Why I Believe in the Resurrection!
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You probably have never heard the name of Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin but during his day he was one of the most powerful men in the world. He was a Russian communist leader and he took part in the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, was the editor of the Soviet newspaper Pravda and was a full member of the Politburo. His works on economics are still read today. But there is a story told about a journey he took in 1930 from Moscow to Kiev to address a huge assembly on the subject of atheism, addressing the crowd he aimed his heavy artillery at Christianity hurling insults, argument and proof against it. An hour later he was finished and he looked out at what seemed to be the smoldering ashes of the faith of men. “Are there any questions?” he asked. Deafening silence. Then one man approached the podium, mounted the lectern standing next to the Communist leader, he surveyed the crowd to the left and the right and finally shouted the ancient greeting known to Christians everywhere, “Christ is Risen!” And the crowd rose en masse and said, “He is risen, indeed!”
And I say to you this morning, “Christ is risen!” and your response is, “He is risen, indeed!” Amen. Amen.
This morning I want to read to you the whole story. It is a long passage of Scripture but I think it is appropriate from time to time to read a large portion, particularly this portion. It is John, Chapter 20. It is the story of the Resurrection. We have heard it before but we should hear it again. As we do, pick out some things, notice some things, about evidence. John was a man of evidence. He writes his gospel, probably 20, 30 years after the others had been written. He has addressed some issues that others have not. He has heard the stories about Jesus’ body being stolen, he addresses that in this particular passage; or, Jesus didn’t really die on the cross, he addressed that in chapter 19 with the spear in the heart and blood and water flowing out. He is a man of evidence. But, most of all, hear the story once more with eyes of faith. (John 20:1-31)
1Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. 2So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”
3So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. 4Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. 6Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, 7as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus’ head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen. 8Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. 9(They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.)
10Then the disciples went back to their homes, 11but Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb 12and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.
13They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”
”They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” 14At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.
15“Woman,” he said, “why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”
Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”
16Jesus said to her, “Mary.”
She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means Teacher).
17Jesus said, “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.’ ”
18Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had said these things to her.
19On 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!” 20After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.
21Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” 22And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”
24Now Thomas (called Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. 25So 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.”
26A 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!” 27Then 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.”
28Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”
29Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
30Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. 31But 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.
Would you pray with me?
Lord help us hear this story, the greatest of stories, once more. May it bolster the faith that we have; and, if we have no faith, may it make it start. We pray, Lord, that this story may energize us, may fill us once again, and give us hope and confidence both in this life and the life to come, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
I have titled my sermon today, Why I Believe in the Resurrection, because I think from time to time we need to just talk about the evidence, and there is lots of it. We need to remember why we believe these things. We live in a scientific generation and we need that; but you know what, as you read this story, you see they needed it too. Sometimes I believe that we look at the ancients as sort of having bones in their noses and paint all over their faces, have a wild look in their eyes and they would believe anything. Well, I think you can see that’s not true. They were very sophisticated people. They weren’t going to believe that somebody just got up out of the dead. Who would believe that? We might believe it if we thought of this story as one bad horror movie because you see that kind of thing all the time. But what makes us believe this actually happened in real history, in real time that it is a literal, not figurative, something that actually happened.
First and foremost, I believe because of the evidence. The text says, “Finally the other disciple (this is John, himself), who had reached the tomb first, also went inside.” (Peter, being a little braver, went in first. He got there second, but went in first. That is typical, but John went in) but it says, “He saw and believed.” He saw and believed. What did he see? You know, I have heard many times Christians say that God is incomprehensible. And you know what? That’s true, it is very true. But many of us might remember the old T.V. series Cosmos with Carl Sagan. Carl Sagan had the famous phrase about all the stars in the universe. He would say “there were billions and billions of stars.” And for Carl Sagan that was evidence which proved his belief, he was basically an atheist. He would talk about the cosmos proving not only it is very big but there is nothing else out there. But, for a Christian, when we look at that, it is proof of, it is a statement of, how big God is, and that he is incomprehensible. But to say that God is incomprehensible, does not mean he is unknown. That is why I love this story. It is a testimony of who God is. It is a testimony of the evidence of what God has done. Now what the disciples saw, the disciples saw a chrysalis sort of thing. You know, you’ve seen, actually talking about horror movies, like The Mummy, how they are wrapped up and that kind of thing, well, that is what he saw. He saw a mummy like figure but there was no body in it. Now you would expect this mummy apparatus to be torn open, ripped open, if a body had been in it; but no, it was intact. What he had seen was that Jesus had come out. He had seen the evidence of Jesus Christ.
Most of you have heard me tell the story about how I went to airborne school a long time ago and, yes, I have jumped out of a perfectly good airplane. What I haven’t told you was the experience that they put you through to get to that week. It is a three week experience. In the first week what they do is that they send you to a barn-like place with a lot of sawdust; and you get up on a about a three foot platform and most of the day, two days really, you jump off of it. The mantra is “keep your legs together and hit the four points of contact: your feet, your side, your back side and your shoulder.” And you do that over and over and over again. Then they take you to a mockup of an airplane and you practice jumping out, like 6 inches; but you’re jumping out. What’s the mantra? “Keep you legs and feet together and hit the ground and count to four by thousands.” So you jump out: four thousand, three thousand, two thousand, one thousand, with the idea that by that one thousand if you haven’t felt a tremendous jerk, you are in deep trouble. Now they prepare you for the deep trouble but they also say, you know, nothing really bad has happened out of the hundreds of people that have been through this school in the last ten years the last time we remember. So they are coaching you, they are training you. Then they take you up to a thirty foot tower where you jump out of that. You are completely terrified until you get used to it. Then the next week the jumps are higher and then the third week you get to jump. What are they doing? They are preparing us for the evidence that you are going to survive this. And it is all about witnessing.
You know, sometimes we think that we have to have the evidence of a scientific lab before we believe in something, but most of us believe in evidence. The only way we know that George Washington crossed the Delaware is because someone told us about it. We don’t even have a picture. And we have hundreds and hundreds of people who saw Jesus and then millions who have experienced him. We believe the evidence.
The second thing that helps me believe is because of who God is. Of who God is. As I said earlier we believe that God might be incomprehensible but we can know who God is and this story is about that. Jesus could have appeared to Peter and John. Why didn’t he? Why did he appear to Mary Magdalene? I told you last week that Mary Magdalene, having the life before Christ, I call it a B.C. life; well, her B.C. life would make a sailor blush. So she had been a very sinful woman. And, she was a woman. No offense, but why would he go to her and not the others? Why not Joseph of Arimathea? Why not even his own mom? Because that is who Jesus is, and that is who God is. Jesus again and again says that God will go to the last instead of the first. Paul will say later, ‘For consider your calling brothers. Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many powerful, not many were of noble birth but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak of the world to shame the strong. It is part of God’s character to go to those the world considers last.” It is part of God’s character to love those who are unlovely. And God is a very big God. I think we approach the Resurrection from the wrong angle. We say how do I believe that somebody can rise from the dead when the question we should be asking is what kind of God are we dealing with? We are dealing with a God who made everything. When we study biology and chemistry and physics we are studying how God has rigged the world, basically. That is what is exciting about science. If you are a young person and you want to be a scientist, great. You get to find out what God has been doing, in detail, because God made everything. But if God is such a God that he is so big and so powerful and has created everything, and he is one who is loving, we can believe in a resurrection. It follows quite logically. It is because of who God is.
Thirdly, I believe in the Resurrection because I have seen it in the lives of so many others. Take the disciples, for example. Let’s start there. They were very a skeptical bunch. The soldiers come, they scatter like the wind, they run off, they think they’re all going to die. They are in a room that is all locked up, they are cowering cowards, they are afraid. By the way, I just love this scene, you know, Jesus appears to them and says, “Peace be with you.” Can you imagine being in a locked room and then somebody shows up you think is dead, do you think you would have a lot of peace? God has a sense of humor. But what he does and the first thing he says is, “Here’s my hands, here’s my side, here’s my feet. I’m really me.” And then Thomas, we think of Thomas as a bad guy, he doubted. He was just one of those guys whose glass was always sort of half empty not half full. He needed to see. “I will not believe this unless I see.” And Jesus says, “See, touch, feel. I’m it. Here I am. “Blessed are those who believe who haven’t seen.” Oh, by the way, that’s us. But we have seen it in others and they go from being cowering cowards to the people who are the personification of courage, people who will die. They were so afraid at the beginning, but now they are willing to die. And their faith has been multiplied over and over again because God said, and Jesus said to them, “I am going to send you and I am gong to give you the power to go out.” Their faith has been replicated, you know, that by the end of the century, the first century, it is estimated that about a half million people had become Christians. Given that there was not much population at the time that was huge. And by the third century Christianity had taken over the entire known world at the time. It had spread.
In my own life as a pastor I have a sort of unique perspective. I have been the pastor in twenty-six years of six different churches. Now that may seem like a lot but my first one was three years, and in one place I had two. It was a yoked situation, what they call yoked; in other words, I got to go to two places on Sunday morning and that was a privilege. But what that means is that I have seen hundreds of people just like you. You know, sometimes the Church is bashed in our time and people talk about the hypocrites in the Church and how bad things are in churches. Even last week I heard somebody talking about “Well, I don’t want to be with those church people.” It is almost like we have cooties or something, I’m not sure what. To be with a church person was something bad. Certainly there is sin in the church. It is full of people. And no one knows better than that than a pastor. No one does; and yet, the other side of it is that people are here and have been, and I have only been in six, a pastor of six, who are there because they know Jesus. They can face life and sickness because they know Jesus. They have a purpose because they know Jesus. They give money to God’s causes because they know Jesus. They raise their children in a certain way because they know Jesus. They make a difference in the world because they know Jesus. That is the side that people don’t see. It is what you are, it is what we are. It’s not perfection. We’re not promised that. That’s not part of the deal. What it is is a different direction, people going one way who are now going another. Sometimes it is like this, that’s true, that’s life; but we see it. The evidence is clear all over the world. Just in my own life I have been to Israel and Africa and Europe and Afghanistan, and I have been in the Army and have had to deal with all kinds of different people. There are Christians everywhere who have the Spirit in their lives, have Jesus in their lives, and it is evidence of the Resurrection.
Last but not least, and perhaps it is the most subjective of all, I have experienced it myself. I read this great story this week about a young lad whose father died in a car wreck when he was twelve years old. He read it in the newspaper before anyone got word to him to tell him about it. He saw the picture of the family car smashed up on the front page of the newspaper and read that his dad had died in the accident. And strangely one of the very first feelings he had was guilt, guilt about an incident that had happened a few months before when he was showing off at a family picnic and threw a ball, hit his father’s thumb and broke it. All he could think about was his father’s broken thumb and what a terrible son he had been to cause such great pain to his dad. Finally he went to see his pastor and he said he would never forget this experience. He said my pastor came over to me and he came around the desk with tears in his eyes and as he sat down across from me and said, “Now Jim, (that was his name) you listen to me. If your dad could come back to life for five minutes and be right here with us, if he knew you were worried about this thumb business, what would he say to you?” “He would just tell me to quite worrying about it,” Jim said. “Alright,” the minister said, “and you quit worrying about it.” “Yes sir,” he said, and he did. Now that minister said, “Your dad would forgive you. Your dad would forgive you and you simply need to accept it. Make a new start with your life.” And it turned out that this young man did, he became a pastor of a large United Methodist church, and wrote thirty books on Christian living. His name was James Moore. But my friends, that’s Easter. That is Easter. The risen Lord has come back to life and assures the disciples they are forgiven. Peter denied him, Thomas had doubted him, and all the disciples had forsaken him; but he came back, he forgave them, he resurrected them in this life and gave them the promise of eternal life in the next. That’s Easter.
I want to say two more things before we quit. There are some of you here who have never confessed Christ as your Lord. Some of you may have been members of this church for twenty years, it doesn’t really matter. Some of you may just be here for Easter. That’s ok we are glad you are here. But you know if you know the Lord or not. Last week we talked about the cross or we talked about Friday; and before you can come to today, you have to go through Friday. You have to come to Jesus on the cross and admit that you are a sinner. If you have done wrong, that you are not going to stand before God and survive the experience without Jesus, the whole idea is that Jesus died for you as your substitute, and when you come to that and surrender your life you can experience. Thursday night we had a wonderful video called, It’s Friday, but Sunday is Coming. And Sunday’s here.
So as we close, if you feel the Lord tugging at your heart, believe. The evidence is clear. It is not for lack of evidence; it is just simply because of the lack of will. You have to give your life and then you will know what Easter is all about. For all the rest of you, the illustration I have told a couple times here, but it still applies, again, my airborne experience. You know, they were giving us all the evidence but you still had to jump. I remember making that first jump. It is like being shot out of a cannon and the shoot opens behind you; but the prop blast from the airplane literally as the shoot is opening, you are going that way and the shoot flips over and opens in front of you, and it was the most beautiful sight I have ever seen. The shoot opened and then it becomes deathly still, and quiet, and peaceful. You go from a hurricane to no noise at all, and that is what it is. The shoot will open. The evidence is there. You still have to jump. And you can believe that God will have you when it does. He is risen! He is risen, indeed!
Let’s pray.
Oh God, thank you for this wonderful celebration, may it not end at lunch today. May we live this experience each Sunday, each day of our lives. As we live our lives which are not always easy but we have this hope which gives us strength to live well for today, because we have you in our lives and we have the promise for ever and ever. Thank you Lord for what you have done for us and I pray for those who may not know you today Lord. May they feel the tug of their hearts and may they believe, as well, and we may all walk out of here all one family in Jesus’ name. Amen.