John 20:1-10
We have gathered here early on this morning, in this “Sunrise Service,” because the empty tomb was discovered early in the morning. As such, this morning has helped us to see every morning as a reminder of Easter, as a reminder of that most important of mornings. Every morning whispers a resurrection hallelujah because every morning is a kind of resurrection. As that great Scottish sage George MacDonald wrote:
The world is full of resurrections. Every night that folds us up in darkness is a death; and those of you that have been out early, and have seen the first of the dawn, will know it – the day rises out of the night like a being that has burst its tomb and escaped into life.
Indeed, Paul himself said that we can see something of the attributes of God in creation itself (Romans 1:19-20). Surely each morning is evidence of that fact. Every morning, the dark of night is beaten back the resurrected light of a new day. Every morning is a symbol of this morning. Every morning whispers Easter joy.
For we followers of Christ who hold the resurrection of Jesus as the greatest truth in the world, we cannot help but view all of creation through the prism of the cross and empty tomb. So we have gathered here this morning, in this time of resurrection, to remember that, “He has risen! He has risen indeed!”
Our text this morning reveals the life-altering, reality-defining, faith-forming implications of Easter. Let us consider these implications and how they speak to us today.
I. Easter Redefines Our Assumptions Concerning the Possible (v.1-2)
The horrible spectacle of the crucified Jesus no doubt hung like a bleak shadow over the hearts and minds of the shell-shocked disciples. There was so much for them to try to comprehend: their abandonment of Jesus, what the cross meant about Jesus and all that He had taught them, what they were to do now, how they were to return to their lives? How were they to begin putting their lives back together again, for instance? How were they to understand all of this, accept all of this? They came into this morning with their minds reeling from conflicting thoughts, feelings and sensations, and the results of the cataclysmic collision between their reeling minds and the blunt realities of the empty tomb would change them and the world forever.
Our passage begins, first, with one of the faithful women, Mary Magdalene, who we last saw standing at the cross, going early in the morning to the tomb.
1 Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. 2 So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”
Let us behold the natural mind of man, the natural assumptions of man, the inherent, germane categories of the human mind. It makes perfect sense to think as Mary Magdalene thought when she saw the empty tomb. Her reaction was perfectly reasonable: “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”
Reasonable.
Makes perfect sense.
I would have thought and said the exact same thing at that point.
It was a perfectly natural thing for Mary to assume. But soon Mary will meet the resurrected Jesus, and then Mary will understand: Easter redefines our assumptions concerning the possible.
Easter redefines “reasonable.”
Easter redefines “makes sense.”
Easter redefines “normal.”
Brothers and sisters in Christ, everything we thought we knew, everything we thought we understood, all of our inherent common sense, all of our pragmatic realism, everything we assumed we had nailed down about reality and how the world works…all of this has to be rethought in light of that empty tomb. We now have to redefine what we thought we knew, scrutinize our own assumptions and reconsider all kinds of things we previously thought were impossible.
How do we do this? We do this by giving ourselves to the resurrected Jesus who redefines reality.
We do not believe the improbable. We believe what the world calls “impossible.”
We do not believe the unlikely. We believe the, “That just doesn’t happen!”
No, Mary, nobody has taken Him. You will have to begin thinking in a whole new way now. Nothing is going to be the same! The Lord Jesus is going to redefine your very assumptions about what is possible.
And He does the same with us. Because of Easter, things we previously considered impossible are now possible. The crucified Christ now lives. And we, who were dead in our sins and trespasses, can now live through Him.
II. Easter Makes Faith in Christ Possible (v.3-9)
The most basic and most important thing that Easter makes possible is faith in the risen Christ. Mary Magdalene informs Peter and John that the body is missing.
3 So Peter went out with the other disciple, and they were going toward the tomb. 4 Both of them were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first.5 And stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen cloths lying there,7 and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen cloths but folded up in a place by itself. 8 Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; 9 for as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead.
The disciples investigate this most unlikely scene. We are told specifically that John believed. But notice the order of verse 8: “and he saw and believed.”
He saw. What did he see? He saw the empty tomb, the linen cloths, the face cloth folded separately. “He saw and believed.” The resurrection of Jesus made faith possible, made belief a reality. The resurrection makes faith in Jesus possible today as well.
Do you understand that our faith is bound up with raw, historical, tangible, physical evidence? There were men and women who saw these things. They were there. They saw and believed.
I have no tolerance for those who say the resurrection does not matter, or that perhaps Jesus only rose “spiritually” while, in reality, His body rotted in the tomb. The Word of God will not allow that kind of reduction. I agree with John Updike who wrote:
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.
Yes, let us walk through the door just as the disciples walked into this tomb. Let us enter there. Let us look. Let us see. Let us touch. Let us stand in this amazing moment in history, this raw, unexpected, utterly shocking turn of events. Let us stand there with the Mary and John and Peter. Let us see what they saw. Let us see and let us believe!
I believe in Jesus because His body was not there. I believe for the exact same reasons the early followers of Jesus believed: because the body that was nailed to that cross was not held by that tomb.
Our faith is grounded in a moment, an event, a concrete reality. That reality is the foundation for all of our spiritual convictions, all of our theological beliefs. The events of Easter confirm the truth of all that Jesus ever said and all that He claimed to be. Easter makes faith in Christ possible!
III. Easter Compels Us to Go to Others (v.10)
What then? What do they do? How do they respond? Verse 10 explains in understated simplicity:
10 Then the disciples went back to their homes.
What I want us to see first is what the disciples did not do. They did not enshrine the empty tomb. They did not stay there in religious ecstasy. To be sure, their faith still had a ways to go to grow and solidify, perhaps especially Peter’s. But they had seen the empty tomb, and a radical new possibility opened up to their previously darkened minds.
They were not paralyzed there, slain in the Spirit, caught up in mystical euphoria. They did not seek to guard the place, pray before the cloths or seek to establish the physical items as relics and sacred paraphernalia.
Instead, they “went back to their homes.” Whatever they were thinking, whatever their theological grasp of the implications of this tomb (and, according to scripture, there were some) and however strong their faith was or was not at this point, they at least knew (1) that the world was somehow different now and (2) that they needed to carry the shocking truth of the empty truth to others.
They did not say, “Let us build a booth here and offer worship to the Lord,” as they had done on the Mount of Transfiguration.
They said, “Let us go home…to the others.”
Easter has feet. It pulsates with energy and movement and power. It lends itself most naturally to going.
And while Peter and John both, no doubt, had to grow even more in their understanding of what all of this meant, they at least knew this: that this truth could not be held, contained, sat upon, merely internalized or enshrined for static observation.
Jesus was up! Jesus was out! Jesus was on the move! Because of that, so were they! Because of that, so are we!
We too are up and out and on the move, reaching our homes and our schools and our workplaces and our worlds with the same unbelievable news they carried with them: the Jesus who was crucified is no longer in the tomb. The Jesus who was crucified could not be held by the grave.
The Jesus who was crucified lives now and forevermore!
He is risen! He is risen indeed!