Here Comes the Son
The
Yorktown United
Pastor Roy Grubbs
Easter Sunday John
20: 1-18
Early
in the morning, while it was still dark…
I
can still remember when I was little. My
family lived in a town called
Even
today, I still become a little more anxious in the dark.
Although I’m not afraid of the same things anymore, in the darkness, I
can’t see as well. I am not sure
what is out there. I may run into
something, or trip over something. How
many of you have ever stubbed your toe at night walking across a dark room?
Well, I don’t think my anxiety about the darkness can compare at all to
what Mary was feeling that Easter morning.
She
goes to the tomb while it is still dark, alone.
Under Roman occupation, as a follower of Jesus, in the darkest hours of
her life, Mary boldly ventures forth. Who
knows what danger lay before her. But
she goes anyway. She
stayed by Jesus’ side as he hung dying on the cross.
She wasn’t afraid of showing everyone her faithfulness to Jesus.
She knew very well Jesus was no criminal, and she wasn’t afraid of the
mob. This woman loved her Lord.
So she goes to anoint the body of
Jesus, and in her grief, has to deal with even more…the stone covering the
entrance to the tomb has been removed. The
body of Jesus was gone. Mary is
confused. So she races back to tell
Peter and the beloved disciple.
The
disciples come, to see for themselves. The
other disciple “believes.” But
they do not understand that Jesus must rise from the dead.
So they leave in fear, terrified. And
they go home. Back to their homes!
They see, they believe, but go back to business-as-usual.
They go back to the everyday, the predictable, and the stable.
For them, this “stealing of the body” is just one final indignity
done to the crucified Jesus and his followers.
Can you believe these two! After
all that Jesus had taught them, all he had foretold about the Scriptures that
were being fulfilled through him, after three years in direct ministry with
Christ, they just go home. How sad.
Didn’t Christ mean more to them than that?
But
wait a minute. Now that I think of
it, I know that there have been times when I have experienced Christ on a Sunday
and “lost it” not long after getting in my car to go home.
I know there have been times when I have had my heart-warmed by the love
of Jesus and then just continued to carry on with my normal routine.
I wonder if Mary was shocked as the disciples left, wondering how they
could just leave. In any event, she
was alone again.
Thank goodness the Easter story does not stop there. As Mary stands weeping outside the tomb, she decides to look in. Two angels ask why she is crying. They have taken away Jesus and she does not know where he is.
At that moment Jesus appeared, and Mary
notices someone in the corner of her eye. She
didn’t know it was Jesus, even when he asked her, “Why are you crying? Who
are you looking for?”
Mary figured he was the gardener and says to Jesus, “If you’ve taken him,
can I have him back?” At that
point, Jesus opened her eyes and spoke her name. She
turned to look directly at him, and suddenly realized that the gardener was no
mere weed-killer – it was Jesus!
She runs toward him, but Jesus tells her: “Do not hold on to me, for I have
not yet returned to the Father.” Well, hold on a second. There
were other times as the Risen Savior that Jesus allowed, even encouraged people
to touch him. Matthew records the
story of the women, including Mary Magdalene, to cling to his feet and worship
him. That same night, as Luke tells
us, Jesus told his followers to touch him and make sure he was no ghost. The
next Sunday, a week later, Jesus told Thomas to touch his side, even put his
finger in the wound in Jesus’ side, where the spear had driven through his
ribcage and pierced his heart.
But here, to his most devoted of followers, Jesus says, “Don’t hang on to me
too tightly.” Don’t cling to me.
Why? Well,
imagine what Mary was thinking as she saw her Lord. Her
agony had just been turned into tremendous joy. Jesus
had disappeared from her view and was lost, so she thought. But
now he was back, and she probably thought, “I must never lose him again. I
can’t do again what I just went through, so I will hold him forever.” No
more separations; no more Fridays like she just had; no more graves.
And Jesus saw this. Jesus saw that Mary wanted things the way they were before:
sight, sound, and touch. And he
said, “Don’t hold on to me too tightly. I will be with you forever, yes, but
not in the same way. Jesus saw that
Mary’s desire to possess him, to hold him, was so overpowering that it crowded
out a purer faith and trust. Mary’s
desire to touch and cling was stronger than her desire to trust. She
wanted what she could see and hold and touch, not what she had to have faith in.
And when you put it that way, it
seems that we all have the same condition as Mary.
We want what we can see and understand, instead of what we can’t see and are
told to just believe in. We try to keep Jesus where we can understand him, where
we don’t need a lot of faith to stay put. Frankly, we don’t want to be where
we are living by faith. It’s much
easier to live by sight, to understand what’s going on, to act on what we can
see. It’s much harder to live by
faith, to trust in things unseen, to be led by a gut feeling instead of by
traditional common sense or wisdom that the majority of people consider wise.
Yes, Jesus died a terrible agonizing death on the cross. The pain he felt, the pain he took on for all of us is unimaginable. That’s who God is; the One who loves us so much and understands our pain and our suffering. But death did not defeat Jesus. Death did not defeat God. Jesus rose from the grave. And Jesus is right there with us, even in our darkest hours. He knows the pain in our lives. He understands everything that we are going through. Even when we are afraid, Jesus is there to comfort us, to wipe away the tears, to help heal our hearts.
Resurrection, new life, cannot happen without death. But death is not permanent. Christ is risen. Christ is alive. The tomb is empty. Jesus appears, first to Mary, and then to the disciples. And for almost 2,000 years, Jesus has been appearing all over the world, in different ways to different people. The question is: What will we do when he comes to us?
For those Beatles fans out there, I like to think of one of their classics when I think about this question. But in this context, I just like changing one of the words a little. Here comes the Son, here comes the Son, and I say it's all right. ‘Christ gave himself for us - a real and lasting presence that stands with us in all the dark nights and difficult days of our lives. Christ rose on Easter morning. And, by his grace, so can we.’
“Christ is
Risen. Christ is Risen indeed.” Alleluia.
Amen.