Past Sermon

Sermon Title: "Who Were You on Easter Morning?"
Date: March 23, 2008
Minister: Rev. Charles E. Ensley, Jr.

Lesson:  John 20:1-18

I have good news for you this Easter morning!  I am not going to spend my sermon time trying to convince you of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.  That is something you already choose to believe, based on faith.  Otherwise, I stand little chance of convincing a doubter today with logical proof of Jesus being raised from the dead nearly 2,000 years ago.  However, you might be interested in this profession from the eminent British barrister Sir Edward Clarke, who said, “As a lawyer, I have made a prolonged study of the evidence for the events of the resurrection.  To me the evidence is conclusive, and over and over again in the High Court, I have secured a verdict on evidence not nearly so compelling.”

Instead of focusing solely on the Risen Christ, I invite us to take a look at the various persons who showed up in the cemetery on that early Easter morning so long ago, but which we continue to celebrate as the pinnacle festival of the Christian year.  Who were they who showed up; how did they react; and more importantly, which one of them might you have been had you been there?  Have you ever thought about that?  How would you have reacted outside the empty tomb?

Though subtle, the Gospel of John names four key characters and their reactions to the resurrection.  These followers of Jesus represent dissimilar personalities, just like the worshippers gathered here today.  They possess diverse dispositions regarding faith, which call for a variety of responses from Jesus so that each of them can come to believe in his resurrection.  As we look briefly at each one, ponder in your mind which one you might have been, or still are.

The “other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved”, is never named, although the prevailing opinion among Biblical scholars is that it might have been John, or possibly Lazarus, whom Jesus raised from the dead as a foreshadowing of his own resurrection.  When “the other disciple” arrived at the empty tomb and “saw the linen wrappings lying there,” he didn’t go in at first.  Why?  It’s probably because he didn’t need to go in.  He was already living in the full assurance of Jesus’ love.  Consequently, he had no doubt that Jesus was “the resurrection and the life.”  And so it is for all of us who experience Jesus’ love, who have felt embraced by his acceptance of us.  When we enter the empty tomb, we are able to see and believe at once.

Yet not all are blessed with such a temperament.  Perhaps we need to feel more than Jesus’ love.  Perhaps we are more like Peter who saw the linen wrappings just like the other disciple, but still found it difficult to believe.  Peter—like many of us—was confused.  He didn’t “understand the scripture, that [Jesus] must rise from the dead.”  Before Peter could make sense of Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection, he needed to experience reconciliation.  He had to find out if Jesus would accept him despite his three denials.  That moment would come later, when the Risen Christ broke bread with Peter and challenged him to serve the new Christian community.  And so it is with any of us who need forgiveness before we can get on with our life and strengthen our faith.  The empty tomb is dark and cavernous until we know that we—yes, even we—are welcome at the Lord’s table and that Christ enlists our full participation in his mission.

Some of us might identify with neither the “other disciple” nor Peter.  Instead, we resemble Mary, whose devotion to the Lord is unquestionable.  In all four gospel accounts, recorded over a period of some fifty years, all four gospel writers—no matter whatever other details they include or omit—declare that Mary Magdalene was the first one to come to the tomb on Sunday morning.  Yet Mary’s understanding is restricted to a temporal, earthly view of Jesus.  It’s an all-too-human perspective that sees him as a close intimate friend, but not as the Lord who makes demands upon us.  For Mary, Jesus’ death was a personal loss.  When she came to the garden alone, she had no expectation of ever seeing him again.  But in that moment-in-time when he called her by name—“Mary”—her friend was miraculously back!  She moved to embrace him, to hold on tight to her Teacher and Friend.  Who of us wouldn’t want to embrace them if one of our beloved relatives were to return—our mother or father, our brother or sister, our spouse or a child who predeceased us?  Yet Jesus warned her not to touch him.  It’s not that he had some dangerous spiritual aura about him, but Jesus reminds her of the bigger picture.  The focus of Jesus was not on basking in the glow of the resurrection event, but on getting word to his disciples and getting them to move out on the mission of taking the message of the Risen Christ into the world. 

Mary somehow was able to overcome her first reaction to grab on and hold him forever.  Therefore, when she followed his command to go tell the other disciples, she didn’t say to them, “I have seen Jesus.”  On the contrary, she said, “I have seen the Lord.  And so it is with all of us who must hear our Lord and Savior, not just our friend Jesus, call us by name.

Let’s see, have I covered everybody who was there?  The other disciple… Peter… the unforgettable Mary…  Wait; someone’s missing!  There may be someone here like Thomas.  You didn’t hear about him today because he neither went to the tomb nor trusted the testimony of the other disciples.  He doesn’t show up until later in the story.  He needed concrete, indisputable, empirical evidence of Jesus’ resurrection.  Without it, he could not, would not believe.  He was not going to accept anything on faith, let alone hearsay from a woman.

In many ways, Thomas represents the modern skeptic.  Although Jesus didn’t hide his scars from Thomas when they met a week later, when he invited him to place his fingers into the holes in his hands or the wound in his side, Thomas did not receive the full blessing pronounced on “those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”  And so it is for any of us who still demand credible, physical evidence these twenty centuries later.  Although we are not offered the opportunity to feel Jesus’ wounds as Thomas did, we must still learn that they are just as real today when we share in and complete the sufferings of Christ.

Last Sunday, many here experienced it as they heard Matthew’s Gospel account of Jesus’ betrayal, arrest, trial and crucifixion.  Everyone knew the story, but many have said since they really felt it for the first time.  A few days ago, I sat at the YMCA’s Good Friday breakfast.  When former mayor Beverly O’Neill read the same Gospel account I read last Sunday, as I sat there, on the very day in which we commemorate Jesus’ crucifixion, I, too, could feel his pain, agony, and death.

The good news of Easter is that Jesus was not sealed forever in a stone cold tomb.  He rose from the dead.  He was and remains unwilling to abandon his disciples, no matter who you might have been on that first Easter morning.  He remains still with those whom he loves along with those who are confused or have doubts.

 

Resources:

The theme of looking at these four persons suggested in an article, “Do You Believe This?”, by Kevin Moore, Ph.D. candidate in New Testament at the Iliff School of Theology, Denver, CO.

All scripture quotations from the Gospel of John.