Paul Walker, “The Kingdom of This World is Become the Kingdom of Our Lord”
On Easter Day in 1742, after much anticipation, the now famous Handel’s Messiah debuted in Dublin’s Musick Hall. The audience swelled to a record 700 people. In anticipation of the crowds, ladies were asked to “wear dresses without hoops to make room for more company.” Handel was a superstar at this point in his career. But his fame wasn’t the only draw. The reigning diva, contralto Susannah Cibber, was embroiled in a scandalous divorce. Society people flocked to see her.
All sat mesmerized from the tenor’s opening line, “Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people.” Then, midway through, Cibber sang – in reference to Good Friday – “He was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrow and acquainted with grief.” There was a clergyman there named Patrick Delany. He was so moved by Cibber’s performance that he leaped to his feet and cried out, “Woman! May all thy sins be forgiven thee!
283 years later and here we are on another Easter Day. You may be brimming with joy today. You may be kind of comme ci comme ca – church is fine but let’s get to brunch. Or you may be like the Chocolate Bunny who went to his psychiatrist. The shrink asked, “How are you feeling today, Chocolate Bunny?” And the Chocolate Bunny answered, “I don’t know, Doc. I just feel kind of hollow inside.”
No matter how you feel, all of us have two great enemies in the Kingdom of this World. In the face of these enemies, we are as powerless as a kitten before a Doberman. Try as you might, you can never wrest yourself free from the enemy’s grip. The first of these enemies is called Sin. Sin is the great plague of human life, isolating us from God and from others and even from ourselves. It’s “more than wrongdoing; it is catastrophic separation from the love of God - being on the wrong side of an impassable barrier of exclusion from God’s heavenly banquet. Put more simply, sin is to be helplessly trapped inside your worst self.” (FR)
But fear not (!) my fine friends. It is Easter Day, after all! For the Dublin clergyman was exactly right. Woman, Man, and Child among you – all your sins HAVE been forgiven thee! For that first enemy was slain along with Jesus Christ on the cross. School’s out! Good Friday put God permanently out of the scorekeeping business. You are free to go. Really! That may make the moralist in you get your knickers in a twist. But that is the gospel. I’d say, “sue me”, but all the world’s damages have been paid in full by the blood of the cross.
Though they don’t understand the implications, this Defeat of the Enemy is what the women discover at the empty tomb that first Easter morning. They come to anoint Jesus’ dead body, but Lo and Behold! He’s risen from the dead! Instead, they find dazzling angels who say to them, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here but has risen. Remember how he told you… that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again." And that is how Jesus destroys the Second Great Enemy – Death. As scripture tells us, “by his death he has destroyed death.” And that is what Easter is all about, Charlie Brown.
The best illustration of the Destruction of Death is still C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.” Aslan, the great lion, has been slain by the witch on the Stone Table of Death. Aslan offered himself up in place of the boy Edmund, guilty of treason and sentenced to death. The girls Lucy and Susan, like the women in our Easter reading, are with Aslan’s dead body on the stone table, weeping all night until they could weep no more.
As the girls drift away in despair, they’re startled by a thunderous “CRACK!” They whirl around and the Stone Table is broken. Like empty tomb, Aslan is nowhere to be seen! Until, sun cresting behind his golden mane, he leaps to the girls nuzzled them with his giant, beautiful face – alive again! The kitten is now a Lion and has slain the Doberman of Death. He tells the girls about the deep magic forever encoded into the creation. “When a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and death itself would start working backwards.”
The great Enemies in this Kingdom of the World – Sin and Death, vanquished like 2 birds with one stone – the stone being the one rolled away from the tomb. Sure, you still sin, but what of it? It is all forgiven! And sure, you will still die, but what of it? Death has lost its sting. After all, why look for the living among the dead? Death is not the end. In fact, in the words of the great Chicago song, “it is only the beginning, only the beginning of what I want to feel forever.”
On that note we’ll end this sermon back where it began with Handel’s Messiah. Alex Johnson, our Director of Music, is exactly right when he says the key moment in the Alleluia Chorus – which we will sing in a few minutes – is transition from “The kingdom of this world (pause – here is where Good Friday and Easter enter) Is become the kingdom of our Lord. And of His Christ, and of His Christ; And He shall reign for ever and ever, For ever and ever, forever and ever.”
Amen.