P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

REVERSIBLE ASSASSINATIONS

It was CBS's Walter Cronkite who had to bring the tragic news to a stunned world. Friday afternoon, November 22, 1963, and with his voice cracking with emotion, the seasoned anchorman went on the air with this announcement:

*** "From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official: President Kennedy died, at one p.m. Central Standard Time, two o'clock Eastern Standard Time, some 38 minutes ago." ***

All during that horrific weekend, and for weeks to follow, friends and followers had to endlessly AGONIZE over the trip to Dallas, Texas. Why had Kennedy gone? Senator Fulbright, who had advised against the trip, heard the news in Washington's F Street Club, and threw down his napkin in helpless anger. "I told him not to go to Dallas," he shouted. Billy Graham had had a premonition and actually called Kennedy friend Senator Smathers with a warning; why hadn't it gotten through? Jackie, the grief-stricken widow, played and replayed in her mind the terrible moments there in Dealey Plaza, the HUNDREDS of what-if variables that could have played out differently. Why hadn't she and Jack insisted on using the bubble-top on the Lincoln Continental? Why hadn't the Secret Service spotted Oswald, who was in PLAIN VIEW on the sixth floor of the depository? Why? Why? Why? But all the why's in the world couldn't erase the plain truth that John Fitzgerald Kennedy was dead. That final bullet from the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, purchased for $21.45, had felled the Chief Executive, and nothing in the world could make a dead president live again.
Five years later, in the hot, angry spring of 1968, America was shocked again to hear this announcement:

*** "Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot outside a Memphis motel this afternoon. His condition is not known at this time. Police put out a wanted bulletin for '(quote) a young white male, well-dressed,' who was seen running from a brick building across the street from the Lorraine Motel. Police said the assailant apparently jumped into a late-model white car after the shooting and sped away."***

Then this one, just exactly two months later:

*** "Andrew West: 'Senator, how are you going to counter Mr. Humphrey and his backgrounding you as far as the delegate votes go?' Robert Kennedy: 'I think it just [unintelligible] struggle for it.' AW: 'Senator Kennedy has been shot! Senator Kennedy has been shot! Is that possible? Is that possible? Is that possible, ladies and gentlemen? It is possible. He has. Not only Senator Kennedy . . . oh my God.'"***

And you know, friend, the FINALITY of those deaths is no more severe than the one I'm sure you've gone through as well. You sit there in the funeral home, or at the bedside of your husband in ICU. And he's gone; the heart monitor has stopped beating. That quiet, eerie hummmmm of a flat EKG tells you that life is gone. The love of your life is gone . . . and nothing can bring him back. Doctors can work NEAR-miracles, but they can't work miracles.
And you know, that's the great curse of death. Its FINALITY. You can beat poverty, but not death. You can lick cancer, but not death. Defeats can be turned into victories, sorrows into joys, unemployment into a job, a broken marriage into a good one. But death is death. Death is so utterly irreversible.
Or so you would think. Because as the citizens of this planet so marred by cemeteries and mass graves celebrate this coming Sunday morning the miracle event Christians call "Easter," we discover that this most FIXED reality, this most entrenched enemy . . . isn't as irreversible as we thought.
Christian writer Philip Yancey, in his book, The Jesus I Never Knew, describes a year in his life when - bam! bam! bam! - three good friends lost their lives. Young friends; vibrant, precious soulmates . . . snatched away. These were brutal losses. And he ached with the apparent FINAL-NESS of death. Those caskets seemed so SEALED; the concrete at the gravesite so thick, so un-crackable. Surely it was all over. Surely there was nothing left but soon-fading memories and a petrified boutonniere, a tattered program from the mortuary's discount printer.
But as this gifted evangelical writer explores the pure REALITY of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ on Easter Sunday, the realization sets in: death is NOT the end. Not for Jesus. And not for any of His followers, either.

"I saw that Easter actually held out the awesome promise of REVERSIBILITY," Yancey writes. "Nothing - no, not even death - was final. Even THAT could be reversed."

Can you imagine the heart-stopping joy, late on November 22, if doctors had emerged from Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, Texas, and come out to where the hundreds of microphones and TV cameras were poised, and said to the watching world: "It looks like a miracle, but President Kennedy is going to live"? What if, even after the last rites performed by Father Oscar Huber, and Lyndon Baines Johnson being sworn in on Air Force One, JFK had come back to life?
What if death had turned into life for 38-year-old Martin Luther King, Jr.? What if doctors had rushed to the Ambassador Hotel right here in Los Angeles, and somehow, miraculously, been able to bring the corpse of Robert F. Kennedy back to life, to continue his struggle for the poor and downtrodden?

But friend, let's leave behind these celebrity musings. Let's think about YOUR own lost loved one. Maybe your mother, who died so suddenly. Or your son, just seven years old, who was hit by a van. Can you imagine the REALITY of getting that person back? You've fantasized about it a million times; it's occupied your dreams, your imagination, over and over and over until you thought your tear ducts would weep themselves dry. But what if it really happened?
That . . . is the reality of Easter. "The dead will live again," the Bible tells us. Not just the famous dead - presidents and world leaders and this crucified Hero named Jesus. But BECAUSE of Jesus . . . ALL of God's children can live again. When Jesus beat death there in Joseph of Arimathea's borrowed tomb, He beat it for all of us. For my loved ones and for me; for your loved ones and for you.
We've titled this week EASTER: TURNING THE CORNER. Because what happened there in the cemetery near Calvary that weekend is THE turning point of human history. Christian writer C. S. Lewis comments on the "turning point" nature of what happened there:

"The New Testament writers speak as if Christ's achievement in rising from the dead was the first event of its kind," he writes, "in the whole history of the universe. He is the 'first fruits,' the 'pioneer of life.' He has forced open a door that has been locked since the death of the first man. He has met, fought, and beaten the King of Death." And now this great concluding line - so very true: "EVERYTHING is different because He has done so. This is the beginning of the New Creation: a new chapter in cosmic history has opened."

The amazing thing, really, is the CASUALNESS with which Jesus beats this enemy called death. Over in Luke eight, a man named Jairus asks Jesus to come heal his little girl, who is desperately sick. I mean, she was dying. This was time to dial 911, to turn on the ambulance sirens and clear the streets of Jerusalem. But when the man asks, PLEADING in desperation, Jesus just kind of says, "Oh, okay." And AMBLES toward the man's house, letting all kinds of interruptions slow Him down. I'm sure Jairus was going, "Comeoncomeoncomeoncomeon! Hurry it up! Every second counts!" But Jesus doesn't rush. There's no NEED to rush, because to Jesus death is no big deal. Then servants come down the road. "Don't bother with the sirens and police escorts anymore," they say. "Your kid's dead."
And you know, at that point, most ambulances would turn around and go home. Why bother now? Dead is dead. Once the EKG needle's gone flat, you shut down the expensive equipment. But not Jesus. He keeps going in the same direction. He shrugs off the announcement, "She's dead," by saying, "Oh, she's only sleeping." Because to Jesus, death is as reversible as the eight hours of rest you had last night. He goes to that house and wakes up that little girl just as easily as your alarm clock did this morning.

Go over to John 11. Famous, famous story - the death of Lazarus. Jesus gets word that one of His BEST friends is sick - very sick. Again, time to break the speed limit, turn on the after burners and roar down the expressway to Bethany. But no. Jesus LOITERS; He casually hangs around where He is for two more days. No big deal. And Lazarus ends up dying. Why? Because to Jesus, death IS no big deal. He calls Lazarus out of the grave just by clearing His throat.
Listen, friend. If you've been grieving over a lost loved one who is dead, dead, DEAD . . . please remember how EASILY Jesus reversed death. It doesn't matter WHOSE death; it doesn't matter what KIND of death. Even bullets fired from the sixth story of a Texas School Book Depository. That's no big deal to Jesus. When He took it on, death went from being THE enemy, the unbeatable adversary, to a rather small, whimpering thing.
The book I mentioned yesterday, The Desire of Ages, makes this very point:

"To the believer," the author writes, "death is but a SMALL matter. Christ speaks of it as if it were of little moment. 'If a man keep My saying, he shall never see death,' 'he shall never taste of death.' To the Christian, death is but a sleep, a MOMENT of silence and darkness. The life is hid with Christ in God, and 'when Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory.'"

Imagine with me the throbbing JOY of Jesus' friends that Sunday when they discovered that HE WAS ALIVE! Jesus is alive! Unbelievable . . . but true! And friend, it's just as true for every single one of us. Death is YOUR defeated foe, as long as you hang on close to the Man who defeated it.