“The life of Jesus was lived like music to be played over again.”
(Harry Emerson Fosdick)
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Easter is here! Thank God!
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Thank God.
Palm Sunday’s word was “Hosanna!” ~
a Hebrew word which means “Save, we pray!”
On Good Friday there was no word.
There was only crying and tears.
Easter’s word is “Hallelujah!” ~
another Hebrew word which means “Praise ye the Lord.”
I remember years ago
asking the children who had gathered at the front of the sanctuary
if they knew what “Hallelujah” meant …
and if they could put it in their own words, what might they say.
One little child’s answer, which summed it up as well as anyone could, was.
“Hot-diggity-dog!” That just about says it all.
A little girl was as anxious for Easter to arrive as she had been for Christmas.
She was taken shopping for a new Easter outfit for church.
At the store where they had stopped to buy a new pair of shoes
to go with her new dress, she said again,
“Daddy, I can’t wait for Easter to come!”
So her Daddy asked, “Do you know what Easter means?”
“I sure do,” was the confident reply.
“Well, what does Easter mean?”
And in her own sweet way, with arms raised, and a smile on her face,
she shouted at the top of her voice, “SURPRISE!”
Well, whatever word you use ~
whether it’s “Hallelujah” or “Hot-diggity-dog” or “Surprise” ~
today is that kind of day:
a glorious, upside-down, inside-out, unexpected,
miraculous, life-changing day!
Thank God for Easter!
In the Good Friday message I said that Jesus’ life was like music,
unlike any music ever heard before.
Music in the major key.
Music in the key of life.
Music with a beautiful melody.
Music that lifted hearts and stirred souls.
Music that made people want to sing again.
I said that Jesus’ life was like a symphony ~
a symphony of hope
and joy and love
and faith and promise.
But on that day we call Good Friday, the music abruptly came to an end.
And those who loved Him most thought the music was finished ~ forever.
Thought the song was silenced.
Thought the dance was over.
Their song and dance man, Jesus, was dead.
But “Hallelujah” …
“Hot-diggity-dog” …
“Surprise” …
they were wrong.
They were all wrong.
On Sunday morning,
following the horror of Friday
and the silence of Saturday,
by the love and power of God,
Jesus was raised from death to life.
The “Requiem Mass” became the “Hallelujah Chorus!”
The song, and the dance, would go on.
It was unrevealed until its season.
It was something God alone could see.
Although I believe the Easter truths
because of scripture’s record of changed men and women ~
enlivened again, singing again, dancing again ~
because of the living Christ,
I believe the Easter truths because I have seen its miracles around me
and experienced its miracles within me.
One of my favourite quotations was written by Harry Emerson Fosdick.
It would have been sufficient if he had only written,
“The life of Jesus was lived like music …”
But what he wrote is this:
“The life of Jesus was lived like music to be played over again.”
Listen to that again.
“The life of Jesus was lived like music to be played over again.”
Where faith will believe in Him
and hearts will welcome Him,
Easter happens.
His music can play in us ~ again.
Years ago I was with a man who,
because of all sorts of problems in his life,
had been at rock bottom.
And as we talked that day in his car
he spoke of the life he had once lived.
He said that he had been a prisoner
to alcohol, and because of it,
to despair and heartache.
He had been filled with anger
and hatred
and self-loathing.
He had been a prisoner to so many things.
And ironically, the sentence he was serving had been self-imposed.
The life he had been living ~
surviving, but with no melody,
existing, but with no song ~
had been a sorry life of his own making.
“Where is the life,” he said that day, “that I had lost in the living.”
To die, he had thought many times,
would be better than living.
To be in the dizzying, numbing twilight of a drunk
was better than being awake.
But it had exacted a price.
He had lost everything that mattered:
his self-respect …
his marriage …
his family …
his friends.
There was no music in his life.
And if there was, it was a mournful litany.
There was no song of joy.
No dance.
But “Hallelujah” …
“Hot-diggity-dog” …
“Surprise!”
Easter happened to him.
The Risen Christ met him.
And he opened his heart to it.
And the Spirit of Jesus literally saved him.
The love and acceptance he experienced …
the forgiveness that flowed over him like a benediction …
the inner power that lifted him …
the will not just to survive
but to live with melody and song …
he found it in Jesus.
And he said to me that day:
“Jesus raised ME from the dead.
Just as he raised Lazarus.
Just as He Himself was raised by the power of God.
I believe in the resurrection because Jesus has raised me.
I was dead … now I am alive.”
It is a remarkable testimony.
And true.
“The life of Jesus was lived like music to be played over again.”
In my friend’s life, the mournful litany was over.
Now it was the “Hallelujah Chorus.”
I believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead
because in the midst of this man’s Good Friday
Easter happened.
The name of Ethel Waters will be familiar to some of you.
I know about her only from what I have read of her life
and from watching and listening to her sing, years ago,
at the Billy Graham Crusades.
The song of faith with which she is most identified is
“His Eye Is On The Sparrow.”
Years ago, at a gala evening, Hollywood paid tribute to her.
Clips of her old movies were shown.
The music that had made her career was played and sung.
But the most moving part of the evening came when Ethel Waters ~
joyful, bubbly, open, honest ~
told the people how happy she was because Jesus was in her heart.
That night, unashamed, she revealed
a big heart … a great soul … and a trusting faith.
Those who didn’t know her, of course, saw only her grace ~
they didn’t see her sorrow.
They saw only her wonderful present ~
they wouldn’t have known about her troubled past.
Her troubled past.
Ethel Waters was fathered by a rapist.
She was an illegitimate child.
She was black.
She was raised in a ghetto of poverty and neglect.
As a child and young woman she was told she was ugly
and would never amount to anything.
The song of her life was a sad song.
The music of her life was melancholy.
But God had bestowed her with a gift: a beautiful voice …
which became the key out of that prison.
And she rose above the walls
that poverty
and prejudice
and struggle had built.
She made a good life for herself.
As a singer, her signature song was “Stormy Weather.”
And she had sung that song with feeling for years ~
with the feeling that comes only when you have lived through it.
The night that Hollywood honoured her
she was asked to sing that song once again.
She answered by saying,
“No sir. I’m never going to sing ‘Stormy Weather’ again
as long as I live.
I can’t. I can’t.
I don’t have stormy weather anymore.
I have peace in my heart because Jesus lives in me.”
She was the sparrow that God’s eye had been on.
She was the one God was watching over.
And when, in faith, she trusted in that love
and welcomed Christ into her heart,
it was His music that began to play in her life.
And “Hallelujah” …
“Hot-diggity-dog” …
“Surprise.”
It was the risen Christ who came out of the grave and into her heart.
His music was being played over again.
Not “Stormy Weather” but the “Hallelujah Chorus!”
I believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead
because in the midst of her Good Friday
Easter happened.
And I have witnessed that miracle time and time again.
I have seen bad people become good
and good people become better
because Jesus’ music has played in their hearts.
I have seen people meet terrible illness with a strength not their own.
I have seen people face death bravely
because they knew that on the other side
a Risen Christ would meet them.
I have seen the lost find their way
and apparently incorrigible lives turn around
because hearts were opened to Christ’s leading.
I have seen people throw off the burden and regret of the past
and face an uncertain future with hope
because they have known our Lord’s forgiveness
and experienced His living presence.
His music played again.
I have seen people rebuild shattered lives …
I have seen people who were broken find wholeness
and people who were defeated find victory
because Jesus’ music played again in their hearts.
I believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead
because in the midst of so many Good Fridays
Easter has happened …
and the Saviour of the world has saved them
in the midst of their worlds.
I believe it.
I believe it.
Even with all of the misery and heartache in the world …
even with the incomprehensible horror of war all around us …
even with people still trapped in seemingly inescapable prisons
of poverty and ignorance and prejudice and powerlessness …
even with the cruelty and stupidity and violence
that is a way of life for so many
who should have learned history’s lessons,
I believe it.
I believe it.
Even when we’re tempted to say:
“Where is your God?
In so many ways this is still a Good Friday world,”
I believe it.
Even then … I believe it
because of that Sunday morning.
And when Jesus was raised from the dead
all of the Good Friday things that sent Him to the Cross
were defeated by the power of our loving God.
When Jesus rose,
hope
and joy
and truth
and life
and all things virtuous rose with Him.
The world is full of sad music.
But it is also full of the presence of Christ.
And His life “was lived like music to be played over again.”
And if we have eyes to see it
and hearts to accept it
and faith to believe it,
it can play in us.
And when it does,
when His music plays in our hearts,
we can rise above it, too.
SOLI DEO GLORIA
