Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

When I was a child, it was not uncommon to learn to play games like checkers, Chinese checkers, or Monopoly. Children are temperamental creatures. At some point in the games, the less mature children would become frustrated as they began to sense that they were losing. Suddenly an arm would sweep across the playing board and knock all the pieces of the game to the floor. Thus, the game would end with no one having won. If they couldn’t win, then no one would win. Then they would exit the room, leaving everyone else behind.

The Churches in the United States often impress me with the same kind of scenario. Everyone wants to play their particular game of faith and life. We must play these games, but we should be very careful how we play them. It is not proper in the Christian faith to work through our salvation by claiming that our way of understanding is the only way. There is an abundant diversity among Christian bodies around the globe. It is not possible to succeed at any kind of uniformity that would eliminate that diversity that is among us.

There are those who are sure that their particular way of playing the faith game is the only way. Some of these people are troublesome, and some are extreme. There will always be the flaps and disagreements within and among churches. I am not so sure that God wants the disagreements to end so much as God wants to know how we handle the disagreeing.

In our own time there is strain of thought that has settled into the churches. Let’s call it dispensationalism. I know that you do not use this word in our everyday conversation, but it is good to know about. Many of you have encountered dispensationalism through such books as the Left Behind series. The teachings represented in these books do not conform to classic Biblical thinking. That has not stopped the dispensationalists from claiming to possess the truth.

Most dispensationalists believe that they are the last or close-to-the last generation before Christ comes to bring final judgment on the world. Instead of seeing this prospect as cause for mourning or repentance, dispensationalists hope to be vindicated: those who are “right with God” will be saved from tribulation, and the rest damned. (Jin S. Kim, The Christian Century, March 23, p. 21)

For them the game of life comes to a halt when suddenly the hand of God sweeps across the playing board. God and, of course, God’s faithful leave the room and leave the others behind to suffer as the world is destroyed in vengeance.

But that is not the message that we hear in the Easter proclamation today. “Alleluia! Christ is risen!”

Last Sunday we heard the Passion and Death of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Luke. Jesus is sent by God into the game of life. Jesus plays by God’s rules. But humanity is playing by its own rules and cannot even recognize who is the good player. They accuse Jesus of breaking the rules. According to his accusers, Jesus is not playing by the rules. He is guilty.

The most outstanding feature of Luke’s account of the arrest, trial, torture and crucifixion of Jesus is the emphasis on Jesus’ innocence. This is, of course, a theme in all of the gospels. But in Luke it seems to be of highest significance for his telling of the story of Jesus.

Luke shares with the other gospels the story of Pilate’s interrogation of Jesus. Pilate does not understand exactly why all the uproar about this man. When he declares that he can find no guilt in Jesus, the leaders and the crowd cry out for Jesus’ death all the more. They allow themselves to be worked up into a frenzy. As the dynamic of the herd mentality kicks in, they become hungry for blood.

Perhaps we can understand the mood of the people. The nation has fallen on hard economic times. The people are oppressed by an occupying force. Rome is secured by its own ruthless power intended to terrorize the population into submission by the excessive use of torture and capital punishment, especially using the dreaded instrument of the cross.

The people are caught between an occupying force and their desire to be free. Somewhere in the middle are their leaders, who must play to Rome on the one side and to the people on the other side if they are to maintain power. It is not a pretty situation. When tensions rise, both the mobs and the leaders need a scapegoat. They need someone to blame, on whom they can direct their wrath. That way the leaders can remain in power and the people can satisfy their bloodlust.

It is Jesus who serves as the perfect candidate. Why is this? It is because Jesus comes preaching neither sedition and insurrection against Rome nor making claims for political power. That would kindle the fantasies of the people and unnerve their leaders.

What Jesus does preach is this.

I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other cities also; for I was sent for this purpose. (Luke 4:43)

The preaching of Jesus was not an announcement that God was abandoning the world. On the contrary, the proclamation was that God had not given up on God’s own work. God is moving in. Jesus proclaimed,

The kingdom of God has come near to you. (Luke 10:9)

Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, "The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, 'Look, here it is!' or 'There it is!' For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you." (Luke 17:20-21)

And Jesus told his followers what to look for as a sign of the kingdom. Jesus told the followers of John the Baptist to give the following report to their leader.

Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me. (Luke 7:22-23)

But the leaders and the mob did take offense at him for not solving their problems the way we humans like to solve them. We have our tantrums. We turn violent. We alter the truth. We demonize our enemies. We thirst for blood.

Dear brothers and sisters, the evangelist who gives us the Gospel according to Luke makes clear that Jesus is innocent. His innocent suffering and death is meant for us to behold how God loves all creation and even us human beings capable of causing suffering and death.

So important is this emphasis that Luke alters the words of the Roman centurion at the cross. Instead of saying, "Truly this man was God's Son!" (Mark 15:39), in Luke “the centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God and said, ‘Certainly this man was innocent’” (Luke 23:4).

Luke thereby gives great witness to the deep involvement of God in the human condition. God’s wrath against all human destructive behavior is not countered by an act of revenge. God, rather, absorbs our hate, our poison, and our inclination toward evil.

Luke tells the story of the disciples discovering the empty tomb. The two men in the tomb tell the disciples,

Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again. (Luke 24:5-7)

Jesus’ suffering and death were the inevitable outcome of God’s non-violent resistance to our sin. But the death he suffered is now for us the death of death. For death no longer has dominion over us who hear the Easter proclamation, “Alleluia! Christ is risen!”

What we hear in these words is that God, in fact, has set up the game and will see to it that it is played according to God’s rules. “Alleluia. Christ is risen” is the church’s proclamation that God is deeply involved in this game of life. Even if we do not want to play by the rules, God is still deeply involved in the game. Even if God appears to be losing at the game, God does not have a tantrum, turn over the board, and walk out of the room. Game over. Everybody wins. Amen.