Focus: Verified by human eyes and ears, Jesus’ resurrection calls for great joy.
Function: To move the people to deepen their faith in the resurrected Christ and to celebrate with great joy the benefits of Christ’s resurrection.
Text: John 20:1-18
It’s a strange feeling indeed. In 1999 I went to the Netherlands to see my parents. Once there, I decided to go to the local cemetery and visit the gravesite of my grandfather. I thought I knew where it was. But I could not find his grave. It was a strange feeling to wander around the graveyard, and later, to say to my Mom: “Where is the tomb of grandpa? I can’t find it.” I wonder how Mary Magdalene must have felt that Sunday morning when she went looking for Jesus’ corpse in the cemetery or garden of Joseph of Arimathea.
Cemeteries are special places. I’ve noticed, for example, that silence rules the roost in most graveyards. It’s amazing how quiet it can be among the dead!
Cemeteries, however, can also speak to you. I find it telling, for example, to visit a historic place like Boston and walk among 200 year old tombstones of historic figures such as Benjamin Franklin. It’s amazing how much the dead can tell you about history.
Cemeteries also have a mysterious power to stir up feelings within us. When I walk through a cemetery, I sometimes feel very frail and vulnerable, recognizing the brevity of my own life. “Dust you are, and to dust you shall return,” so testify the graves. In some people, such testimony will conjure up feelings of fear and dread. Perhaps that’s why most people do not go to cemeteries while it is dark.
Mary Magdalene, however, does not seem to have such fear. The scriptures tell us that “Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb….” Mary is on a mission. She wants to complete the burial preparations for Jesus’ body. On Good Friday they buried Jesus quickly, just before the Sabbath would start. Now on this Sunday morning, Mary wants to finish the job of proper embalmment and burial of Jesus’ body. But something is wrong.
Mary expects to find a stone
blocking the entrance of Jesus’ tomb. But when she gets there, she notices that
“the stone had been removed from the entrance.” And Mary right a
way assumes the worst: grave robbery perhaps by Jesus’ enemies; or vandalism
maybe. Or maybe Jesus’ enemies wanted to go beyond crucifixion and mutilate
Jesus’ body beyond recognition. In any case, there is no corpse in the tomb. So
Mary hurries back to the house where Jesus’ disciples are staying, and she
tells them: “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know
where they have put him.”
Now there is
something about the way John the gospel writer tells the story about Jesus’
resurrection. It’s a telling way! For example, John begins and ends the
story of Jesus’ resurrection with Mary Magdalene. The spotlight of attention
falls on Mary in verses 1-2. Then, in verses 3-9, the focus of the story is on
the two disciples called Simon Peter and John. They investigate the empty tomb.
Then, in verses 10-18 the spotlight of attention falls back on Mary again.
So, if you think of the story of
Jesus’ resurrection in the gospel of John as a picture in a frame, you will
note that Mary Magdalene frames the picture. She opens the story and cries out:
“They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they
have put him!” And she closes the story with resurrection joy saying: “I
have seen the Lord!
Now by telling the
story in this way, John gives us some telling insights about how we come to
faith in the risen Christ. For some of Jesus’ followers, embracing resurrection
faith involves struggles of the mind; for others, it’s all a matter of the
heart.
Did you notice what
happened to Simon Peter and John? They run to the tomb of Jesus. John gets
there first. He observes the scene. And that’s when he notes sign #1: An open
tomb; then he bends over and sees sign #2: An empty tomb. John peeks around and
observes another sign—sign #3: “strips of linen lying there.” Guess
what’s going through John’s mind!
Then Simon Peter
arrives at the tomb. Huffing and puffing, he decides to enter the tomb and look
around. That’s when Peter observes sign #4 “He saw the strips of linen
lying there, as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus’ head. The
cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen.”
Then John enters the tomb. He looks around; he ponders the signs, the evidence; he weighs the evidence against the teachings of the Scriptures and against the cryptic words of the Lord Jesus spoken so recently, and then, we read that John “saw and believed.” His mind grappled with the evidence and reluctantly, courageously, John came to the conclusion that Jesus was raised from the dead. Verified with his own eyes, the signs convinced John that it’s time for resurrection joy. (As he tells his story John writes in parentheses that “they still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.”)
This much is clear from the story, however. John and Peter’s noodles up here embraced the fact of Jesus’ resurrection. They had their Sherlock Holmes moment. Their investigation of the tomb led them to resurrection faith—and joy.
But here we have another insight from the story: Mary Magdalene comes to faith—not by the magnifying glasses of our brains or noodles, not by eye sight and evidence or signs—but by hearing. Forget the rational approach of Sherlock Holmes and like most of us, men. No, Mary needs a heart to heart encounter. Mary needs a Hallmark moment.
A Hallmark moment (for us guys here) is a moment that assails your emotions or deepest feelings in the heart. Watching movies with my wife and daughters, for example, I’ve noticed that women enjoy these Hallmark moments of tenderness and kindness and loving resolutions of forgiveness or heartfelt tears or neat surprises.
For most of us guys it’s not very cool to blow your nose and wipe your eyes. I find myself fighting these Hallmark moments. But women seem to welcome them and respond to them so “easily and naturally,” perhaps? Well, Mary has the greatest Hallmark moment in all of human history. She encounters the risen Lord and recognizes him by sound.
The men have gone back to the house; Mary decides to linger by the open tomb. She is bawling her eyes out. She weeps and wails; then she bends over to look into the tomb and suddenly she sees to men in white. They are angels.
Their presence in this cemetery underscores that Divine action is taking place; their presence suggests that Mary is standing on holy ground, on ground that has just witnessed an astonishing act of God.
The open tomb, which embraces these two angels, now seems to encompass the heavens and the earth: all of creation is holding its breath. What will happen next?
“Woman,”
the angels ask, “why are you crying?” Implied in their question
is a gentle rebuke suggesting that this is NOT a time for tears but for
joy—resurrection joy. From the point of view of heavenly angels tears are out
of order. Mary Magdalene, however, does not get it. She is thinking “corpse.”
She is looking for a body. So, she replies: “They have taken my Lord
away, and I don’t know where they have put him.”
And
then we notice that Mary turns around. She apparently hears something. And as
she turns around, she sees Jesus standing there, but she does not realize that
it is Jesus.
Mary,
you see, is thinking “corpse.” She is looking for a “thing’—not a person. So,
Jesus expands her frame of mind a bit and says: “Woman, why are you
crying? (Sounds familiar, does not it?). Who is it you are
looking for?” Mary, however, does not pick up on Jesus’ subtle
prompting of “Who” instead of “What”? Mary thinks that she is talking to the
gardener, so she responds and says: “Sir, if you have carried him away,
tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”
Now comes the Hallmark moment of faith. Deep calls to deep. It’s sound—the sound of the voice that bursts Mary’s balloon of sorrow and unbelief. Deep from his heart, Jesus says: “Mary.” And from the bottom of her heart, Mary echoes “Rabboni”. One word or sound from Jesus; one word from Mary. And that’s how resurrection faith and joy came to Mary Magdalene.
Friends, do you see the point? Sherlock Holmes and Hallmark moments—God uses all kinds of different ways for a person to come to resurrection faith. This much, I trust, should now be clear to us: Verified by human eyes and ears, Jesus’ resurrection calls for great joy.
Let me tell you why:
· By his resurrection, the Lord Jesus has conquered the power of death. If you think of death as a shroud enveloping all of humanity, then Jesus’ resurrection has led to a hole in the shroud. The power of death is broken. There is a way out of death.
If you
think of sin, Satan and death as a prison holding us captive, the resurrection
of Jesus is the way out of that prison. The gates of hell and death now must
contend with the entrance of eternal life. Jesus has conquered the power of
death.
There is
reason for resurrection joy today, because Jesus’ resurrection affects and
covers all of history—past, present, and future. All Jesus’ followers
experience the power and benefits of Jesus’ resurrection already today. In the
words of an ancient confession (L.D. 17) the benefits are three-fold: “First, by his resurrection (Jesus)
has overcome death, so that he might make us share in the righteousness he won
for us by his death. Second, by his power we too are already now resurrected to
a new life. And third, Christ’s resurrection is a guarantee of our glorious
resurrection.” Surely, verified by human eyes and ears,
Jesus’ resurrection calls for great joy.
Here’s
another reason for great joy today: Jesus’
resurrection restores our relationship with God and with one another. Listen to what
Jesus says to Mary Magdalene:
“Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to
the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am returning to my
Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” The God and Father of Jesus (who
is the eternal Son of God) is also our God and Father. That is, we may
call God “Abba” (Father) because God has adopted us as sons and
daughters.
How? As Jesus died and paid the price for
our sins, and as Jesus rose again, so that we too may live forever more, so
Jesus has opened up our heavenly Father’s home. We now may enter God’s presence
through Christ as adopted sons and daughters. Whereas at first we were rebels
and sinners, hopelessly lost, now—through Christ’s death and resurrection—we
have become children of God.
(I John
3:1ff) “How great is the love the Father
has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what
we are!...now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made
known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see
him as he is.”
Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ
will come again!
Glory be to
the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and
always shall be: world without end. Amen.