He Is Risen Matthew 28:1-10
Somewhere or other I heard of a Sunday School teacher who had just finished telling her third graders about how Jesus was crucified and placed in a tomb with a great stone sealing off the only way in or out. Then, wanting to share the excitement of the resurrection, and the surprise of Easter morning, she asked: "And what do you think were Jesus' first words when he came bursting out of that tomb alive."
A hand shot up into the air from the rear of the classroom. It belonged to a most excited little girl. Leaping out of her chair she shouted out excitedly, "I know, I know, I know."
"Good," said the teacher, "Tell us."
Extending her arms high in the air she sang out: "TA - DA!"
In the words of the Apostles' Creed, a statement of faith which many of us recite from memory week after week in worship, as well as the Nicene Creed which was our proclamation of faith this morning: "The third day he rose from the dead." Wow.
Someone once suggested that if the cross was a heart-breaker, then the resurrection is a MIND-breaker. Well I don’t know about a mind breaker – but it is certainly a mind bender!
It certainly was for the ones who first heard about it. They knew what had happened during these past few days. The arrest, the trial, the torture, his murder on a cross.
Jesus was dead.
Dead as a doornail.
And after the horror was over, a caring friend named Joseph, from the town of Arimathea, requested of Pilate that he be granted Jesus' body for burial. Pilate agreed to the request, the remains were removed from the cross, wrapped in a white linen shroud, and laid in Joseph's own new tomb. A large stone was rolled in front of the entrance to prevent unwanted intrusion.
There were still issues though.
The religious leaders who had instigated the crucifixion came to Pilate and asked for a military guard, reminding the governor of Jesus’ claim that he would rise from the dead after three days. And Pilot agreed to a round the clock guard to prevent such a hoax.
Finally, that cruel and horrid Friday came to a close.
The body lay there from Friday evening until Sunday morning, three days, by Jewish reckoning. And then suddenly, the tomb is empty, the body gone. TA - DA!
How is that possible?
Well, some have suggested that perhaps he was not really dead to start with. Perhaps he only went into a deep swoon on the cross, and regained consciousness while in the cool damp of the borrowed tomb. And then he awoke, got up, rolled that big stone away, and walked off. Right past the Roman guards. Right!!!
Listen, Jesus was badly beaten and wounded. He lost an incredible amount of blood. He had gone without food or water for several days. The idea that he woke up and walked out of that grave on his own requires more of a leap of faith than coming back from the dead.
Of course, there is the possibility that Jesus' friends came to the wrong tomb. As the ladies came into the garden at dawn on the first day of the week, their grief had so disoriented them that they went to the wrong place, jumped to a hasty conclusion, then ran back to tell the others. But that would mean that Peter and John would have had to have made the same mistake and run to the same, wrong tomb. Naa!!!
One more obvious possibility and the one that the religious leaders tried to disseminate - Jesus' friends could have simply stolen the body, re-buried it in some secret location, and then begun to circulate this incredible tale of resurrection with the stone miraculously rolled away.
Amazingly, for folks who were pulling such a gigantic hoax, this is a story that they would ALL have to stick to. And if indeed this was just a story, they would have to stick to their guns, come out of hiding and carry this message throughout all of the world. Eventually their telling of the story would end up costing them their lives. A hoax? Yeah. Sure.
You know, it takes less faith for me to believe that Jesus was raised from the dead than to believe any of those stories that would try to explain away this miraculous event.
Do you believe it? Really?
If so, you have a lot of company. According to a Newsweek poll taken just two years ago, 78% of Americans believe it.
Four out of five.
So what DO you believe?
John Killinger suggests that we have three possible answers to that question:
1) It did not happen. It is merely a fiction invented by the early church.
2) It did happen, and therefore we don’t understand the world we live in as well as we think we do.
3) It did happen, but only because there is a Power so great that it can change the laws of nature as we know them.
Now, from my viewpoint it did really happen. And from the viewpoint of those closest to Jesus, it did happen. There can be no doubt about that. They knew that people do not normally revive after they have died - especially after three days.
This is why they reacted as they did. Running hither and yon like chickens with their heads cut off.
Will Willimon tells the story of a boy in his high school chemistry class. During some experiment gone wrong, there was an explosion in the back of the room. Nothing serious, just a loud bang. And this young lad, seated at the front, bolted out the door, ran down the hall, and was not heard from again that day.
"What on earth were you thinking about?" the teacher asked him the next day.
"I wasn't thinking about anything," he said. "I was just running. I didn't know what to do, so I ran."
Mary, what were you thinking about when you found the tomb empty and heard the angel say, "Do not be afraid, … He is not here; he has risen." What were you thinking, Mary?
"I did not know what to think, so I just ran."
Peter, John, what were you thinking when the women came to you with the report of the empty tomb? "What COULD we think, besides the fact that they were probably crazy? We just ran."
Did the resurrection occur as we have always heard? I say YES. And there are four major pieces of evidence that I would like to present to you this morning.
1) First, there was the empty tomb. No fewer than four followers saw the empty tomb and reported it. We have already noted the attempts to explain that away, but, in my view, none are in the least compelling.
2) Second, there were all the appearances of the risen Christ - to the women in the garden; to two disciples on the road to Emmaus; to ten of the disciples in the upper room; to those ten again, plus Thomas a week later; to several disciples by the Sea of Galilee; and then to more than five hundred followers at one time.
3) Third, there was the incredible change in the attitudes and behavior of the followers. Before the crucifixion, they acted from a position of cowardice and confusion. After the resurrection, they were transformed into pillars of power; they were courageous and decisive, ready to die for their faith. The same Peter who, in saving his own skin, had denied he even knew Jesus, just a short time later would boldly and publicly proclaim Jesus the Messiah, raised from the grave. Something had happened to Peter. Something had happened to all of them. Something changed them.
4) Fourth, there is the very existence of the church. These friends of Jesus - faithful, monotheistic Jews, every one - had been raised with the understanding that one thing and one thing alone cemented their identity before the world as the people of God - the observance of the Sabbath. Now, they begin a tradition of worship on the 1st day of the week instead of the 7th. They took this extraordinary step of changing the holy day from Saturday to Sunday and calling it THE LORD'S DAY. Only a mind-boggling event could have been responsible for such a shift.
So saying, there are still questions to which we have no answers.
1) Scripture never tells us HOW Jesus was resurrected, just that it happened.
2) And what about Christ's resurrection body? It appears to be the same as before but there must be something different. It could pass through locked doors unhindered. In almost every account Jesus is not recognized at first - not by Mary, not by the two disciples going to Emmaus, nor by the bigger groups of disciples gathered in the upper room and beside the Sea. Why? I do not know.
What I DO know is this: Jesus "was crucified, dead, and buried; the third day he rose again from the dead."
As I said earlier, Killinger suggested that we opt for one of three possibilities: it did not happen; it happened, but we do not understand; or it happened because divine power MADE it happen. For me, I would like to opt for both the second and the third.
I admit I do not fully understand the nature of the world we live in, and I am convinced that God intervened in an unusual way to rescue Jesus from the grave.
I believe, brothers and sisters, that the third day he rose again from the dead.
And I believe one more thing. I believe Jesus was telling the truth when he said, "Because I live, you will also live." Death is not the final word. Not for him. Not for us.
Ever heard of Clarence Jordan? Clarence was a farmer and New Testament Greek scholar and the founder of Koinonia Farm, a small but influential religious community in southwest Georgia. They were very active in promoting racial justice in the days when that was more than a bit dangerous in the deep South. Clarence was also the author of the Cotton Patch translations of the New Testament which offers a modern rendering with a distinctly southern accent. For example, here is how he translates today's lesson:
As the Sabbath ended, at the crack of dawn on Sunday, Mary, "that girl from Magdala," and the other Mary came to visit the vault. And you know, a big commotion happened. An angel of the Lord came down out of the sky and went and rolled away the stone, and sat down on top of it. His face was like lightning and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were so shook up that they looked like corpses. But the angel said to the ladies, "Don't y'all be scared one bit, because I know that you're looking for Jesus who was lynched. He isn't here. He was raised just as he told you..."(1)
In 1968 Millard and Linda Fuller visited Koinonia, planning only to stay for a couple hours. Inspired by Dr. Jordan, however, the Fullers chose to make Koinonia their permanent home. Soon the organization changed its name to Koinonia Partners and started "Partnership Housing," a project to build quality, affordable homes for low-income area families. That eventually led to the creation of Habitat for Humanity which, in the years since, has seen the construction or rehabilitation of more than 200,000 homes for low-income families around the world.
Sadly, Clarence Jordan did not live to see the completion of even the first house. On October 29, 1969, he died suddenly of a heart attack. He was buried in an unmarked grave on the Koinonia property, a used refrigerator box for his casket. The citizens of southwest Georgia treated him in death as they had in life: his funeral was attended only by his family, the Koinonia partners, and the poor of the community.
At his funeral, a beautiful thing happened. As expected, people were weeping and moaning as men shoveled soil on top of the make-shift casket. Suddenly, a little girl - Millard and Linda Fuller's two-year-old daughter Faith - stepped up to the grave. She had sensed that this was a special day for her friend, Clarence, so boldly and loudly in her little two-year-old voice she sang him a song:
"Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday, dear Clarence,
Happy birthday to you."
Little Faith Fuller was right, wasn't she? For God's people, death is not the end, it's a beginning. It's a birthday!
And that is what we celebrate today.
Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed!
TA - DA!
Happy Easter.
Amen!
1. Clarence Jordan, The Cotton Patch Version of Matthew and John, (Chicago : Follett Publishing Co., 1970), p. 96
