“Come, Step into
Easter” (John 20:1-18)
Rob Tennant, HillSong
Church, Chapel Hill, NC
Easter Sunday, April
1, 2018
The disciple Jesus loved; he was
with Simon Peter, huddled, hiding, scared, defeated. Jesus had died on Friday in the worst way
possible, broken and bleeding on a Roman cross.
He, the beloved disciple, was there.
He wept alongside the women who followed Jesus, Mary Magdalene, the
other Mary (the one married to Clopas), and, Mary, the mother of Jesus. None of the male disciples other than him
were there. They had fled. He stayed.
He looked into Jesus’ dying eyes.
That’s when the Lord entrusted care
of Mary into his hands. That’s when the
lump in his throat became unbearable.
Then, they thrust a spear into Jesus’ side. He was gone.
This disciple and the women returned home to find Simon Peter drowning
in shame.
The longest Saturday in the history
of Sabbath days passed. At sunrise on
Sunday, the women woke and headed out, arms loaded with spices. They were going to anoint Jesus’ body.
“The tomb will be guarded,” Simon
Peter croaked. Ignoring him, they
stepped into the morning shadows, grief-stricken but resolute. He dismissively waved them off and sank back
down into debilitating sorrow. The
Beloved Disciple stared after them.
An hour later his heart stopped as
Magdalene burst through the door. “They
have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid
him” (20:2). Simon Peter staggered to
his feet and was out the door. The
Beloved Disciple, for a moment, stood paralyzed, and then dashed after
Peter. Briefly, they ran side by side
before the younger man sprinted past the husky fisherman.
Arriving at the tomb, seeing the
rock rolled aside, he paused. He looked
in. The linen wrappings were there, but
no body. The head cloth had been
intentionally, neatly rolled up and set aside.
As he stood pondering this, a
wheezing Simon Peter barreled past him.
He followed Peter into the tomb.
And he remember Jesus’ words. “When
I am raised to life again, you will know that I am in the father, and you are
in me, and I am in you” (John 14:20). Raised to life again? Was this …?
He looked at Peter. Peter moved
out of the tomb. He followed. Slowly, they walked back to the house.
“They asked him, ‘You are not one of
his disciples, are you?’ He denied it
and said, ‘I am not’” (John 18:25). If
he ran for 1000 lifetimes, Simon Peter could not escape the moment he uttered
those words. As he fled into the bleak
night, into the infamy of history, the weight of his denial settled upon
him.
His self-pity grew more pathetic
when, after he had made his way back to the house and sat brooding for hours,
his reverie of shame was interrupted when the Beloved Disciple and the Marys’
returned. How could he look at
them? How could he speak to them? As briefly as possible, they described the
crucifixion that he in his cowardice had skipped.
He stared vacantly into the eternal
void. Somehow Saturday passed. He ate nothing. He said nothing. He just felt.
Again, the activity of those around him roused him, just a bit. The women were headed to the tomb to perform
burial rituals. He barely noticed their
departure.
A while later though, he was snapped
out of his stupor when Mary burst in the door.
. “They have taken the Lord out
of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him” (20:2). Simon Peter jumped to his feet, lumbered out
the door, and moved as fast as his thick legs would carry him. They
have taken the Lord? As he chugged
up the bath, the lithe body of the younger man, the one dubbed the Beloved
Disciple, zoomed past him. He had only
been vaguely aware of the quiet youth’s presence the last couple of days.
Now, he looked ahead to see him
timidly peeking into the tomb. Simon
Peter pushed past him. He saw what Mary
had described. The burial cloths were
there, but no body. Where was Jesus? Oblivious to his younger friend, completely
confused, he turned and headed back to the house. Halfway there, he was aware that his young
friend was beside him. They shuffled
along in silence. He could see that the
younger man had a strange gleam in his eyes.
He didn’t know what it was.
The two men didn’t even notice Mary
Magdalene as they headed back to the house.
Nor did she see them as she walked back to the tomb, her vision still
clouded by sadness, blurred by a flood of tears. Alone at the tomb, she looked in and saw two
young men in white, radiant with purity.
She had never seen anyone like this.
She knew it, but it didn’t register.
“Woman, why are you weeping?” The voice was tender and fierce, if a voice
can be both of those things.
Trembling she said, “They have taken
away my Lord and I do not know where that have laid him” (20:13).
This was too much. She couldn’t talk to these men. As she turned from them, there was
another. There was something about this
man too. It was all too much.
Though she thought it not possible,
His voice ripped through her soul even more than theirs. “Woman, why are you
weeping? Whom are you looking for?”
Why
do people keep asking me why I am weeping?
Her voice was not much more than a whisper. “Sir, if you have taken him away, tell me
where you have laid him, and I will take him away” (20:17).
“Mary.”
“Rabbouni!” She flung herself at his feet. She held him, a second time washing his feet
with her tears. His hand was so strong,
so gentle on the back of her head.
Taking her by the shoulders, he raised her to her feet.
“Go to my brothers and say to them,
‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God” (20:17).
When she got back to the house she
told them, “I have seen the Lord.”
The first Germanic tribes in the
ancient, tribal days of Northern Europe worshipped a fertility goddess called
‘Austron,’ the goddess of sunrise; the goddess of spring. The frozen winter was over, melting snows
receded, and flowers bloomed. The worship
of this goddess spread across the north as language evolved and ‘Austron’
became ‘Eostre,’ and then ‘Easter.’[i]
[ii]
Then St. Patrick and other early
evangelistic missionaries came telling a story – the story of the life, death,
and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Bit by
bit, tribe by tribe, Anglos and Saxons came to believe that Jesus was the
Savior and that their sins were forgiven.
They were baptized as the Kingdom of God took hold at the beginning of
the period known as Medieval Europe. As
these ancient Anglos and Saxons came to understand that the only true God is
the God they knew in Jesus, they were left with a problem. What were they to do with the stories told by
their grandfathers and their grandfathers before them, stories of the Goddess
of Spring and sunrise, the story of Easter?
The story made sense but not as they
had understood it. They realized the
resurrection of Christ was the eternal spring, the final sunrise, the flowering
of forever. Easter wasn’t the story they
thought it was. Easter was the story they
had come to know, the story of new life in the risen Christ. These Northern European Christ-worshipers
preached the same simple sermon Mary Magdalene preached to Jesus’ male
disciples. They said, “We have seen the
Lord.”
They stepped into Easter from the
darkness of Pagan fertility cults. Once
they took that step, nothing ever looked the same again.
Mary Magdalene and later Simon Peter
and the Beloved Disciple and the rest of the disciples stepped into Easter from
the midnight certainty of the permanence of death. Read the accounts of Peter before the
resurrection. Read about Peter in the
books of Acts, chapters 2-5 and 10-11.
He’s a different person. But that
is what happens when we step into Easter where we meet the resurrected
Christ. Everything we thought we knew
goes up in flames.
I
see TV commercials about the mind-blowing technology of virtual reality and
interactive TV and other new developments.
On one AD, the announcer is a motivational speaker who sparks our
engines with the triumphant claim, “We are living the future we dreamed
about.” Humph! Technology’s got nothing! Resurrection is truly mind blowing. Stepping into Easter is stepping beyond
anything we ever could have dreamed, more than we could have “asked or
imagined” (Eph. 3:21).
Of
course “stepping into Easter” does not mean colorful eggs full of chocolate; it
does not mean going to church on that one day of the year, just to make mom
happy; it does not mean fancy new dresses or hats to wear to church. It does not mean the preacher dresses up
extra nice. Oh, those are fine
things. Those might be things we do
around Easter time. But stepping into
Easter is something different altogether.
The song the ensemble sang invites
us …
Come those whose joy is
morning sun and those weeping through the night.
Come those who tell of
battles won and those struggling in the fight.
Come young and old from
every land, men and women of the faith.
Come those with full or
empty hands, find the riches of his grace.
Which are you?
Have you wept through the night?
Are you glowing with joy? Are you
right in the middle of a mighty struggle?
In the winter of life, can you tell of battles you’ve survived?
We step into Easter when we come
from where we are. We don’t pretend to be
something else. We don’t “put on our
Sunday best.” We are honest about our
own lives, our mistakes, messes we’ve made, failures. We come to God as our messiest selves. Simon Peter lumbered to that tomb with
nothing to carry by his embarrassment and sorrow. The Beloved Disciple came timidly, peeking
in, waiting for others to lead, moving when prompted; but still moving toward
Jesus. Mary came under the shroud of
death. She was looking for a corpse.
When
we see ourselves, our sins for what they are, we come in the same
condition. Blindly like Mary Magdalene,
timidly like the Beloved Disciple, or shamefully like Peter, we come in our
sin. Receiving us in love, Jesus calls
us by name and asks, “Why are you weeping?”
In that moment, our eyes are
opened. Mary’s sermon becomes our own. Your own testimony is “I have seen the
Lord.” From personal experience I can say,
“I have seen the Lord.” Because the Holy
Spirit has touched your heart, shown you that this story is true and real, you
can say, “I have seen the Lord and he is good.
I know I am forgiven, saved.”
We come from where we are. We come to Jesus. Yes to church, but church gets confused for a
building or an institution; Easter is mistaken for a spring-time holiday. From our deepest pain, we come to Jesus, and
thus to a new way of seeing. Death,
shame, sorrow, failure – it is all behind us.
In the light cast from the empty tomb, reality changes. The world is new and we become new
creations. Like Peter, we are no longer
who we were before. We have been made
new.
All that’s left is to go and tell;
tell the world that in Jesus Christ, the Kingdom of God has come near. In the risen Jesus, salvation has come for all
who repent of sin and approach him in faith.
If you already know this salvation, go forth on Easter Sunday radiant in
resurrection and find a way to share the Good News.
If you have never entrusted your
heart, your life to him, you can right now.
If you have never announced to the church and to the world that not only
is Jesus Lord, He is your Lord, you
can do that today. Come. Come and pray with me or with Heather. Pray to receive forgiveness of sins, to
receive Jesus into your heart, and to receive new life right now. This is your invitation to step in
Easter. As we sing, come, enter the
Kingdom of God as a born again child of God.
AMEN
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