Holy Trinity Anglican Orthodox Church

Love and Power

Mark 16:1-8

Easter Sunday

April 12, 2009

Love took Jesus to the cross.  Love held Him there.  Nothing else could.  This is no mere man suffering and dying at the hands of other men.  This is the Lord of all creation.  This is the One who stilled the storm.  This is the One who healed the sick, made the lame to walk and the blind to see.  This is the One who made the leper clean.  This is the One who raised the dead.  We know from the biblical witness that it was Christ who made the world and the cosmos.  We know He created and sustains all things.  He knows the stars by name.  He knows the hairs on our heads.  He knows all the molecules and atoms, and subatomic particles.  He created them.  He joined them together into atoms and elements and compounds and substances and cells and systems.  They operate by His will and obey His voice.  We may call this “natural law” or “physics” or “chemistry” or “biology,” but, in reality it is the rule of God over His creation, by which He maintains order in the universe. Its real name is “Providence.”  God created the atoms and molecules that formed the cross and the nails.  He sustained them, and they obeyed His will.  They could do nothing without His permission and active aid.  Thus, no mere human invention could have held Jesus on the cross.  Truly “He could have called ten thousand angels,” but He didn’t need them.  He had all power within Himself.  Compared to Him, ten thousand angels are pathetic and weak. 

Since no cross could hold Him and no nails could fasten Him without His will, what was it in Christ that made Him will to go to and remain on the cross?  It was love.  “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1Jn. 4:10).

We can truly say love killed Jesus.  But if love killed Jesus, power raised Him from the dead.  He had power within Himself over death.  He raised Lazarus from the dead.  He said that He laid His life down of His own will; He had power to lay it down and to take it up again.  No tomb could hold Him.  Though it be hewn of solid rock, the rock itself is His servant.  He can make it bring forth water as He did for Israel in the desert.  If people will not worship Him the very stones will sing His praise.  The One who miraculously entered the upper Room, though the doors were locked fast, found no barrier in walls of stone.  It has been truly said that the stone was rolled away from the tomb to let the Apostles in, not to let Jesus out.  He came from Heaven to enter the womb of the virgin.  How could a tomb hold Him?

He had power to raise Himself, just as He had power to leave the cross, but did not do it.  Why?  Because He waited in faith for the Father to raise Him.  This was part of His humiliation, part of His full humanity.  Just as we must endure the grave in faith, so He had to endure it.  Just as we must trust in God to raise us, so He had to have that same trust.  There could be no exception for Him, no “cheating.”  He had to trust the Father in all things, just as we must do.  He had to trust the Father, not only in dying, but also in death.

He is risen.  The Father did not leave Him in the grave, but raised Him again by His Almighty power.  Who among us can raise the dead?  Who can give life where there is none?  Who can raise the dead to the very heart of Heaven?  Who can give life to the soul that will last forever though worms destroy this body?  Only God.  The resurrection of Christ is a promise to those who believe, that the same power that raised Him will also raise us incorruptible.  Just as death cannot hold Him, neither can it prevent His grace from keeping the promises He has made to us, that where He is, there shall we be also.  Therefore, trust in Him.  Trust the love that gave Him to the cross for our sins.  Trust the power that raised Him from the dead and seated Him at the right hand  of the Father.  Trust the promise He gave “that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.”

Thanks be to God. Amen.

The Rev. Dr. R. Dennis Campbell, Vicar, Holy Trinity Anglican Church, 

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