“On the first day… in the garden” is how John starts his
narrative of the resurrection (I preached on it last year). He had
started his Gospel ‘In the beginnings’ painting us a wonderful sweep from
before time and Creation, and onto the incarnation, the word that spoke and it all
came into being, the word becoming flesh and pitching his tent in our
neighbourhood. In Jesus we see the truth
and grace of God revealed. Now we have a new start and the dawn of a new
creation. “on the first day… in the garden”
And maybe you expect John who had started his gospel with
that grand sweep of cosmic proportions to start his narrative of the new
creation, in the same way, but he doesn’t he starts with simple stories of
people’s encounters with the risen Jesus… By telling us how that new life, that
resurrection hope began to shine its new reality into one life at a time, it
helps us to see how that resurrection reality can shine into our lives as well
this Easter Sunday.
We’ve been working our way through encounters with Jesus in
John’s Gospel and now… We’ve followed him from sitting under the fig tree, to
being nailed to the cross… and today we find ourselves encountering Jesus risen
from the tomb, in the garden with Mary, in the locked room with the disciples
and in particular Thomas, and on the beach, by a fire with Peter … almost a
full circle as we come back to where we started and find Jesus asking Peter to “follow
me”.
Mary Magdalene, Thomas and Peter act as witnesses. They are
witnesses to the reality of the resurrection; they meet Jesus raised from the
dead. They also act as witnesses to what that resurrection reality means for us,
how it can change our lives… from grief to good news… cynicism to certainty and
forsaking to forgiveness. They invite us to witness what a life transformed by
the risen Jesus can and what it means to be a witness to the resurrection.
Mary Magdalene, is mentioned in all four gospels as being at
the cross, and a witness to the resurrection. Outside of that it is left to
Luke to tell us about her, in Luke 8:2 he mentions Mary Magdalene as one of the
women who Jesus had healed and who in response travelled with Jesus and
provided financial support. In Mary’s case Luke tells us she was delivered of
seven demons. She would have been a woman on the edge of her society, Outcast
and stigmatised as having spiritual problems before she met Jesus, but in Jesus
she found someone who had turned her life around.
She had been at the cross, she had watched Jesus rejection
and death, you can imagine all her hopes and dreams dying on that cross as
surely as if they had been nailed up there as well. She is full of grief, and
now as she had come to do one last act of respect to her Lord and master, her
beloved Jesus, she finds that the stone has been rolled away and the tomb is
empty. She does not see it as hope… no…What cruel sick trick is this… what last
desperate act of hatred… there was no longer anywhere to focus that grief and
desire to remember. Even the angels John tells us who were there are unable to
console her.
A figure comes and stands behind her, she does not recognise
him, she thinks it’s the gardener maybe he can tell her where they have taken
the body… She is so caught up in her grief until he says her name “Mary”.She
recognises at last through the tear filled eyes, the voice that spoke healing
and wholeness into her life, who had been willing to have women as part of his
followers and had taught them, a voice she could not forget saying “Mary”.
Mary’s grief is turned to Joyous Good News. Jesus is
ascending to the father, the grave has lost, death where is you sting. She is
told to go and to tell the disciples and so her song of sorrow is turned to one
of Good News “I have seen the Lord!”.
Despite what Dan Brown might have you believe…Mary seems to
disappear out of the scriptural story at this time… My reflection on what she
has to say to us today really comes in what sort of week it’s been for me. You
see we too are called to witness to knowing the risen Jesus, and even in the
face of grief to witness to that new life and new creation. I was given the
privilege this week of doing a eulogy for my Father in Law Ray Middendorf, It
meant that I sat down with Shona and some of his brothers and heard the precious
family stories. But also as Ray was a man of faith I had the great privilege in
the midst of that sorrow and grief in celebrating his faith and proclaiming
Good News as well. That you and I have hope in a Risen saviour that goes beyond
grief and death… I didn’t want to use my own words I borrowed them from a very
trusted source… Desmond Tutu… who more than anybody recently has articulated
that hope… when he finished his farewell for Nelson Mandela with “rest in peace
and rise in glory”…
Thomas, also known as Didymus, which means twin, is one of
the twelve. We meet him at various times in the gospel, you may remember when
Jesus was going to Bethany and the disciples were trying to convince him that
it would be suicide to do so, Thomas said “ hey we might as well go along and
die with him”. But Thomas seems to be very absent at the cross and the day of
the resurrection. In fact when Thomas turns up, he is not prepared to believe
what he has been told. Thomas seems to fit into our twenty first century materialistic
world, I want to see for myself, touch and hear for myself before I will
believe. So when Jesus turns up in the locked room, Thomas as a witness becomes
quite important. We don’t know how Jesus
appeared in that locked room, we do know that Jesus like with Mary is concerned
and cares for Thomas. He invites Thomas to do exactly the things that he had
said he needed to do to believe. We
don’t know if Thomas does these things or not, all we know is that Thomas stops
doubting and believes. He turns from his cynicism to certainty… and he is the
first to actually understand what this means. He responds in worship” My Lord
and My God”.
You see for Thomas to believe in the resurrection is to
believe in the divine nature of Jesus. If you believe in the resurrection it
points to vindicating and proving all that Jesus had claimed about
himself. Thomas knew that… it was not a
step he would take lightly.
Again Thomas steps out of the scriptural story, except when
he is mentioned as part of the twelve and the apostles. Part of that is that
Luke is interested in telling us how the Gospel spread to the centre of the Roman
Empire, and we have Paul who was a prolific letter writer. Thomas however went
east, to Syria where he is acknowledged as founding the church there… WE can
tend to forget that in what are mainly Muslim countries these days that the
gospel and church have been there from almost day one. I am always reminded of
this in a story told by shane Claiborne, talking with the bishop of Baghdad
during the US bombings, and in response to Claiborne’s expression of amazement
that there are so many Christians in Iraq,
the bishop told him the west did not invent the gospel, it just
domesticated it”… In fact even in India
the church looks back to Thomas going and telling and establishing faith
communities. (it was grat to have
someone in Church from Madras India today who after the service told me of
growing up and worshipping at St Thomas’ church in that city, traditionally
said to have been built on the site of Thomas’ death in that city).
Jesus gentle rebuke of Thomas is a blessing on you and I who
have believed withoutseeing. Who have come to know the risen Christ through the
witness of people like Thomas and those who have followed him down through the
millennium, have shared their hope and certain knowledge of Jesus death and
resurrection. It calls us to stand with
Thomas as a witness, maybe like him away from the limelight, without the write
ups, not at the centre of the dominant society but as it says in the great
commission as we go… where ever we go… everywhere we go.
Simon Peter, we’ve known from those first encounters that
Jesus has in this gospel. His brother
had come to find him and told him “I Think we’ve found the one”. He’d been
there and seen and slowly begun to understand, he’d been given the name Peter…
which means Rock… he’d assumed the position of leader and spokesman for the
group. When many stopped following Jesus he had said “where else can we go, you
have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are
the Holy One of God.” he’d even been ready for an armed uprising drawing his
sword when Jesus had been arrested, but he was not ready for the cross. John
tells us of Peter denying knowing Jesus three times; he tells us that while
John was at the cross Peter was nowhere to be seen. He was at the tomb that
first day and with the twelve. But it seems he had no understanding of what
this meant for him, maybe he was still so aware of having forsaken Jesus, he
decided to go back to what he knew. Let’s go fishing he says. It’s in that that
he encounters Jesus again. In the midst of this we have a wonderful narrative of
Peter being reconciled with Jesus, being forgiven, restored and freshly
commissioned. Peter, do you love me?, Peter do you love me?... Peter do you
love me? Then feed my sheep. Come and
follow me…
When Jesus had first meet the disciples he had spoken to
them of the power to forgive sins and here that power is demonstrated and
wonderful shared with Simon Peter. Sin and death have lost their power and we
are set free. We are invited out of the familiar to serve Jesus a fresh and
anew. Of course we know a lot about Peter’s story from here, we know he was an
apostle we know he made mistakes and didn’t get it right, Paul had to rebuke
him about showing favouritism to his own people. But we see that here is someone
who experienced the new life, freedom and forgiveness from Christ crucified and
resurrected.
No comments:
Post a Comment