The adult Sunday School class of Living Water Lutheran Church started a study of the Gospel of John today.
Showing posts with label Genesis 1. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Genesis 1. Show all posts
Sunday, July 23, 2023
Sunday, April 24, 2016
The Spoiler You Can Love (Understanding Revelation, Part 4)
Revelation 21:1-7
Imagine that you’re the fan of a best-selling series of novels. For several years, you’ve been waiting for the last book in the series to be published. You’re so dedicated to the stories, in fact, that you stand outside in the shivering cold to be among the first million or so people who rush into a bookstore in order to snap up a copy of the latest installment just past midnight.
You purchase your copy and head home intent on binge reading through the night in order to know how the central mysteries of the series are resolved. You can’t wait to get started!
On the way home, you turn on your car radio and hear a news report on how millions around the world, just like you, are buying the book.
Then the news reader reports: “By the way, set free by the actions of the series’ protagonist, the evil princess is transformed into the embodiment of good, the evil lord turns out to be the hero’s father and repents, thereby unleashing a millennia of happiness and peace. That’s how the series ends.”
Everything you’d been wanting to learn through hours of enjoyable reading is now revealed to you in a matter of seconds by a big-mouthed radio announcer. You know the end the story.
Will you turn your car around and return the book for a refund, the experience of reading the book now ruined for you?
Will you join a class action lawsuit against the newscaster and his employers for spilling the beans?
Or will you, so in love with the universe created by the author of this series of books, shrug your shoulders and read the final book differently than you would have otherwise?
Will you now, read the book knowing that, while bad things will come, in the end all will be well?
Knowing how things turn out, in fact, may help you to go through the story with a comfort and enjoyment you might not otherwise have. You know what’s important and what plot twists are really red herrings that have no power to change the definite good end the author has in mind.
Today, as we continue our series Understanding Revelation, we near the end of a book designed to let God’s people who follow Christ know that in the unfolding history of life in this creation--in the life of this universe, in our personal and communal lives as Christians--there will be adversity, persecution, and death. But Revelation also comes to tell us that those who endure in following Jesus are part of the new and eternal thing that God began in Jesus Christ.
John, the author of Revelation, the recipient of the great vision from God that makes up the book, would agree with the apostle Paul when he writes in 2 Corinthians: “...if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” Like the big-mouthed newscaster, John wants to tell us how the story ends for those who believe in and follow and trust and worship the God we know in Jesus Christ!
Is John wrong in doing this?
Knowing how the story of this universe ends, knowing how the story of your life ends if you will daily trust and obey the God we meet in Jesus Christ, does it ruin everything?
Do you want to sue God for spoiling the story?
Or, instead, doesn’t knowing that God is in control of history and how it ends and that the Author of life wants you for all eternity, make you want to change how you live each day?
Doesn’t it make you want to side with the whole great story’s writer and hero, Jesus Christ?
Doesn’t it help you to see your life, your relationships, your life’s work and daily activities differently?
I think that knowing how the story turns out for those who follow Christ can do all those things!
And believing that as I do, let me give you a spoiler alert as I invite you to look at our second lesson, Revelation 21:1-7. John is the speaker. “Then I saw ‘a new heaven and a new earth,’ for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.”
The problem with the old heaven and old earth, the creation you and I now occupy, isn’t that it’s intrinsically bad. It isn’t. When God first created this place we now call home, Genesis tells us: “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” [Genesis 1:31] The problem with this universe with all its intricacy and beauty, isn’t with how it was made.
The problem is that the rebellion of humanity, the only of God’s creatures made in His image, has dragged the whole creation down to sin, death, and darkness.
So, God has resolved to give a new heaven and earth--a new Eden--to those who turn from sin and the death that comes from sin and turn instead to Jesus for forgiveness and new life.
In the meantime, as Paul says in Romans 8:22: “the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth” for the new creation.
John sees this new creation--the new heaven and new earth. In describing it, it seems sometimes easier for him to tell us what isn’t part of the new creation than it is for him to describe what it actually looks like. He starts by saying “that there was no longer any sea.”
If you’re like me and enjoy oceanside vacations, that may not sound very good. But remember that Genesis 1 begins with God’s Spirit moving over the thrashing seas of chaos. The first creation happened when God pushed back this chaos, carving out a universe of peace and order for His creatures. When humanity fell into sin, we ushered chaos, disorder, and darkness back into our lives. Jesus, the Lord Who, you remember, stilled the stormy waters of the Sea of Galilee, is going to subdue all the chaos, suffering, and death which bedevils us in this world and give all who follow Him a new creation of still waters.
Verse 2: “I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.”
For the ancients, cities were places of safety and light in the midst of a dark, chaotic world, filled with thieves and wild animals. At night, people didn't want to be left outside the city gates because it was beyond the city that real danger loomed. This is part of what gave Jesus' parable of the prodigal son so much power to His original hearers. The road from Jerusalem to Jericho was well known as a place beyond city gates where thieves hiding in crags of rock would pounce on defenseless travelers.
God is going to send and usher His people into a new city, a new Jerusalem, which His people will inhabit in eternal safety and joy.
The morning that my great-grandmother died, my mom woke me and said, “Mark, Grandma is walking the streets of gold with Pop today.” Mom was saying that this woman who meant, and still means, so much to me, was in the new Jerusalem. It gave me comfort to know that my great-grandmother was with God. It comforts me now to know that if I will persist in trusting Christ in this world, I too will one day walk on the streets of gold in the city God has in store for His people.
We members of Christ’s Church wait for God to descend to us like brides awaiting the return of their husband.
Verse 3: “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God…’”
In former times, you know, the presence of God on earth dwelt in the holy of holies at the temple in the old Jerusalem. The words will dwell translate the word in the original Greek in which Revelation was written, skenosei, literally meaning, will tabernacle. God will pitch His tent among His people.
This is the same word we find in John 1, which tells us that God in the flesh, Jesus, dwelt or tabernacled in this world.
In the new creation, we will never feel far from God. We will know intimacy with God. We won’t need a holy of holies; we will be living in the holy presence of God. Sin, death, and darkness will never get in the way of our fellowship with Him.
In verse 4, we read: “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.’ He who was seated on the throne [God, then] said, ‘I am making everything new!’ Then he said, ‘Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.’”
Apparently, God doesn’t think that knowing how the story ends for those who follow Jesus--tears wiped away, death done forever, grief and pain dispensed with--will hurt us. In fact, I think it's safe to say that knowing the end of the story helps us.
When we lose loved ones, knowing that all who trust in Christ live with God forever, can give us strength.
When we know that we belong to God for eternity, it can free us to love even those who hate us and to bring God’s compassion and love to the lost and the hurting of this old creation.
Revelation tells us that death isn’t the worst thing that can happen to a Christian.
Beyond the gates of death is perfect life in the perfect city of God!
Knowing how the story ends for followers of Christ can, if we will let it, make us downright bold and reckless about loving God and neighbor!
Verses 6 and 7: “He said to me: ‘It is done.’ [Or, we might hear God saying as Jesus did from the cross, “It is finished. I have completed what I set out to do.”] I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life. Those who are victorious will inherit all this, and I will be their God and they will be my children.”
Apparently, those who believe in Jesus Christ, won’t miss the sea with all its chaos, darkness, and sin. Instead, we will be given oceans of fresh and living water!
God will slake our thirst for life and we will inherit a creation rich with the very life of God.
The new heaven and the new earth will make Eden look like it was, just the beginning.
In the end, there will be no end, only God and us living life as it was meant to be lived: filled with new creations, new stories, new adventures, new fellowship, new fulfillment.
God will make all things new.
I hope that knowing the end of the story for those who dare to follow Jesus doesn’t ruin your experience of the story of your life, a life that God wants desperately to make continuously and eternally new.
I hope that knowing how it all ends for those who follow Christ will, instead, help you to do the one thing God most wants you to do: To well and truly live. Amen
Imagine that you’re the fan of a best-selling series of novels. For several years, you’ve been waiting for the last book in the series to be published. You’re so dedicated to the stories, in fact, that you stand outside in the shivering cold to be among the first million or so people who rush into a bookstore in order to snap up a copy of the latest installment just past midnight.
You purchase your copy and head home intent on binge reading through the night in order to know how the central mysteries of the series are resolved. You can’t wait to get started!
On the way home, you turn on your car radio and hear a news report on how millions around the world, just like you, are buying the book.
Then the news reader reports: “By the way, set free by the actions of the series’ protagonist, the evil princess is transformed into the embodiment of good, the evil lord turns out to be the hero’s father and repents, thereby unleashing a millennia of happiness and peace. That’s how the series ends.”
Everything you’d been wanting to learn through hours of enjoyable reading is now revealed to you in a matter of seconds by a big-mouthed radio announcer. You know the end the story.
Will you turn your car around and return the book for a refund, the experience of reading the book now ruined for you?
Will you join a class action lawsuit against the newscaster and his employers for spilling the beans?
Or will you, so in love with the universe created by the author of this series of books, shrug your shoulders and read the final book differently than you would have otherwise?
Will you now, read the book knowing that, while bad things will come, in the end all will be well?
Knowing how things turn out, in fact, may help you to go through the story with a comfort and enjoyment you might not otherwise have. You know what’s important and what plot twists are really red herrings that have no power to change the definite good end the author has in mind.
Today, as we continue our series Understanding Revelation, we near the end of a book designed to let God’s people who follow Christ know that in the unfolding history of life in this creation--in the life of this universe, in our personal and communal lives as Christians--there will be adversity, persecution, and death. But Revelation also comes to tell us that those who endure in following Jesus are part of the new and eternal thing that God began in Jesus Christ.
John, the author of Revelation, the recipient of the great vision from God that makes up the book, would agree with the apostle Paul when he writes in 2 Corinthians: “...if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” Like the big-mouthed newscaster, John wants to tell us how the story ends for those who believe in and follow and trust and worship the God we know in Jesus Christ!
Is John wrong in doing this?
Knowing how the story of this universe ends, knowing how the story of your life ends if you will daily trust and obey the God we meet in Jesus Christ, does it ruin everything?
Do you want to sue God for spoiling the story?
Or, instead, doesn’t knowing that God is in control of history and how it ends and that the Author of life wants you for all eternity, make you want to change how you live each day?
Doesn’t it make you want to side with the whole great story’s writer and hero, Jesus Christ?
Doesn’t it help you to see your life, your relationships, your life’s work and daily activities differently?
I think that knowing how the story turns out for those who follow Christ can do all those things!
And believing that as I do, let me give you a spoiler alert as I invite you to look at our second lesson, Revelation 21:1-7. John is the speaker. “Then I saw ‘a new heaven and a new earth,’ for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.”
The problem with the old heaven and old earth, the creation you and I now occupy, isn’t that it’s intrinsically bad. It isn’t. When God first created this place we now call home, Genesis tells us: “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” [Genesis 1:31] The problem with this universe with all its intricacy and beauty, isn’t with how it was made.
The problem is that the rebellion of humanity, the only of God’s creatures made in His image, has dragged the whole creation down to sin, death, and darkness.
So, God has resolved to give a new heaven and earth--a new Eden--to those who turn from sin and the death that comes from sin and turn instead to Jesus for forgiveness and new life.
In the meantime, as Paul says in Romans 8:22: “the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth” for the new creation.
John sees this new creation--the new heaven and new earth. In describing it, it seems sometimes easier for him to tell us what isn’t part of the new creation than it is for him to describe what it actually looks like. He starts by saying “that there was no longer any sea.”
If you’re like me and enjoy oceanside vacations, that may not sound very good. But remember that Genesis 1 begins with God’s Spirit moving over the thrashing seas of chaos. The first creation happened when God pushed back this chaos, carving out a universe of peace and order for His creatures. When humanity fell into sin, we ushered chaos, disorder, and darkness back into our lives. Jesus, the Lord Who, you remember, stilled the stormy waters of the Sea of Galilee, is going to subdue all the chaos, suffering, and death which bedevils us in this world and give all who follow Him a new creation of still waters.
Verse 2: “I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.”
For the ancients, cities were places of safety and light in the midst of a dark, chaotic world, filled with thieves and wild animals. At night, people didn't want to be left outside the city gates because it was beyond the city that real danger loomed. This is part of what gave Jesus' parable of the prodigal son so much power to His original hearers. The road from Jerusalem to Jericho was well known as a place beyond city gates where thieves hiding in crags of rock would pounce on defenseless travelers.
God is going to send and usher His people into a new city, a new Jerusalem, which His people will inhabit in eternal safety and joy.
The morning that my great-grandmother died, my mom woke me and said, “Mark, Grandma is walking the streets of gold with Pop today.” Mom was saying that this woman who meant, and still means, so much to me, was in the new Jerusalem. It gave me comfort to know that my great-grandmother was with God. It comforts me now to know that if I will persist in trusting Christ in this world, I too will one day walk on the streets of gold in the city God has in store for His people.
We members of Christ’s Church wait for God to descend to us like brides awaiting the return of their husband.
Verse 3: “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God…’”
In former times, you know, the presence of God on earth dwelt in the holy of holies at the temple in the old Jerusalem. The words will dwell translate the word in the original Greek in which Revelation was written, skenosei, literally meaning, will tabernacle. God will pitch His tent among His people.
This is the same word we find in John 1, which tells us that God in the flesh, Jesus, dwelt or tabernacled in this world.
In the new creation, we will never feel far from God. We will know intimacy with God. We won’t need a holy of holies; we will be living in the holy presence of God. Sin, death, and darkness will never get in the way of our fellowship with Him.
In verse 4, we read: “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.’ He who was seated on the throne [God, then] said, ‘I am making everything new!’ Then he said, ‘Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.’”
Apparently, God doesn’t think that knowing how the story ends for those who follow Jesus--tears wiped away, death done forever, grief and pain dispensed with--will hurt us. In fact, I think it's safe to say that knowing the end of the story helps us.
When we lose loved ones, knowing that all who trust in Christ live with God forever, can give us strength.
When we know that we belong to God for eternity, it can free us to love even those who hate us and to bring God’s compassion and love to the lost and the hurting of this old creation.
Revelation tells us that death isn’t the worst thing that can happen to a Christian.
Beyond the gates of death is perfect life in the perfect city of God!
Knowing how the story ends for followers of Christ can, if we will let it, make us downright bold and reckless about loving God and neighbor!
Verses 6 and 7: “He said to me: ‘It is done.’ [Or, we might hear God saying as Jesus did from the cross, “It is finished. I have completed what I set out to do.”] I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life. Those who are victorious will inherit all this, and I will be their God and they will be my children.”
Apparently, those who believe in Jesus Christ, won’t miss the sea with all its chaos, darkness, and sin. Instead, we will be given oceans of fresh and living water!
God will slake our thirst for life and we will inherit a creation rich with the very life of God.
The new heaven and the new earth will make Eden look like it was, just the beginning.
In the end, there will be no end, only God and us living life as it was meant to be lived: filled with new creations, new stories, new adventures, new fellowship, new fulfillment.
God will make all things new.
I hope that knowing the end of the story for those who dare to follow Jesus doesn’t ruin your experience of the story of your life, a life that God wants desperately to make continuously and eternally new.
I hope that knowing how it all ends for those who follow Christ will, instead, help you to do the one thing God most wants you to do: To well and truly live. Amen
Sunday, February 01, 2015
Authority
[This was shared during this morning's worship celebrations with the people and guests of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio.]
Mark 1:21-28
New Testament scholar N.T. Wright tells the true story of an incident that happened at sea. The operators of a tourist boat, filled with cars and people on their vacations, failed to close the boat’s doors properly. After the boat had shoved off, water began to pour into the boat. People were thrown into panic. They were terrified and their shrieks of fear filled the air.
Suddenly, a passenger--not a crew member--took charge of the situation. In clear and confident tones, he told people what to do. A sense of relief began to replace the panic as the man’s fellow passengers realized that someone was taking charge. Many were able to get on lifeboats that they might otherwise have missed in the dark and the frenzied rush. The man who took control also went down to find people trapped in the hold, then formed a human bridge, holding onto a ladder with one hand and the mostly submerged ship with the other, enabling more people to cross to safety.
Later, this man was found drowned in the boat’s hold. As Wright puts it: “He had literally given his life in using the authority he had assumed—the authority by which many had been saved.”
In today’s world, we don’t much care for the whole idea of authority. We don’t want anybody telling us what to do, even when the person in authority seems to know what they’re doing and to have our best interests at heart…even when the authority figure in question is God. It’s so hard for us to trust even the God we meet in Christ. Yet Jesus tells us (and backs up the authority of His words through His death and resurrection): “I am the way, and the life, and the truth. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” That’s authority!
Do we truly believe that Jesus has the authority to make that command and that promise?
Or do we repose greater trust in ourselves, our families, our work, our wits, or our pleasures?
The choice between heaven or hell, life or death, purpose or futility, connection to God and others or utter, stark eternal aloneness resides in the issue of who we will give authority over our lives: Jesus Christ or ourselves.
In first-century Judea where Jesus lived, there was no shortage of people who claimed to have authority. Roman governors and soldiers, priests, Sadducees, Pharisees, scribes, tax collectors: They all barked out orders, religious and secular. And while they might gain outward submission, none could command true respect. None of them acted like the passenger who saved so many on that tourist boat, a man many of his fellow passengers had probably never met, but were willing to follow.
And none of the would-be authority figures people encountered in Jesus' day spoke or acted like Jesus.
All of this may help to explain our Gospel lesson for today, where we’re told that Jesus’ fellow Jews in the synagogue at Capernaum were “amazed” by Him, because, verse 22 says, “He taught them as one who had authority, and not as the teachers of the [religious] law.”
What made Jesus so authoritative to these people? Two things possibly.
First, Jesus taught as one who wasn’t looking out for himself. In Mark 10:45, Jesus: “...the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”
We don’t know if Jesus used words like those in the synagogue at Capernaum, but the worshipers there that day would have clearly sensed that when Jesus called them to follow Him, He wasn’t doing it to feed His ego, fill His wallet, or gain political power.
Philippians 2:5-11 says that though Jesus was equal to God the Father, He “emptied Himself,” became a slave for our sins and died on the cross for them so that the Father could raise Him up, opening eternity to all who move away from sin and turn in trust to Jesus. Jesus had authority because He was looking out for you and me, not Himself. And so He prayed in the garden of Gethsemane, “Father...not what I will, but what You will.”
Here’s the other thing that may have given Jesus’ teaching authority that day: He taught as one with un-derived authority. By that, I mean when Jesus spoke, He clearly wasn’t just quoting the God of the Old Testament. Jesus was and is the God Who spoke to the world into existence, founded the nation of Israel on the barren womb of Sarah, led His people out of slavery in Egypt, and promised that Israel would fulfill its mission to be a light to all the nations by being the birthplace of the Savior of the nations, Jesus Himself.
Scholars say that when rabbis taught in the synagogues of Jesus’ day, they would preface their points with phrases like, “Moses said…” or “Rabbi So-and-So taught…” While He sometimes quoted from the Old Testament, Jesus had no need to resort to citations or footnotes to buttress the power of His words. He spoke with the clarity and authority of God’s own voice. Often, when Jesus cited passages of the Old Testament, He would say things, "You have heard it said...but I tell you." He spoke with the authority of God Himself.
Though the worshipers at Capernaum could not have articulated a confession of Jesus as God in the flesh, the Messiah King yet, they knew that there was something more authoritative about Jesus’ teaching than the teaching they ordinarily heard.
But someone in their presence knew the facts. Please look at verses 23 and 24 of the Gospel lesson. Mark says: “Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, ‘What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.’”
The demon understood that Jesus was God in the flesh.
The problem, from Jesus’ viewpoint, was that the people of Capernaum didn’t yet understand the full truth about Jesus. And unless we understand that following Jesus means submitting to the daily crucifixion of our sins and our inborn desire to be the ultimate authorities over our lives, we’re not ready to follow Jesus.
Jesus would later say in Mark 8:34, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
There are many people today--many of them filling up the membership rosters of churches--who don’t follow Jesus, but simply hover around Him because they see Him as a cosmic rabbit’s foot or a dispenser of blessings for which they can make deals.
They aren’t Jesus’ disciples. Jesus never makes deals. Instead, He’s in the gift-giving business.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” But we know that in order to take hold of this gift, we must let go of the old sinful self. Our old sinful selves must be crucified...every day!
And, even when we do that, day-in and day-out, Jesus doesn’t promise that all will go smoothly. Think about this: Even after Jesus brought His friend Lazarus back to life, Lazarus had to die again! Bummer!
But Jesus does promise to be with us always and, as He said to Lazarus’ sister on the day He called Lazarus from the grave: “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”
Jesus couldn’t risk seeing the people of Capernaum come to hover around Him on the testimony of a demon. When the enemies of God define what it means to follow Jesus, they always get it wrong, either turning Christian faith into a spiritual Disneyland without difficulties or a painful struggle to please a cruel God. In Jesus’ cross and empty tomb, we see that neither picture of God is true.
But, at Capernaum near the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, neither cross nor empty tomb had happened yet. So, Jesus did something that, afterwards, His early disciples would see as a sign—an epiphany—of His identity as God in human flesh.
Look at verse 25. Jesus rebuked the demon. “‘Be quiet!’ said Jesus sternly. “‘Come out of him!’ The impure spirit shook the man violently and came out of him with a shriek. The people were all so amazed that they asked each other, ‘What is this? A new teaching—and with authority! He even gives orders to impure spirits and they obey him.’” Later in His ministry, Jesus would still wind and waves, causing His disciples to ask a similar question, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!”
Both are good questions! Who is this guy with authority over demons, wind, waves, and, as we’ll see, life and death?
The answer can be found in Genesis 1, where we’re told that before the universe was formed, God’s Spirit moved over “the deep,” a roaring storm, and spoke to it—“Let there be light…” “Let there be dry land…” “Let there be grass and fields and trees and fruits…” “Let us make human beings in our image…”
Jesus spoke to and subdued all that is in opposition to God with the same voice God used to bring creation into being!
The people of Capernaum didn’t see this about Jesus yet. They didn't understand yet that Jesus was God as well as man. But they were amazed. It would only be after Jesus' death and resurrection that His first followers would understand what Jesus had shown and what Jesus had taught them about His identity as God in human flesh.
A friend of ours came home one day to discover that his wife had left him. For months, He tried to claim control of his life by throwing himself into long work days and non-stop busy-ness. He didn’t have a demon. But the devil was riding on his back.
Friends finally got to him though. We told him how Christ helped us through tough times and gave us hope for tomorrow. That didn’t make all his pain go away. But as he began to walk with Christ, the need for frenzy subsided. He knew he didn’t need to be in control. Christ set him free.
That’s what the authority of Christ over the chaos of this fallen universe can do for all who believe in Him. It frees us from sin and death and the need to be our own gods.
Christ wants to give that same peace to you and me every day. May Christ help us to turn each day from a self-driven life and turn instead to Him. May we learn the power that comes from surrender to Jesus, when we give Him complete authority over our days and our eternities. Amen
Mark 1:21-28
New Testament scholar N.T. Wright tells the true story of an incident that happened at sea. The operators of a tourist boat, filled with cars and people on their vacations, failed to close the boat’s doors properly. After the boat had shoved off, water began to pour into the boat. People were thrown into panic. They were terrified and their shrieks of fear filled the air.
Suddenly, a passenger--not a crew member--took charge of the situation. In clear and confident tones, he told people what to do. A sense of relief began to replace the panic as the man’s fellow passengers realized that someone was taking charge. Many were able to get on lifeboats that they might otherwise have missed in the dark and the frenzied rush. The man who took control also went down to find people trapped in the hold, then formed a human bridge, holding onto a ladder with one hand and the mostly submerged ship with the other, enabling more people to cross to safety.
Later, this man was found drowned in the boat’s hold. As Wright puts it: “He had literally given his life in using the authority he had assumed—the authority by which many had been saved.”
In today’s world, we don’t much care for the whole idea of authority. We don’t want anybody telling us what to do, even when the person in authority seems to know what they’re doing and to have our best interests at heart…even when the authority figure in question is God. It’s so hard for us to trust even the God we meet in Christ. Yet Jesus tells us (and backs up the authority of His words through His death and resurrection): “I am the way, and the life, and the truth. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” That’s authority!
Do we truly believe that Jesus has the authority to make that command and that promise?
Or do we repose greater trust in ourselves, our families, our work, our wits, or our pleasures?
The choice between heaven or hell, life or death, purpose or futility, connection to God and others or utter, stark eternal aloneness resides in the issue of who we will give authority over our lives: Jesus Christ or ourselves.
In first-century Judea where Jesus lived, there was no shortage of people who claimed to have authority. Roman governors and soldiers, priests, Sadducees, Pharisees, scribes, tax collectors: They all barked out orders, religious and secular. And while they might gain outward submission, none could command true respect. None of them acted like the passenger who saved so many on that tourist boat, a man many of his fellow passengers had probably never met, but were willing to follow.
And none of the would-be authority figures people encountered in Jesus' day spoke or acted like Jesus.
All of this may help to explain our Gospel lesson for today, where we’re told that Jesus’ fellow Jews in the synagogue at Capernaum were “amazed” by Him, because, verse 22 says, “He taught them as one who had authority, and not as the teachers of the [religious] law.”
What made Jesus so authoritative to these people? Two things possibly.
First, Jesus taught as one who wasn’t looking out for himself. In Mark 10:45, Jesus: “...the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”
We don’t know if Jesus used words like those in the synagogue at Capernaum, but the worshipers there that day would have clearly sensed that when Jesus called them to follow Him, He wasn’t doing it to feed His ego, fill His wallet, or gain political power.
Philippians 2:5-11 says that though Jesus was equal to God the Father, He “emptied Himself,” became a slave for our sins and died on the cross for them so that the Father could raise Him up, opening eternity to all who move away from sin and turn in trust to Jesus. Jesus had authority because He was looking out for you and me, not Himself. And so He prayed in the garden of Gethsemane, “Father...not what I will, but what You will.”
Here’s the other thing that may have given Jesus’ teaching authority that day: He taught as one with un-derived authority. By that, I mean when Jesus spoke, He clearly wasn’t just quoting the God of the Old Testament. Jesus was and is the God Who spoke to the world into existence, founded the nation of Israel on the barren womb of Sarah, led His people out of slavery in Egypt, and promised that Israel would fulfill its mission to be a light to all the nations by being the birthplace of the Savior of the nations, Jesus Himself.
Scholars say that when rabbis taught in the synagogues of Jesus’ day, they would preface their points with phrases like, “Moses said…” or “Rabbi So-and-So taught…” While He sometimes quoted from the Old Testament, Jesus had no need to resort to citations or footnotes to buttress the power of His words. He spoke with the clarity and authority of God’s own voice. Often, when Jesus cited passages of the Old Testament, He would say things, "You have heard it said...but I tell you." He spoke with the authority of God Himself.
Though the worshipers at Capernaum could not have articulated a confession of Jesus as God in the flesh, the Messiah King yet, they knew that there was something more authoritative about Jesus’ teaching than the teaching they ordinarily heard.
But someone in their presence knew the facts. Please look at verses 23 and 24 of the Gospel lesson. Mark says: “Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, ‘What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.’”
The demon understood that Jesus was God in the flesh.
The problem, from Jesus’ viewpoint, was that the people of Capernaum didn’t yet understand the full truth about Jesus. And unless we understand that following Jesus means submitting to the daily crucifixion of our sins and our inborn desire to be the ultimate authorities over our lives, we’re not ready to follow Jesus.
Jesus would later say in Mark 8:34, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
There are many people today--many of them filling up the membership rosters of churches--who don’t follow Jesus, but simply hover around Him because they see Him as a cosmic rabbit’s foot or a dispenser of blessings for which they can make deals.
They aren’t Jesus’ disciples. Jesus never makes deals. Instead, He’s in the gift-giving business.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” But we know that in order to take hold of this gift, we must let go of the old sinful self. Our old sinful selves must be crucified...every day!
And, even when we do that, day-in and day-out, Jesus doesn’t promise that all will go smoothly. Think about this: Even after Jesus brought His friend Lazarus back to life, Lazarus had to die again! Bummer!
But Jesus does promise to be with us always and, as He said to Lazarus’ sister on the day He called Lazarus from the grave: “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”
Jesus couldn’t risk seeing the people of Capernaum come to hover around Him on the testimony of a demon. When the enemies of God define what it means to follow Jesus, they always get it wrong, either turning Christian faith into a spiritual Disneyland without difficulties or a painful struggle to please a cruel God. In Jesus’ cross and empty tomb, we see that neither picture of God is true.
But, at Capernaum near the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, neither cross nor empty tomb had happened yet. So, Jesus did something that, afterwards, His early disciples would see as a sign—an epiphany—of His identity as God in human flesh.
Look at verse 25. Jesus rebuked the demon. “‘Be quiet!’ said Jesus sternly. “‘Come out of him!’ The impure spirit shook the man violently and came out of him with a shriek. The people were all so amazed that they asked each other, ‘What is this? A new teaching—and with authority! He even gives orders to impure spirits and they obey him.’” Later in His ministry, Jesus would still wind and waves, causing His disciples to ask a similar question, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!”
Both are good questions! Who is this guy with authority over demons, wind, waves, and, as we’ll see, life and death?
The answer can be found in Genesis 1, where we’re told that before the universe was formed, God’s Spirit moved over “the deep,” a roaring storm, and spoke to it—“Let there be light…” “Let there be dry land…” “Let there be grass and fields and trees and fruits…” “Let us make human beings in our image…”
Jesus spoke to and subdued all that is in opposition to God with the same voice God used to bring creation into being!
The people of Capernaum didn’t see this about Jesus yet. They didn't understand yet that Jesus was God as well as man. But they were amazed. It would only be after Jesus' death and resurrection that His first followers would understand what Jesus had shown and what Jesus had taught them about His identity as God in human flesh.
A friend of ours came home one day to discover that his wife had left him. For months, He tried to claim control of his life by throwing himself into long work days and non-stop busy-ness. He didn’t have a demon. But the devil was riding on his back.
Friends finally got to him though. We told him how Christ helped us through tough times and gave us hope for tomorrow. That didn’t make all his pain go away. But as he began to walk with Christ, the need for frenzy subsided. He knew he didn’t need to be in control. Christ set him free.
That’s what the authority of Christ over the chaos of this fallen universe can do for all who believe in Him. It frees us from sin and death and the need to be our own gods.
Christ wants to give that same peace to you and me every day. May Christ help us to turn each day from a self-driven life and turn instead to Him. May we learn the power that comes from surrender to Jesus, when we give Him complete authority over our days and our eternities. Amen
Tuesday, January 07, 2014
Read the Bible in a Year (Day 1)
It's been your New Year's resolution for years, maybe. You've started with Genesis and gotten stuck in the "begat" mud and have never been able to move on.
Help is on the way!
We're starting your new year today!
Beginning today, I'll have a series of posts that will, by the grace of God, appear for the next 365 days. There will be a few notes and questions to ponder on the Bible passages for the day.
You can read the entire Bible in one calendar year by reading little more than three chapters a day. A friend suggested that a good format would be to read three chapters and a Psalm. I thought that was a great idea. The Psalms are the Old Testament's hymnal and book of prayer and they still speak powerfully in so many ways. (Sometimes we'll use a portion of a Psalm.)
Each day, I'll have hyperlinks to the chapters appointed and give you the option of reading them in three different renderings: The New International Version (TNIV); the English Standard Version (ESV); and Today's English Version (TEV, also known as the Good News Bible).
One brief word about the nature and authority of Scripture. The writers of the Bible saw themselves as conduits of the Word of God. The Holy Spirit has, through the centuries, led the Church to believe and experience that the Old Testament is God's Word for the human race, not human attempts to understand God.
As we'll have time to discuss in the coming year, historically, the Church, including the denomination of which I am now a part, the North American Lutheran Church (NALC), has held that the Bible is the authoritative source and norm of our life, faith, and practice.
There are things in the Bible we can't fully explain or understand. But its overall theme and story is of the God Who created and loves the human race and Who ultimately became one of us in Jesus Christ in order to offer His life as the pure sacrifice for our sins and then died and rose in order to open up new and everlasting life to those who turn from sin (repent) and believe in Christ as their only God and Savior...their only hope.
(And yes, that story is even told in the parts of Scripture that tell us about God sending His people into wars and such.)
The Christian view of Scripture is put well in 2 Timothy 3:16:
January 7:
Genesis 1: TNIV ESV TEV
Genesis 2: TNIV ESV TEV
Genesis 3: TNIV ESV TEV
Psalm 1: TNIV ESV TEV
Notes:
1. Genesis 1-2: The interest of Genesis in the universe's creation focuses on two basic questions: Who created the universe, especially its life, and why? Who, of course, is God. Why appears to be that God, self-sufficient yet filled with love and life, must, by His nature, give of His life and of His love. God is giving by His very nature.
2. Genesis 1:27-30: These verses demonstrate the special place humanity has in God's creation. First, God makes us in His image. We bear a special resemblance and relationship with God in our essence, not in our physical appearance because "God is spirit." The image of God has become distorted in us because of the condition of sin. Christ came into the world to restore the image of God to those who trust in Him. Death is the consequence of sin and even believers in Christ die. But like the Savior to Whom they surrender, they will rise to live with God eternally. Second, humanity is put in charge of the world God creates.
3. Genesis 2: The Hebrew names of Adam (man) and Eve (life) sound similar: ish and ishah. There are many such word plays throughout the Old Testament, written in Hebrew.
4. Genesis 3: Notice that the serpent told Eve the truth in a lying way. That's how subtle he was. In fact, Adam and Eve didn't immediately die. But death, which was never intended for them or their descendants--you and me--became part of the human condition when they transgressed God's will for them.
5. The Bible speaks of sin in two different ways. (1) First, as a condition of separation from God and from others. We see this in that Adam hid from God after he and Eve sinned. We see it too, in that Adam and Eve, so close a few verses earlier, blame each other for their common sin against God. Psalm 51:5, among other passages, affirm that we are born into the condition of sin we have inherited from our parents and, ultimately, the first humans.
(2) Second as those things we do, sins, that we do because we are sinners.
6. The grace (or undeserved charity) of God can be seen in several ways in Genesis 3: (1) First, God didn't do away with Adam and Eve as a good project gone bad as soon as they rebelled. He reached out to them.
(2) Second, God sewed clothing for them. Adam and Eve had been naked and ashamed. But once they had sinned, they became aware of how they could misuse their bodies and their lives. Mark Twain once said that man is the only animal that blushes...or needs to. Even today, God provides the world with "daily bread." The fact that millions go hungry is not a problem of God's provision, but of human selfishness...It's a sin issue.
(3) Third, God banished them from the Garden of Eden. It may seem cruel for the first human beings to have been barred from paradise. But the reason it had to be was simple: Had the two remained there, they would have gained access to the tree of life, but done so while still alienated from God and in sin. They would have been eternally separated from God and others. This is exactly how the Bible describes hell!
God has better plans in mind for Adam and Eve and their descendants. It's only when sin's power over our lives is eliminated that we can take eternal life as God intends for us from Him. That's why Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, was crucified. The cross is, for all who turn from sin and trust in Christ alone, the tree of life. (See this more literal rendering of Acts 5:30, from the New Revised Standard Version's translation of the Bible.) We submit to its verdict on our lives and to the crucifixion of our old selves so that our new selves can rise with Christ!
Points to Ponder:
1. How much of yourself do you see in Adam and Eve?
2. In light of the phrase, "her husband, who was with her," why have some believers pinned the blame for sin more onto Eve than Adam, do you suppose? What are the implications of this blame game?
3. Historically, New Testament scholars have seen the promise of Christ in Genesis 3:15. Can you see why this might be so? (Think about that before taking a gander here, if you like.)
Help is on the way!
We're starting your new year today!
Beginning today, I'll have a series of posts that will, by the grace of God, appear for the next 365 days. There will be a few notes and questions to ponder on the Bible passages for the day.
You can read the entire Bible in one calendar year by reading little more than three chapters a day. A friend suggested that a good format would be to read three chapters and a Psalm. I thought that was a great idea. The Psalms are the Old Testament's hymnal and book of prayer and they still speak powerfully in so many ways. (Sometimes we'll use a portion of a Psalm.)
Each day, I'll have hyperlinks to the chapters appointed and give you the option of reading them in three different renderings: The New International Version (TNIV); the English Standard Version (ESV); and Today's English Version (TEV, also known as the Good News Bible).
One brief word about the nature and authority of Scripture. The writers of the Bible saw themselves as conduits of the Word of God. The Holy Spirit has, through the centuries, led the Church to believe and experience that the Old Testament is God's Word for the human race, not human attempts to understand God.
As we'll have time to discuss in the coming year, historically, the Church, including the denomination of which I am now a part, the North American Lutheran Church (NALC), has held that the Bible is the authoritative source and norm of our life, faith, and practice.
There are things in the Bible we can't fully explain or understand. But its overall theme and story is of the God Who created and loves the human race and Who ultimately became one of us in Jesus Christ in order to offer His life as the pure sacrifice for our sins and then died and rose in order to open up new and everlasting life to those who turn from sin (repent) and believe in Christ as their only God and Savior...their only hope.
(And yes, that story is even told in the parts of Scripture that tell us about God sending His people into wars and such.)
The Christian view of Scripture is put well in 2 Timothy 3:16:
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness...
January 7:
Genesis 1: TNIV ESV TEV
Genesis 2: TNIV ESV TEV
Genesis 3: TNIV ESV TEV
Psalm 1: TNIV ESV TEV
Notes:
1. Genesis 1-2: The interest of Genesis in the universe's creation focuses on two basic questions: Who created the universe, especially its life, and why? Who, of course, is God. Why appears to be that God, self-sufficient yet filled with love and life, must, by His nature, give of His life and of His love. God is giving by His very nature.
2. Genesis 1:27-30: These verses demonstrate the special place humanity has in God's creation. First, God makes us in His image. We bear a special resemblance and relationship with God in our essence, not in our physical appearance because "God is spirit." The image of God has become distorted in us because of the condition of sin. Christ came into the world to restore the image of God to those who trust in Him. Death is the consequence of sin and even believers in Christ die. But like the Savior to Whom they surrender, they will rise to live with God eternally. Second, humanity is put in charge of the world God creates.
3. Genesis 2: The Hebrew names of Adam (man) and Eve (life) sound similar: ish and ishah. There are many such word plays throughout the Old Testament, written in Hebrew.
4. Genesis 3: Notice that the serpent told Eve the truth in a lying way. That's how subtle he was. In fact, Adam and Eve didn't immediately die. But death, which was never intended for them or their descendants--you and me--became part of the human condition when they transgressed God's will for them.
5. The Bible speaks of sin in two different ways. (1) First, as a condition of separation from God and from others. We see this in that Adam hid from God after he and Eve sinned. We see it too, in that Adam and Eve, so close a few verses earlier, blame each other for their common sin against God. Psalm 51:5, among other passages, affirm that we are born into the condition of sin we have inherited from our parents and, ultimately, the first humans.
(2) Second as those things we do, sins, that we do because we are sinners.
6. The grace (or undeserved charity) of God can be seen in several ways in Genesis 3: (1) First, God didn't do away with Adam and Eve as a good project gone bad as soon as they rebelled. He reached out to them.
(2) Second, God sewed clothing for them. Adam and Eve had been naked and ashamed. But once they had sinned, they became aware of how they could misuse their bodies and their lives. Mark Twain once said that man is the only animal that blushes...or needs to. Even today, God provides the world with "daily bread." The fact that millions go hungry is not a problem of God's provision, but of human selfishness...It's a sin issue.
(3) Third, God banished them from the Garden of Eden. It may seem cruel for the first human beings to have been barred from paradise. But the reason it had to be was simple: Had the two remained there, they would have gained access to the tree of life, but done so while still alienated from God and in sin. They would have been eternally separated from God and others. This is exactly how the Bible describes hell!
God has better plans in mind for Adam and Eve and their descendants. It's only when sin's power over our lives is eliminated that we can take eternal life as God intends for us from Him. That's why Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, was crucified. The cross is, for all who turn from sin and trust in Christ alone, the tree of life. (See this more literal rendering of Acts 5:30, from the New Revised Standard Version's translation of the Bible.) We submit to its verdict on our lives and to the crucifixion of our old selves so that our new selves can rise with Christ!
Points to Ponder:
1. How much of yourself do you see in Adam and Eve?
2. In light of the phrase, "her husband, who was with her," why have some believers pinned the blame for sin more onto Eve than Adam, do you suppose? What are the implications of this blame game?
3. Historically, New Testament scholars have seen the promise of Christ in Genesis 3:15. Can you see why this might be so? (Think about that before taking a gander here, if you like.)
Monday, April 09, 2012
Easter: God Makes a New Creation!
[This was shared during worship with the people and guests of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, yesterday.]
John 20:1-18
In the beginning, the Old Testament book of Genesis says, God’s Holy Spirit “swept over the waters” of chaos and, on the first day of the first week, God began to bring creation into being.
According to Genesis, God’s week of creativity culminated in the creation of human beings. God placed the first man and the first woman, Adam and Eve, in a garden. It was a place of perfect peace and fellowship with God.
You know what happened, though. Adam and Eve wanted to “be like God.” They caved into the egotistical notion that they could declare their independence from God without any consequences. Through their sin, the world was plunged into the dark chaos of selfishness, violence, injustice, and hopelessness we have to this day.
This garden, God’s perfect creation, has been groaning under the chaos and darkness of sin ever since.
But God hasn’t given up on us!
Long centuries after God’s creation fell under sin, on the Sunday after Jesus’ death, some of the female followers of Jesus went to Jesus’ tomb.
In our gospel lesson for this morning, John focuses on just one of the women who went to the tomb that day. Her name was Mary Magdalene.
We know little about Mary Magdalene. The gospels of Mark and Luke say that she was a woman from whom Jesus cast out demons. And the Gospel of John says that, at the time of Jesus’ crucifixion, she stood at the foot of the cross, among the few who were unafraid to admit that she was a believer in Jesus. But, while we may know little about Mary, she played a huge role in the event we celebrate today.
Turn to John 20:1 in your Bible. “Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene went to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb.” The first day of the week: Unbeknownst to Mary or anyone else for that matter, God was creating again. This day, begun in darkness, the pall of death and chaos hanging over it, was to be the first day of the first week of God’s new creation. But neither Mary nor any of the women with whom she went to Jesus’ tomb that day suspected it.
Go to verse 2: “Then she ran and came to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, and said to them, ‘They have taken away the Lord out of the tomb, and we [Mary mentions herself and the other women] do not know where they have laid Him.”
Mary had no notion that Jesus was anything but dead. She had watched Him die. She was simply outraged that the One Who had freed from slavery to demons, Who had been humiliated, beaten, and crucified, was now, in death, being further demeaned and desecrated.
Verses 3 and 4 tell us that Peter and the beloved disciple, the one to whom Jesus from the cross had entrusted the care of His mother and probably John, the author of this gospel, ran to the tomb to see for themselves. The beloved disciple, younger than Peter, made it to the tomb first.
Now, look at verses 5-7: “And he [John], stooping down and looking in, saw the linen cloths lying there yet he did not go in.” [Peter, ever impulsive, doesn’t show the same hesitation.] “Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb; and he saw the linen clothes lying there and the handkerchief that had been around [Jesus’] head, not lying with the linen cloths, but folded together in a place by itself.”
The burial custom of those days was to wrap the deceased in linen cloths. They would roll the body in linen, so it wound around it in layers. The head would then be wrapped in a separate linen cloth.
Unraveling the linen after the wrapping took place would have been quite a process. If you were a grave robber, wanting to work fast and remain undetected, you wouldn’t take the time to peel the linen off of Jesus’ body. Yet, here were the linen cloths that had wrapped Jesus’ dead body lying there and the cloth that had wrapped His head, neatly folded in another spot.”
To John and Peter, the place would have looked less like a tomb from which a body had been stolen, than a guest bedroom in which the guest had considerately made his bed before leaving in the morning!
Look at verses 8 and 9: “Then the other disciple, who came to the tomb first, went in also; and he saw and believed. For as yet they did not know the Scripture [the Old Testament prophecies], that [Jesus] must rise again from the dead.”
The beloved disciple believed that Jesus had risen from the dead.
Listen: Faith understands things that the intellect strains to comprehend. Faith is the teacher of the mind, not the other way around.
John accepted the signs of Jesus’ resurrection before he actually saw the risen Jesus, before he knew it to be empirically true.
Believing--even the willingness to believe--is seeing. You cannot see God unless you are willing to see God. Faith is not imposed by God; it’s given to those who want to believe!
When I was an atheist exploring the faith of the dear people Ann had introduced me to in her home congregation, I found that as I opened myself to accepting what I could not understand, I began to believe in the God and in the risen Savior I could not see. I saw the risen and living Jesus working in the lives of people who believed in Him with every fiber of their beings.
Their faith pried open this heart and will that once were sealed as tightly as Jesus‘ tomb was.
I don’t know when I first believed. But I do know when I first knew that I believed.
I had been looking into this Christian faith, studying the Bible with a group of people at the Lutheran church of which Ann was a member. One night, I went to sleep and experienced something I rarely experience, a dream I could remember. In my dream, I was walking down a street. Ahead of me, I saw Jesus. I didn’t dare to be so presumptuous as to approach Him. But He came up to me. And when He did, He wrapped His arms around me. To this day, as I recall that moment, I can still feel the cloth of Jesus‘ robe touching me.
When I realized that I believed in the crucified and risen Jesus, I also knew that my life would never be the same again. I was no longer be in charge of my life, just as Mary Magdalene, John, Peter, and the other witnesses of Jesus’ resurrection knew that their lives could never be the same again.
And if you believe in Jesus, your life can never be the same again either.
Yet, at this point in John’s telling of the events of Easter, Mary is still unbelieving.
Maybe Mary had seen too much of life and death to believe that Jesus could be risen. Maybe you feel that way this morning; then what John says happened next is for you.
Slip down to verse 11: “But Mary stood outside by the tomb weeping, and as she wept, she stooped down and looked into the tomb. And she saw two angels in white sitting, one at the head and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain. They said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping?‘ She said to them, ‘Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid Him.’”
Mary sill thinks that Jesus is dead. No other possibility has entered her mind. Sometimes, we can be so beaten down by life and death and grief that we feel nothing good can happen, that God is powerless, that the future holds no hope.
Don’t cave into those lies!
Verse 14: “Now when she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, and did not know that it was Jesus.” When we allow our faith to be held hostage to grief and doubt, we cannot see or experience the blessings God wants to give to us.
But Jesus never gives up on trying to reach us! Look at verse 15: “Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?’ She, supposing Him to be the gardener, said to Him, ‘Sir, if You have carried Him away, tell me where You have laid Him, and I will take Him away.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ She turned and said to Him, ‘Rabbouni!’ (which is to say, ‘Teacher’).”
Mary wanted to grasp hold of the risen Jesus. But in verse 17, Jesus tells her not to cling to Him. Both He and Mary have things to do: He must ascend to His Father and she must go tell others the good news.
Look at verse 18: “Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord, and that He had spoken these things to her.”
If you need any more proof that Jesus really has risen from the dead and is alive this very moment, this verse should provide it!
First-century Judean culture believed, as centuries of their Hebrew ancestors had before them, that women were inferior and that their testimony could not be trusted. Yet Jesus chose Mary Magdalene to be the first preacher of this good news and, miracle of miracle, in spite of the messenger being a woman, those she told believed her; they believed that Jesus was risen from the dead. If Jesus’ resurrection were untrue, the originators of such a hoax would have come up with a more politically correct way of kicking off their campaign to convince people Jesus had risen from the dead than to make a woman the first Christian preacher!
So, what does Jesus’ resurrection mean?
First, it means that everything that Jesus ever said is validated. Jesus has conquered sin and death. He’s the Lord of everything. Nothing is beyond His authority. Nobody has sinned so horribly that God can't forgive them and give them eternity.
And we dare not call into question anything Jesus says about sin and repentance, forgiveness and new life, death and resurrection, heaven and hell, about money, or taxes, or work, or parenting, or marriage, or sex, or the Ten Commandments, or saving faith.
When Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me,” we must believe it.
When He says, “Those who believe in Me, even though they die will live,” we can bank on it.
When He tells us, “Until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter...from [God’s] law” will be abolished, the Christian grateful for the undeserved love and forgiveness that comes to those who trust in Christ will do all they can to break away from the me-centered morality of the world and align their lives, however imperfectly, with the will of God.
When Jesus says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life” and “those who believe in [Jesus] are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already...,” we should ask God to help us turn from sin and trust in Christ each day.
Jesus’ resurrection means that we need to take Jesus seriously as God and Lord and Savior and not see Him as just a nice teacher who did nice things.
And we certainly cannot take His words as advice that we can take or leave!
And here’s the second big thing that Jesus’ resurrection means: On the first day of a new week, in a garden, God burst through the chaos and sin of this old creation and began to bring His new creation into being. The fall into sin that happened in Eden and the chaos into which creation sank has been decisively undone by God’s creative act in Jesus!
Go to 2 Corinthians 5:17. It says: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, [she or] he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold all things have become new.”
God hasn’t given up on you; so, don’t you give up on God!
All who turn from sin and entrust their lives to Christ are part of God’s new creation.
For the follower of Jesus, the past is dead and buried. It’s a new day!
God is making all who follow Jesus Christ new and one day like Mary, we too, will see the risen Jesus and He will call our names and we will fall at His feet, the beneficiaries of an eternity of second chances to be all we were meant to be, living forever in God’s new creation. Amen!
John 20:1-18
In the beginning, the Old Testament book of Genesis says, God’s Holy Spirit “swept over the waters” of chaos and, on the first day of the first week, God began to bring creation into being.
According to Genesis, God’s week of creativity culminated in the creation of human beings. God placed the first man and the first woman, Adam and Eve, in a garden. It was a place of perfect peace and fellowship with God.
You know what happened, though. Adam and Eve wanted to “be like God.” They caved into the egotistical notion that they could declare their independence from God without any consequences. Through their sin, the world was plunged into the dark chaos of selfishness, violence, injustice, and hopelessness we have to this day.
This garden, God’s perfect creation, has been groaning under the chaos and darkness of sin ever since.
But God hasn’t given up on us!
Long centuries after God’s creation fell under sin, on the Sunday after Jesus’ death, some of the female followers of Jesus went to Jesus’ tomb.
In our gospel lesson for this morning, John focuses on just one of the women who went to the tomb that day. Her name was Mary Magdalene.
We know little about Mary Magdalene. The gospels of Mark and Luke say that she was a woman from whom Jesus cast out demons. And the Gospel of John says that, at the time of Jesus’ crucifixion, she stood at the foot of the cross, among the few who were unafraid to admit that she was a believer in Jesus. But, while we may know little about Mary, she played a huge role in the event we celebrate today.
Turn to John 20:1 in your Bible. “Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene went to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb.” The first day of the week: Unbeknownst to Mary or anyone else for that matter, God was creating again. This day, begun in darkness, the pall of death and chaos hanging over it, was to be the first day of the first week of God’s new creation. But neither Mary nor any of the women with whom she went to Jesus’ tomb that day suspected it.
Go to verse 2: “Then she ran and came to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, and said to them, ‘They have taken away the Lord out of the tomb, and we [Mary mentions herself and the other women] do not know where they have laid Him.”
Mary had no notion that Jesus was anything but dead. She had watched Him die. She was simply outraged that the One Who had freed from slavery to demons, Who had been humiliated, beaten, and crucified, was now, in death, being further demeaned and desecrated.
Verses 3 and 4 tell us that Peter and the beloved disciple, the one to whom Jesus from the cross had entrusted the care of His mother and probably John, the author of this gospel, ran to the tomb to see for themselves. The beloved disciple, younger than Peter, made it to the tomb first.
Now, look at verses 5-7: “And he [John], stooping down and looking in, saw the linen cloths lying there yet he did not go in.” [Peter, ever impulsive, doesn’t show the same hesitation.] “Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb; and he saw the linen clothes lying there and the handkerchief that had been around [Jesus’] head, not lying with the linen cloths, but folded together in a place by itself.”
The burial custom of those days was to wrap the deceased in linen cloths. They would roll the body in linen, so it wound around it in layers. The head would then be wrapped in a separate linen cloth.
Unraveling the linen after the wrapping took place would have been quite a process. If you were a grave robber, wanting to work fast and remain undetected, you wouldn’t take the time to peel the linen off of Jesus’ body. Yet, here were the linen cloths that had wrapped Jesus’ dead body lying there and the cloth that had wrapped His head, neatly folded in another spot.”
To John and Peter, the place would have looked less like a tomb from which a body had been stolen, than a guest bedroom in which the guest had considerately made his bed before leaving in the morning!
Look at verses 8 and 9: “Then the other disciple, who came to the tomb first, went in also; and he saw and believed. For as yet they did not know the Scripture [the Old Testament prophecies], that [Jesus] must rise again from the dead.”
The beloved disciple believed that Jesus had risen from the dead.
Listen: Faith understands things that the intellect strains to comprehend. Faith is the teacher of the mind, not the other way around.
John accepted the signs of Jesus’ resurrection before he actually saw the risen Jesus, before he knew it to be empirically true.
Believing--even the willingness to believe--is seeing. You cannot see God unless you are willing to see God. Faith is not imposed by God; it’s given to those who want to believe!
When I was an atheist exploring the faith of the dear people Ann had introduced me to in her home congregation, I found that as I opened myself to accepting what I could not understand, I began to believe in the God and in the risen Savior I could not see. I saw the risen and living Jesus working in the lives of people who believed in Him with every fiber of their beings.
Their faith pried open this heart and will that once were sealed as tightly as Jesus‘ tomb was.
I don’t know when I first believed. But I do know when I first knew that I believed.
I had been looking into this Christian faith, studying the Bible with a group of people at the Lutheran church of which Ann was a member. One night, I went to sleep and experienced something I rarely experience, a dream I could remember. In my dream, I was walking down a street. Ahead of me, I saw Jesus. I didn’t dare to be so presumptuous as to approach Him. But He came up to me. And when He did, He wrapped His arms around me. To this day, as I recall that moment, I can still feel the cloth of Jesus‘ robe touching me.
When I realized that I believed in the crucified and risen Jesus, I also knew that my life would never be the same again. I was no longer be in charge of my life, just as Mary Magdalene, John, Peter, and the other witnesses of Jesus’ resurrection knew that their lives could never be the same again.
And if you believe in Jesus, your life can never be the same again either.
Yet, at this point in John’s telling of the events of Easter, Mary is still unbelieving.
Maybe Mary had seen too much of life and death to believe that Jesus could be risen. Maybe you feel that way this morning; then what John says happened next is for you.
Slip down to verse 11: “But Mary stood outside by the tomb weeping, and as she wept, she stooped down and looked into the tomb. And she saw two angels in white sitting, one at the head and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain. They said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping?‘ She said to them, ‘Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid Him.’”
Mary sill thinks that Jesus is dead. No other possibility has entered her mind. Sometimes, we can be so beaten down by life and death and grief that we feel nothing good can happen, that God is powerless, that the future holds no hope.
Don’t cave into those lies!
Verse 14: “Now when she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, and did not know that it was Jesus.” When we allow our faith to be held hostage to grief and doubt, we cannot see or experience the blessings God wants to give to us.
But Jesus never gives up on trying to reach us! Look at verse 15: “Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?’ She, supposing Him to be the gardener, said to Him, ‘Sir, if You have carried Him away, tell me where You have laid Him, and I will take Him away.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ She turned and said to Him, ‘Rabbouni!’ (which is to say, ‘Teacher’).”
Mary wanted to grasp hold of the risen Jesus. But in verse 17, Jesus tells her not to cling to Him. Both He and Mary have things to do: He must ascend to His Father and she must go tell others the good news.
Look at verse 18: “Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord, and that He had spoken these things to her.”
If you need any more proof that Jesus really has risen from the dead and is alive this very moment, this verse should provide it!
First-century Judean culture believed, as centuries of their Hebrew ancestors had before them, that women were inferior and that their testimony could not be trusted. Yet Jesus chose Mary Magdalene to be the first preacher of this good news and, miracle of miracle, in spite of the messenger being a woman, those she told believed her; they believed that Jesus was risen from the dead. If Jesus’ resurrection were untrue, the originators of such a hoax would have come up with a more politically correct way of kicking off their campaign to convince people Jesus had risen from the dead than to make a woman the first Christian preacher!
So, what does Jesus’ resurrection mean?
First, it means that everything that Jesus ever said is validated. Jesus has conquered sin and death. He’s the Lord of everything. Nothing is beyond His authority. Nobody has sinned so horribly that God can't forgive them and give them eternity.
And we dare not call into question anything Jesus says about sin and repentance, forgiveness and new life, death and resurrection, heaven and hell, about money, or taxes, or work, or parenting, or marriage, or sex, or the Ten Commandments, or saving faith.
When Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me,” we must believe it.
When He says, “Those who believe in Me, even though they die will live,” we can bank on it.
When He tells us, “Until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter...from [God’s] law” will be abolished, the Christian grateful for the undeserved love and forgiveness that comes to those who trust in Christ will do all they can to break away from the me-centered morality of the world and align their lives, however imperfectly, with the will of God.
When Jesus says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life” and “those who believe in [Jesus] are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already...,” we should ask God to help us turn from sin and trust in Christ each day.
Jesus’ resurrection means that we need to take Jesus seriously as God and Lord and Savior and not see Him as just a nice teacher who did nice things.
And we certainly cannot take His words as advice that we can take or leave!
And here’s the second big thing that Jesus’ resurrection means: On the first day of a new week, in a garden, God burst through the chaos and sin of this old creation and began to bring His new creation into being. The fall into sin that happened in Eden and the chaos into which creation sank has been decisively undone by God’s creative act in Jesus!
Go to 2 Corinthians 5:17. It says: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, [she or] he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold all things have become new.”
God hasn’t given up on you; so, don’t you give up on God!
All who turn from sin and entrust their lives to Christ are part of God’s new creation.
For the follower of Jesus, the past is dead and buried. It’s a new day!
God is making all who follow Jesus Christ new and one day like Mary, we too, will see the risen Jesus and He will call our names and we will fall at His feet, the beneficiaries of an eternity of second chances to be all we were meant to be, living forever in God’s new creation. Amen!
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