Resurrection & A New Beginning Rev. Colin S. Marshall
Easter Sunday – 4th April 2010 St. John’s Presbyterian Church, Mt. Roskill
Readings: Psalm 116, Isaiah 65:17-25, John 20:1-18, 1 Cor 15:19-28
The Jewish people of Jesus day lived in the hope and expectation of a
Messiah who would come and removed the oppressive rule of the Romans.
Because of this they were ferocious fighters and refused to kowtow to any
invading force. They refused the
pagan gods of their conquerors and would not worship any way but in the manner
prescribed in their own Scriptures. They
alone among all of the races the Romans conquered were exempt from military
service. To have a Jew in the midst was to invite discord, distrust and outright
disobedience. They could be forced
to be slaves but their religious freedom could not be denied.
Why? Because they had a
living hope, a moment by moment expectation of the Messiah’s arrival.
When Jesus rode the donkey up the slope to Jerusalem and entered the city
on a colt the people thought he time of their wise and powerful Messiah had
come. The One who could command the
dead to rise would have no fear of the Romans nor any trouble calling an army
together. Here was the conquering
King – even if He wanted to arrive by donkey.
But Jesus seemed to flatten their hopes as He told the crowds that He had
to be lifted up before He could be elevated to such heights.
‘Lifted up’ being a euphemism for being crucified.
The crowds were confused. How
could such a thing be? How could
Jesus have an expectation of crucifixion? This
wasn’t a king – this was a madman and quickly their hope and enthusiasm
dissipated and they disappeared as quickly as they had come. No point upsetting
the Romans for a madman.
And when Jesus was arrested and put on trial and the crowd was asked who
they wanted crucified Jesus was the obvious answer.
After all it was what He was anticipating wasn’t it?
And what of the disciples? Those
who had followed Jesus so faithfully every summer and maybe every winter for
some three years. What of their
hopes and dreams, their expectations of glory alongside Jesus?
They too were flattened as they saw Him led away to be tried and tortured
and crucified. Where now was their
glorious king and rosy future? Hope
dashed is a killer. And the limp,
dead, bloodied body of Jesus laid in a cold, dark tomb, sealed and guarded
really was the end.
Isaiah had spoken the Lord’s word to the people. Behold God was doing a
new thing. But this surely wasn’t
it. Jesus had done wonderful things
and taught beautifully but that was all there was to it.
The restoration of Jerusalem and God’s people once again seemed to a
false hope. Many so-called
Messiah’s had come and gone and this Jesus of Nazareth was yet another forlorn
hope. The disciples too were
frustrated. None more than Judas.
He had pinned everything on Jesus and he thought he knew exactly what was
going to happen. And if Jesus
wasn’t brave enough, if Jesus wasn’t ready, if Jesus seemed to lose His way
then Judas would push Him, pressurise Him, direct Him.
Except Jesus wouldn’t be manipulated and Judas sold out for a mere
thirty pieces of silver. At least He
could materially profit from Jesus. But
the absolute futility, the complete loss of hope was too much and Judas took his
own miserable life. One disciple
down.
And
as Jesus died on the cross the rest of the disciples went into mourning.
What to do? Would they be
executed next? Once the body was
taken care of they would have to get out of Jerusalem and scatter.
So much for their hopes and dreams, their optimism and all Jesus’
seeming promise.
Mary
Magdalene arrived at the tomb on Sunday morning before it was light.
Mary found things were not as expected.
The guard on the tomb had vanished. They
should have been there for three days, the period after which Jews believed the
dead could not be raised though they’d forgotten about Lazarus already.
The stone sealing the tomb had been rolled away.
Who had done such a thing and where was the guard?
Now Mary could not have her own time of grieving away from the disciples
and their despair. She could not
even quietly await the dawn and ask the guards to let her tend to Jesus.
Before her was something worse – an empty tomb and Jesus nowhere to be
seen. Where had they taken His body?
We
forget, or maybe we don’t know, that the Jewish day begins and ends, not at
midnight but with the sun. In
Genesis we are told there was evening and there was morning the (whatever) day.
The day starts with the dawn. The Exodus ended with the plague of death
at midnight, Moses and Aaron called during the dark before Pharaoh and the
people leaving Egypt during the dark to a new day as dawn broke.
So too as Mary arrived at the tomb we came in the dark, the end of
Saturday and before Jesus rose. Where
was He? 1 Peter 3:19 that Jesus went
into hell to proclaim God’s victory to the souls and demons already imprisoned
in hell and then He was to return on Easter Sunday – after dawn when the day
started.
This
is a salient reminder to us that Jesus rose from the dead physically, even if
His body was different to our own. 1
Corinthians 15 tells us that the resurrection body is different and glorious but
in continuity with our own. Do not
be led astray by those who would teach that Jesus’ resurrection one was only a
spiritual one, that it was His good thoughts and deeds and essence that lives on
but that His physical body stayed in the tomb.
They will never find Jesus physical body in a tomb because He has already
been gloriously resurrected. One of
the earliest heresies and one that continues today and is trotted out every
Easter is that Jesus was not physically resurrected … but He was.
In
Luke 24:5 we find that Mary Magdalene was joined by other woman, Mary Jesus’
mother, Joanna and a number of others. No
doubt they didn’t want to leave poor grieving Mary Magdalene alone too long
and they too wanted to care for Jesus. The
women arrived and looked around for Jesus body.
They were confronted by two glorious men that terrified them. The men
asked them, “Why are you looking for the living among the dead? He is not here
He has risen.”
It
is now and only now that hope is rekindled.
Hope springs to life. The
angels have not said that He wasn’t dead.
Jesus had been very dead. The
women knew, they had buried Jesus. But
Jesus had risen just as He said. What
they had heard but didn’t care for. The
promise they had feared, the message they could not even begin to comprehend and
had so completely ignored was now proven to be true.
Jesus was risen just as He said. He
was not longer dead.
Like
the women and the disciples we are so prone to keeping our eyes down in the
dirt, in the sin and mire of our own condition, our own knowledge of how things
must be, that we struggle to hear the word of hope and the promise that takes us
beyond our present situation. Would
God’s Word fail? Would God not
keep His promise? Does God not
complete what He has started? Of
course He is faithful. He has
started with us – is He not faithful to complete that work He has begun in us?
Is our sin too great for God to handle?
Is there any personality, any person too difficult for God to transform?
How weak and how foolish when we keep our eyes down when Jesus calls us
to lift them up – to hope, to expect, to walk toward Him toward a better
future. And if it is difficult now
we will not give in to despair and a lack of hope.
We are a people of hope – and not a foolish weak hope, but a hope
grounded in the One who is able to change and transform death into life.
Strength for today and a bright hope for the future – and like the
women we may unexpectedly experience our hope realised when we least expect it.
The
women struggled to comprehend the message. Told
repeatedly by Jesus, then by angels they still struggled with it.
And so do we. We struggle to
comprehend how God will do His work in us and in others around us.
Our sinful nature wrestles with God even in the face of proof.
The women ran to tell the disciples, the men who were probably still
asleep. Men are men. They want
action and proof. Peter and John run
to the tomb only to find the empty stone cave and the linen cloths Jesus was
wrapped in. They are left, not with
proof but with wonder. What has
happened. What might be?
It
is only later, after they have wrestled with believing and hoping that Jesus
will appear to the disciples, men and women alike.
And when He does, after the initial shock, there is no doubt who He is.
Mary
had come to the tomb too soon. Not
because she wanted to meet the risen Jesus – such a thought was not even
vaguely in her mind. But because she
wanted to hold on to the memory of love once shared.
In the pain of her grief and things not going right she had failed to
comprehend that God could and would change the situation far more than she could
possibly imagine. Mary had taken her
eyes off the ball. But God hadn’t, doesn’t, couldn’t.
God knew her heart, what she wanted, what she needed and in His own time
that need would be meet. All Mary
had to do was hang in there. And
when Jesus appeared, when Jesus came back, He was different man – transformed,
glorious, far more than she expected. But
Jesus came when God was ready – not when she was.
In
1 Corinthians 15 the apostle Paul reminds us that the resurrection has a greater
meaning than just for this life. In
2 Tim 1:10 Paul states bluntly one of the most profound understandings.
Jesus resurrection has destroyed death.
If death was understood to be the end prior to Jesus we are forced to
rethink. If death is the last enemy, as 1 Cor 15:26 puts it, its defeat is
already under way. Jesus opens the
door to a new world and a new life when we walk with Him with our eyes on Him.
The disciples would come to know the truth of this in a whole new way and
their lives from that point on would be totally different.
This
life is not all that there is and if we become so caught up in our situation
here and now we risk missing the big picture altogether.
If we seek life among the dead – if we continue wallowing in our own
sin and weakness only looking for solutions in ourselves then we are indeed to
be pitied. Pitied for our
foolishness. To live such a way is
to follow the path of Judas and miss out on the joy of resurrection.
But today we are able to realise that Jesus’ resurrection gives us a
new hope, a new joy. The egg of the
Passover feast is broken open and new life springs from it.
The tomb is empty, to body is given life and death is overcome, the
curtain in the Temple is torn in two and God will not be constrained to our
meagre constraints. Ahead of us is a
glorious hope, for this world and the next for death is not a barrier just a new
beginning and as we hand over our sin, our lack of vision and our weakness to
Jesus we ask instead for a new beginning, a new hope and a new future walking
with Jesus afresh day by day – not in darkness but in the ever new light of a
fresh Easter morning.