To Be Without Jesus

Rev. Dr. Christopher Carlson

Tony Compello, a famous preacher, decided one day that he would try something, he would try a healing service inspired a little bit by a friend of his, a Pentecostal pastor, who said, “You Baptists are forgetting half of Jesus’ ministry and that is healing.” And so Tony decided to try it. Now, Baptists like many Presbyterians are a little uncomfortable with healing services but Tony decided to try it and one evening service he just simply said, “If you need to be prayed for,  if you need some healing, come after it’s over with and I’ll pray for you.” Nothing spectacular happened but about four days later he got a phone call from a woman who said “You prayed for my husband the other night and he had cancer.” “Had?” Tony got a little nervous; he wondered if he had done something wrong. And she said “No, you don’t understand. My husband had cancer and he did pass away but the last two years have been literally hell for us.  When he found out he had cancer he became incredibly angry.  He screamed and he cursed and he hated me, he hated God…he hated everything.  But when you prayed for him something happened.  He walked out different and the last four days have been some of the best of our marriage.  We’ve laughed, we’ve cried, we sang hymns, we told stories. You don’t understand Tony, he wasn’t cured, he was healed.”

Today is Easter. Easter is the best day of the Christian faith because Jesus has risen from the dead literally.  And because he lives we will live.  Without the resurrection of the dead we might as well go home, because there is no reason to be here.  Sometimes every Sunday is called Easter Sunday, because we celebrate the resurrection on Sunday.  But there is more than just bodily resurrection,  Jesus also heals us in our hearts and minds.  Theologically, the Bible calls this being born again, we are raised from the dead twice.  Once into eternity, but before that when Jesus comes into our heart, he heals us and raises us spiritually.  A story that I am going to tell you today is just such a story about the disciples getting the promise of eternal resurrection but being raised in their hearts and minds as well.  I want you to listen to the story carefully; it comes on Sunday after the crucifixion in John chapter 20, beginning at verse 19:

This is the word of the Lord.

On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord. Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.” Now Thomas (called Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!” But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.” A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.” Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!” Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

Please pray with me.

Father in heaven we come hearing the Word on Sunday sung to us, read to us and preached.  We pray that you would have a Word to speak to each one of us individually.  A Word we need to hear.  A Word with Jesus in it.  We give you this time Lord.  In His name, Amen.

Nobody likes to talk about death.  Did you ever notice that?  Imagine if you were at a dinner party, you’ve had a great meal, dessert comes out, time for conversation and you said to everyone, “Let’s talk about death!”  You wouldn’t get much of a reaction I don’t think.  We don’t like to talk about it.  We don’t like to think about it.  And often we live in a denial about it.  There is a paragraph I ran across from a book by Andy Rooney of 60 Minutes frame, he wrote a book called Not That You Asked. He says funny things, he said “I don’t like any music I can’t hum.” Or he says this “When I was young I always assumed I would get to like carrots when I was older, but I never did.”  Or particularly this one I like, “If dogs could talk it would take a lot of the fun out of owning one.”  But on a more serious note he writes, “I do not accept the inevitability of my own death, I secretly think there may be some other way out.”  Good luck Andy.  But then he says later, “In the middle of the night, as I get older, seems a lot longer than it used to.” 

The disciples had a couple of nights since the crucifixion.  They had seen the one that they loved the most, their best friend, the one who had been the center of their being, horribly crucified.  They had seen death and they couldn’t deny it. And their reaction was to run and hide, they locked the doors, afraid of the authorities would be bursting down the door pretty soon.  Without Jesus they had no courage, without Jesus they couldn’t face life. They were afraid and they didn’t know what to do.  But Jesus was going to change that.  You know in our time we tend to think that if we just try hard enough to we can have what we need to live life.  If we just look down inside we’ll find the courage to live.  But there are some things in life that are just plain too scary.  Sometimes death is one of them, other things maybe.  But now Jesus comes and everything is about to change.  Without Jesus the disciples also lack peace.  You know this is one of those stories in the Bible when I read it I am convinced that God must have a sense of humor. I mean think about it for a minute. Here they are, they are incredibly frightened and yet Jesus comes and stands in their midst.  They have something more frightening than the authorities. They have a man that they think should be dead.  I like the old story about the man who died sitting up.  And not only did he die sitting up he died with his head turned to one side.  And the mortician was late getting there, so rigor mortis set in and when he put him into the coffin he had to strap him down.  And he had to turn his head a bit.  And sure enough during the worship service, it was an open casket funeral, the strap broke.  You can imagine that that church had an extra exit by the time the service was over.  And yet Jesus comes and says, “Peace be with you.”  I can’t imagine anything else that they would have less, with him in their midst. And had to have scared the “ba-jeepers” out of them and yet when they saw him, they had peace. 

You know that there is much in life that takes away our peace, we all know that.  Think of the way the world is, every day something seems to happen.  Both in the world and in our lives seemingly.  I mean you can be there sitting there working at your desk in a tall building and maybe an airplane flies through it.  Or, maybe all that money you put into a stock market went out the window. Maybe you’ve heard some news from a doctor that you don’t like. Maybe you have some kind of disease or your spouse is getting ready to leave you or your child is on drugs.  Things are not going well.  All kinds of things take away our peace.  And in almost every situation of life from chaos at home to work to the world, there is no peace.  And we try to substitute a lot of things for peace.  Some of us are in love with our Daytimers.  We think that if we just plan our lives enough we will have peace.  Some of us have to take a whole handful of medicine in the morning just to cope with the day.  Some of us think that one vacation, “If I could just get to that place I will have peace.”  Some of us think, “If I could just get rid of this spouse I would have peace.” Some of us think that, “If I only had another kind of batch of kids I would have peace.” Or, “If I could just get them off to college, I don’t mind writing the checks.”  But I have found they come back.  Hand out. Peace comes in the presence of Christ.  That is the message here.  Real peace, the kind of peace Jesus is talking about is the peace that gives us confidence and courage to face life. Not perfectly, because there are going to be times when we are full of anxiety, full of fear at times always, but the kind of peace overcomes that.  In the presence of Christ, there is peace.  There is also forgiveness.  Without Jesus, the disciples were guilty.  You know they all have one thing in common, they were all in deep trouble.  They were all in deep trouble, in need of forgiveness.  We like to point to Judas as being the bad guy in the story and certainly  he was.  But every one of them denied Christ either with their mouth or their feet.  When the soldiers came of Friday morning they ran like rabbits, hiding.  And they were still hiding.  They needed forgiveness.  And Jesus comes and says, “Peace be with you.”  Now he says that three times.  Now when you see something repeated in the Bible, particularly three times, pay attention, it means something.  And so he is not only talking about the peace inside, he is talking about peace with God.  That’s what the cross did.  The meaning of Jesus’ death on the cross is that God himself paid our penalty, served our sentence and made the reconciliation with Him possible.  “Peace be with you.” Oh what wonderful words, “Peace be with you.”  Forgiveness

An old story about a soldier in World War I who committed a cowardly act and he was court marshaled, and sent back to his unit and the commander said to the executive officer, “If I don’t give him something to do, if I don’t trust him, he’ll be worthless to us.’  And so what he did he began to give the young man more and more responsibility and even gave him a command after a while.  And he went on to win medal after medal for valor for bravery. Why?  He said later, “I had betrayed the old man…and yet he trusted me.  What else could I do?”  File that under forgiveness.  And here the disciples the same thing and Jesus forgives them.  They were not only scared they were guilty. 

Without Jesus they also had no purpose.  Someone once asked, “Why do you go to that meeting?” ‘I don’t know I just always do.” “Why do you go to work?”, “I don’t know but I am always on time.”  “Why are you alive?” , “I don’t know but at least I am on the right side of the grass.”  What is our purpose?  For many people, purpose is simply living as long as possible as comfortably as possible.  For others, it is building tall buildings.  For others, it is accumulation.  For others, it is vacation, summers at the cabin.  For others, it is going skiing every time you get a vacation.  Some, it is education.  Whatever it is, and there is nothing wrong with these things, but is that why you are alive? Is that your meaning of life?  Is that your purpose? Jesus comes to the disciples and says to them, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you. “  That’s purpose.  And that is our purpose.  Jesus has not only forgiven us he has given us something to do of eternal significance. We are his ambassadors.  We are his representatives.  And that is the question, if you want to know one of the questions that God is going to ask us all about, what kind of representative were you of me?  Did you do anything like that at all?  Without Jesus there is not purpose but with Jesus there is eternal purpose.  Eternal meaning, eternal significance.

Not only did they not have purpose they did not have power.  And you know, that is the number one excuse to what I just said about purpose.  Who me?  God wouldn’t choose me. I’m just ordinary something. I can’t do that.  I remember like it was yesterday, my parents used to own a house on Lake Lanier near Atlanta, sitting on the dock talking to my father about serving the Lord.  And he said something like this, he said “Oh, it’s different for you, you’re a minister.”  I loved my father and I respected him, but I said something like, “WRONG! WRONG!” I’m not sure I said it that way, I just felt that way. But it is. If you just read the Bible, look at the character of the disciples, very ordinary people.  Very central people. A lot of people with issues. And yet, they’re the ones chosen.  Just like he chooses  you and me, all of us.  There is only one difference between you and me and that is simply calling.  I’m called to do this, you’re called to do something else.  It is not a question of status, I’m not on this podium because I’m higher than you.  We are all the same before the Lord.  We have purpose and we have power.  Jesus doesn’t say, “Okay now, now that I have chosen you, go out and do it.”  You know that is really the way we do it in the modern world.  We really are into this power of positive thinking stuff, and I think it is okay to a degree.  But, you know, Christian life isn’t like the little train that could. “I think I can. I think I can. I think I can.” If I just try hard enough I can be good. At least a failure. I mean Jesus comes to these disciples, they have failed miserably.  They were all into the same thing.  Peter said, “I can do it Lord!”  Right down the tubes.  All of them said the same thing.  Right down the tubes.  And Jesus says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”  The power of God, the personal power of God, that’s what the Holy Spirit is.  He gives them the Spirit to go out and do the mission.  Without Jesus there is no power, but with Jesus there is. For you and for me. 

Without Jesus they also had no faith.  Now, there are two aspects of faith.  One is to believe something is true.  I really do like Thomas.  We know that Thomas is the doubting Thomas but I really believe that Thomas was just expressing what all the disciples felt.  He just verbalized it, “Unless I put my finger here, and put my hand there, I will not believe.”  He sounds like a great scientist of the twentieth century.  There is nothing wrong with that.  He has to see it to believe it.  And then he does, by God’s grace.  But there is another aspect of faith, and that is to believe in someone, to trust someone.  And all the disciples were guilty of not believing in the facts but they were also guilty of not trusting Christ in the end.  He would say to them, “I am going to die and rise again.”  He said that several times, it went right over their heads, they just didn’t believe him.  And faith becomes, in the Bible, the mechanism by which we receive all this power and forgiveness and our salvation.  But you know I really do believe it is part of our DNA. Its part of who we are to think that we really just have to earn it.  We have to do something for it.  And that is not the message.  We think that way. We think in terms of comparison for example.  I know that the disciples are really guilty of that.  You know after all they were Jews and they were the chosen people, right?  But then not only were they Jews they knew Jesus so they had to be better than everybody else.  And we do the same thing, “I’m not as bad as so and so.”  “I’m not as bad as that person.”  “If they can get in, I certainly can.”  It’s human nature. But that isn’t the way it works.  It’s almost like saying, “I can bench press more than my grandmother.”  Or, “I can do this”, or “I’m not as bad as Hitler.”  “I’m not as bad as that person.” You know in the humanness, on a scale of one to ten, there are people at different numbers.  Some people are threes, some people are fours, some people are eights.  But it doesn’t matter, all have sins.  All have sins.  You can’t get there that way.  And Jesus comes, that’s why Jesus died on the cross, to pay the penalty. And we are reconciled by faith. 

Last but not least, without Jesus, the disciples had no joy.  I have come to believe that the Christian life is much more about believing than doing. And much more about joy than sadness.  Oh, there is sadness in life.  There’s heartache, there’s horror, and certainly we must work, we must do.  But the foundation of our lives should be one of joy.  Someone once said that the definition of Christian maturity is the recognition that joy comes when you see the Lord because that is why you are created.  That is why you were created.  And even in the midst of tremendous hardship we can have joy because Jesus is raised from the dead and he has raised us in his hearts.  Joni Erickson Tada is a woman who that when she was fourteen dove into a pool of water and it was only two feet deep and she broke her neck and she became a quadriplegic.  Very bitter initially, she came to know the Lord and the Lord has used her vitally over the last many years, she is in her fifties now.  And someone had asked her about the hope that she had and she said this, “I keep a pair of size nine red high top shoes in my art studio as a reminder of my hope.  They are my dancing shoes.  I can fit into them and they are pretty snazzy.  I love to dance.  At a recent family camp in Texas I was on the dance floor one night swinging and swaying with all the other families.  At another camp a group of moms had gone to Wal-Mart, bought the high tops for me and had all the families autograph them.  They presented them to me that night as dancing shoes for heaven.  When I have my new body, one that won’t be paralyzed.”  There is joy in the Lord.  Without Jesus there is no joy.  What about you?  Is your life lacking in forgiveness, purpose?  Lacking in power?  Lacking in joy, faith?  Perhaps it is because you have left Jesus out of your life.  Some of you may not know Jesus at all and this is your day to come and know him.  Others of you may be far away and just need to come back.  Still others, may just simply need to grow in your appreciation and your love of the Lord, wherever you are.  I am going to pray now and I want you to come before the Lord wherever you are and ask him to give you these things and whatever degree you need.  Let’s pray.

Oh Father, thank you for Jesus, his death on the cross and his resurrection. Because you live, we live.  Father, we come before you, each in a different spot.  Some without Jesus at all, I pray for them.  Receive them Lord, receive them into your arms.  Brothers they have been away for a while and they need to come back.  They need to find out about your forgiveness, your power and your joy, all those things.  And for still others, we just need to grow Lord and we pray for that.  Send us away from here Lord in the joy of your Spirit and the joy of the knowledge  that the resurrection is real and that you are real.  And that you are part of our lives.  Give us your power Lord.  And your presence. And your joy. In your name we pray. Amen.