Joy Comes in the Morning
A Sermon preached Easter Sunday, March 23, 2008
by Pastor Terry Davis
First Presbyterian Church, Hartford, CT
Psalm 30
1 I will extol you, O LORD, for you have drawn me up,
and did not let my foes rejoice over me.
2 O LORD my God, I cried to you for help,
and you have healed me.
3 O LORD, you brought up my soul from Sheol,
restored me to life from among those gone down to the Pit.
4 Sing praises to the LORD, O you his faithful ones,
and give thanks to his holy name.
5 For his anger is but for a moment;
his favor is for a lifetime.
Weeping may linger for the night,
but joy comes with the morning.
6 As for me, I said in my prosperity,
“I shall never be moved.”
7 By your favor, O LORD,
you had established me as a strong mountain;
you hid your face;
I was dismayed.
8 To you, O LORD, I cried,
and to the LORD I made supplication:
9 “What profit is there in my death,
if I go down to the Pit?
Will the dust praise you?
Will it tell of your faithfulness?
10 Hear, O LORD, and be gracious to me!
O LORD, be my helper!”
11 You have turned my mourning into dancing;
you have taken off my sackcloth
and clothed me with joy,
12 so that my soul£ may praise you and not be silent.
O LORD my God, I will give thanks to you forever.
It would be hard to overestimate the depth of the disciples’ grief and pain. Think about the grief you have experienced; those of us in the older generation have experienced the loss of our parents, some of us here have unfortunately experienced the loss of a child. I cannot imagine the grief involved in losing a child, a young child, or a child who has grown to maturity. After all we would like to feel that children should bury their parents, not parents needing to bury their children. We experience the loss of sisters and brothers, or best friends and companions; too many of us have experienced the loss of a spouse or life partner. Except for a few of us we have all experienced pain and loss of those who have left us behind and taken their leave of the world. There is heart ache, the feeling of abandonment, in many cases there is anger that the one we loved has deserted us. Of course this anger is irrational, but it is there in so many cases. We wonder how we can go on one more day; how we can continue to live when a part of our life has been taken from us. Somehow we live and grow past the grief; our life goes on, but the pain remains for months, for years, in some ways it never leaves us completely.
For the disciples Jesus was their best friend; he had called them to follow him and they had left their parents, in some cases they have left behind wives and perhaps even children to follow him, and for most of the last year, perhaps three years they have been with Jesus almost constantly. According to the gospels Jesus sent them on one or more preaching missions without him, but they returned to him soon enough. He had left them on a few occasions, and when we read the gospels we see that they were upset when ever he was missing. When they woke in the morning and found him gone they seldom waited until he came back, they went out seeking him, and they learned to go up the nearest hills, because they would find this was where he would go to pray and have conversation with his God, the one he taught them to call Our Father.
Even when he went up to a high mountain he took the three of them with him, Peter and James and John, they were the inner circle, and they must have been the ones most devastated by his death – particularly Peter who in a moment of fear and weakness denied that he ever knew the master, this a matter of a few hours after Jesus had said that he would deny him, and Peter’s vehement insistence that he would die before he would desert him. So they were crushed, totally devastated, grief filled and sick of heart. He was the center of their life; he was the one who they believed was the hope of the world, the savior of all of the human family. “We had believed that he was the one to redeem Israel” said Cleopas and his companion as they spoke to a stranger on the road to Emmaus. They had believed, but they believed no more, their eyes were too filled with tears to even see and recognize the stranger who walked with them down the road.
For them it was more than losing their best friend and companion and their leader, when he died hope died with him. Through him they had come to believe that love was stronger than hate, that right ultimately would triumph over wrong, they had even believed that life was stronger than death, but all that they had come to believe through him was shattered by his death. Hate had triumphed over love, non violence had failed, and life was swallowed up by death.
Martin Luther King died nearly 50 years ago in Memphis, TN, and those who loved and followed him, those who believed in him and in the cause of equality and justice, love and non violence had something of the same experience as the disciples, the dreamer died, and it seemed that his dream died with him. I was talking with Lois about having the opportunity to be in Memphis in a few weeks to commemorate the anniversary of his death, and suddenly the tears welled up in my eyes and I struggled to hold on to my composure and to continue to speak through my tears. I understand a little of the depth of their grief and pain.
But something happened on the third day after Jesus death that transformed the disciples from a depressed, despondent and defeated band of followers hiding out together in fear for their lives into a courageous group of missionaries who spent the rest of their lives proclaiming that he was raised from the dead. What happened was that after he was dead and buried they experienced his appearance and presence in their midst. Even the most skeptical students of the New Testament, those who doubt the stories of the empty tomb and a bodily resurrection do not deny that Mary Magdalene and others of the inner circle of the disciples experienced seeing him alive. An even wider circle of followers may not have experienced seeing him with their eyes, but they did experience that he had come alive in their hearts and in the midst of their worship and fellowship. He was not defeated, his dream and his message did not die with him, but he and his message of hope and his message of love and service to others remained alive, not for a generation, not even just for a century, but today, 20 centuries after his death his ideas, his teaching, his hope and his love remain alive, and although few people have the experience of seeing him, millions have had the experience of his living presence in their lives and in our worship together.
His resurrection and present life and power in the world have transformed history, and continue to transform individual lives.
This is no illusion, but a reality, the Lord is risen, he has risen indeed. Weeping may tarry for the night, grief may last for a period, but there comes a time when joy comes. In the morning, at the break of day, at the start of the first day of the week is when it happened to Mary, she saw the risen Lord, and her life was transformed, and ours has been, and can be, and will be transformed by that same resurrection power which is still alive 2000 years after his supposed death.
Weeping may linger for the night,
But joy comes with the morning.
Joy, joy, everlasting joy comes in the morning.
Acts 10:34 - 43 34Then Peter began to speak to them: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, 35but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. 36You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all. 37That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: 38how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. 39We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; 40but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, 41not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. 42He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. 43All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”
Matthew 28:1 - 10 1After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. 2And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. 3His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. 4For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. 5But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. 6He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. 7Then go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.’ This is my message for you.” 8So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. 9Suddenly Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. 10Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”