Sunrise Service - Why do you look for the living among the dead?

 Read Luke 24

Why do you look for the living among the dead?

By the evidence of all that these women knew, Jesus was dead.  That’s why they came. That’s why they brought spices.  What else could they expect?

The facts as they knew them were that Jesus was dead and they needed to finish the work of tending to the dead.  This would be their final act of devotion.

This would be their last act of service to their Lord.  How could it be anything else.

Some years later, Paul wrote to the church in Rome telling them not to conform to the patterns of this world any longer.

These women—as well as the men—were conformed to the patterns of the world.  He had no more blood left in him.  He had no breath.  The spear pierced his side.  He was dead.  Dead is dead.  There was nothing left to do but to prepare the body the right way.

Or so the ways of the world would tell them.  What else could they go by?

How about the words of their Master that on the third day he would rise?  Would these not set their expectations?  Should they have not expected to find an empty tomb?

He told them ahead of time that he would be turned over to the religious hypocrites, then to other sinful men who would cause him to suffer and die.

He gave his life willingly as our atoning sacrifice, but he described how it would all be played out including rising from the dead.

The angels spoke to the women.

The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.

How could they not know?  They remembered the words of Jesus after the angel told them, but the patterns of the world still told them that he was dead.

They told the disciples and Peter rushed to the tomb, found it with only strips of linen within, and could not figure out what happened.

He wondered to himself what had happened. 

We can beat these people up over their disbelief and failure to remember what Christ himself said while he was with them, but they lived this story moment-to-moment. 

We never walked the earth following Jesus all over Judea and Galilee, even Samaria.  We did not sit at his feet and learn from him.  We were not there for the feeding of the multitudes or the healing of so many.

But we know the whole story.  We know of his life, death, and resurrection and are without excuse as to what to believe.

But how many times do we conform ourselves to the patterns of the world.

The past couple of years have been interesting.  Life has changed for everyone.  Even if you did very few things differently, so many around you have been drinking the Kool-Ade and even selling it.

Fear is all around you.  Fear governs the decisions of so many.

Personal connections among so many have lessened significantly.

There is a quiet dichotomy working its way through the world.  Are you made in the image of God or just a carrier of contagion that must be contained and controlled?

It is a subtle dichotomy, unnoticed by most.

This is a time where it seems that the very fabric of our Constitution is under attack.  We must realize that while many of the Framers of this incredible document were Christians; our form of government was not promised to us by God.

Trust me, God was in the framework of this nation.  He was working through the men who forged this nation.  You doubt it?  Read our Declaration of Independence for the apologetics.

Look for it in the Bible and you have to go to the Book of Second Opinions.

Look at the world.  We have been so protected for so long.  Christianity has never really been contrary to the norms of our society until recently.

Being American and being Christian seemed to go hand-in-hand for so long that people thought that I’m American; therefore, I must be Christian. 

Now we see that the world was trying very hard to conform us to its patterns.  It did a good job. 

Our minds are easily swayed and they should be our first line of defense against the wiles of the enemy.

Whoa!  Hold your holy horses there Tom.  We got up early to celebrate resurrection, not listen to all of this doom and gloom.

This brings us to this question.  What are we looking for early in the morning?

Worldly evidence or the promises of God?

There is plenty of the former, most of it is not good news; but it is the latter that comes with the power of God.

Have we come to prepare a dead body or to have Christ live in us?

Jesus said that we would have trouble in the world.  We are not to be discouraged but to take courage for he has overcome the world.

Don’t show up early in the morning to sing He Arose then go home to focus on the darkness and the storm.

We know the story.  We are commissioned to tell the story.

We are to be God’s light in these dark times.

We are to be the salt—the God seasoning of the earth.

We know the story.  Let’s live as people who know the story, remember and believe the promises of Jesus, and want to be known by our love.

Let’s stop looking for the living among the dead.

He lives!  Let us live out his promises, our commission, and be known as his disciples by our love.

Ame

John 20 - Part 2

 

Read John 20

In the hymn I Love to Tell the Story, the third verse begins:  I love to tell the story, for those who know it best, seem hungering and thirsting to hear it like the rest.

You know the story.  Many of you know it well.  You have been reading it all week.  It was surely a much easier read that last week.

Nobody comes to this part of the story and says, yeah, ok, I know how that comes out. Shakespeare may have consistently climaxed his stories in Act III, Scene II but John takes you all the way to chapter 20.

Put yourself in that time and place just for the moment.  Jesus is gone.  Mary thinks someone has taken the body.  OBTW—this huge stone has been rolled away.  Peter and John race to the tomb.  There are some burial cloths but no body. 

They go back to where they were staying.

Mary comes back and in a somewhat circuitous conversation discovers the Lord is alive.  For the second time that morning, she returned to the disciples with news.

I have seen the Lord!

On that same evening, the disciples were gathered in a locked room and Jesus appeared to them.  Peace be with you was his greeting.  Now there is joy.  Seeing is believing.

Again, Jesus said peace be with you.   He said receive the Holy Spirit and breathed on them.  You might think that the Spirit didn’t come until Pentecost but consider that the disciples received the Spirit at this time and it was fully manifest upon them at Pentecost.

These were some confused men.  It might take a few weeks to bring to recollection what they had been through and how it all fit together.

Jump ahead a little to Saul’s conversion.  He met the resurrected Jesus on the road to Damascus.  This was a powerful conversion of a man well versed in God’s written word; yet, Paul spent some time in the wilderness after this encounter putting the pieces together.

He knew God’s word inside and out, but he had realized he didn’t know God very well.  Some time to process, digest, reconcile his education and experience with what God had called him to do was needed.

The disciples needed a little time as well.  About 7 weeks should do the trick, but the Spirit was given at this time. 

OBTW—Thomas missed this meeting and would not believe what had happened.  You know the story.  I won’t believe it until I see it.

Thomas wanted the forensics.  I want to see holes from nails and a spear.  Thomas gets the less than affection nickname in the modern times of Doubting Thomas. 

Perhaps a better title would be Be Careful What You Ask For Thomas.

Jesus appeared to Thomas later and told him to see and touch what he needed to.  Thomas believed and proclaimed, My Lord and My God.

Then Jesus speaking to Thomas speaks directly to us.

Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.

That is the story that we celebrate once a year.  This year, you get it again.  We should celebrate resurrection time and time again.

The crosses that we display on our church buildings and homes are empty.

We remember that the tomb was empty.

We sing Christ Arose.  Hallelujah, Christ arose.

But for the moment, I ask that we look at the very end of this fantastic chapter.

Jesus performed many other 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 Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

If you have read the Bible for a while, you have asked these questions or others like them.

How was Jesus as a baby?

Did he have to go through the terrible twos?

We see a glimpse of Jesus when he was 12 but what happened between then and when he turned water into wine when he was about 30?

Did he act like he knew everything when he was a teenager?  What if he did know everything?  Now there is a parenting challenge.

Did he ever get grounded?

How many days or weeks or months was it between some events in the Bible?

Will there be a college football season in 2020?

It seems like there is so much that is not included in the Bible that inquiring minds want to know. Listen again to how John ends this chapter.

Jesus performed many other 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 Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

We have enough to believe.  Our charge is to believe.  Our calling requires us to believe.  Our discipleship calls us to believe.

We are charged with more:  trust, obedience, love to name a few, but we must believe and this short closing to this chapter tell us that we have what we need to believe.  These written words are what we need to believe.  These testimonies passed from generation to generation are what we need.  We are blessed that we have them in writing.

Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.

Let’s celebrate our atonement in the blood of Jesus. Let’s celebrate resurrection. Let’s celebrate life eternal.  Let us celebrate the victory over sin and death that we know in Christ Jesus.

Let’s do this believing in what we have not seen. 

Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.

We have all that we need to believe, and we are blessed for believing.

Amen.

John 20 - Part 1

 

Read John 20

Trust in the Lord with all of your heart and lean not on your own understanding… But they just killed him.  They killed our Lord and our Teacher and our Master.

In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight…  But they just killed him.  They killed our Lord and our Teacher and our Master.

I want to trust the Lord, but my eyes tell me that the One who I followed as Messiah and Christ is dead.  The one who was to be my King forever and ever is dead.

Are they coming for me next?

Speaking of next, what would be next even if they don’t come for me?  Fishing? Moving? Trying to go back to normal.  What exactly will be my new normal?

Sometimes the toughest battles that we must fight take place in our own mind.  We often gravitate to the worst-case scenario, but who could blame the disciples, they had killed the Lord?  Surely that’s the worst-case scenario, right?

Then Mary Magdalene returned from the tomb with news.  The stone had been removed.

What?  Didn’t see that coming.  Who would move the stone?

Mary added that they had taken the Lord and we don’t know where they put him.   This was her assessment not raw intelligence.  She saw an empty tomb and made her own conclusions.  Who they was never is defined, but the body of Jesus was gone.

Peter and another disciple (probably John) raced to the tomb.  That was the race that we read about, but I think there were a couple other races.  Do you ever wonder what they were thinking along the way?  What thoughts raced through their minds as their legs propelled them to the tomb?

John won the foot race but stoped at the entrance to the Tomb.  Peter flew by John and entered the tomb.

Peter inventoried the cloths present, strips separated from the head cloth, but no body and no clues.

The scripture said that they saw and believed, but is not specific about what they believed.  Did they just believe he was gone?  Yep, Mary was right.  There’s no body here.

Or did they believe that Jesus had risen from the dead?  John’s gospel noted that these two did not yet understand that Jesus had to rise from the dead.  Did they believe he had risen but just did not understand that it was required by scripture?

Surely, there were many unanswered questions.

The next sentence gives me a run for my money as far as dry humor goes.  Having taken all of this in, the disciples went back to where they were staying. 

Yeah, ok, he’s not here.  Let’s go.

We are blessed to be able to look back across 2000 years and know the story.  We didn’t live it moment-to-moment.  We don’t have to wonder, what’s next.

We know, but what do we see with these two disciples?  These are two from what we might call the inner circle. They saw more than most, but what we see are sheep without a shepherd.

Understand that joy will come, but bewilderment and that feeling of being lost would come first.  He was gone—he died—and they mourned.

He was gone—his body was gone—and they did not understand.

Let’s go back to Peter and John racing to the tomb.  What were they thinking?  Theft? Resurrection? Somebody’s idea of a bad joke?  What had the Master said about…

Such was the condition of the disciples illustrated in these two.

Excitement, confusion, wonder, expectation, uncertainty, and who knows what else. 

We can look back and see these things clearly but do we see them in ourselves.  We want so much to trust in the Lord but we wonder what is going on all around us.

We want to be able to set aside our own understanding but what does our mind retreat to when the stress level goes up?  What goes on in our mind—things called negative fantasies—can be debilitating.

Do we truly acknowledge God in everything we do and say and think or are we just dumbfounded and confused at times wondering why God has not fixed everything?

Do we trust him that the path he has set us upon is the right path?

The disciples were at a loss.  What now?  First, they kill him.  Now they have taken him.  What now?

Because we have read the chapter and the rest of the gospel, we know, but sometimes we are just like the bewildered disciples in the tomb.

This morning, I want to remind you that there is always more to the story.  We will hit some low points in our lives, but we don’t need to stay there. 

We won’t always understand but we must trust.

We won’t always see God’s plan at work but we must acknowledge that he alone is sovereign.  He is Lord.

We know that there is more to this story.

Remember, there is also more to our story as we follow our Lord.

As you read and study, celebrate the resurrection of the Lord.

As you face today and the next, realize that there is more to come as we live out our stories.  Never fear the worst case scenario. 

Amen.