We Have Seen the Lord!

Kevin Gasser

Staunton Mennonite Church

4/12/09

 

John 20:1-18

 

20Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. 2So 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.” 3Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. 4The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. 6Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, 7and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. 8Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; 9for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. 10Then the disciples returned to their homes.

 

11But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; 12and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. 13They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” 14When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. 15Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” 16Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). 17Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” 18Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her.

 

            Turn on your television or radio and you will here guarantees.  The Men’s Warehouse tells us, “You’re going to like the way you look.  I guarantee it.”  Rogain guarantees that you will regrow hair in a few months.  Nutrisystem guarantees that you will loose weight on their program.  There are numerous guarantees out there to get rich fast, to make someone fall in love with you.  You name it, someone will guarantee that they can provide it for you.

            I’ve always been told that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.  So to these guarantees, I usually find myself saying, “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

            Today I would like to look at our scripture from John 20 and I hope to see that God makes a number of guarantees to us as well.  Guarantees that seem too good to be true, but guarantees that I am confident of because I have seen it, therefore I do believe it.

            Our text for today tells us about four main characters.  We begin with Mary Magdalene, and a little background on who she was.  Mary was a woman that had been fully dedicated to serving Jesus ever since he healed her from demon possession.  Some traditions even say that she was a prostitute.  But she became a disciple, following Jesus from town to town, hearing him preach and teach, watching him heal and perform miracles.  Surely Mary knew that Jesus was the Messiah.

            The one that Mary had been waiting on, no the one that all of Israel had been waiting on had arrived.  He came preaching a new message, speaking as a prophet, saying that the kingdom of God was at hand.  Mary witnessed all of this and I’m sure that she and all of Jesus’ other followers got pretty excited about this new kingdom. 

But then just as fast as Jesus gained popularity, he had everything taken away from him.   Mary witnessed Jesus’ crucifixion.  Just three years into his public ministry, on a day that we commonly refer to as Good Friday, Jesus was nailed to a cross, tortured, mocked, and he eventually died.  Mary witnessed it all.

            Our story picks up on the following Sunday.  Mary comes to the tomb to anoint the body of Jesus, to put oils and herbs on the body before he is left alone to decompose.  She hadn’t come earlier because the day after Jesus was killed was the Sabbath day, a day where it would have been against the Jewish law for her to anoint his body.

            So Mary Magdalene arrives at the tomb of Jesus early on Sunday morning and finds a bit of a surprise…the stone is rolled away from the entrance.  And when Mary sees this she runs to find Jesus’ disciples, the men that have spent the last three years learning from him.  And she finds Peter and John and she tells them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”  Evidently she looked into the tomb to see that it was empty and the stone had not simply been removed.

            Well Peter and John hear this and they jump to their feet and they run to the tomb.  John is younger than Peter so he gets there first and stops outside, looking at the stone that has been moved and peeking inside at the clothes left laying there.  Then Peter shows up and he runs right into the tomb where he too finds the clothes that Jesus had been buried in.  And they believed Mary that Jesus’ body had been taken, and they walked back home, confused, dishearten.

            That, my friends, would be a terrible story if it ended there.  This would be a terrible story if this guy named Jesus had gotten everyone excited about being the Messiah, then gets himself killed, and then even his body is stolen from his grave.  Thankfully this is not how the story goes; the story doesn’t end there.  But let’s pause this story and come back to it in just a few minutes.  First let me tell you about my week.

            I have been doing a lot of work around the outside of our home this week, taking advantage of the beautiful weather.  We got some seeds planted in the garden, I got the lawn mowed and some bare patches seeded.  And I took some time one day to dig up some shrubs in the front of our house.

            I didn’t realize how much work this would be.  Those evergreen shrubs put down some pretty deep roots.  So I spent a lot of time bent over, digging in the ground, trying to uncover some of these roots.  And as I got underneath the shrubs I found that I could pry them up by pushing down on the handle of my shovel.  That is, until I got to the biggest shrub.  Perhaps I was getting a little too carried away, but I decided to try to stand on the shovel handle for additional leverage to get the last and biggest shrub out of the ground.  And when I did, I heard a cracking sound and found myself standing on the ground.  I had broken the handle of the shovel.

            Like the story of Jesus’ death, the story of my shovel would be a pretty bad one if we just stopped there with brokenness and disappointment.  But neither story stops there.  There is more.

            As I examined the broken shovel, I noticed the sticker on the handle which had the word “Lifetime” printed in big bold letters.  I chuckled a bit as I read that sticker, thinking “It sure did have a short lifetime.”  I considered looking into taking advantage of this lifetime guarantee, but it is my understanding that jumping on the shovel handle probably qualifies as user abuse, therefore voiding my lifetime guarantee.

            But as I stood there with the two broken pieces of my once whole shovel, I realized that we too have a lifetime guarantee as Christians, a lifetime guarantee against our brokenness.

If we pick back up our story from John, we find that after the disciples find the empty tomb, Mary returns to the tomb and weeps.  And as she weeps, she meets a person that she does not recognize immediately.  She thinks it is the gardener.  But as they have a conversation together Mary realizes that this is not the gardener that she is speaking to.  This is Jesus, the Messiah, Rabbouni, she calls him.

Mary Magdalene has an encounter with the risen Lord.  Jesus, whom she saw killed with her own eyes a few days earlier is now standing before her once again, having a conversation with her.

Mary runs to the disciples and she tells them what she has seen and heard.  She tells the disciples, “I have seen the Lord.”  And later that evening, 10 of the disciples also saw the risen Lord.  The brokenness had been restored; Jesus had been raised from the dead.

Now that is a lifetime guarantee.  A guarantee made between God and human beings.  God has made several of these guarantees with us humans.  God guaranteed that he will never leave us, nor forsake us throughout our lifetime.  God guaranteed that he would send a messiah that would come to the earth to lead God’s people.  And God did just that through the person that we know as Jesus Christ.

            And through Jesus we received another lifetime guarantee, one that transcends even death.  Jesus made the guarantee that anyone who believes in him shall not die, but have eternal life.  And if we truly want life, we need to follow him.  We have a lifetime guarantee.  A guarantee that we can believe because we can see it.

            One thing that I love about the lifetime guarantee that we receive from Jesus is that it isn’t just a guarantee of life after death.  God not only has promised us life after death, but God has also promised us life before death!  God is active in this life, God is active in this world, God is here today! 

Jesus spoke about the kingdom of God not only being something that we hope for in the future, but something that is available to us all right now.  And I believe that like Mary Magdalene, we can say “We have seen the Lord.”  Maybe we haven’t seen Jesus with our own eyes, but surely we have all seen the Lord.  Surely we have all witnessed God working in our lives and in the lives of others.

            When I was growing up, I remember when my older brother got a new toy and I wanted to play with it, I would ask him “Can I see that?”  And he would always wave it in front of my face and say, “You see with your eyes, not with your hands.”  But I would like to say today that we see the Lord with all of our senses: our eyes, ears, hands, tongues, and noses.  And today I have asked three people to share with us how they have “seen” the Lord in the last year.  Garlan, Kristin, and Kathy will share how they have seen the Lord recently.

            (I have asked three people from our congregation to share stories for about two minutes each about how they have witnessed God moving in their lives and in the lives of others in the last year.)

            We have seen the Lord.  Part of my job as a pastor is that I get invited to be a part of some of the most memorable and important parts of your lives.  In the last year I have been to the hospital to welcome babies into the world and experience the gift of new life.  I have been in hospitals holding the hands of and praying for those who are ill.  I have baptized a new member of this congregation.  I have been a part of two people beginning their life together in marriage and I have stood by a grave as you have said good-bye to loved ones.

            I have seen the Lord because you have allowed me to walk with you through these experiences.  And I thank you all for that.  On this Easter Sunday, I echo the words of Garlan, Kristin, Kathy, and Mary Magdalene.  We have seen the Lord, because he is not dead.  He lives among us and within us today.

So what do we do with this information?  Don’t keep it to yourself.  Let others know that you have seen the Lord.  Share your stories with your neighbors.  Tell them how you have seen God move in your life and in the lives of others.  Help them to see the Lord as well.  Because we serve a God who was not only crucified, but a God that was raised again to new life, a new life that is available to us all.  We have a lifetime guarantee that we can see and show others.  You can see it and believe it.

Easter Sunday is our guarantee that death does not have the final word.  Easter Sunday is our guarantee that neither life, nor death, nor angels, nor demons, nor things of this time or things to come will ever separate us from the love of God.  Easter Sunday is our guarantee that all those who name Jesus as Lord will have eternal life because love conquers all.  We have seen the Lord.  Let’s make sure others see the Lord in us as well.

Now it makes sense

Kevin Gasser

Staunton Mennonite Church

3/23/08

 

Mark 16:1-8 (NIV)

 

1When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus’ body. 2Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb 3and they asked each other, “Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?”

 4But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. 5As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed.

 6″Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. 7But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’ ”

 8Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.

 

Thesis: None of the New Testament’s witness makes any sense unless the community is vindicated by the resurrection of the dead (pg. 338 Hays).

 

            Over the last three Sundays, you have seen me progressively get rougher looking.  My hair was cut short and my beard has been growing out.  I have lovingly been called “grizzly” and “grungy” by people in this congregation. 

            Now nobody ever asked me why I was putting myself through such a metamorphosis.  You simply accepted me, as grizzled and grungy as I appeared, and welcomed me.  And I appreciate that.  Especially since we as Christians need to be accepting of all people, no matter how they look or smell, even when they look different from us.  We are all created in the image of God, though some of us might be slightly more distorted images of God than others.

            Now I do have a reason for my exceptionally grizzled look over the last three weeks.  If I never told you that, you probably wouldn’t have thought anything of it.  You probably would have forgotten that rough looking guy that preached a few Sundays in Lent.  But now I am going to tell you that there is more to the story.

            Through Lent, we have witnessed the worship leader nailing a black piece of paper to the cross every week.  These black pieces of paper, which represented our sins, accumulated over the weeks.  Then, last Sunday everyone had the opportunity to nail their sins to the cross.  And it was covered from top to bottom.  It was a black out.  Our sins dominated the landscape.  Now this week, all of those sins are gone.  The cross is now cleared of all of those sins, and it has been made white as snow.

            As the black papers accumulated on the cross, I grew progressively grungier as well.  The whiskers grew out and thicker week by week.  I probably showered less frequently than I should have, and I chose to only wear dark colors.  Now, here today I stand clean cut and shaven, washed and made new again.

            Probably everyone here would have missed out on that message if I hadn’t disclosed this information to you this morning.  You would have just forgotten about my grunginess in a week or two.  But now you see the significance in what I was doing.  I was trying to show you something symbolically.  There is a cleansing, an atonement that makes us right with God again.  And the medium for that atonement is the cross.  The method for that atonement is crucifixion.  And the source of that atonement is Jesus Christ.

            Like my frequently changing styles, we have all done things that don’t make sense to many others.  Now there are things that are just bad decisions that we make that really never make sense and there are choices that we make that only make sense to others when we explain it to them.  Over that last few weeks I have been talking about the counter cultural nature of Christianity, the way that Christians are called to do things differently from the world around us.  I have spoken of how we as Christians are called to do things that don’t make sense to the rest of the world.  And today I would like to share with you why these things do make sense for those of us living on this side of Easter Sunday.  Because they only make sense in light of the resurrection.  Like my progressive grunginess, it only makes sense when you have the whole story.

            Our text for today speaks about the first Easter morning.  Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James (and Jesus?), and Salome are said by Mark to be going to the tomb of Jesus to anoint his body.  Jesus had died on a Friday, the next day was the Sabbath, and it was early on the first day of the week when they had their first opportunity to go to Jesus’ grave to perform this duty.  And as they are walking, they become very pragmatic, asking, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?”

            But when they got to the tomb, they find that the stone has already been rolled away.  They walk into the tomb to find, not Jesus, but a young man dressed in white.  And this young man in white proceeds to tell the ladies, “Jesus, who was crucified, is not here.  He has risen.  Go and tell the disciples (and Peter) to meet him at Galilee.”

            And then we come to something that is somewhat problematic.  Verse eight says, “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”  Why is that problematic?  Well, originally the gospel of Mark ended with verse 8 and according to Mark, nobody else witnessed the empty tomb.  So if these ladies did not tell anyone else, then how did Mark find out?  How did we find out?

            I wonder sometimes what would have happened if they truly would not have told anyone else.  What if nobody had witnessed the resurrected Jesus?  What if the burial of Jesus was the end of the story?  Would the story have died with Jesus and his disciples?  Would we even know the name “Jesus” today? 

If I say the name Judas Maccabaeus, could you tell me who he was?  Does that name ring a bell?  What about Simon bar Kochba?  I would guess that most of us have never even heard of these men.  They are both very important people in Jewish history, but not really so much in Christian history.  Both were very influential people, both had a strong following.  Both were thought to be the messiah during their time and date, one coming before Jesus and one after.  But what happened to these two men?  They both died, they were killed by the Greek and Roman leaders, respectively.  And if they were resurrected, we don’t have any text today that shows this.  So if they were resurrected, and someone did witness this, then those witnesses, unlike the witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection, truly told no one.

I tell you the stories of Judas Maccabaeus and Simon bar Kochba to make the point that someone said something that first Easter Sunday.  Someone told of Jesus’ resurrection.  If they hadn’t, he might have gone down in history next to these two other men that we seem to know so little about.  If the Mary’s and Salome hadn’t witnessed to his resurrection, the story of Jesus would have probably died with him or been nothing more to us than a little line in the history books about some counter cultural leader in Palestine in the first century that made a bunch of statements about how the law of Moses was not being lived out properly and how God’s people needed to step it up a bit. 

But the word got out.  The women did not keep the resurrection a secret.  They told others and then those people told others and the word spread exponentially.  Eventually people started writing things down about what Jesus had told them, they began to record the things that he had said so that it could be passed on to others who were not there in person.  And they began to realize that these things that were confusing, these things that didn’t make sense to them at the time when Jesus said them, only make sense now.  Now that they know that Jesus is not dead, these things make sense.  Now that we are given the assurance that all those who are in Christ will rise with him, these tough sayings become intelligible.

Jesus said things like “You have heard it said, ‘You shall not murder’, but I say to that if you are angry with a brother or sister you are liable to judgment.  You have heard it said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’  But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.  You have heard it said ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’  But I say to you, Do not resist an evil doer.  But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; if anyone wants to take your coat, give them your cloak as well, if anyone forces you to go a mile, go with them a second mile.  You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’  But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” (Paraphrase from Matthew 5:21-48)

This isn’t the way the world works!  The meek shall inherit the earth?  That is wrong, the strong will inherit the earth.  The powerful will inherit the earth.  The one with the biggest guns and the biggest bombs and the biggest bank account will inherit the earth.  That is what the culture around us is teaching us.  But that isn’t what Jesus says.  And what Jesus has taught us only makes sense now that we know about the resurrection.  Many of the teachings of Jesus only make sense with the promise of a new creation.

To illustrate this, I think it is appropriate to retell a story that we are all probably familiar with.  On October 2, 2006, a 32-year-old milk truck driver named Charles Roberts entered a one room Amish school house in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, taking 10 students hostage.  Their ages ranged from 6-years-old to 13.  After a boarding up the door and windows, Roberts began shooting the girls execution style, from point blank range in the back of the head.  A coroner from Lancaster County said, “there was not one desk, not one chair, in the whole schoolroom that was not splattered with either blood or glass. There were bullet holes everywhere, everywhere.”

Five of the girls died on the spot or soon after.  The five other victims survived, though one, six-year-old Rosanna King, survives today in a wheel chair, being fed through a feeding tube, unable to communicate verbally.  Roberts also took his own life that morning.

This is a story that we are all familiar with.  It blanketed the news for days after the event took place.  Books are still being published about the shootings at Nickel Mines almost 18 months later.  But as I was preparing for today, and even this morning as I stand here preaching this message, I find myself getting angry.  How could someone do such a thing to these young, innocent girls?  What did they ever do to Charles Roberts?  And when you hear about the things he thought about doing to these girls, it just makes me sick.  And the worldly side of me kicks in and I begin to think, “It is too bad that Charles Roberts took his own life, because he would have gotten what he deserves in jail.  He would have been harassed by the other inmates and he probably would have gotten some sort of extreme punishment from the courts.”

But what happened?  While much of the world thinks of ways to pay back evil with evil, what was the response of the Amish community?  They forgave Charles Roberts for his offense.  They reached out to his family.  One Amish man is said to have held Charles Roberts’ father in his arms as they wept together for an hour.  The grandfather of one of the murdered girls was quick to remind others that they must not think evil of this man.  Charles Roberts left behind a wife, children, and parents as well.  All of them needed to grieve this terrible tragedy, too.  And the family of Charles Roberts has been able to do so with the grace and forgiveness offered to them by the Amish community.

Jesus said in Matthew 5:43, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’  But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father I heaven.”  The teachings of Jesus, the forgiving nature of the Amish community don’t make sense in the world we live.  We want vengeance, we want people to pay for what they have done to us.  Baking bread and cookies for the wife of the man who just shot 10 little girls is probably the last thing on most people’s minds.  But we are called to live a counter cultural life, different from the world around us.

The Apostle Paul writes in Romans 12:2, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”  I think it is safe to say that the Amish community has taken this passage to heart in many ways.  And so often all that the people of the world around them see is the lack of conformity in clothes, cars, and electricity.  What people don’t see is the second part of the verse.  We are not to become conformed to the patterns of this world, but rather we are to be transformed by Christ.

Now I don’t think that we need to go as far as the Amish do when we seek to not become conformed to the patterns of this world, but I also think that it is clear that the teachings of Jesus and the teachings of Paul teach us that we are not supposed to be like the rest of the world, either.  We are to be a city on a hill that cannot be hid.  We are to stand out from the rest of the world.  And they will know us by our refusal to repay and eye for an eye, they will know us when we turn the other cheek and go the extra mile.  They will know us as followers of Jesus Christ.

As I began this message, I said that sometimes things just don’t make sense to us until we have the entire story.  And the teachings of Jesus just don’t make sense to most people.  Like Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 1:18 “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.”  But that is not the entire story.  There is more.  Paul goes on to say, “but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

So as we go from this place today, let us think about that first Easter morning when the Mary’s and Salome found the tomb to be empty.  They were so afraid that they didn’t tell anyone what they had found.  Imagine what the world would be like if they hadn’t found the courage to share that message.  Let us be glad they found the courage to share this message with other, and may we find the courage to do the same.