The Meaning of Jesus: Saturday can try to hold us – but Easter sets us free Easter Sunday, April 8, 2007 – Rev. David Tinney Text: John 20:11-18 Theme: Many of us live in the perilous place called Saturday, between Good Friday and Easter. The good news is Saturday can try to hold us – but Easter sets us free. The story goes there was a man who had survived a shipwreck and was living on a small island for many years. One day he flags down a passing ship and they send a rescue party. When the captain greets the man on the island he hands him a stack of newspapers to read. The captain says, “Spend some time reading the headlines and let me know if you still want to be rescued.” I can relate to the man on the island. In fact there are times when I look at the daily news and listen to the problems of the world and I yearn for my own private isle of isolation. Do you have those moments? For many of us we don’t even need national and international headlines to tip our worlds, we can do all the tipping with headlines generated in our own families. Let’s face it the headlines of our lives portray a world that is more dangerous, more complicated, and more divided than any we have ever faced before. We live in perilous times and we wonder if rescue is even possible or if it means more of the same if it is even worth being rescued. Have you ever felt like you were trapped in that perilous space? Have you ever had the wind knocked out of you by a sucker punch of life that you never saw coming? A death, a betrayal, a wound that was so unnecessary or so spiteful that you could hardly breathe again? Have you ever had your knees buckle under the weight of a burden that was not yours to carry? An obligation that you never expected, an imposition that you never saw coming, an intrusion you were not prepared to have? Have you spent days in a row with your stomach churning and your heart racing because fear is your new master and it has consumed every thought? Have you ever laid in bed not wanting to lift your head from your pillow and start a new day? Every new dawn represents new disappointments, challenges, and mistakes to be made. Have you been in places like these? Perhaps you are not there now, but you have been there in the past and you know how dark these places can be. I call them the ruts of life. Some of the ruts we dig for ourselves. Others we allow others to dig for us. Either way ruts are deep, dangerous, and tough to escape. I was told this week that the only difference between ruts and graves are the dimensions but both can hold you in its grasp forever. This morning I bring good news. The grasp of the grave has been broken – Easter has set us free! The routine of the rut has been destroyed – Easter has liberated us! What smelled like decay now bursts with the fragrance of new life! How do we know? Let me tell you another story. Two thousand years ago a group of loyal disciples – men and women – followed their leader into Jerusalem. They all had great expectations and the parade at the beginning of the week certainly did not disappoint anyone. It was more like a victory lap at the end of a three year race. As they proudly marched with their leader into the holy city each person secretly thought the time for reward had finally come. All those long walks on dusty trails, all those crowds that kept pushing and shoving, all those nights under the stars away from their families, and all those sermons and parables that were hard to understand – now they would be rewarded for enduring them all. No one could have anticipated what came next. We were not even there and we have a hard time imagining the sequence of events. Jesus goes from the darling of the day to the cursed of the community in a matter of hours. The journey meant for glory was sidetracked by betrayal, manipulation, deceit, violence, anger, and jealousy. Try to imagine if you can being one of the followers with all of your bold expectations and then watching as your leader was crucified as a common criminal. Try to imagine the horror of Good Friday. Try to imagine that sense of abandonment, confusion, and darkness. Wander in the footsteps of your sisters and brothers in the hours after the crucifixion not knowing where to go, what to do, or what to make of the confusion of their lives. This is the dark, lumpy, rutted ground between Good Friday and Easter morning where there are more doubts than questions and more questions than answers. There is a name for the other days of Holy Week. We have Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday but what do you call that perilous time between Friday and Sunday? There is no other name but Saturday and it is in Saturday that many of us live. It is in this place between doubt and truth, between confusion and revelation, between betrayal and victory, between death and new life that many of us journey. Many of us live in the rutted and confusing ground of Saturday. Hear the good news. Saturday can try to hold us – but Easter sets us free. I like the sounds of that. Let’s try that again. When I say Saturday can try to hold us, you say – but Easter sets us free. One more time. Saturday can try to hold us – but Easter sets us free. I will come back to this a couple more times in the sermon so remember your line. You might be asking the question right now: “How do I know that Easter will set us free?” How do I know there was a resurrection? How do I know it was not a hoax? Let me explain one of the problems with hoaxes. The perpetrators can’t keep secrets. They are usually too proud of what they have done and they want credit for the charade so they end up fessing up so they can lap up the glory. Do you remember a fuzzy black and white photograph that appeared in London’s Sunday Telegraph in 1934 of a long neck rising out of the waters off Loch Ness. The picture is famous. It is just enough out of focus to engage the imagination and just enough in focus to generate speculation. The photo was taken by a physician named Robert Wilson and it appears to show a brontosaurus type dinosaur that has since been called the Loch Ness Monster or “Nessie” for those who really fell for the hoax. For years Wilson swore it was an authentic picture and he was so convincing that there were dozens of other sightings. But in 1994, just before his death, a man named Christian Spurling confessed his role in making the fake photo. Spurling and his stepfather attached a long “neck” of plastic and wood to a 14 inch submarine toy and then floated it in shallow water so that Wilson could photograph it. They worked hard at getting just the right angles and focus to make it look much bigger than it really was. Spurling could not go to his grave without confessing his role. Hoaxes are like good pranks, they are not funny unless someone knows they have been had. Perpetrators of hoaxes need to reveal their cleverness for the hoax to be effective. The early disciples and witnesses to the risen Lord were not in pranking moods as they watched their leader killed. They were hurting and wounded and not about to concoct an elaborate hoax. So some might ask, was the Easter story a grand and creative conspiracy? To answer that one I turn to one of the greatest conspirators of last century, Chuck Colson of Watergate fame. While serving time for his role in the Watergate affair he had a conversion experience and became a devote Christian and writer. In one of his essays where he is asked if he thinks the disciples were telling the truth about what they saw on Easter morning he responds that the best source for his answer is Watergate. He explained that the President of the United States surrounded himself with the most loyal, powerful, and clever men he could find. But when these men got caught each jumped to “save his own skin.” From the moment the cover-up was uncovered it only held together for two weeks before people started jumping ship. He goes on to say that no one was facing death or crucifixion. The worse anyone would face is prison and public embarrassment. The most clever, the most loyal, and the most politically savvy men of the day broke in two weeks. Colson says that when you compare these men to the disciples and witnesses of the past who had to face beatings, stonings, executions, and families that were torn apart it had to be something more a conspiracy. Men and women will give their lives for something they believe to be true; they will never give their lives for something they know to be false. “The Watergate cover-up reveals the true nature of humanity. Even political zealots at the pinnacle of power will, in the crunch, save their own necks, even at the expense of the ones they profess to serve so loyally. But the apostles could not deny Jesus, because they had seen him face to face, and they knew he had risen from the dead. No, you can take it from an expert in cover-ups—I've lived through Watergate—that nothing less than a resurrected Christ could have caused those men [and women] to maintain to their dying whispers that Jesus is alive and is Lord. Two thousand years later, nothing less than the power of the risen Christ could inspire Christians around the world to remain faithful—despite prison, torture, and death. Jesus is Lord: That's the thrilling message of Easter. It's a historic fact, one convincingly established by the evidence—and one you can bet your life upon.1” Did you hear his claim? It is a powerful statement. But it is not powerful enough and I would like to add to it. Nothing less than in encounter with the Resurrected Jesus – not a vision, not a hoax, not a well constructed story, not a warming of the heart experience – NOTHING LESS than an actual encounter with the Risen Lord could have brought about such and immediate transformation and such enduring faith. NOTHING LESS. But there is one more way we modern enlightened thinkers have of trying to explain away Easter. Some theologians contend that Easter was really a mythical metaphor rather than historical truth. It was something experienced in thought and heart but not actually played out in flesh or in resurrected body. To those theologians I pose this question: Who do you know was spiritually transformed by a metaphor? Better yet, who do you know who would be willing to die for a metaphor? I don’t know about you but I have never met a metaphor that was that powerful. If or when I start to question the historical accuracy of the resurrection, all I need to do is read the story again and look at those women and men stumbling in the darkness between Good Friday and Easter Morning. I see a woman by the name of Mary Magdalene, still numb with grief over the loss of someone she loved deeply, obediently journey to the tomb to perform the perfunctory task of anointing the body. I see a woman who in one moment can hardly raise her head or her heart under the weight of sorrow, and the next moment this woman is celebrating and witnessing about something she cannot begin to understand. I see a man named Peter who just hours ago was so spineless that he cowered at the question from a servant woman. Within days of encountering the Risen Christ he is standing in front of the highest Temple authorities and giving witness and speaking so eloquently that his accusers don’t know what to do with him. I see a group of disciples who were uneducated, dysfunctional, and at times quarrelsome suddenly see the Risen Lord and be completely transformed into the most inspiring evangelists in history. That does not happen by encountering a metaphor. They were people momentarily stuck in the darkness of Saturday – but Easter set them free. They were not freed and transformed because of a good shared hoax, or an exciting new metaphor, or some clever scheme to fool the Jews. They were freed and transformed by an encounter with the Risen Lord. It was not a vision. It was not an appearance. It was an encounter with our resurrected Lord that showed God’s power over death and power to bring new life. Nothing else could have done it. Nothing else. Let us turn our attention away from those men and women of history to those of us sitting in this room this morning. We all at one time or another have struggled in Saturday moments. Each one of us has been betrayed by someone we loved. Each one of us has walked through a forest of doubts and become so confused that we lost our way. Each one of us has lost a loved one too soon or too unfairly. The good news is the Easter story is not just about the freedom and new life at the end of life but also about the new life that can take place right here and now. To all those who are laboring in doubt, hear the good news. Saturday can try to hold us – but Easter sets us free. To all of us who are wounded and in pain over the actions of a loved one, hear the good news. Saturday can try to hold us – but Easter sets us free. To all of us who still mourn the loss of someone who died too early, hear the good news. Saturday can try to hold us – but Easter sets us free. To all of us who walk in darkness and feel coated with the consequences of years of sinful behavior, hear the good news. Saturday can try to hold us – but Easter sets us free. Even though we live a lot of our lives in Saturdays, you and I are Easter people. Go and live the good news. 1 Charles Colson, BreakPoint Online Commentaries (4-29-02); submitted by Cynthia Davenport-Herbst, Paris, Texas --------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ Easter sermon Page 1