Magyar Egyház, 1966 (45. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1966-03-01 / 3. szám
MAGYAR EGYHÁZ 7 MAGYAR CHURCH Bishop Louis Nagy: THE STOLEN CHRIST AN EASTER SERMON Matthew 28:13 Most ministers are very happy at Easter time, because then they have their largest congregations. The presence of the great audience gives their souls wings and they seem to be able to present their best sermons. They become poets and they deliver beautiful sermons about the resurrection. They have visions and their language is most descriptive. They have hundreds of illustrations bearing on the resurrection and eternal life. You have heard many times how that resurrection is portrayed in nature, in springtime. The buried bulbs spring into new life and lilies and all flowers in their full bloom exemplify the resurrection. Perhaps you have heard stories about the caterpillar and its way of depicting new life. But amidst all of this sentiment the real, true meaning of Easter is lost. How sad it is that there are many orators who steal from their audiences the risen Christ and the real facts of Easter. There is always the biggest crowd of the year in church who come expecting to hear a great sermon or a sweetly-told Easter story that will sing lullabies to their souls. There are people who come with cold, empty hearts and leave just as empty as they came. There is the large crowd that wishes to believe, but cannot. There are orators who use all their strength to try to prove that the story of the risen Christ is true and try to reason the facts so that men might believe. How often it happens that those who come to church leave no better than they came and those who sorrow continue to sorrow and their tears do not cease to flow. Death remains for them still the most horrible of all things. Easter after Easter comes and goes and there is still no change in their hearts. There must be something wrong somewhere. Someone has stolen Christ and the glad tidings of the Easter-joy from them. Men steal all sorts of things from their fellow-men — money, jewelry, property, good name, happiness, and even salvation. Yet the greatest and most awful thievery was when the high priests and the soldiers stole Christ and the reality of Easter from their people. Man accepts bribes for many things in this world. But to have accepted money to hide the best news that the world has ever known — was unforgivable. The high priests and the soldiers were the most wicked in this Easter story. No one in the world expected the resurrection, — not Mary, the mother of Jesus, not the disciples, not any of those who were close to Him and loved Him. The high priests and the elders, strange though it seems, were those who thought He might rise from the dead. All of His followers had forgotten what He told them about His resurrection but the high priests and elders remembered. They didn’t completely believe but there was a fear in them because of what Jesus had said: “After three days I will rise again.” What would have happened if the disciples would have taken Jesus’ words to heart as the high priests did? They most certainly — had they believed — would have called all Jerusalem to witness this great event. They were in hiding for fear and were not expecting Jesus to come forth from the grave. Only His enemies watched His tomb for three days. In the resurrection Jesus began to judge the world. He divided the world into two parts. One part, those to whom He revealed Himself and gave the greatest blessing, the faith of eternal life, the other, His enemies, those whose hearts became hardened, and who became blind and who live always in the permanent fear of death, because they have no hope. From those who were His enemies only the soldiers saw a few of the happenings at the beginning of the resurrection. One other enemy of Christ saw the Living Lord, Saul of Tarsus, but he became Paul and this experience made him the greatest witness of the resurrection that the world ever knew. Now let’s see what the soldiers did? They reported these events truthfully to their masters and this is what they were supposed to do. But what they did later is inconceivable! They agreed that for money they would lie about the resurrection! We do not know the number of the guards there but they could have trumpeted the good news to the whole world even before the women and the disciples. And their testimony would have been the strongest in the world because they had been Christ’s enemies. Or the high priests. They had to believe the soldiers and they should have told their people that the prophecy had now been fulfilled. Instead of this they made the darkest conspiracy in the history of the world against man. “Say ye, His disciples came by night and stole Him away while we slept.” No — the disciples had not stolen the body of Christ but these others stole salvation and the blessed faith of eternal life from their own people! What traitors they were! For them, there is no excuse! The high priests and soldiers in wanting to kill the truth of the resurrection said that the disciples of Jesus had deceived the world because they stole the body of Jesus. Christianity was built upon an empty tomb. Two thousand years point to this empty tomb. This is our proof of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Upon this empty tomb have arisen both great cathedrals and small houses of prayer. Now these clever priests and these dishonest soldiers cry out their lies in the face of our glowing Easter faith. “The grave is empty because the disciples stole Him away!” If we were not angered at this it should make us smile. However, there are some questions we would like to ask. In the Gospel we read that the disciples were gathered together, and because of their fear of the Jews they were afraid to go out. How did these weaponless men suddenly become so brave as to go and steal the body of Jesus
