There are two days that have earned a special place on the Christian calendar. The first day is Good Friday, the day on which we commemorate Jesus' death on the cross. The second day is Easter Sunday. On Easter Sunday we celebrate Jesus Christ's resurrection from the grave.
By now you have no doubt heard and sung the words,"Who let the dogs out?"Several weeks ago after attending a Hearts and Homes conference, several women enthusiastically offered up the new rendition, "Who let the moms out?" Well Easter is primarily concerned with, "Who let the Lord out?" Easter Sunday concerns an empty tomb, a resurrected messiah, and a resurrection hope that triumphs over death.
Our Saturdays.
Sandwiched between Good Friday and Easter Sunday is Saturday. There isn't much of anything that is theologically significant about Saturday. Author Philip Yancey is right in saying that Saturday is, "the in between day with no name."
On Saturday the disciples mourned Jesus' death as if he were lost forever. On Saturday the hopes and aspirations of Jesus' followers were dashed by the gruesome violence of Jesus' death on the cross which occurred the day before. On Saturday the disciples were haunted by the images of Jesus' body being removed from the cross, wrapped in white linens, and laid in a guarded tomb. On Saturday Jesus' disciples huddled in fear in the upper room. Their hearts were crushed by grief. They were confused and disillusioned. They wondered if they'd been duped. They felt foolish. They feared for their lives.
On Saturday the disciples didn't believe there was anything good about Friday at all! To them Friday had been a tragedy. On Friday death had seemed so real, powerful, invincible, final, and painful. Death had robbed them of everything they cherished.
Friday was the disciples' September 12.
On Friday Lara and I went to Jacksonville to see a movie and to shop around. As we left Jacksonville we came upon a horrifying accident scene. It was one of those accidents where you could sense something tragic had happened simply by viewing the expression on the faces of emergency workers who were directing traffic.
Not wanting to get entangled in the traffic jam, we tried to drive down a side street. But we got held up in the turn lane just yards from the accident scene. As I waited for the police officer's signal, just behind him emergency workers were somberly spreading a white sheet over a lifeless body that lay in the street. In Saturday's paper we discovered that a fifty-four year old woman had been walking home from Walmart when she tragically stepped out in front of a van.
That scene was a chilling reminder of how tragic and how final death is, and how tragic and final it must have seemed to Jesus' disciples on Good Friday. We are all too familiar with the images of death and life on Saturday. Like the disciples gathered in the upper room, many people live their lives on the Saturday sandwiched between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.
Many people live their lives in fear and uncertainty, looking backward to the tragic events of a Friday gone sour, not knowing to look forward to Sunday. Many people live their lives gazing backward to their most recent encounter with death. They are crushed with grief. They are full of confusion. They are disillusioned. They are filled with questions. They are refusing to believe that anything good can exist beyond the grave or that any good could possibly come of the Friday of their sorrow.
I wonder this morning how many of us are living life on Saturday? I wonder how many of us have not yet been confronted with the events of Easter Sunday? I wonder how many of us are living as if Saturday is all we will ever know?
Life in the bios.
The events of Friday deeply impact the life we try to live on Saturday. In the New Testament, written in the Greek language, there are three words for life. The first of these three words is bios. Bios refers to life as we experience it now. Bios refers to the daily grind of working, resting, and playing, and then working, resting, and playing again. Bios refers to all that concerns us today. It includes our physical well-being, our health, our desires, our hungers, our cravings, our thirst, our material pursuits, our sweat, our toil, and our worries.
On the Saturdays of our lives, bios becomes everything to us. On Saturday we cling to bios with a death grip, refusing to let go even for a moment, lest everything be lost and Friday return to haunt us.
There is a story in Luke 8:43-48 about a woman who had a severe illness for twelve years. She continually bled and became deathly ill. The Bible tells us that she expended all of her bios on doctors and medicines. She held on to bios with a death grip, fearing Friday, delaying Friday, and expending every ounce of energy and wealth to live through the Saturday of her despair. Unfortunately, she lost more bios than she gained. In the end she only found herself borrowing for life against her debt to death. Her bios had become everything, but in the end she found herself with nothing.
Are you living on Saturday?
This morning is Easter Sunday, but I know many of you are living on Saturday. You are looking backward to Friday instead of looking forward to Easter Sunday. Your fear of Friday is driving you to expend every lasting ounce of your life. You mourn the passing of time and despair of how quickly your childhood has slipped away. You lament how your body creaks and cracks and pops and buckles and loses energy. You lament how quickly your children and grandchildren have grown up and you cherish every moment, because deep down, you know your Friday is coming.
You work as if money were the wellspring of life. You clutch your possessions as if they were as important as life itself. You protect your time like a grizzly bear protecting her baby cub. You eat, drink, and live as if there is no tomorrow. You worry about every hop, skip, jump, and jitter in the stock market. You surf the cable news channels each night seeking the reassurance and naiveté you enjoyed before the morning of September 11.
Like the frenzied woman who bled for twelve years, you are pouring all your hope, energy, and resources into medicine and science. You are borrowing against your debt to death hoping to live a longer life. Like the disillusioned disciples, you are living for the present life with no sense of context. You are living as if Saturday were the only day of the week. You are living believing that all is lost in death. You are sitting in the upper room with the disciples, holding your head in your lap. You are somberly approaching Jesus' tomb with the women, expecting to tend to Jesus' body of death. You are looking backward to the Friday of your grief instead of forward to the Easter Sunday resurrection hope.
Saturday is no longer a day of rest for us.
On Saturday we work more than ever to preserve our bios, to maximize this life and all it has to offer. On Saturday the disciples despaired of life itself. They were searching for a reason to get up the next morning. They were making plans to return to their careers in fishing and collecting taxes. On Saturday they didn't realize that Sunday would bring new hope, new life, new meaning, and fresh joy. And their lack of realization was evidenced by how they lived.
If you are living on Saturday this Easter morning, you need to know that Friday is gone and Sunday has come! You need to know that Easter Sunday can put the adjective good in front of even the worst Fridays. Easter Sunday is what makes Good Friday, good Friday!
So what difference does a day make? On Easter Sunday those who loved Jesus discovered a life that transcended bios. I told you that there were three Greek words for life in the New Testament.
Life in zoe!
The second word for life in the New Testament is zoe. Where as bios refers to our life in the present, zoe refers to the life that God intends. Zoe refers to eternal life, immortal life, inextinguishable life, and invincible life! Unlike bios, zoe never fizzles out. Zoe is everlasting, it's interminable, it's timeless, it's infinite, and it's the life that is in God and of God. The woman who had been bleeding for twelve years came to Jesus after expending all her bios. She wanted more life. Fortunately, Jesus was the resurrection and the life.
The scriptures tell us that Jesus came that we might have "zoe and zoe to the full." (John 10:10) John 3:16 (NIV) says, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life (zoe)." Jesus didn't come to give us more of what we already have! He didn't come to give us bios! He didn't come to prolong life as we live it now. Rather, Jesus came to offer us the everlasting life of the Father. He came to bring us zoe. Zoe pays our debt to death so that we can live life to the full forever! For eternity!
Jesus' resurrection from the dead on Easter Sunday was God's demonstration to a bios hungry world that a better life can be found in Jesus Christ. Through the resurrection, God was teaching us that this life isn't all there is! There is more to live for. This life isn't our hope. This life isn't our destiny. This life isn't our home. This bios isn't our treasure.
You can imagine the shock of the disciples as they woke up on Easter Sunday. They were told that Jesus wasn't dead, but that he was alive. Eyewitnesses reported having seen Jesus in and around Jerusalem. The tomb was empty, its stone rolled away. Witnesses of the resurrection were coming out of the cracks and telling their stories. Death had been defeated. Jesus' life had triumphed over the grave.
A woman once wrote to J. Vernon McGee, "Our preacher said that on Easter, Jesus just swooned on the cross and that the disciples nursed him back to health. What do you think?" McGee replied, "Dear Sister, beat your preacher with a leather whip for thirty-nine heavy strokes. Nail him to a cross. Hang him in the sun for six hours. Run a spear through his heart. Embalm him. Put him in an airless tomb for three days. Then see what happens."
The miracle of Easter Sunday is that Jesus had truly died, but then he truly, physically lived. On Easter Sunday Jesus demonstrated that the zoe of God was superior to the bios of this world.
William Barrick in Christian Reader, talks about a Good Friday service that occurred at Dampara Baptist Church in Chittagong, Bangladesh. Some missionaries were showing the "Jesus" film to a packed room of Bengalis. Most all of them were seeing the film for the very first time. Little children sat on the floor in the aisles and across the front of the church. Rows of people stood in the back, craning their necks to see the crucifixion scene as depicted in the "Jesus" film. Weeping and gasps of unbelief could be heard in the shocked hush as Jesus was crucified. As the Bengalis watched, they were living and feeling the agony of Jesus' pain and the disappointment of the disciples on Saturday. In that emotional moment, one young body in the crowded church suddenly cried out, "Do not be afraid. He gets up again! I saw it before." That boy's encouraging cry, "He is risen!", sent shockwaves of hope throughout the room.
That same cry gives all of us hope this Easter Sunday. That same cry reminds us that Saturday will soon pass and that Friday wasn't the final word. Zoe alleviates the pressure we feel over the limitations of this bios, of this life. Zoe frees us from the fear of Friday and enables us to truly live life to the full now. Zoe is our death-defying resurrection hope and it is available to all who believe.
What life have you chosen for your psuche?
There is a third Greek word for life in the New Testament. That word is psuche. Psuche refers to your inner life, your living soul. In the scriptures we discover that our soul is the recipient of the kind of life we choose for ourselves. We can choose two different kinds of life for our psuche, for our soul.
The first kind of life you can choose for your psuche, or soul, is bios. Bios is the kind of life we have by default. We all have it right now as we sit here. Bios is the life that slowly fades before our very eyes. It's the life that abandons us when we want to count on it most. It's the life that cannot take us beyond the grave. It is the kind of life that that is expended day after day and that causes us to despair on the Saturdays of our lives. It's the kind of life that leaves us empty.
The second kind of life you can choose for your psuche, or soul, is zoe. Zoe is ours through faith in Jesus Christ. It is the life that is in God. Zoe is the life that never fails, that never perishes, that never spoils, that can never be exhausted, that is inextinguishable, that is everlasting, and that never leaves us hungry or thirsty or lacking or craving or despairing or wanting more.
Zoe transcends bios. It provides an eternal resting place for your soul and mine. Zoe is the resurrection hope that takes the sting out of death and carries us through our Fridays and Saturdays. Zoe gives us a reason to rise on Sunday morning to glorify God.
The bottom line is that we haven't lived until we have tasted the zoe that God offers in Jesus Christ! The life we try to build for ourselves, the bios, is the life that we fabricate through sweat and toil, through the home we live in, the automobile we drive, the clothing we wear, the jobs we work, the relationships we nurture, and the nest egg approaching. None of it even begins to compare to the zoe from God.
In Luke 12:23 (NIV) Jesus says, "Life (the soul psuche) is more than food, and the body more than clothes."
In Matthew 16:26 (NIV) Jesus asks, "What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world (bios), yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?"
In Colossians 3:1-4 (NIV) Paul says, "Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory."
Get a life, a real life.
When I was in high school certain kids used to tell me to, "Get a life." What they really meant to say was, "Live life like us, Jon. Live for the bios." I never pursued the kind of life they wanted me to pursue. Most all of those guys are living their lives on Saturday, and what a shame! They have missed it!
This Easter you need to think about what kind of life will you choose for your psuche? Will you choose bios or zoe? Will you choose this life or eternal life? Will you choose the life that is in Jesus Christ, that is everlasting, that never spoils or fades? Or will you choose the life that fizzles and fades and disappoints? Will you choose forward from resurrection Sunday, or will you keep on living backward from Saturday and looking at Friday? Why not do yourself a favor this morning? Why not get a life? A real life!
And one last thing, who let the Lord out? Who? Who?
Well, God did that for Jesus Christ and he wants to do it for you too. John 3:16 (NIV) says "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." That verse isn't talking about just anyone. It is talking about you. God wants your soul to have eternal life. He wants your psuche to have zoe.