I am ashamed to admit I rarely make it to a sunrise Easter service anymore. Animals and malfunctioning body parts make for a slow start to any day, and starting one even earlier is to say the least difficult.
I always remember, however, one particular sunrise service.
The Old Man got me up, of course; weekend mornings were our time together, and since he started the day early, I wanted to as well. We had coffee and cereal, bade my dog farewell (he didn’t seem too upset, being content to stay home and look after Miss Lois) and headed for the cemetery.
I knew the place well, of course. I mean, I was all boy, and parents in the 70s allowed their children a tremendous amount of freedom. We rode bikes through there, played hide and seek among the tombstones (until we got caught) and explored the woods and creek along the edge of the graveyard more thoroughly than Amadas and Barlowe. Our Cub Scout pack placed flags on veteran graves there every year. And of course, there were funerals now and again. For some reason, I’d never been to a sunrise service there.
That particular morning was cold. Not chilly, but cold. It was foggy as well, which lent itself to all kinds of imaginative thoughts for a little kid who had likely watched an old horror movie the morning before on Sunrise Theater.
The fog, the pre-dawn darkness, and the hushed tones of the faithful few who gathered (most were men, as I recall) gave the entire scene an eerie feeling.
Our preacher, Rev. Tom Freeman, gave the message that morning, bundled like almost all the other men in a long black coat. The sun broke the horizon and began to slowly burn off the mist just as he read the passage about the women questioning the gardener about where Jesus’ body had been taken, only to discover that he was no gardener, but the Messiah they sought among the dead.
We have no meteorological or historical records to show what it was like that day 2,000 years ago, when the stone was discovered rolled back and the Roman guard were discovered missing. Was it bright, dry and clear? Was it chilly and foggy, as was the morning I remember so vividly? We really don’t know, and I reckon in reality it doesn’t matter.
What matters is that Jesus Christ, the son of God, born of woman, lived a perfect, sinless life, was unjustly convicted and executed in the worst way imaginable in that time. Plenty of people were crucified, of course, and plenty were flogged to death, but few were subjected to the agony of both, a sadistic torture that He voluntarily took, paying the ultimate price, the sacrificial price for all the sins of all people, forever.
I have a hard enough time, even as a somewhat cynical adult, paying for the faults of others. No one has ever asked me to shed blood to pay for their debt, of course, but sometimes I wonder if that might have been easier.
As a little kid, and now even as a late-middle aged man, I cannot conceive of bearing the sin, the hatred, the evil, the debt of all people, and doing it out of love.
I know the sins I have committed; I need repentance and forgiveness every day. And He knew. As those spikes were driven into His hands and feet, as the blood stank and stuck to the cross and the thorns jammed into His forehead—He knew, almost 2,000 years before I was born, exactly what I would do wrong, when, and how often. Me and everyone else. He knew as He died, slowly and painfully, and was finally taken down and laid in a borrowed tomb, the door sealed and a guard set upon it. Yet he did it anyway.
He knew how bad I would be, and he paid my sin debt in full in the only way possibly. He willingly bore that burden, out of love.
I am not a hateful person, but I cannot fathom that kind of love. I have a wife, friends and family for who I would give my life. The children I call my grandkids: an orphan boy in Uganda, a sassy nine-year-old girl here who may have a new little sister by the time you read this—I would not hesitate to take whatever steps were necessary to protect them. I can see dying for them, with a smile on my face.
But for the people I write about every day, those who inflict pain and suffering on others, the mean and the greedy and the uncaring and the unthinking and the heartless – would I die for them? Likely not.
Yet I am no better than them, in the eyes of Christ. He died for my sins just as He died for theirs, that all men could have eternal life, in Heaven, with Him, where there is no more pain, no more anger, no sorrow, no hunger. He paid that price for me, as sinful and evil as I was and am.
Just as he did for you.
Enjoy the bunnies and the candy and the kids in their new Easter clothes this week. Spend the time with your family. Our older nieces are too far away and too grownup for egg hunts any more, but there are other kids to hear laughing as they run across the yard and moms stress over getting their new good clothes dirty.
Just don’t forget that it’s Resurrection Day, when an open tomb showed the Death and Sin had been defeated forever, and anyone can have a part in that victory, by asking Christ into your heart.
If you can make your morning move along, be there when the sun breaks the horizon, and the preacher says those glorious words, “He is risen.”
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