By Rev. Dr.
Charles J. Tomlin, DMin
Flat
Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
Easter
Sunday, April 5th, 2015
Jesus said to her, "Mary!" She turned and said to him in Hebrew, "Rabbouni!"
(which means Teacher). (Joh 20:16 NRS)
Jesus said to her, "Mary!" She turned and said to him in Hebrew, "Rabbouni!"
(which means Teacher). (Joh 20:16 NRS)
If you are a Christian, or even
if you’re any kind of hopeful person,
Easter is a day you certainly don’t want to miss. “If Christ is not raised,” the
apostle Paul wrote, “your faith has been
in vain” and we are the most pitiful people
(1 Cor. 15: 14-19). He continues:
“But in fact Christ has been raised from
the dead, becoming the first fruits of those who have died…” (v. 20).
Easter is the foundation of the
Christian faith. We don’t just have
faith in Jesus Christ as a great religious teacher, but we have faith in Jesus
Christ as the Lord of Life who is triumphant over death and the grave. To be
a Christian you must find a way to agree with Paul that ‘in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead….’
But what are the ‘facts’ of
Easter? We have four gospels with four differing
approaches, not one. These stories have
the same ‘fact’ in common, but they describe it from different angles and different
perspectives. For some people this is
troubling, because it looks like contradicting details. For others, these opposing particulars point
to truth are not manufactured or manipulated by human heads or hands. If Easter is a truth, based on the eyewitness
testimony of different people who see things differently, then there should be
differences, as there are.
The resurrection of Jesus
happened beyond any human envisioning or explanation. It is important for us to realize that
nowhere in any gospel story does anyone watch the resurrection happen. What we do find in each of the gospel
stories is a description of how Jesus’ own disciples struggled to come to grips
with what Easter meant. If something
was happening that had never happened before there should be struggle to come
to grips with it. After we come to
believe in the ‘fact’ of Easter, we still have wrestle with what it should mean
for each of us in our own living, our own dying, and in our own hope of eternal
life.
SLOW IN GETTING THERE
No gospel brings us any closer to
the heart of what Easter means than John’s.
Part of this may be because John has an advantage over all the other
gospel writers. He writes last, but he
is certainly not least.
John’s gospel is the highest theologically,
is the most socially personal, and is the deepest expression of the meaning and
the message of Jesus. John starts on
the grandest note, “In the beginning was the Word…”
and then goes on to tell us how Jesus is the very ‘Word that became flesh and dwelt among us…” John is also the one who gives us the great
“I Am” sayings of Jesus; “I am the
Bread… I am the Living Water… I am the True Vine… I am the Good Shepherd, and I am the Resurrection
and the Life.” John is the gospel who
gives us the great verse of John
3:16, which says, “For God so loved the
world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him, shall not perish
but have everlasting life.” When you get to the conclusion of John’s
gospel, he reminds us that ‘world itself
could not contain the books that could be written’ (21.25). No other gospel begins or ends with any
grander claims.
All this grander and glory built
into this gospel makes John’s approach to Easter rather surprising. John does not begin with an Earthquake
rolling the stone away as in Matthew (28.2).
He does not have a bunch of women fleeing the tomb in terror or
amazement like Mark (16.8). Neither
does John have Luke’s two men in dazzling white asking, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” (24.5). No, John’s gospel starts out slow and messy. You
could say that it starts like an old, old car, with a great big engine that’s
very difficult to get cranked and will take a while to get in gear even if it
does. But if it does ever get cranked up,
watch out! It will be different than
anything else out there on the road.
I recall once, as a youngster, going
with my mechanically gifted uncle Ray to try to start an old car that had been
setting in the woods for many years. I believe it was a ‘49 Ford. After putting in fresh gas and a new
battery, my uncle got into the old musty and rusty car and tried turning it
over. Nothing happened. Then, he lifted the hood, took off the air
breather, and started spraying ether into the carburetor. Still,
nothing happened. He turned and turned the
key and sprayed more ether without success.
“It’s not going to start!” I
said.
John’s beginning to Easter
doesn’t seem to crank up easily either.
Although the diethyl ether has already been sprayed into the carburetor,
we don’t see any hard evidence to the contrary of defeat, death or destruction. Mary is making all kinds of wrong
assumptions that appear as the right assumptions---the ones we might also make. Notice how Mary ‘came to the tomb’ but she never actually looks in. Then she runs away with the wrong conclusion:
“They have taken the Lord out of the
tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him” (20.2).
A new day was dawning, but Mary gets it wrong.
Could we do any better? What would you do if you found the grave of
your loved one disturbed or opened and the body missing? This is exactly what happened back in 1978,
when grave robbers robbed the grave of the late silent comedian Charlie
Chaplin. Chaplin’s 4th wife
had him buried in Switzerland because he could not get a visa back to the
United States. Chaplain had been a
communist sympathizer during the height of the cold war, so our government
would not let him come home. He died in
Europe. But not long after he died his
grave was robbed and the body went missing.
The culprits proved to be two eastern Europeans who had stolen the body in
hope of getting rich off a ransom. But
they were finally caught and arrested and the body was recovered in grave not
far from the first one.
Mary’s Easter begins with this
kind of fear, but it doesn’t stop here. The
next wrong assumption is made when she returns to the tomb as second time. We are
told that she is standing outside the tomb weeping when she decides to have a
look for herself. But when she looks in,
she doesn’t see the burial wrappings Peter and the other disciple saw, but she sees
two angels sitting on the top of the burial slab. They are just sitting there like the two
angelic cherubs setting on the mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant (Ex.
25.18), but Mary doesn’t get that either.
God’s mercy is being revealed, but she can’t see through her tears. When the angels ask “Why” she is still weeping, she answers again, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid
him” (20:13). John has us turning
the same dead engine over again, but nothing is happening. Easter just doesn’t want to get cranked.
Finally, the risen Jesus shows up. Thinking again of that rusty, musty old ’49
Ford, by raising Jesus God has
sprayed the dead engine with a
combustible power, but Mary still doesn’t see it? She mistakes Jesus for the gardener, not at
all realizing that the curse of Eden’s first garden is being overruled and
overturned. When Jesus again asks, why
she is weeping, he adds a hint, a clue, or an insinuation: “Whom are you looking for?” Still sounding like that old car turning over
and over again, without recognizing him, she now asks: “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him,
and I will take him away.” Now
Mary’s getting in real deep, over her own head.
It’s getting a bit ridiculous. She
couldn’t ‘take him away’ (20:15)
even if she found him. The Easter
engine still won’t crank.
WHAT WE CAN’T SEE COMING
Commenting on this passage, the
great reformer of the 16th century, John Calvin wrote: ‘it is might be thought strange that John
does not produce a more competent witness… for he begins with a woman… “
While I don’t necessarily like
how Calvin puts it, he does have a point.
John tells the story of Easter from the perspective of a close companion
who can’t be consoled, no matter what new things have happened. She doesn’t want to look straight into the
grave. She doesn’t see the meaning of
the angels. She can’t recognize the
risen Jesus, even when he is standing right beside of her. Mary doesn’t see the Easter that is coming and
she keeps cranking, and cranking, and cranking this same old dead engine
without success.
No other gospel tries to start
Easter exactly this way. Why does John have
us looking at Easter through the lens of this grieving Mary who can’t be
convinced or consoled? It may not be a
coincidence that John’s gospel is the last gospel, written after most eyewitnesses
are dead and gone. The truth now must
come not through the eyewitness, but it must come through the Spirit (Jn
3.33-36; 4:23; 16: 13). It may also not
be a coincidence that the early church, who along with Paul, thought that
Easter would bring a new reality, realizes that even after Easter, the world it’s not that different. Troubles still come. Kingdoms still rise and fall. And people, even loved ones and believers
still die (11.21). It may not be a coincidence
that from now on, the people who believe Jesus, must find the blessing even
when they don’t see and they don’t have anything or anyone to give them proof
(Jn. 20. 29). Now, after the event of
Easter has long come and gone, it’s not getting easier, but it’s getting
harder, and harder to get this message through the grief, the loss, and the
darkness of death that still hasn’t gone away.
Instead of resurrection, Easter seems
to be more like a missing body report.
Easter seems to be more questions than answers. Even Jesus, in the midst of our own grief is more
like a stranger who doesn’t appear to understand why it is that we still cry.
Why does John see Easter through such
a grinding, sputtering, stammering mess?
Perhaps this is how we too might experience Easter. Perhaps we too will go through the same negative
assumptions, the same unnerving confusions, or have the same nagging resistance
to having faith when sadness or sickness looms or when loved ones are
lost. When darkness returns, even this great big story of Easter just won’t
easily crank up any hope.
A college acquaintance of mine,
Bob Setzer, is pastor of a prominent church in Winston-Salem. In a book on John’s gospel, he wrote about
Mary’s difficulty in getting to the risen Jesus. In speaking about Mary, he gives his own
personal testimony, saying that he also once lost Jesus out of his life. It happened in college, when he was taught
like I was, that the Bible is as much a human book, as it is divine. Because we were made to read, not just the
affirmations and confessions of faith, but also the learn the critiques and
skepticisms, he said he came to wonder whether or not the empty tomb was just an
illusion, a myth, or a projection of great humans fears of death or perhaps
nothing more than a strange hope for what might lie beyond the grave? As he struggled with all the new ideas (I
was a slower learner than him), the Jesus he once had at the center of his life---the
Jesus of his childhood----was slowing disappearing as it was being dismantled underneath
the load of all those new questions. His
life, he says, became a cry of anguish like Mary’s saying to his own soul, “They
have taken away my Lord, and I don’t know where they have laid him!” (Encounters
with the Living Christ, Robert B. Setzer
Jr., Judson Press, 1999, p. 148).
Have you ever lost Jesus under
the load of life and wondered whether or not all this talk of resurrection is
more than, as his first disciples put it,
‘an idle tale’ (Luke 24.11)? This is how Easter can look, for any or all
of us, when we have must see it through our own losses and tears. Grief and death are not easy assumptions to
overcome. How can we see what we can’t see coming? How can we get the Easter engine of hope up
and running when we turn and turn the key, but it just won’t crank?
YOU’LL KNOW WHEN YOU HEAR HIM
There is only one way, says
John. There is only one way to find
Easter in the midst of our own confusions, our own assumptions and our own struggles
with grief. Like Mary, we will not know the living truth
of Easter, until we hear the living Christ speak our own name. Only when she heard Jesus called her by
name, saying “Mary,” did the light came
on. Only when she heard her name, did
that old Easter engine finally get cranked.
When my uncle cranked that ’49 Ford one last time, it was like a ‘Boom!’
and with a blast of smoke, the old car
started to run. It was then that I
almost called out a few names too, but I can’t repeat them here. Only after Mary heard the ‘boom!’ of her own
name being spoken, by the very same Lord that she had loved, was she able to run
back to the others and declare, “I have
seen the Lord!”
Earlier, in John’s gospel, Jesus told his disciples that someday, “the
hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son
of God, and those who will hear will live” (John 5.5.25). No one will fully know all that Easter means
until we too, hear the voice of Jesus awaken us from our own grave of death (5.28-29). But Jesus doesn’t just say the hour is
coming, he also says that the day is already here (5.25). We can hear Jesus now. We can hear our name called now. We
can already hear the “boom!”
I love the genius of the
commercial of the local lawyer, Timothy Welborn, who advertises that he can
help you with your worker’s compensation or disability claims. He doesn’t come right out and tell you that
you need him, but he more subtlety and perhaps, even more authoritatively
declares, You’ll know when you need us!”
Just like you’ll know when you
need a doctor, or you’ll know when you need a plumber, or you’ll know when you
need a lawyer, you’ll also know you need to hear the voice of Jesus. One day we will all hear his voice, because
only his voice can awaken the dead .
But if you are willing to listen, you will hear him now. This is what John wants his church to
know. You can hear him now, because you know
you need him, and when life has your number, or as they say, ‘when your number is up’, his voice will not come as a surprise, but his
voice will be the one that can awaken you from all your own assumptions and
calls you to back to faith and life.
You’ll know its Easter when you
recognize his voice. Can you hear the voice
of the crucified, but now living Christ who also calls you by name? You need no other argument, or no other
plea, as the song says. You just need to
listen and hear the voice of one who died and who lives and calls you by name. You only get to Easter, when you hear and
recognize his voice. Amen!
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