I Corinthians 15:1-11
John 20:1-18

In the 19th century, when it was established that life had begun in the oceans, some scientists reasoned that the earliest forms of life might still be there, hidden in the deep, dark recesses of the open sea, where human beings cannot descend. They were certain that in that world of darkness lay the first forms of life. They even had a name for that oceanic nursery. They called it the "Urschleim." They chose a German name to give it scientific respectability.

In 1872, Sir Charles Thomson left England aboard a ship called the Challenger to sail through all the oceans of the world to test this theory. For four years they sailed the oceans, sixty-nine thousand miles, dragging the ocean bottom. They found rare forms of life, many of which were grotesque, but they didn't find anything new. Time and time again they would play out four miles of rope, and then pull the rope back in. They found the same animals every time.

So you could say they didn't find what they were looking for. What they found were life forms that had descended from creatures that could be found in the shallow part of the ocean. They concluded, therefore, that life was created at the surface, and then descended into the depths, perhaps for reasons of survival, and then adjusted to a life of darkness at those depths.

To do that, to live at those depths, they evolved into grotesque kind of animals with huge mouths, way out of proportion to the rest of their bodies, in order to catch any morsel that might float down to the bottom of the ocean. They also had huge projecting eyes, in order to catch a glimpse of any light that might be down there.

That's what life in the deep is like, its distorted life. It's not life the way God created it to be. So the Challenger expedition was considered a failure, in that it didn't find what it was looking for. But in another sense, it was a success, because it substantiated that life began in the upper oceans, near the surface. And there is one reason for this, and the reason is light. Without light there would be no creation.

Now here is something to ponder. Genesis tells the Creation story in the same way, in these words: "Darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the water. And God said, `Let there be light.'" So before science, Genesis said light is the agency of creation. Without light there would be no life.

Then look to the New Testament, to the Gospel of John. John's gospel begins with a story of Creation as well. In fact it begins with the same words that the story of Creation in Genesis begins with: "In the beginning..." Only John says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made." Then, like Genesis, John says that light is the agency of creation. He proclaims it in these beautiful words. He says that Jesus is the "Word" that was associated with God in the beginning, and Jesus has come to us. Then he says, "In him was life, and the life was the light of the world. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it."

Before the Creation there was darkness, like the depths of the ocean. Then there was light. And then there was life. So John says that the light that we saw in Jesus was the light that created the world. It means that wherever Jesus went, there was the possibility for a new creation.

Our text for this Easter Sunday is John's story of the Creation, a new creation, that is called Resurrection. The Resurrection is a new creation. The Resurrection is also a confirmation that when the light descended to the very depths of human existence, into the darkness of death itself, the darkness could not overcome the light. Which means that Jesus Christ is Lord over all areas of our life.

I understand that in the port of Genoa there is a statue that is called the Christ of the Deep. It is in the form of those classic statues of Jesus with his arms outstretched, as if to say, "Come unto me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." The statue is placed beneath the surface of the water in the harbor, descended into the depths of the ocean, as a memorial to all of those who died at sea. But it is a wonderful symbol of the gospel message that Christ has gone into the depths of our life to give us new life.

He did that throughout all of his ministry, for he lived the life that you and I must live. But we look at the last week of his life, the week that is called his passion, to see that he descended into the darkest recesses of human existence. The prophet Isaiah said of the Messiah that he was "a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief." In that one week Jesus knew all of those things that we will know at some time.

And because he was there, it means that you don't have to stay there. That's the gospel message. You may have to go there, but you don't have to stay there. Jesus' Resurrection means that in any area in your life in which you find yourself trapped, down into the depths of life where life is distorted to be unlike the way God wants it to be, you don't have to stay there, because of the Resurrection of our Lord.

Years ago there appeared a story in the newspaper in Galveston, Texas. It was about a woman and her parakeet, whose name was Chippie. It seems that the woman was cleaning Chippie's bird cage with a canister vacuum cleaner, the kind with a long metal tube, on which you can put attachments at the end. Only to clean his cage, she took the attachments off.

She was cleaning the bottom of the bird cage when the phone rang. She reached over to get the phone, and as she did, she heard the unmistakable sound of Chippie being sucked up into the vacuum. Immediately she put down the phone and rushed over to the vacuum, pulled out the vacuum bag and ripped it opened. She found Chippie sitting there stunned, but still alive. Since the bird was now covered with soot and dirt, she grabbed him and ran into the bathroom, held him under the faucet and washed him to get all the soot and dirt off. When she finished she saw the hair dryer sitting on the sink. She turned it on, held Chippie up in front of the blast of hot air to dry him off.

Now that's the kind of story that newspapers like, so the newspaper in Galveston sent a reporter out to talk to the woman about this incident. He concluded the questioning by asking her, "How's Chippie doing now?" The woman said, "Well Chippie doesn't sing much anymore. He just sort of sits and stares."

That happens to a lot of people too. Life treats them rough, and they don't feel like singing anymore. They just kind of sit and stare. You can pick them out. They have the unmistakable look of the survivor, or the victim. The vacant stare, the empty face, drawn of any emotion.

There are some people who never get over the tragedies that hit them. They go through the rest of their life with that stare. You can pick them out. It serves as kind of an announcement to everybody else: life has been rough on me, life hasn't been fair, my life from this point on is over. Soren Kierkegaard, the great Danish philosopher and theologian, described them as "people who live their lives as if they were typographical errors refusing to be erased." They lived their lives as proof that life is unjust. You can pick them out. They don't sing anymore. They just sort of sit and stare.

The Christian Faith has something especially to say to them, as well to all of us. The most important thing that it says is that the Cross and the Resurrection were one event. Which means, you may not have chosen your suffering, but you don't have to stay there. God sent his Son into our suffering so that we would not have to stay there. But God resurrected Jesus because he wants us to live again. He wants us to get out of whatever depths of despair we might find ourselves. And the way the Christian Faith says that is to say that the Cross and the Resurrection are one event. You cannot endure a cross without expecting a resurrection.

In fact the Cross and Resurrection should be punctuated with a hyphen, so that they are always together. When you do that you cannot say tragedy has the last word. You have to say now resurrection has the last word. You can't say being a victim is my destiny. You have to say being a conqueror is my destiny. As Paul says to the Romans, "We are more than conquerors through him who loved us." "For now we know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose. What then shall we say to this? If God be for us, who can be against us? Who can separate us from the love of God which we saw in Christ Jesus our Lord." Paul can say that to the Romans because he believes the Cross and the Resurrection are one event.

Tony Campolo teaches at Eastern Baptist College in Philadelphia. He's the lay preacher as well, and a very popular one. He is a remarkable Christian in many ways. He's a white man. He belongs to a black church in Philadelphia because he wants to give witness to the power of the gospel to overcome the divisions that this world sets up between people. He also believes that controversial issues, such as homosexuality, should not divide Christians, but that we ought to model a dialogue, a Christian dialogue for the world, that you can discuss controversial issues, and admit to different opinions without being divided from one another. He and his wife, who hold differing opinions on that subject, give workshops across the country on Christian dialogue.

Campolo, when he speaks, will sometimes remind his audience of a sermon that he heard his African-American preacher deliver once, with this wonderful title: "It's Friday - But Sunday's Comin."

What a great summary of the Christian attitude about suffering. It's Friday, it's the day of the Cross, but Sunday, the day of Resurrection, is coming. It's a cross now that I have to bear, but I believe a resurrection is on its way. I believe that God is in charge, and something good is therefore going to happen. It may not be what I want to happen. It may not be what I hoped for to happen. It may not be a restoration of the way things were before. But because God gives resurrection, not resuscitation, and there's a difference, resurrection means new life, resuscitation means that the old has been restored, but because God resurrects, God gives new situations, new surprises, that we had never anticipated, things that we may never have imagined, but they will be good. Because of the Cross and Resurrection we can say that even the experience of death now has received new life through the light of Christ. The light that Christ brought into the valley of the shadow of death, reveals that not even death has the last word.

If you had been living in the Roman Empire in the first century, you would have noticed a strange custom practiced by the Christians. They would go out to their graveyards with laurel wreaths, the wreaths that had been used in Greek and Roman culture to crown the victors of athletic contests. They would take those laurel wreaths and place them on the graves. If you had asked them why, they would say, "Because we believe that in Jesus Christ we have received victory over the power of death."

We read Paul's letter to the Corinthians today as our epistle lesson, the beginning of the fifteenth chapter, in which Paul gives us sort of a creed which consists primarily of the witnesses to Christ's Resurrection, a whole collection of them. It is an appropriate lesson to be read on this festival of Jesus' Resurrection.

But in the rest of the 15th chapter, if you read on through that long chapter, Paul talks about resurrection itself. He talks specifically about what will happen to us when we die. The Corinthians write Paul and ask him, "What will happen to us when we die?" Paul answers, "Lo! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall be changed...For this perishable nature must put on the imperishable, and this mortal nature must put on immortality...Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."

Jim Moore, who is the pastor of St. Luke's Methodist Church in Houston, tells about a woman who was a member of the choir in that church. One day it was diagnosed that she had a terminal illness. She lived only a few weeks after that. When he visited her in the hospital she told him that she wanted to be buried in her choir robe. She said, "I've heard that in heaven all God's children have robes, and I want to take mine, just in case."

That's the kind of light-heartedness that you find characteristic of people of faith, who know that when their life is no longer in their hands, still trust that it is in God's hands. They have a kind of nonchalance about the journey they are about to take.

That woman's daughter found a prayer among her mother's belongings when she went to pick them up at the hospital. She had written a prayer before she went to the hospital. In the prayer was this line:

Lord, send me a surprise,
One that catches me off guard,
And makes we wonder...
Like Easter.

At Easter God sent light into the deepest depths of human experience, and into death itself. And the light created new life. It was a surprise. It caught the world off guard. And makes us wonder.