Sermon for Easter Sunday, March 27, 2005

Recognizing the Risen Christ

Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz

Scripture: John 20:1-9

20:1 Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. 20:2 So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him." 20:3 Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. 20:4 The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first.20:5 He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. 20:6 Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, 20:7 and the cloth that had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. 20:8 Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; 20:9 for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.

Every story about resurrection begins in darkness.

Every story about resurrection and hope and new life always, always begins in darkness.

That’s how the Easter story begins in the gospel of John—in darkness. “It was still dark when Mary began her journey to Jesus’ grave.” We began this worship time today in darkness because that is how this news first arrived in our world 2000 years ago— in darkness.

If you are getting to know your Bible, you would expect the Easter story in John to begin in darkness. You would begin to read chapter 20 and say, of course it is still dark when Mary starts her long sad journey to the tomb outside Jerusalem on Sunday morning; of COURSE it is still night time and dark because this is the gospel of John where light and dark and blindness and sight and nighttime and daylight have been major themes all along as John introduces us to the one who is the Light of the world.

It’s even more than this. Every story about resurrection has to begin in darkness or we would not be able to be grasped by the message of hope and help and light which Easter is all about. And if you have never experienced darkness—pain, loneliness, despair, broken dreams, suffering, fear, failure, isolation, grief—if you have never tasted darkness, then we will not be able to make much sense together on this day of resurrection and hope and new beginnings.

Carlyle Marney, one of the most important Baptist ministers of the 20^th century said that he would not dare to talk about Easter and resurrection with anyone who was not yet forty years old!! He said, it is because until we have lived for a while and known the sadness of life and had some of our dreams shattered and sat in a hospital waiting room and prayed or stood by a grave or two and been through times of darkness and crisis and asked, “God where in the world are you???” Until we have felt those feelings, we won’t be able to experience Easter and resurrection.

Marney was exaggerating of course. You don’t have to be forty. You can be a teenager and know what loneliness is, or rejection, or the absence of love and hope and belonging.

Every story about resurrection begins in darkness, so maybe you need a moment to get in touch with those times in your life of fear and darkness, if you need to remember lying awake at three in the morning and asking how in God’s name you can get through this dark time in your life, so you will be able to see again and hope again and love again and believe again—listen to how the story begins in the gospel of John;

It was still dark on that Sunday morning when Mary Magdalene—one of Jesus closest followers—was making her way to the tomb. And when she got there her life was completely changed by what happened to her.

Easter means so many things. This would be a great Bible discussion today with your family and friends—to look at each of the four gospels and see the different stories that are there and to say, based on this story, Easter means….

And there is always more than one answer to that sentence completion. Easter means that Christ is alive—right now, here and now. Easter means Jesus is the Messiah, the one you have been waiting for to get your life together so pay attention to him! (That is what the first sermon about Easter said from that shameful disgrace of a disciple whose name was Peter).

Easter means that God, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Moses and David and the God of Jesus—God is coming to you in your time of darkness and fear and brokenness and hopelessness and bringing light.

Let me tell you about how God just did that a couple of weeks ago. You know this story already. And like every story of resurrection it begins—in darkness. It was two o’clock in the morning in Atlanta. Ashley Smith was returning to her apartment after she had just gone out for cigarettes when she felt a gun in her side and knew that her worst nightmare was about to happen.

Brian Nichols who had allegedly killed four people and escaped from the courthouse where he was on trial for charges of rape, was taking her hostage. It was a terrifying moment. Nichols led her into the apartment where he tied her up, put a towel over her head while he took a shower and told her he would not hurt her if she did what he said.

You know the rest of the story. Ashley Smith treated her extremely dangerous captor as a human being. She began to ask him about his life. And she told him about herself and about her times of despair and darkness and pain. She showed him her emotional wounds and scars—there were many. Her husband whom she loved deeply had been stabbed and had died as she held him in her arms. She was in despair. She developed a drug habit. She had been caught for speeding and drunken driving, arrested for assault, had given custody of her daughter to her aunt. But now finally through her relationship with the risen Christ, she was beginning to get her life back together.

And then she told him how she was doing that, what the source was for her redirection and her rebirth and her-resurrection. And she read to him from her Bible and from The Purpose Driven Life about God has plans and hopes and dreams for every person and about how God has hopes and dreams even for Brian Nichols and how God can take the most painful and hopeless of circumstances and the most horrible tragedies (like even the crucifixion of Jesus) and bring something new and full of light.

She told her story. She shared her faith, an Easter faith. She listened to him. She treated him as a fellow struggler on the sometimes dark and treacherous path of life. And she fixed him pancakes. And God was at work in those hours of darkness to bring something that might have seemed impossible—her release and perhaps a new direction in life for him.

Andrew Sullivan in writing about this in Time Magazine this week says, “There’s a line in a Leonard Cohen song that has always stayed with me. It kept me going in a bleak moment in my life when I thought, as we all sometimes do, that I couldn’t see how good could come out of the wreck I had turned my life into. The line is “Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

Here is a modern story of resurrection and hope that like all those stories, had to begin in darkness.

There is an element in Ashley Smith’s story that leads to the next story. When she opened her copy of The Purpose Driven Life to chapter 33 that tells about serving God by serving others, the bookmark that held that chapter had been made for Ashley Smith by her five year old daughter Paige. The bookmark says, “Jesus Christ lives.”

Easter means that Christ is alive and among us and is still changing lives.

Tom Long teaches preaching at one of our United Methodist seminaries. He tells a story about resurrection and changed lives in his new book. (Testimony – Talking Ourselves into Being Christian.)

A friend of mine, Heidi Neumark, served for several years as the pastor of a Lutheran church in the south Bronx, in perhaps the poorest of all poor neighborhoods in America. Her first Sunday as pastor, Heidi understood what kind of church she was serving when she found under the altar a box of rat poison next to the communion wafers. The leaders and officers of her congregations include former addicts and undocumented aliens, the unemployed and the recently homeless.

During Hoy Week several years ago, this congregation decided to reenact in a passion play the whole sweep of Holy Week, from Palm Sunday to Easter. They began by dramatizing Jesus’ entry into the city, borrowing a live donkey and, led by an actor playing the part of Jesus, parading in a long procession around the block of shabby storefronts and run-down apartments shouting, “Hosanna!" When they got around the block and back to the door of the church, the Palm Sunday procession ran into a street demonstration protesting police brutality. It was fitting, really, as Jesus and the protesters, the congregation and the street crowds, the cries of “Hosanna!” and the cries of social outrage mingled together in a swirl of movement and noise. Somehow the processional managed to make it inside the church, where, as the play unfolded, Jesus was tried, condemned, and executed. But then women returned early in the morning of the first day of the week with the amazing word of an empty tomb and the astounding news, “He is risen!” The actors playing the disciples remained true to their assigned parts, expressing disbelief and confidence that this new from the women was but an “idle tale.”

But then the script called for three members of the congregation to stand up and give testimony, to bear witness in court as it were, to the truth of the resurrection. “I know the he is alive,” each one was to begin. The first was Angie. “I know that he is alive,” she said, “because he is alive in me.” She then told how she was abused by her father, how she fell into despair and alcoholism, became HIV-positive. But then she responded to the welcome of the church, then she started attending worship, then a Bible study, and bit by bit she rose from the grave of her life. Now she is a seminary student, studying to be a pastor. “I am now alive because Jesus Christ lives in me and through me,” Angie said, her face aglow.

The two other witnesses stood in turn, each reciting the assigned part of the script: “I know that he is alive.” Then that portion of the play was done, and it was time to move on. But the testimony would not stop. Others in the sanctuary began to rise spontaneously. “I know that he is alive,” they would say, “because he is alive in me.” Homeless people, addicts now clean, the least and the lost, stood one by one. Nothing could stop them. “I know that he is alive, “ they shouted, all giving corroborating testimony to the witness of Jesus, adding their own word to the great witness of Easter, telling the truth about what they had seen and heard.

I know that Christ is alive. The risen Christ is alive and still able to bring light and hope into our darkness.

One last story about light and darkness and blindness and being able to see. This one has a punch line. Two fellows in New York were walking their dogs. They were good friends. The dogs got along really well also, even though the dogs were very different. One was a German Shepherd and the other was a Chihuahua. It was a warm day and they had been walking a while and decided they would stop at a Starbucks and get something cold to drink. They did not want to leave the dogs on the street so they decided they would walk in with their sun glasses on and their dogs with them and pretend they were blind and these were their seeing eye dogs.

They put on their dark glasses, entered the Starbucks, and the barista saw them and said, “You can’t bring those dogs in here. Leave them outside.” The shepherd owner said, “Wait. These are our seeing eye dogs.”

The barista said, “Maybe yours is, but this other dog? A Chihuahua for a seeing eye dog??”

The other fellow said, “They gave me a Chihuahua?”

There is another major theme in the gospel of John. It is about blindness. God is at work in Jesus right in front of people, religious people, and they are blind to what is happening. The risen Christ is right in front of Mary Magdalene on Easter morning and she does not see him, she mistakes him for the gardener. In some of the other Easter stories Christ is right there and goes unrecognized because of people’s blindness.

Even sadder, our Lord Jesus Christ is at work right now in our lives, your life every day, ready to bring you hope and light and encouragement and guidance—and we will be blind to him as well until and unless we begin to take time for God, for worship, for study, take time to know what to look for, take time to practice the prayer life that he practiced, (there are beginning prayers in your bulletin for you to use). This will involve more than just visiting a church a couple of times and then forgetting about God the rest of the time. Being here this morning is a great start but it is still just a start on what can be an exciting life long journey.

Christ is already at work in your life and he will best be recognized when we take time with him and meet together and hear his teachings and make new commitments to follow him, to move beyond just admiring him to following him and becoming his disciples.

Easter means that God is still sending Jesus into the darkness to bring hope and light and transformation and the new life of Easter. Will we see him? Will we recognize him all these times he is with us?

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