April 4, 2010 Introduction He asked of himself, “What will come of what I am doing today or tomorrow? What will come of my whole life? Why should I live, why wish for anything, or do anything? Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy?”
The brilliant Russian novelist, Count Lev Nikolayevich, better know as Leo Tolstoy, struggled with these questions in mid-life – even to the verge of suicide. “The simplest questions, lying in the soul of every man… a question without an answer to which one cannot live,” he wrote in his personal work A Confession in 1882 at the age of 54. Questions about the meaning of life are asked in every generation in every culture throughout human history. Well, today is Easter Day, the most important holiday in the Christian faith; the most important celebration that any and every person can have. For the One we preach is not merely one choice among many for one’s religion, philosophy, or world view; nor is this some mystical Christ unrelated to the real world. This is not just the Jesus of ancient history. The One we preach is the contemporary Christ who once lived and died, and now lives to meet our human need in all its variety. The Risen Lord Jesus offers us a sense of real self-worth and personal significance, because he assures us of God’s love for us. He sets us free from guilt because he died for us; and he releases us from our own self-centeredness by the power of his resurrection, and from paralyzing fear because he reigns over all things in heaven and on earth. Our Living Lord gives meaning to family and home, to work and leisure, to private life and public citizenship. In Christ we are invited into a new community, the new humanity that he is creating and redeeming. He challenges us to go out into some segment of the world which does not acknowledge him. He calls us to give of ourselves in witness and service to him. And finally, God in Christ promises us that history is neither meaningless nor endless. At the end time, he will return to destroy death and usher in the new heaven and new earth – a new universe of righteousness and peace. I. First Witnesses to the Resurrection (John 20:1-2, 11-18) “Early on the first day of the week (Sunday morning, the third day since Jesus’ death on the cross – Friday, Sabbath Saturday, Sunday), Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Peter and John and said, ‘They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him.’ Later on, Mary stood outside the tomb crying.” Mary of Magdala was an early follower of Jesus, certainly considered one of his disciples. Mary had been healed by Jesus. Her “seven demons” could have been any number of physical, psychological, or spiritual problems. With great love and appreciation she had for Jesus, she traveled with Jesus and contributed to the needs of the group (We are not told, but Mary seems to have been wealthy and with other women disciples was vital to Jesus’ public ministry – see Luke 8:1-3). Her presence at the tomb on that first Easter morning helps establish the credibility of the New Testament account. The first century opinion of the testimony of women was not worth much. No gospel writer would have invented this account if they were trying to convince others. Yet, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John include Mary Magdalene and a few other women disciples (another Mary, Salome, Joanna) as the first to meet the Risen Lord and tell the others. Throughout the gospels, Jesus did not treat women as others in his culture did; he treated them with dignity, a people of worth. Mary was one of the few present at the crucifixion. She was on her way to give the body a Jesus a proper, honorable burial. Like the rest of Jesus’ disciples, she never expected his bodily resurrection. But she was overjoyed to discover it. “Jesus said to her, ‘Mary.’ She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, ‘Rabboni!’ (which means ‘Teacher’).” Remember Jesus words in John 16? “In a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me… I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy” (John 16:19-22). Imagine the love that flooded her heart when she heard her Savior saying her name. Then “Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: ‘I have seen the Lord!’ And she told them that he had said these things to her.” II. Running To and Fro (John 20:3-10) “Mary came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved… So Peter and John started for the tomb – both were running.” John got there first, bent over and looked at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Typical Peter, when he got there he went straight into the tomb. The cloth was still lying in its place. Then John also went inside. And it says that “He saw and believed.” Someone has suggested that the stone was not rolled away so that Jesus could get out. The Risen Lord could have left the tomb without moving the stone. It was rolled away so others could get in and see that Jesus was gone. The next few hours must have been an amazing experience for Mary, Peter, John, and all of the disciples still hiding out after the horrific events of last Thursday and Friday. At first, they may have thought that the story was a fabrication, impossible to believe. Like Peter, they may have checked out the facts and still have been puzzled about what happened. Then, like Mary, when they encountered Jesus personally, they were able to accept the reality of the resurrection. And lastly, they committed themselves to the Risen Lord Jesus and devoted their lives to serving him as they began to understand the reality of his presence with them. Every year someone in the media presents the fuel for controversy surrounding this essential of Christian belief. Newsweek or Time, 20/20 or The HistoryChannel offer the “expert” opinions of scholarly skeptics and thoughtful believers. On one of the TV specials, Kathleen Corley of the Jesus Seminar said, “I think it was visions or hallucinations.” William Lane Craig of the Talbot School of Theology said, “He probably literally got up and walked out of the tomb.” And Daniel Schwartz of Hebrew University said, “Something definitely happened. I don’t know how they convinced themselves. But the historical fact is, you’ve got people who are convinced he was resurrected.” Obviously, I would encourage you to take the New Testament on face value. When it was written, there were still plenty of people around who knew Jesus and the resurrection. The tomb was empty, the body gone. The grave clothes were in place as Jesus passed right through them. The Risen Jesus appeared several times to the disciples and to as many as 500 people at one time. And the disciples were changed from weak individuals to strong leaders willing to undergo persecution and death for their belief in Jesus and his resurrection. Conclusion The apostle Paul wrote the earliest accounts of the resurrection in his letters only 15-20 years after the events. “If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith” (I Corinthians 15:14). And no less than John Updike (who died in 2009) echoes this in his youthful poem “Seven Stanzas at Easter.” “Make no mistake: if He rose at all / it was as His body; if the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall. It was not as the flowers, each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His Flesh: ours. The same hinged thumbs and toes, the same valved heart
that — pierced — died, withered, paused, and then regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose. Let us not mock God with metaphor, analogy, sidestepping transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door. The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché, not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day. And if we will have an angel at the tomb, make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck's quanta, vivid with hair, opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen spun on a definite loom. Let us not seek to make it less monstrous, for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty, lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.” Whether Mary, Peter or John; whether Leo Tolstoy or John Updike; whether common believer or brilliant theologian – let us rejoice in Resurrection of Jesus and the life promised in its reality. Let us pray together.
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