came in with, "On That Resurrection Morning, We Shall Rise, We Shall Rise." Isn't that the good news of the gospel? You know when you say good night, you know that person is saying good morning and that's the gospel.

But now, consider the alternative to the good news. This morning let's back our way into Easter by considering the alternative. I want you to use your imagination and picture our world as a terrarium.

My version of this terrarium is a large glass bottle. It used to say Arrowhead on it. Into that glass bottle you pour gravel, sand, and soil. With long tweezers you plant seeds of special plants. Then you put in just the right amount of moisture and a cork in the top. You set it where it gets just the right amount of light. The water rises to the top and condenses, and it rains inside. The plants grow. Everything is perfect and well ordered.

Now I want you to picture your life as lived in this kind of enclosed terrarium world -- a world with hard boundaries but which meets most of our needs. Yes, there is a cork in the top, but that doesn't bother us at first. Because, as we look around at what is inside, there are so many things to do, so many places to explore, so many issues to uncover. In fact, we could take dozens of lifetimes -- just to explore what's inside the world.

Wouldn't that be an ideal place in which to live? If I could just have life in this world to the full, couldn't I say "I've lived as much as I really want to live -- even if God doesn't give me another good morning after I die?" Couldn't we say that?

Today I'd like to explore this question. And I'd like for us to use as our guide a famous explorer -- a man who wrote a book about his exploration of this terrarium that he walked through called earth. The guidebook that he left is the Old Testament Book of Ecclesiastes.

He introduces himself in chapter 1, verse 1. "I the teacher was king over Israel in Jerusalem. His name is Solomon. Solomon is rich and handsome and famous, young, intellectually gifted, and inquisitive. And he has the power to do whatever he wants.

With those credentials and with those advantages, he decides to go on a journey through the whole broad range of this earth and to document what he finds.

The first verses of his text: "Meaningless! Meaningless!' Everything is meaningless."

Solomon begins his book with his conclusion. His conclusion is that life as we experience it just on earth is ultimately meaningless.

I want to ask you not to resist that message for a few moments but to listen to what Solomon has to say -- because I am confident that some of us here this morning are living on the assumption (and we may not even be aware of the assumption) that, "if all I could have were a good life on this earth. That would be enough. I would be satisfied."

Solomon says, "Listen to me. It's not enough. I've been there: you won't be satisfied." He calls himself the man "under the sun -- the man whose world is limited by space and time. His conclusion is "what you'll find is a meaningless existence."

How does he know that anyway? What right does Solomon have to write off 1999 and tell us that it's meaningless?

It's because he tried it all. He says in chapter 2, verse 1, "I thought in my heart, 'Come now, I will test you with pleasure to find out what is good. But that also proved to be meaningless. I tried cheering myself with wine and embracing folly -- my mind still guiding me with wisdom. I undertook great projects. I built houses; I planted vineyards for the future. I built ships. I had gold and silver. I built parks and gardens. I had slaves. I had many women. I gave myself to music and comedy and laughter. I did it all."

Today his resume might read as varied as this:"I flew rescue helicopters in Desert Storm. I've built my own solar house. I saved the whale. I developed a great and prestigious winery in the Napa Valley. I've owned and quarterbacked an NFL championship franchise. I've performed in the nightclubs. I've lived with the movie stars. I've done it my way."

"And," he says, "don't think I'm some pallid, little, wheezy killjoy." He says in chapter 2 verse 10, 'I denied myself nothing. I refused my heart no pleasure." "And," he says, "I loved it all. I wasn't setting out to prove that it was meaningless. I set out to enjoy it, and I enjoyed it." So this is not someone who is ready to take all of our fun away.

Then in chapter 2 verse 9. He says. "In all this my wisdom stayed with me. In all the things I tried -- pleasure, music, travel, ownership, dominion over the work world -- in all those things I kept my mind about me to sort and process and evaluate and conclude." You know what his conclusion is -- Chapter 2. Verse 17: "So I hated life. I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun" -- and now here's why -- because I must leave them to one who comes after me." Solomon says that he hates what he loves -- because he can't keep it. He hears the ticking and knows that his time is going to run out.

Many of you probably remember the Meryl Streep film Out of Africa. You'll remember it's a nostalgic reflection of a young Danish woman named Karen Blixen. At an early age she goes to Kenya. There she marries a man she hardly knows. She plants a coffee plantation; and for a while, paradise belongs to Karen Blixen. Then, after about fifteen years of hard labor, within the span of a few months she loses it all. She loses her health, she loses her lover -- Robert Redford -- she loses her friends, she loses her coffee crop and her farm. Everything she lived for is taken away from her. As she is reflecting in that movie she writes with burning, utterly answerless nostalgia and fatigue about how meaningless it all was. She says: "If I know a song for Africa, of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back of the plows in the fields and sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Would the air over the plain quiver with a color that I had on? Or the children invent a game in which my name was? Or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel in the drive that was like me? Or would the eagles of the hills look out for me?"

She gives her life to Africa. But when she's gone, Africa doesn't remember. There's nothing there that remembers her, though she remembers it.

Why does Solomon hate life? With every pleasure available, every vehicle for enjoyment, every conceivable advantage to a young man, why does he hate life? I'll tell you why he hates life. He has found the boundaries of the terrarium. No matter how beautiful it is, no matter how pleasant and nice, life under the sun is finally meaningless because it's not big enough. "I have discovered the boundaries. I have looked around this earth, this terrarium, and the one thing I find is this: There's a cork in the top of the bottle, and I can't get out. And that destroys my pleasure because I still need something more. I need permanence."

There's always something more that we want, and so runners become bikers, and climbers become kayakers, and housewives become executives, and salesmen become engineers and engineers become teachers, and we keep changing. But there's a limit to what this earth can give. And it's not enough to have what you can't keep.

But I have news for you. That's not even the toughest part. Solomon hasn't really reached his full conclusion. If you want to know what Solomon thought was the height of futility while we live here in this world, look at chapter 3, verse 11. Solomon says "He," (that s God) has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of people; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end."

You know what the really bad news is about living in the terrarium? It's that the walls of the terrarium are transparent -- but impermeable. We can see through them. We know in our hearts there's something on the other side. God has put eternity in our hearts. But we can't get through.

Solomon says, "The worst of the bad news is that we can see what we want. But we can't get it. I've got my nose plastered up against the glass and I can see that there ought to be more, but I can't get there."

One of the most well known passages of scripture, thanks to the rock group The Byrds, is found in Ecclesiastes, chapter 3. Beginning at verse 1: "There's a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven. The time to be born and the time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal. A time to tear down and a time to build...."

Solomon is not giving us instructions here on how to use time. He is warning us that time is our greatest enemy. There are some non-choice areas like when you're born and when you die. There are cycles of the seasons that don't change. There are times of love and peace, and there are times of hatred and war. Everything, he says, has an appointed time. We do too. It's as if we're strapped to the minute hand of a giant clock, and we want to hold back time -- but it keeps moving us on.. Time keeps on slippin, slippin, slippin into the future. And there aren't enough days and there aren't enough years.

Have you felt the pressure of time this week? Does time moving along really get managed by our day-timers? The fact that I know I have only so much time; does that get time under control. Does my fastidious planning? No it doesn't. The terrarium still has its walls.

Okay. I want to thank you for enduring this litany of bad news. I promise you there is a purpose in it. Because did you know this Easter morning, this resurrection Sunday, that the one thing we can tell you about all this bad news is that this bad news is wrong. That's what Easter tells us.

You see, Jesus Christ came out of eternity.. He penetrated the barrier of time and our humanity. He lived in this world. He died in time. And then He rose from the dead. That's the message of Easter. "Look up! The cork is out of the bottle. There's life everlasting!"

There is a false form of Christianity in our day that claims that it's enough to have Jesus in this life -- even if there is not life after death. This false faith says that the real message of Christianity is, "Remember Jesus Christ. He is the example; He is the moral teacher; he has given us the great example of His life and His teaching for us to follow. Now remember that and try to imitate Him." But a Christian hope that is really only a good example of how to live inside the walls of the bottle is no hope at all. It doesn't answer our real need. In 1 Corinthians 15, the Apostle Paul echoes Solomon. He says in verse 17, "If only for this life we have put our hope in Christ, we are more to be pitied than all people." If this is all there is -- if all there is is an 80 degree day in Moorpark, California -- then live it up. Get out of here right now and go to the beach. If that's all there is -- if there is no resurrection from the grave -- then just enjoy. Because that's all you're gonna get.

But that is not the end. No, this Sunday morning we are gathered here to remember the greatest fact of history: Jesus Christ, risen from the dead -- and the promise of hope for us all. "Because I live, you will also live."

Paul declares in verse 20, "But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead -- and this means that eternity can now be achieved. The longing in our hearts and Solomon's heart for something more is answered by the empty tomb and Jesus' appearing before His followers and saying, "Touch me. I have risen from the dead."

The terrarium cannot hold us. There has been an outside intervention. It happened in time. It happened in history. It is God's only Son who died that you might live. That is good news. But it is only good news if you do something with it.

I ask you this Easter morning. Is it time? Have you found the boundaries? Can you see the boundaries coming up?. Have you even pressed your face against the glass and known there must be something more? Has God placed eternity in your heart?

I want to invite you to put your trust in Jesus Christ who has come into you life and said, "Follow me. I am the way." Is it time for you today to put your trust in that promise?

Note: I am indebted to a sermon by Episcopal evangelist John Guest titled "The Good News is the Bad News is Wrong" for the analogy of the world as a terrarium and pointing me to the contrast between the bad news of Ecclesiastes and the good news of Easter.