Magyar Egyház, 1963 (42. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1963-03-01 / 3. szám
MAGYAR EGYHÁZ 9 MAGYAR EASTER Dr. David H. C. Read:* GOD'S EASTER ANSWER Acts 2:32, “This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we are all witnesses.” IT WAS AT PENTECOST that the first Christian Sermon was preached The preacher was a young Galilean fisherman who stood in a doorway and addressed a huge jostling throng of religious tourists in Jerusalem. He spoke with passion and conviction, and — unlike many sermons since — there was no mistaking what he was talking about. He spoke of Jesus — this Jesus whom they all knew about, and many had actually seen nailed to a cross. And without any hesitation or beating about the bush, he delivered this message to the waiting crowd: Jesus is alive, and Jesus is Lord. On that rock the Church was built. If on this Easter morning the hells are ringing around the world, if a flame of common hope is kindling again in the dark anxieties of the human heart, if the words “Christ is risen” do indeed circle the earth, penetrating every iron or bamboo curtain of man's devising, it is simply because that bold statement of the apostle was heard that day by some men and women like you and me — and accepted and believed. For this is how it all began. That first sermon exploded like a bomb in the hearts of those who listened. “Jesus is alive and Jesus is Lord.” “Men and brethren,” they said, “what shall we do?’ I h's message wa not a kind of quiet meditation to soothe their spirits; nor was it a philosophical disquisition to be argued over lunch. It didn’t deal with problems and paradoxes and dilemmas. It didn’t tell them how to be happy, healthy, wealthy, and wise. It simply asserted that Jesus, whom they had crucified, was alive again and alive for ever, and left them to reckon with that news. “This Jesus,” said Peter, “hath God raised up, whereof we are all witnesses.” That was all. The first Christian sermon was a street-corner affair. It was neither tape-recorded, nor televised, nor did it rate a lin’ in any Roman historian’s memoirs. Yet these words so gripped and changed the lives of about three thousand people that a chain-reaction followed which turned the ancient world Upside down. It is One of the most startling facts of history, with which even the most sceptical has to reckon, that the Resurrection story launched a movement that more * Dr. David H. C. Read Is pastor of the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church In New York City. He preached this sermon on Easter, 1960. We print It here by permission. than any other has changed the destiny of nations and moved the minds and hearts of men. The words “This Jesus hath God raised up” possessed a dynamic infinitely greater than all the legions of Rome, all the philosophy of Greece, and all the wisdom of the East. I HAVE GONE BACK to the first Christian sermon today because it tells us so clearly what Easter means. It would be easy on this or any other Easter to speak about many quite palatable truths. We could think about the hope that is indomitable in the human breast. That would be true, but it is not the Easter message. We could reflect on the perennial return of Spring, and the many myths of dying and rising that haunt the nature-religions of the world. That might be interesting and helpful, but it would not be the Easter message. We might talk in glowing words about the immortality of the soul. That might be entrancing, but it is not the Easter message. “This Jesus hath God raised up” . . . the Easter message is about “this Jesus.” Who wants to hear about “this Jesus?” You do — if you have been through Lent with him, been to the cross with him, heard again his cry of desolation, and shared by faith in that mysterious battle where the body of his love was broken and the blood of sacrifice was shed. You want to hear again, you cannot hear too often, of that Return — those brief encounters with his friends, indelibly imprinted on their minds and passed by them to us, by which they knew the victory of love. For you “this Jesus” is enough, for in him you have found the Way you must follow, the Truth that is inexhaustible, and the Life that is eternal. In him you find both your neighbor and your God. For you the meaning of Easter is summed up in two words spoken in the garden as the sun broke through the mists of the dawn: “Mary”; “Master.” But there are others for whom this is not so simple. And not only “others:” haven’t we all our moments when “this Jesus” troubles us? There are so many who cannot accept his claim — good people, honest people, friends of ours. And when the world is threatened by militant atheism, ought we not to close ranks with all other religions — and therefore play down “this Jesus?” Then comes the thought: Isn’t it the idea that matters, the idea of victory over sin and death, not this person, this Jesus? Let’s keep him the symbol, a beautiful symbol of an eternal truth. There is nothing wicked about such thoughts. We do not close the doors of this church to those THÍTR II
