Deep in my past, in a time long before I have any conscious memory, I was riding in my grandfather’s car one day, sitting in the front seat.  This was long before child safety seats had been invented.  So, I was probably sitting there with nothing more than a diaper between me and the full metal dashboard.  All of a sudden, my grandfather came to a screeching halt and I went tumbling into the floorboard.  Papa reached down, nabbed the closest piece of anatomy he could latch onto with one hand and set me back up in the seat as we went on our way together.  For some reason, that story always humored my dad’s father.  I never remember him telling it without laughing. 

Actually, I don’t remember it at all.  I don’t remember ever being small enough to wear a diaper or to be picked up by one hand.  I don’t remember riding in my grandfather’s car that day or falling down or being picked up.  Yet, all of those things happened and became a part of my life’s story, a part of my story I only know because someone I trusted told me.  Why that story meant so much to my grandfather never made sense to me until I became a father.  Maybe telling it helped bond him to me as he grew older, helped us stay close.  Stories from our past, retold, become present tense for a moment, as though they were happening as we told them, and help us take our next steps toward an unknown future.  Maybe that’s why my grandfather reminded me of the little things that made up our history, especially about the time I fell and he was there to pick me up, even though I don’t remember it. 

It is not true that we have to have conscious memory of even very significant events for them to profoundly shape our lives.  None of us remembers the signing of the Declaration of Independence or the battle of the Alamo or Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.  All of those events played a profound role in shaping our lives yet we only know of them because someone who witnessed them told someone who trusted them and they told someone until one of those someones became the one who told you.  Even our connection to God’s work in history is based on many events of which we have no conscious memory but which we believe to be true because someone we trusted told us about them.

The apostle Paul had been the first to tell the Corinthians about Jesus.  But, like we all do, they tended to live at times as though they were a people without a history of what had made them who they were.  Paul occasionally reminded them of one event in particular of which they had no conscious memory but which had profoundly affected their lives, their eternal future.  “Now I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, through which also you are being saved . . . I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.”

By the way, who told you?  Who told you that, the day Jesus was crucified, God took man’s very worst and turned into his very best for all mankind?  Who told you that?  Paul kept referring back to the scriptures.  To the specific prophecies in what we now know of as the Old Testament where the Messiah’s coming was predicted.  Paul kept pointing back to the history of God’s work with man that finally led to Christ.  A history that included story after story of how God always takes man’s worst and turn it into his best. 

Perhaps you remember the story of Joseph because someone told you about his terribly dysfunctional family.  Son of Jacob, Joseph was the youngest brother of eleven very jealous stepbrothers.  So jealous that one day, in a fit of rage, they almost killed him.  Instead, they decided to sell him into slavery and tell his father that Joseph was dead.  They obviously intended him great harm.  But, God turned their worst into his best.  Joseph was taken in slavery all the way to Egypt.  Over time, he so impressed Pharoah that he was made second in command in Egypt.  Some years later, when a famine struck the land, Jacob’s father moved his whole family to Egypt so they could survive.  It was then that Joseph’s brothers discovered that Jacob had become a very prominent man, powerful enough to imprison or execute them for what they had done to him years before.  Instead, after Jacob’s death, Joseph made certain that his brothers and their families were well cared for.  Joseph’s brothers couldn’t believe that, though they had been so cruel to him, even meant to kill him, Joseph could respond with generosity and grace.  But, Joseph chose to interpret his experience in light of God’s grace, his power to take what is evil and redeem it for good, which is exactly what he told his brothers, “‘Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good (Genesis 50:19-20).’” 

This is the story of the Bible.  God’s power to bring good out of any evil is always greater than evil’s power to destroy what is good.  That is particularly the message of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection.  God took man’s instruments of torture and turned them into instruments of our salvation.  But, that is not just a story of something God did in the past.  In every way, Easter is a story that is still happening.  The resurrection of Jesus is a story about how God is even now taking what is bad and making something very good out of it.  This he accomplished by taking your sin, my sin, all sin of all time into himself and dying its death for us.  We’re too often fixated on a timeline when we tell the story Jesus’ resurrection.  Yet, every time we tell it, it becomes present tense reality for us now. 

Years ago I received an urgent call from the hospital where one of the church’s young boys, about two or three, had been diagnosed with spinal meningitis and wasn’t expected to live.  I found his mother standing by his bed too numb to cry anymore.  We stood there speechless for the longest time when she finally said, “I just wish I could do it for him.”  There was not one doubt in my mind that, if that mother could have, she would have taken her son’s place in that bad and transferred his disease into her body.  She would have done his suffering for him.  Her son went on to live and so did her words, “I wish I could do it for him.”

On Calvary, God’s wish to do our suffering and dying for us became his command.  He did take our place both in suffering and dying.  Time means something to us it doesn’t mean to God.  “Christ holds all our tenses, past, present and future in the syntax of his spirit (George Mason, “I See Live People,” The Wilshire Pulpit, Wilshire Baptist Church, Dallas, Texas, April 23, 2000).”  That is why the scriptures say that Jesus suffered “once for all (Hebrews 7:27).”  God isn’t keeping score!  A pastor once told his congregation that, on the cross, Jesus took sinful man in one hand and holy God in the other and pulled them back together.  I wonder who told him that.  Let’s listen to the scripture.  “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them (2 Corinthians 5:19).” 

The cross was not where a loving son played tug of war between rebellious children and a reluctant father.  The cross was not where some third party mediator did God’s work for him.  On the cross God himself was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.  The cross is where God’s wish to do our suffering for us became reality so that he could take our worst, past, present and future, and turn it, through Christ’s resurrection, into his best.  Every sin you have ever committed or ever will commit God took upon himself that day in Christ.  Every disobedience of any kind, every murder, every sinful sex act, every unholy thought, every theft, every jealousy, every rage, every adulterous deed, every betrayal, even every act every terrorist ever committed, all of it God took upon himself that day so that man’s worst could become, in God’s own good way and time, his very best.  Perhaps someone told you once that you would forever be remembered for the worst thing you did.  Who told you that?  Listen to what our Father is telling us.  Our sin is what we do.  Resurrection is what he does.  Not just 2,000 years ago, but now, and forever. 

This is the hope of the resurrection.  No matter how our life’s story has been written until now, God gets to write the last chapter.  Our resurrection story isn’t finished yet.  When you go to the nursing home and stare into the blank face of one who no longer remembers you because Alzheimer’s has robbed the memory of their story, you can remember that God gets to write the last chapter.  When you’ve just lost the love of your life, maybe a spouse of sixty or seventy years, and you’re adrift on a sea of indescribable loneliness and despair, remember that God gets to write the last chapter.  Would any of us be here today, I know I wouldn’t for sure, if it wasn’t God’s way to take our very worst and turn into his very best, to write a last chapter of resurrection where death thought it had the final word?  We are not a resurrection people only because of some ancient story about something God did in history past.  We are a resurrection people today because our very existence on the other side of sin’s death is proof that God can take our worst and turn it into his best.  Jesus died for our sin, was raised for our life, someone told us and we believed it.  We’ll never be the same because our resurrection story is still being written. 

Winston Churchill planned the details of his own funeral service which was conducted at London’s historic St. Paul’s cathedral.  Dignitaries from all over the world were in attendance and the service included many of the great hymns of our faith.  At the end of the service, after the benediction, a bugler stationed up in the dome of the cathedral began to play Taps.  Oliver Willcox Norton’s haunting tune was first used during the Civil War and has been used ever since not only to signal the end of a soldier’s day but also at memorial services for those who have served their country.  Day is done, gone the sun, from the hills, from the lake, from the sky.  All is well, safely rest, God is nigh.  Fades the light; and afar goeth day, and the stars shineth bright, fare thee well; day has gone, Night is on.

The impact on the crowd at Churchill’s funeral was profound.  People wept.  But, just then, in another place in the cathedral, another bugler began to play Reveille.  It’s time to get up, it’s time to get up, it’s time to get up in the morning.  Churchill, well known for his “never give up” speech that helped England survive World War II, was sending his last and most powerful message even from the other side of death.  He believed that Taps would only be the second to last thing he’d hear.  The final sound he believed he’d hear would be, It’s time to get up.  It’s time to get up.  It’s time to get up in the morning (Thanks to John Claypool, The Worst Things and the Last Things, Trinity Episcopal Church, New Orleans, Louisiana, September 23, 2001)!  I wonder who told him that.

You’re here today, aren’t you, because someone told you about the resurrection of Jesus.  Even though you have no conscious memory of it, someone you trusted told you and you believed them.  Who was that?  Who told you?  Who told you that your sin, all of it, Jesus took upon himself, once for all, so that it doesn’t matter anymore?  Who told you that Jesus’ resurrection means that God’s way is to take our worst and turn it into his best?  Who told you that, when we trust him, Jesus’ resurrection becomes ours, past, present and future? 

Who told you that, no matter how many chapters death may write in your life’s story, God will write the final chapter?  Who told you that the very last line on this life you now have and the very first line in the life you will have forever will be, “It’s time to get up!  It’s time to get up!  It’s time to get up in the morning!”?

Who told you?

Do you believe it?