The Living Christ
“Our changeful lives are ebbing to an end; Onward to darkness and to death we tend; O Conqueror of the grave, be thou our guide, Be thou our light in death’s dark eventide; Then in our mortal hour will be no gloom, No sting in death, no terror in the tomb.”
It always does us good to let the gospel of a risen, living Christ afresh into our heart. We need it in our life of care and struggle. It is an old truth, but it is one we forget, one, at least, whose power over us needs constant renewal.
The women were heart-broken when they found not the body of their Friend in the sepulcher. But suppose they had found it there, still held in the power of death! Suppose Jesus had never risen; what would have been the consequences? It would have been as if the sun, moon and stars were all blotted from the sky.
If you lay imprisoned in some great fortress
262 and one who loved you went forth to try to rescue you, and fell and died fighting upon the walls, you would cherish the memory of your friend’s valiant effort on your behalf, but you would still remain in chains, undelivered. So would it have been with those whom Christ came to save, if he had perished in death, and had not risen. He would have been defeated in his great effort, and those for whom he gave his life would have been undelivered. Think of all the hopes of which the empty grave is the symbol — hopes for ourselves and for our dead who have fallen asleep in Jesus; hopes for this life and for the life to come, — and remember that none of these would have been ours if the women had found the body of Jesus in the grave that morning.
The angel said he was risen. Until that morning, death had been an unquestioned conqueror. Into his dark realms he had been gathering his harvests from all the generations of men. Every human life — the rich, the poor, the great, the small, the strong, the weak — had been compelled to yield to death’s scepter and to pass under his yoke. Nor had any ever come again from his dark prison. True, a few persons in Old Testament days and a few at the bidding of our Lord himself, had been returned
263 to life; but these were not resurrections. They only came back for a little while to the old life of struggle, suffering, sorrow and pain. Until that first Easter morning, no one had ever disputed death’s sway or wrested himself from the grasp of the conqueror.
“Why seek ye the living among the dead?” asked the angel. A marginal reading is, “him that liveth,” that is, the one alone who really lives. He lives in himself, a life underived, independent, original. Our lives are only fragments. We do not have life in ourselves. How frail we are, even physically, fainting under light burdens, tiring on short journeys! How weak we are in our purposes, in our endeavors, and how we falter and fail in our efforts! How helpless we are in the face of opposition, driven like swirling autumn leaves before the storms! How little we accomplish! How small an impression we make on the world’s life! But in contrast with all this, think of the infinite life of Christ, perfect, full, rich, changeless, eternal. He is the Life, the living One. We live only in him. Our broken fragments of life have their hope only in his eternal life.
The women had brought spices, expecting to find his body wrapped in burial garments, lying in the rock. “He is not here,” said the angel.
Too many Christians look yet for their Chnst among the dead. They do not get beyond the cross and the grave. They see Christ as the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. They think of him as accomplishing in his passion the whole of his work of human redemption. They do not think of a living Christ who intercedes for them in heaven and who walks with them on earth in loving companionship.
The cross must never be forgotten. In a certain very real sense Christ saved the world by giving himself for it.
“From thy blessed gloom The hope of all the world doth rise and sing j By thy sweet pain immortal joy is won $ And in the happy shadow of thy tomb Is hid the root of Easter’s blossoming.”
There could have been no Easter without a Good Friday; no rising again, without the dying on the cross. Christ must taste death for every man before he could offer deathless life to every man. The mark of the cross is on every hope of Christian faith. The light that shines in soft lustre throughout the world streams from Calvary. The sorrow of that day is that which is softening all human hearts and making all life
265 gentler and sweeter. The cross was the fullest, completest revealing of love that earth has ever seen. There the heart of God broke, that its streams of life might flow out to give life to the world. To leave a dying Christ out of our creed is to leave out salvation. The prints of the nails are the proof-marks on all doctrine, on all theology, on all Christian life. He who dims the lustre of the cross of Christ is putting out the light of Christian hope by which alone souls can be lighted homeward. In the holy sacrament, which means so much to Christian faith, it is the broken body and the blood of Christ that are kept before the eye of believers by the sacred memorials. We must never forget that Jesus was dead — dead for us.
But if our faith stops at the cross, it misses the blessing of the fullest revealing of Christ. We need not merely a Saviour who nineteen hundred years ago went to death to redeem us, but one who also is alive to walk by our side in loving companionship. We want a Saviour who can hear our prayers; to whose feet we can creep in penitence when we have sinned; to whom we can call for help when the battle is going against us; a Saviour who is interested in all of the affairs of our common life and who can assist us in time of need; who can be our
266 real Friend, loving us, keeping close beside us always,
“Closer than breathing, nearer than hands and feet.”
We want a Saviour who saves us not alone by one great act wrought centuries ago, but by a life warm and throbbing with love to-day, walking ever by our side.
It is for love that our hearts hunger. The bread that will satisfy us is not the bread merely of memorial, the memory of a great devotion and sacrifice long, long since, but the bread of love, living, present, warm and throbbing. Nothing less than a living Christ will do for us. That is what the gospel brings to us. It tells us of him that liveth. He was dead — the nail-prints are in his hands — but he is now alive forevermore. He is risen. He loves us now, to-day, always. He is with us.
While we praise the love that was crucified for us, we crave love from a Saviour who lives. Memories of affection are not enough to feed a hungry soul. Memories of a friend who has gone away may be very sweet. They fill our life with fragrance. The odors of love departed stay in a home, like the perfume of sweet flowers when the flowers have been borne away. But how unsatisfying are the mere memories of our
267 friend when our heart hungers for love’s presence and touch and tenderness! No more will the mere memories of the Love that died on the cross for us satisfy our cravings for Christ. “My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God,” cries every human heart. It is only as we realize the truth of a living Christ that our hearts are satisfied. We crave love — a presence, a bosom to lean upon, a hand to touch ours, a heart whose beatings we can feel, a personal friendship that will come into our life with its sympathies, its inspirations, its companionship, its shelter, its life, its comfort. All this the living Christ is to us.
“For warm, sweet, tender, even yet
A present help is he 5
And faith has still its Olivet,
And love its Galilee.”
The angel’s word to the women, with its gentle chiding, may be spoken also to Christians whose dead have been laid in the grave. “Why seek ye him that liveth among the dead?” We think of our friends as in the grave instead of in heaven. Sacred, indeed, becomes the little spot in “God’s acre” where sleeps the form of our beloved. All we know of our friends is associated with their bodily presence. The
268 soul looks out through eyes that we can see. The love that is so tender reveals itself to us in the touch of a real hand, in the tones of a human voice and in the glow of a living face. Everything about the dear life becomes sacred — the attitudes, the step on the floor, the chair, the room, the desk, the books, the tools, the garments, the places made familiar by association. We cannot see the inner life; we know our friend only in the form in which his spirit lives. Hence it is hard for us to think of him apart from this well-known form. When death has come and the body is only a frail and empty tent, out of which our friend has moved, it is hard for us to think of him as being elsewhere. It is natural that we should prize still the form that has grown so dear.
The women came with their spices to anoint the body of Jesus. That was beautiful. It is fitting that we plant flowers upon the graves where the bodies of our beloved sleep. We keep in sacred remembrance everything in which they live. We believe, too, in the truth of resurrection. Christ has conquered death and holds in his hand the keys of the grave. Our beloved shall rise again. It is right, therefore, that we should honor the body of the friend who was so much to us in life.
But too many think of their Christian dead only as sleeping in the grave. Their eyes look down into the darkness of the tomb with sad longing, and not upward toward the brightness of heaven, with blessed hope. The angel’s voice is heard to-day, speaking to every sorrowing heart: “Why seek ye the living among the dead?” Our sainted ones have entered into life.
The truth of the living Christ should lift all our days out of dreary commonplace and fill them with heavenly brightness. If only we realized the power of the endless life, it would make all life glorious. The expectation of continuance, of a future, affects all our life. If we knew there would be no to-morrow, that when the sun goes down to-night it would not rise again, that with the night’s horizon all life hereafter would be cut off, the tasks to be taken up again no more forever, would we care for the things we are doing? It is the hope of to-morrow that gives meaning to the duties and tasks of to-day. The things we are doing seem worth doing because they are beginnings which shall have their fuller meanings, their completeness, in the days to come. It is hope that gives interest and zest to life.
Richter tells of a beautiful dream. He was
270 lost in the vast spaces, and he saw sailing toward him, amid galaxies of stars, a dark globe in a sea of light. He saw on it a little child. At last he recognized our earth in the dark globe, and in the form of the child, Jesus, who looked upon him with a light so bright, gentle and loving, that he awoke for joy. No matter how dark life may seem to us, while the living Christ appears, all is well. His presence illumines any gloom. The shining of his face gives peace in any storm.