It turned into a fun sermon to write -- lots of neat stuff I had not explored previously in an Easter sermon.
Introduction:
Ann
Lamott, Plan
B: Further Thoughts on Prayer:
“I don’t have the right personality for Good Friday, for
crucifixion: I’d like to skip ahead to the resurrection. In fact,
I’d like to skip ahead to the resurrection vision of one of the
kids in our Sunday School, who drew a picture of the Easter Bunny
outside the tomb: everlasting life and a basket full of chocolates.
Now you’re talking.” (141).
What
do we do with the resurrection?
The
Gospel of John describes the surroundings related to the empty tomb a
bit differently than the others gospels – he seems to go out of
his way to connect the empty tomb with other stories of God's people.
This
morning, I have three questions for you, all of which grow of the
particular way in which the Gospel of John tells the story of the
resurrection.
Move
1: Question
#1 --
Whom
are you looking for this morning?
a.
IN
the opening chapter of the Gospel of John, two of John the Baptist's
disciples meet Jesus, and he looks at them and asks, “What are you
looking for?”
1.
Turn out, the disciples were looking for the Lamb of God, the
Messiah.
2.
Now in the garden at the empty tomb, the
one Mary thinks is the gardener asks her a
similar question, “For whom are you looking.”
3. I'm not sure Mary
even knows how to answer that question.
5. her most honest answer
might have been, “I am looking for the body of the my dead friend
Jesus.”
6. She won't find Jesus'
dead body, but she is looking at Jesus, the one who is raised from
the dead.
b. For whom are you
looking this morning?
1. Someone recently
called me in a tear-filled voice tears shared the good news that her
loved one, for whom we had been praying, had received the best
possible news following the surgery. Healing was taking place. Are
you looking for someone who offers healing of body of Spirit?
2. As I mentioned in
this month's newsletter, today is my parents wedding anniversary. I
am keenly aware of our human mortality this morning and the hope of
eternal life. Are you looking for the one who overcomes death and
offers us the hope that death is not the end?
4.
Mary and the other disciples were surely crushed at the death of
Christ. She needed the resurrected Christ to give her hope and new
life. Maybe you are here and have had your dreams crushed, and
you are looking for the one who can offer you new possibilities.
5.
Some of us arrive
here today feeling beat up and betrayed. Maybe
not like as
bad as Judas
betraying Christ, but you feel alone, as if there is no one you can
trust in the world. Are you looking for the one who befriends
you and loves
you no matter what?
6.
When Christ was walking among them and performing miracles, I
suspect the world seemed full of possibilities, but now as Mary
approaches
the tomb that morning, the only possibility the world seemed to offer
was death. Are you looking for the one who offers new life?
c. As Jesus, the
resurrected one, calls Mary by name, he invites her into a new
reality.
1. Where crushed dreams
are restored.
2. where hope replaces
despair.
3. Where the vision of a
new heaven and a new earth that Isaiah had prophesied about years
before now seems possible.
d. Those first disciples
found whom they were looking for, the Messiah, when the met Jesus.
1. They knew that when
they heard him speak and watched him perform miracles.
2. Now Mary discovers
that the one she mistakes as a gardener outside the empty tomb, is
the resurrected resurrected one.
3. If you come here this
morning looking for the Messiah, the one who can change your life,
the one who brings you hope, he is alive and among us.
Move
2: Second
question –
Are
you ready for what God
has done for you?
a.
My
theology professor from seminary suggested that as Christ was
convicted and crucified by the authorities, the world convicts God of
forsaking Christ and letting Christ die.
1.
But the empty tomb tells a different story.
2.
the
verdict against God has been overturned.
3.
God
has acted decisively to raise Christ from the dead. .
b. The Gospel of John,
unlike the other three gospels, places the empty tomb in a garden.
1. In our Lenten Bible
study this week we saw a garden that tradition suggests was the
garden Mary went to that first Easter morning.
2. It was a beautiful,
tranquil place – the kind f place where you might find God.
3. The presence of the
tomb in a garden also takes us back to the Garden of Eden.
4. Takes us back to that
time before Adam and Eve eat from the forbidden fruit; a time when
when humans and God were in right relationship; a time when God would
look over creation and call it good
b. In that context, we
realize the implications of what God has done by raising Christ from
the dead.
1. The resurrection is
not about a scientific oddity.
2. The resurrection is
not about some miracle in which we have to believe.
3. the resurrection of
Christ reveals that God has deemed you worthy of being saved. That
God has declared the world worth saving.
4. The resurrection of
Christ means that God values being in right relationship with us
enough to let Christ die on the cross and then raise him from the
dead.
5.
The
resurrection means that God wants you to be a new creation.
c.
Are
you ready for
that?
1. It means giving up
looking in the mirror and seeing the person who is not good enough
and instead seeing the person God has said is worth saving.
2. It means giving up on
all the reasons we cannot move into those new possibilities God puts
before us and claiming that new creation God calls us to be.
3. I recently had a
conversation with someone who was in the interview process for what
appeared to be an exciting new job situation.
AS the person shared with
me about the new job and how the interview process, they was clearly
some apprehension. I thought maybe the person was afraid of not
getting the job, so in all my pastoral care wisdom I asked, “Are
you scared of not getting the job?”
After a long pause, the
person replied, “No. I'm scared that I might actually choose me.
That they might actually think I'm the one who can do this job.”
4. Its' easier not to be
the chosen one. To just go along with how things are.
4. The empty tomb is God
saying, “I choose you. Come and be a new creation.”
Are you ready for what
God has done for you?
Move
3: Third
question – what
are you going to tell the world?
a.
Remember,
the
crucifixion of Christ was very
public.
1.
Like the Little Caesar guitar man who hopes that if he makes a
spectacle of himself on the sidewalk on Main St. you will step
in and buy some some pizza, the Romans make
crucifixion a public spectacle.
2.
The
Romans wanted
lots of people walking by to see the gruesome
death and be reminded, and
to tell others, do not mess with the Roman
government.
3.
If
you were in Jerusalem around the time when Jesus was crucified, you
probably saw it or heard about it. We remember that in the Gospel of
Luke when the resurrected Christ meets some followers on the way to
Emmaus, they ask him, “are you the only in Jerusalem who hasn't
heard about the crucifixion of Jesus?”
5.
Christ's crucifixion is there for everyone to see.
b.
In
contrast, in
the Gospel of John, Mary arrives at the tomb while it was still dark.
1.
In the pre-dawn solitude of the garden she discovers the tomb is
empty.
2.
she has to go tell the Peter and the beloved disciple that the tomb
is empty.
3.
and after the resurrected Christ reveals himself to her, Mary has to
go and tell those who she meets, “I have seen the Lord.”
4.
No crowd of people to witness the resurrection.
5.
the story of Jesus being raised from the dead will be heard
only
when Mary and the other disciples tell others.
c.
We remember that later in the Gospel of John, Jesus appears on the
beach to some of the disciples. As Jesus talks with Peter, he tells
him, “Feed my sheep.”
1.
IN other words, go and share the good news of my resurrection through
your words and deeds.
2.
WE live in a world that desperately needs to know the good news of
the resurrection.
Are
you going to tell the world?
Conclusion:
The
Easter bunny brings candy for a day or two; the resurrected Christ
brings good news for a lifetime and beyond.
Sources used:
The parts that refer to the connection between the garden where the tomb is and the Garden of Eden were supported by: http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?lect_date=4/8/2012&tab=4
Lucy
Lind HoganHugh
Latimer Elderdice Professor of Preaching and Worship
Wesley
Theological Seminary
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
The section on the public nature of Roman crucifixions was found in A Hitchhiker's Guide to Jesus by Bruce N. Fisk and 24 Hours that Changed the World by Adam Hamilton.
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