Roland H. Bainton - Easter Service (April 17, 1960)
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| - | "I am the Resurrection and the Life." | 0:22 |
| "If a man believe it in me though he were dead," | 0:24 | |
| "yet shall he live." | 0:28 | |
| That affirmation made the Christian Church. | 0:33 | |
| One may doubt whether they would've been a Christian Church | 0:37 | |
| had it not been for the Resurrection. | 0:40 | |
| It is a possibility. | 0:43 | |
| The apostle Paul records | 0:47 | |
| that the Lord appeared to 500 brethren at once. | 0:48 | |
| They had gathered together after the crucifixion | 0:52 | |
| and before they had had any experience of the Resurrection, | 0:56 | |
| per chance, if no such experience had come, | 1:01 | |
| they might have continued to gather | 1:04 | |
| and there might have been a church. | 1:06 | |
| It is doubtful, | 1:09 | |
| for the very center of the affirmation of the early Church | 1:12 | |
| was that Christ was risen from the dead. | 1:16 | |
| The cross does not appear in Christian art for 300 years. | 1:20 | |
| And when it first appears, it is surmounted by a circle. | 1:26 | |
| The circle is a wreath, the laurel wreath, | 1:31 | |
| the wreath of victory. | 1:36 | |
| And the victory is over death. | 1:38 | |
| Without the faith in the Resurrection, | 1:45 | |
| there would scarcely have been a church. | 1:49 | |
| It is a faith which has sustained men | 1:53 | |
| throughout the centuries, | 1:55 | |
| consoled them in grief, | 1:58 | |
| strengthened them in trial, | 2:01 | |
| inspired them to endeavor, | 2:04 | |
| and even to persecution. | 2:08 | |
| In order to save their souls | 2:11 | |
| and to save the souls of others. | 2:13 | |
| But it is a faith, which in our own days, attenuated. | 2:18 | |
| I read a book recently on death, | 2:23 | |
| a symposium by a number of authors. | 2:26 | |
| And only one, even so much as spoke of life after death. | 2:30 | |
| It was the psychologist Jung. | 2:39 | |
| He affirmed immortality | 2:44 | |
| or the likelihood of immortality in the first place | 2:46 | |
| because of the universal belief of mankind | 2:49 | |
| for, said Jung, the subconscious | 2:53 | |
| is a better clue to truth and the conscious, | 2:57 | |
| and therefore, the universal belief of the simple | 3:00 | |
| has more truth value than the doubts of the sophisticated. | 3:03 | |
| He affirmed also the truth of telepathy. | 3:09 | |
| And he said in that case, spirit can communicate with spirit | 3:12 | |
| without the medium of the body. | 3:16 | |
| But he was the only one in the whole book, | 3:20 | |
| and the rest simply described how men die | 3:23 | |
| and suggested how to make easier | 3:29 | |
| the encounter with the inevitable. | 3:33 | |
| I have even heard Easter sermons | 3:38 | |
| in which it was said | 3:42 | |
| that we must reconcile ourselves to this, | 3:44 | |
| that immortality is only the continuity | 3:47 | |
| of influence. | 3:54 | |
| Against such a view, the heart cries out. | 3:58 | |
| The mother is not satisfied when she has lost a babe | 4:03 | |
| to hear of the continuity of influence. | 4:09 | |
| Young couple friends of mine recently (clears throat) | 4:15 | |
| lost a little child | 4:20 | |
| just on the point of beginning to speak. | 4:21 | |
| The child had been continually getting out of her crib. | 4:24 | |
| So they put on a little extra railing around the fence, | 4:28 | |
| and she got through and caught her neck in the railing | 4:32 | |
| and was strangled. | 4:37 | |
| And they asked, what is the meaning of this brief life? | 4:40 | |
| Is this all? | 4:47 | |
| Shall we never meet again? | 4:50 | |
| The husband who has lost a wife, the wife of his youth, | 4:55 | |
| the companion of his years. | 5:01 | |
| When she is gone, faces the most frightful ordeal, | 5:04 | |
| which comes to mortal man. | 5:10 | |
| He reviews the years. | 5:13 | |
| He thinks of unkind words spoken, | 5:16 | |
| of kindness as contemplated, but not done. | 5:19 | |
| He is rebellious to think that to see her again, | 5:24 | |
| he must wait 'til he too crosses the great divide. | 5:28 | |
| And if, when the divide comes, | 5:32 | |
| neither she is there nor he, it is unbearable. | 5:37 | |
| A son who has had a choice companionship | 5:45 | |
| with father for 50 years feels it. | 5:48 | |
| And here, I can speak out of my own life. | 5:52 | |
| The last weeks of my father's life | 5:58 | |
| contained a little episode, | 6:02 | |
| which afterwards became for me a parable. | 6:04 | |
| He was lying in his bed, | 6:09 | |
| looking out of the window on Long Island Sound, | 6:10 | |
| and he liked to watch the ships come and go, | 6:13 | |
| and he looked at them through glasses. | 6:15 | |
| And my sister gave him a small telescope, | 6:19 | |
| but he found that it was not even as good | 6:23 | |
| as his field glasses. | 6:25 | |
| So she took it back to the dealer and he saw nothing wrong | 6:27 | |
| but gave her another, and she tried it again. | 6:30 | |
| It was no better, and she took it home | 6:32 | |
| and set it up in an upper room. | 6:34 | |
| And just then, | 6:38 | |
| she saw her husband and son coming down the street | 6:38 | |
| and she raised the window and asked them to wait a minute | 6:41 | |
| while she trained the glass on them | 6:44 | |
| to see if it was any good. | 6:45 | |
| And to her amazement, | 6:47 | |
| it was as if they were walking into the room. | 6:49 | |
| On every previous occasion, the window had been down | 6:52 | |
| and the glass had refracted the light | 6:56 | |
| and spoiled the telescope. | 6:59 | |
| This time, she had it up. | 7:00 | |
| Father enjoyed his telescope but briefly. | 7:04 | |
| On his 75th birthday, | 7:08 | |
| we had in the evening a party for him. | 7:09 | |
| At eight o'clock, he said he was tired and went up to bed, | 7:12 | |
| and the next day he was gone. | 7:16 | |
| And then this little episode became a parable. | 7:20 | |
| I felt as if the window had gone down. | 7:23 | |
| And dimly beyond, | 7:28 | |
| I could feel a presence stirring. | 7:31 | |
| And now, after 20 years, | 7:38 | |
| I still await the day when the pain will lift, | 7:43 | |
| and there will be an image clear and well-defined. | 7:49 | |
| The heart cries out against an ultimate parting. | 7:55 | |
| So also does the head, | 8:03 | |
| but we cannot believe | 8:06 | |
| that God will suffer the beautiful and the noble to perish, | 8:08 | |
| or that man will be divided from his own finest creations. | 8:15 | |
| Count Romanoff, the Imperial Grand Duke of Russia, | 8:22 | |
| wrote these lines: | 8:25 | |
| "There is no death for in the great hereafter," | 8:27 | |
| "remembrance of this life shall have its part," | 8:30 | |
| "nor shall our griefs and sorrows," | 8:34 | |
| "joys and laughter in the last sleep" | 8:36 | |
| "depart from mind and heart." | 8:39 | |
| "The eye that flamed, inspired with glorious vision." | 8:42 | |
| "Shall it be blind and deaf, the listening ear?" | 8:45 | |
| "Shall the freed spirit, bent on its new mission," | 8:49 | |
| "fail to commune with those on earth held dear?" | 8:53 | |
| "Will Raphael in that life of bliss and wonder" | 8:57 | |
| "forget the Virgin, which his genius wrought?" | 9:01 | |
| "Will Mozart cease to love his requiem yonder?" | 9:05 | |
| "Will Shakespeare give his Hamlet no more thought?" | 9:10 | |
| "No, it can never be." | 9:14 | |
| "That which gave life its merit on this, our earth," | 9:16 | |
| "shall still be ours to love" | 9:20 | |
| "in forms perfected by the gracious Spirit," | 9:22 | |
| "who gives this life and fuller life above." | 9:25 | |
| We cannot believe that the beautiful and good will perish. | 9:32 | |
| But yet, | 9:36 | |
| the head also prompts us to doubt and to deny | 9:39 | |
| for in our own lives, needed by experience nor by analogy, | 9:47 | |
| do we find anything which would warrant us in believing | 9:53 | |
| that life can survive the extinction of the body. | 9:57 | |
| Body and spirit are so intimately connected. | 10:03 | |
| If a blow on the head will make a man an idiot, | 10:07 | |
| will a heavier blow make him an angel? | 10:10 | |
| If a damage to the cerebral system will impair intelligence, | 10:14 | |
| will the complete end of the whole cerebral system | 10:20 | |
| restore all of our faculties? | 10:23 | |
| And then there is the cycle of growth and of decay. | 10:28 | |
| Out of oblivion, we come. | 10:34 | |
| We develop inter consciousness. | 10:36 | |
| We mature. | 10:40 | |
| We decline. | 10:42 | |
| And it's not always true that as the outward man decays, | 10:44 | |
| the spiritual man is renewed | 10:47 | |
| because sometimes the aged sink into senescence. | 10:49 | |
| And it would appear that they are passing into that oblivion | 10:54 | |
| out of which we came. | 11:00 | |
| This experience, these analogies, they point to darkness. | 11:04 | |
| But then, the Resurrection, | 11:16 | |
| is that not a fact and the proof of life to come? | 11:19 | |
| Yes, but the Resurrection itself | 11:25 | |
| is for us to be grasped only by an act of faith. | 11:30 | |
| We can't prove it. | 11:34 | |
| We weren't there. | 11:36 | |
| We did not put our hands in the nail prints. | 11:38 | |
| We have the testimony of the witnesses. | 11:42 | |
| We believe in the reliability of the witnesses | 11:46 | |
| for they gave their lives for their faith. | 11:48 | |
| We assume the credibility of the witnesses. | 11:52 | |
| We can argue from the power of the Resurrection | 11:57 | |
| in the life of the church. | 12:00 | |
| When Athanasius defended the Resurrection, | 12:02 | |
| he, as a matter of fact, | 12:06 | |
| appealed not to the testimony of the witnesses, | 12:07 | |
| but to the life of the Church. | 12:10 | |
| He said: "Behold, our lives now are being transformed." | 12:12 | |
| "And is he a dead Christ" | 12:16 | |
| "who is working these miracles in our midst?" | 12:18 | |
| We can give reasons for believing in the Resurrection, | 12:25 | |
| but still, it is believing. | 12:32 | |
| We walk by faith and not by sight. | 12:36 | |
| And we are compelled to reckon with the possibility | 12:42 | |
| that death may be the end. | 12:47 | |
| And if that should be true, we can take comfort | 12:51 | |
| in the words of Robert Ingersoll who said, | 12:55 | |
| "And suppose the death does end all." | 12:59 | |
| "Next to eternal joy, next to being forever" | 13:03 | |
| "with those we love and those who have loved us," | 13:07 | |
| "next to that, is to be wrapped in the dreamless drapery" | 13:09 | |
| "of eternal peace." | 13:14 | |
| "Next to eternal life is eternal sleep." | 13:16 | |
| "Upon the shadowy shore of death," | 13:20 | |
| "the sea of trouble casts no wave." | 13:22 | |
| "Eyes that have been curtained by the everlasting dark" | 13:26 | |
| "will never know again the burning touch of tears." | 13:30 | |
| "Lips touched by eternal silence | 13:34 | |
| "will never speak again the broken words of grief." | 13:36 | |
| "Hearts of dust do not break." | 13:41 | |
| "The dead do not weep." | 13:43 | |
| "Within the tomb no veiled and weeping sorrow sits," | 13:45 | |
| "and in the rayless gloom is crouched no shuddering fear." | 13:50 | |
| If this be all, | 13:58 | |
| we can thank God for what he has given. | 14:01 | |
| And wrap the drapery of our culture about us | 14:06 | |
| and lie down to dreamless sleep. | 14:10 | |
| But that is not our Christian faith. | 14:15 | |
| We must remember, however, that our faith is faith. | 14:20 | |
| It is not sight, it is not knowledge. | 14:24 | |
| And it is a stupendous faith | 14:27 | |
| because it is faith in a miracle. | 14:29 | |
| Immortality is a miracle. | 14:32 | |
| A miracle involves discontinuity. | 14:35 | |
| In immortality, there is continuity and discontinuity. | 14:39 | |
| Continuity of memory, we believe, but discontinuity, | 14:41 | |
| in that life will have to continue | 14:45 | |
| on new terms without this physical body. | 14:47 | |
| And that kind of discontinuity is a miracle | 14:51 | |
| and only God can give it. | 14:55 | |
| It's no greater miracle, of course, than Creation. | 14:58 | |
| God said, "Let there be light." | 15:02 | |
| And there was light. | 15:04 | |
| It is no greater miracle than our expanding universe. | 15:07 | |
| And now, we are told that it is expanding | 15:11 | |
| and that even now, creation is taking place out of nothing. | 15:13 | |
| It is no more a miracle than birth, | 15:18 | |
| for God calls us out of darkness into light, and light. | 15:22 | |
| But it is a miracle. | 15:28 | |
| The Apostle Paul says we should all be changed | 15:30 | |
| in a moment in the twinkling of an eye. | 15:34 | |
| The corruptible must put on interruptability. | 15:37 | |
| The perishable must put on the imperishable. | 15:40 | |
| We shall be clothed upon, but not with this body, | 15:44 | |
| for there are bodies terrestrial and bodies celestial. | 15:47 | |
| We shall be changed. | 15:51 | |
| Continuity, discontinuity. | 15:54 | |
| John in the epistle says, | 16:00 | |
| "Beloved, we are the sons of God" | 16:02 | |
| "and it does not appear what we shall be." | 16:04 | |
| "But when He appears, we shall be like him." | 16:07 | |
| "We shall be changed." | 16:14 | |
| And if we are not changed, | 16:20 | |
| the thought of endless immortality | 16:23 | |
| is staggering and unbearable. | 16:26 | |
| Can we face going on forever and forever and forever? | 16:32 | |
| I dropped into a museum | 16:40 | |
| and saw a specimen of an insect | 16:41 | |
| that had been drowned in amber three million years ago. | 16:43 | |
| Think it going on for three million years. | 16:49 | |
| Or one million. | 16:53 | |
| Or one thousand. | 16:56 | |
| If one went on that long, | 17:01 | |
| this present life would be so little. | 17:05 | |
| Would its memories become vague reminiscences? | 17:11 | |
| Should we remember our children? | 17:18 | |
| Our parents? | 17:21 | |
| Could we go on? | 17:28 | |
| Or after a thousand years, | 17:31 | |
| might we not cry out for extinction | 17:33 | |
| and everlasting sleep? | 17:38 | |
| It is possible only if we are changed. | 17:42 | |
| Lifted beyond time and space. | 17:49 | |
| Made into denizens of eternity. | 17:55 | |
| "Beloved, now, are we the sons of God?" | 18:01 | |
| "And it does not appear what we shall be," | 18:03 | |
| "but when He comes we shall be like Him." | 18:05 | |
| Like Him. | 18:11 | |
| Truly. | 18:15 | |
| We shall have to participate in the very nature of God | 18:18 | |
| If we are to be capable with Him | 18:24 | |
| of sharing in eternity. | 18:28 | |
| And if that then be so, | 18:34 | |
| how shall we walk in this, our present pilgrimage? | 18:37 | |
| The apostles said, "Christ is risen from the dead." | 18:43 | |
| "Look, then, to the things that are above." | 18:49 | |
| "Set not your affections upon the things that are below," | 18:53 | |
| "but on the things that are above," | 18:58 | |
| "and mortify your desires." | 19:02 | |
| Unless we set our minds on the things that are above, | 19:07 | |
| how intolerable will immortality be? | 19:12 | |
| If no longer there is the flesh, | 19:18 | |
| if our whole existence centers around the delight of the eye | 19:22 | |
| and the lusts of the flesh. | 19:26 | |
| If we are given immortality without the body, | 19:29 | |
| truly, we shall be like salmon | 19:33 | |
| that have tried to leap a dam, | 19:35 | |
| and have fallen on the concrete ledge, | 19:37 | |
| and are gasping for their element. | 19:41 | |
| Only if we know the life of the Spirit | 19:47 | |
| shall we be capable | 19:56 | |
| of continued life in the Spirit. | 19:58 | |
| Wherefore, beloved brethren, | 20:07 | |
| said the apostle, | 20:11 | |
| "Abound in the work of the Lord." | 20:14 | |
| "Set your affections not on the things that are below," | 20:18 | |
| "but on the things that are above, | 20:22 | |
| "that when He comes, we may be like Him," | 20:26 | |
| "and be capable of life with Him." | 20:34 | |
| Let us pray. | 20:40 | |
| Eternal and everlasting Father, | 20:48 | |
| who art yesterday, today, and tomorrow, | 20:52 | |
| who has brought us from darkness into light, | 20:57 | |
| and are able to take us from light into Thy glory, | 21:02 | |
| so do Thou strengthen us | 21:09 | |
| while we walk on this, our pilgrimage. | 21:11 | |
| But when our days are done, | 21:15 | |
| we shall be capable of enjoying Thy fellowship | 21:18 | |
| and of dwelling with Thee for ages and ages | 21:23 | |
| through Jesus Christ, our Lord. | 21:30 | |
| Amen. | 21:34 | |
| (solemn organ music) | 21:48 | |
| (choir and congregation singing) | 21:59 |
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