Wiping Away Our Tears
Rev. John J. Lolla, Jr.
April 1, 2018
Text: Isaiah 25:8,O.T.: Isaiah 25:6-9,N.T.: John 20:1-18
Loss is a powerful emotion. Anxiety wells in us when we lose something important. When we lose someone we love too much to lose, tears well up in us. Tearsfrom loss canflood the past, present, and future.
Grief blocks us from seeing God’s blessings. God’s past blessings are hidden. God’s future blessings are blocked from view. Grief’s tearsblind our vision of God’s goodness.
Easter is God’s intervention in our tears. Our heavenly Father’s raising of Jesus Christ to eternal life does not protect us from loss. Christians still experience loss in loving someone too much to lose. Easter is God’s hand, wiping away our tears so we can see His love amid our loss.
Easter doesn’t prevent us from crying. It doesn’t stop grief from overcoming us. God’s Easter intervention in the world does not end death.
God frees us from death’s power to blind us in unending grief by raising Jesus Christ. Easter gives us confidence that life is eternal. There’s a future beyond death through Jesus Christ. Eternal lifewipes away our tears.
Easter emancipates Christ’s believers from loss. Easter gives us Christ’s companionship. Easter reassures us Christ is always with us. He does not leave our side. Nor does He ignore ourtears. His pierced hands reach through time and space to wipe away our tears, so we can see God’s blessings.
The Cross brought grief to Jesus’ followers. They huddled in the Upper Room. Fear and anxiety clouded their eyes. If He had not returned on Easter, they would have been paralyzed. They would have been trapped by the trauma of Jesus’ horrible fate.
Instead, each disciple burst from the darkness of devastating loss into Jerusalem’s streets. Their confidence was restored by Jesus’ resurrection. Their joy exceeded their despair before Jesus’ resurrection. Their conviction that God hadoverpowered death was unshaken after Easter’s resurrection. Each showed the Romans and Jews God had wiped away their tears.
Peter had betrayed Jesus before the resurrection. He had every reason to be buried beneath mountains of guilt. He had no business showing his face publicly. He had been one of Jesus’ first followers, chosen especially by the Master to make disciples of all nations. Peter’s betrayal of Jesus’ trust should have kept him from mentioning Jesus, let alone being one of Jesus’ key leaders.
After the resurrection Peter became a missionary giant! He boldly entered Jerusalem’s streets to proclaim Christ’s resurrection from the dead. He did this despite denying his relationship with Jesus three times three days earlier.
Peter didn’t want to face the Cross before the resurrection. After Easter,Peter let everyone know that God had created a new world through the Cross of Jesus. Petersaw God’s tremendous future revealed by Easter. Peter lived the rest of his life liberated from grief and fear. God had wiped away Peter’s tears.
Grief and feargenerate all sorts of emotions for those who are trapped by death’s grip. Some people respond to grief with vengeance. Angry, bitter tears cloud their eyes to God’s goodness and mercy. I once had a church member say he saw red through tears of vengeance one night. He then did something that put him in prison for ten years. That’s an extreme example of the power in tears that are angered by injustice. They prevent us from seeing God’s love.
This can be especially true when innocent people are victims of injustice. Those who mourn injustice can become consumed by powerful anger toseek retribution. They want an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth – as the Bible describes. Their grief isn’t resolved until a price is paid by those responsible for the injustice.
The Apostle Peter is again Easter’s focal point. Here was an Apostle willing to defend Jesus with the sword before the Master was arrested. Here was an Apostle not afraid to stop an injustice by resorting to injustice – at least at first.
Peter was overwhelmed with anger before the prospects of Jesus’ crucifixion. He thought he had every reason to seek vengeance against those who condemned Jesus. He took up the sword and stopped seeing God’s love.
Peter could have joined Judas Iscariot in hopelessness after Jesus was crucified. He could have lost total faith in God and cried for a revolution against the Romans.
But Peter responded to Easter’s loss with confidence and conviction. Not once did Peter demand Jesus’ followers avenge the injustice perpetrated against Jesus by the Romans, the Sanhedrin, and the Jerusalem crowd. Not once did Peter show anger in the face of continuing opposition and hostility against Jesus or him by the authorities or the public.
Peter’s vision of God’s lovewasn’t clouded by tears of hatred. Not once did Peter’s bitterness against injustice lead him to vengeance. His vision after Easter was enlightened, brightened by Jesus’ resurrection. God overcame the Cross’ injustice. God vindicated Jesus’ innocence. Injustice had no power against God’s love. The Empty Tomb became the lens through which Peter saw hope in God’s love.
Jesus’ pierced hands wiped away Peter’s tears in the Upper Room. Jesus’ warm heart offered grace to wipe away ten other Apostles’ tears in the Upper Room – behind locked doors. Jesus’ mother Mary’s tears, Mary Magdalene’s tears, the other followers who were victims of the injustice against Jesus had their tears wiped away by the power of God’s love in the resurrection.
Every day friends you and I are tempted to cry tears of grief. Feelings of loss can overwhelm us the farther we travel along life’s journey. The injustices we see and feel powerless to prevent can alienate us from seeing God’s love in theblessings around us.
God doesn’t intend for us to live with our eyes clouded by tears. Nor does He desire for us to live as angry souls seeking retribution for the injustice we see about us. In either case, we’ll be blind to God’s love in Easter.
But neither does God shield us from life’s reality. On Easter day God has shown us a greater vision by which to live. On this day He intervened in life to display the greatness of His mighty love. Today, Jesus Christ revealed a glimpse of the Kingdom of Heaven where there are no tears and there is no injustice - where the faithful live forever.
Twelve years ago, the Old Order Amish of West Nickel Minesreminded us God wipes away the tears of families whose lives are shattered by murder. They had lost five innocent little girls to Satan. But Jesus’ resurrection cleared their vision. Their children were victorious by the grace of Jesus Christ. The Amish forgave the shooter. It was remarkable. They showed America and the world the victory of Jesus Christ’s love. This is what Christians do when God wipes away their tears to show them the glory of eternal life!
Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina reminded us God wipes away the tears of a congregation that was shattered by racial hatred. Nine members of the Church were shot and killed during a prayer service, including the pastor, who was also a state senator.
The shooter had tried to start a racial war. Instead, he was forgiven by church members to the public’s utter amazement. Many complained forgiveness was inappropriate, including several prominent Church clergy and media writers.
But when God wipes away our tears through Easter, there is a greater principle involved. That greater principle is that God reconciles the world through His love in Christ’s resurrection. The greater principle is that Christians who claim they believe in Jesus as their Lord and Savior are tested every time an injustice is perpetrated against brothers and sisters in Christ. It’s God’s test to see just how willing are we to let Him wipe away our tears so we can still see His Easter love.
Throughout Christian history, such moments are defining moments of faith in God’s love.
Has God really wiped away your tears of loss by the promise of the resurrection?
Do you really see the victory of Jesus’ resurrection vindicating the righteous sufferer? Do you really believe what you say you believe?
Or, are your tears of loss greater than your capacity to believe in God’s love that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things?
There is no other event in the history of humankind that shows death has no power over seeing God’s love in Easter. There is no other event in human history that compels people of faith in God to see beyond their desire for retribution to forgive the sinner who has crucified God’s love on the Cross.
God didn’t condemn the sinner to death. He showed the sinner hope through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ’s resurrection grace. God forgives the crucifiers. His love compels us to show equal grace to crucifiers of God’s love.
The Old Order Amish gave us as clear a vision of Easter as the families of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church did in Charleston, South Carolina. Their steadfast sight of God’s lovein the face of death and their capability to offer forgiving love after death’s injustice is evidence that God wipes away our tears, so we can see His love no matter how great the injustice.
The Apostle Paul spoke about Easter love in I Corinthians 13. He wrote, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. But now that I am an adult, I have given up childish ways.”
Paul is describing how Easter wipes away the tears of childish innocence. We read many books in our childhoods that ended with the assurance everyone lives happily ever after in this life. It was a fantasy where injustice doesn’t exist. We know as adults, life isn’t a utopia. Injustice is real.
But injustice doesn’t control life. God’s love controls life. We learned this as adults through Easter. Easter shows us the reality of injustice in this world is overcome by God in Jesus’ resurrection.
We can only see this as mature adults, who know suffering’s reality and understand the greatness of what God did in raising Jesus Christ from the dead. God wiped away the tears of childlike innocence in believing we live in a fantasy world, so that we can see with adult vision the importance of eternal life.
When we leave here today, we are going back out into a real world where God’s love is being crucified by hate, jealousy, greed, pride, and a hundred other sins. Are you only going to see the world’s sins and be disheartened by not seeing God’s love through your tears?
Or, are you going to see the glory of God’s love clearing your vision bythe resurrection of Jesus Christ. Easter gives you that glimpse of God’s love in His eternal kingdom. It’s all you need to see clearly God’s love in this world!
Thanks be to God - through Jesus Christ our Lord!
Happy Easter!
Amen.
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