He Is Risen Indeed! A Sermon for Easter Day!

You may wish to read John 20: 1-18

Preachers do all sorts of odd things on Easter Day.

I have heard of several Ministers and Local Preachers who have eaten daffodils on Easter Day.  Well, I won’t be walking over to our cross this morning and eating one of the daffodils.  For a start off I have no idea what a daffodil tastes like and for another they may be high in calories, which won’t help with the weight loss!  The point was that if the congregation went home and told people their Minister had eaten a daffodil, nobody would believe them.

I know another Minister who planned a very special Easter sermon.  As he began to preach a circus performer came tumbling down the church, interrupting his preaching.  After a brief conversation he resumed the sermon.  Then the Christmas fairy appeared, skipping down the aisle and interrupting the sermon.  Again there was a brief conversation and the sermon resumed.  Finally, just as the Minister was getting going again, I entered the church, dressed as Elvis Presley and belted out Suspicious Minds to a by now intrigued congregation.  The Minister then suggested that if people told family and friends that in church, on Sunday, the service had been interrupted by a circus acrobat, the Christmas fairy and Elvis Presley, nobody would believe them.

 
The point of all these unbelievable acts perpetrated by Ministers and Preachers is, of course, to point out that the resurrection of Jesus is, for many, simply unbelievable and yet it happened.  I say that with absolute conviction!  I believe very firmly that in first century Judea God raised Jesus Christ physically from the dead to glorious and eternal resurrection life. Many people do indeed doubt that Jesus physically rose from the dead.  They dismiss whole thing saying that we know dead bodies do not come back to life, it is simply impossible.  Some inside church have the same view.  They say that what the early Christians meant by resurrection wasn’t that Jesus physically came back to life, but that in the days and weeks following his death they could still feel his presence and therefore began to claim that he was still alive.  The idea that he physically rose from the dead came when later generations misunderstood what the very first Christians meant by resurrection.

Our gospel account this morning makes it clear we are talking about more than a spiritual experience, though it was certainly that as well.  Mary Magdalene saw somebody who she thought was the gardener, though he was, of course, Jesus.  This obviously very solid flesh and blood person asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?  Who is it that you are looking for?”

Mary replied to this unrecognised though very real physically present person, “If you took him away, sir, tell me where you have put him, and I will go and get him.”

Let’s pause and reflect here.  For Mary, at this point, there is no suggestion at all that this is anything other than an ordinary conversation between a man and a woman, not suggestion of anything spiritual going on and no suggestion that she thought anything had happened to Jesus other than his body being moved by somebody.

Why did she not recognise Jesus?  Perhaps, as I was once told in Sunday School, it was because her vision was blurred by her tears.  Maybe Jesus simply has his back to her or was partially turned away, as the film ‘The Greatest Story Ever Told’ suggested.  Perhaps Jesus was some distance away.  Maybe it was because Mary knew Jesus was dead and didn’t even consider the possibility that the man she was talking to could be Jesus.  Why did Mary not recognise Jesus?  I’ll return to this question later.

Jesus speaks just one word, ‘Mary’ and she realises who he is; her ‘Teacher’ risen from the dead.  He is still the same solid physically real person she has been talking to, but now the experience of encountering the person Mary now knows to be the resurrected Jesus takes on an added spiritual dimension as well.  Mary’s encounter with the risen Jesus was both a physical and a spiritual experience.

Jesus physically rose from the dead on Easter Day.  Since the earliest days of Christianity the constant claim about Jesus was that on the cross he defeated death and that by rising to life he proved death a defeated enemy.  If Jesus did not rise physically from the dead then how is death defeated?

If Jesus did not physically rise from the dead, then where did the idea come from?  Bishop Tom Wright, in one of his books, points out that in the pagan Roman world the idea of physical resurrection seemed as ridiculous as it does to many people today.  Even in Israel there was no concept of individual resurrection.  Many Jews believed that all the dead would rise when God brought in his worldwide kingdom, but not that anybody would rise before that day.

Jesus physically rose from the dead on Easter Day.  As Paul wrote, in his first letter to the Corinthians, “if Christ has not been raised from death then we have nothing to preach and you have nothing to believe.  If Christ has not been raised then your faith is a delusion and you are still lost in your sins.  It would also mean that believers in Christ who have died are lost.  If our hope in Christ is good for this life only then we deserve more pity than anyone else in all the world.  But the truth is that Christ has been raised from death as the guarantee that those who sleep in death will also rise.”

Jesus physically rose from the dead on Easter Day.  It was not just a spiritual experience who appeared to Mary Magdalene outside tomb but a real solid person.  It was not just a spiritual experience who walked with the two on the road to Emmaus and broke bread before them but a real living person.  It was not just a spiritual experience who cooked fish on the shore of the Sea of Galilee but a real living person.  It was not just a spiritual experience who appeared before Thomas and the other apostles but a real living person.  Only a physically resurrected Jesus could have convinced Doubting Thomas that Jesus lived again.

Jesus physically rose from the dead on Easter Day and yet Mary did not recognise him.  Why?  Why do so many people today, even in church, not recognise our risen Jesus?

I think it was because Mary was searching for a dead body rather than a living Lord.  She couldn’t find Jesus because he was alive, not dead.  Many people today make the same mistake.  The Jesus they know lived almost two thousand years ago.  The accounts of his miracles and teaching impress them.  But they have no experience of the risen Jesus who walks with us day by day.  “Christ is risen” doesn’t just mean he came back to life in first century Judea: it means that he is alive today, right here, right now!  Christ is alive!

Mary was searching for a dead Jesus, but she found a living Lord because Jesus found her and came to her.  That is usually the way it is.  Jesus parable of the Lost Sheep tells us that even before we know we are lost, Jesus is looking for us.  On the road to Damascus Paul was not looking for Jesus, yet Jesus came to him in a vision of glory and Paul found the Saviour he didn’t even know he was looking for.  If you feel that you have lost your faith or Jesus seems far away know that he is already coming towards you and is just waiting for you to recognise him once again as your Saviour and Lord.

Mary was searching for Jesus but did not recognise him when she found him.  Sadly that is true for so many people.  Jesus comes to us in the hungry, in the thirsty, in the lonely and in the persecuted.  He comes to us in the needy person and we do not recognise him.

Francis of Assisi was terrified of leprosy.  One day, whilst walking down a narrow path, he saw a leper coming towards him.  Instinctively his heart shrank back, recoiling from contamination by that horrible disease.  But then, ashamed of himself, he ran and put his arms around the leper’s neck and kissed him before passing on.  Only a moment later he looked back and the road was empty with nobody in sight.  For the rest of his life Francis was convinced that it wasn’t an ordinary leper he had met, but Jesus himself.

We should always be ready to help those in need because, if we don’t we may miss out on a meeting with our Lord Jesus himself.

Jesus physically rose from the dead on Easter Day.  Jesus Christ is risen indeed!  Our living Lord Jesus comes to us each and every day:  let us welcome him daily into our lives and into our hearts and live as people who serve a living Lord.

 

Make Way for Christ the King

A man was heading for Jerusalem, a man to whom was given authority and power and he was riding a horse, a war animal.  Surrounding him was an army of well-equipped and expertly trained soldiers.  Trumpets sounded and the army cheered as Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea rode through one of the gates of Jerusalem!  History records that he always arrived this way at the beginning of the Jewish Passover week.

Another man was heading for Jerusalem, approaching from the opposite side of the city, a man to whom was given authority and power and he was riding on a donkey, a beast of burden and peace.  Surrounding him were crowds of ordinary people who waved palm branches and shouted for joy as Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah, the Son of God, rode through one of the gates of Jerusalem.

The first Palm Sunday was a day of celebration for the followers of Jesus, not just for the twelve disciples but for all who followed him and who believed he was God’s Messiah who had come to set the Jewish people free.  It was the day when Jesus, in open defiance of the Jewish and Roman authorities, declared publically in an unambiguous way that he truly was the Messiah they had been waiting and praying for.

According to John’s gospel Jesus had visited Jerusalem twice before, but he was always alone and had entered the city quietly; performing miracles and preaching before slipping away again.  This time he wanted people to know from the start that he was there!

Centuries before the prophet Zechariah had predicted the coming of the Messiah.  “Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion!  Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem!  See, your King comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”  Every first century Jew knew this prophecy and Jesus made sure that he fulfilled it in a deliberate and pre-planned act to show them he was indeed that King!

We know that this entry into Jerusalem was carefully planned because he sent two of his disciples to collect the donkey from a village with an obviously pre-arranged password, “The Lord needs it.”

“The Lord needs it” is a password, but it is more than that.  It is a proclamation of Jesus true identity as God in man.  The word translated as the English “Lord” is Adonai, which is one of the Biblical names of God himself.  The phrase could be translated as “God needs it”.

In one sense God needs nothing because he is complete in himself and because he created all things.  Yet God chooses to work through the people and the things he has created.  Jesus needed the donkey and so he asked for it.  What do we have that God needs to use for his purposes?  What are we holding back that God wants to use?  How do we respond in our own lives to the phrase, “The Lord needs it”?

This pre-planned act of riding into Jerusalem on a donkey was a prophetic act.  If we look back to the lives of Old Testament prophets we sometimes see them performing some dramatic act to get across their message; like Jeremiah walking through Jerusalem with a yoke on his back.  Jesus is doing the same here!  Jesus was riding into Jerusalem in such a way that every Jew who saw him would be left in no doubt that Jesus was claiming to be the Messiah, God’s anointed King!

This pre-planned act of riding into Jerusalem on a donkey was, as William Barclay writes, “an act of glorious defiance and of superlative courage.”  Jesus was a man with a price on his head, he knew that the Jewish authorities wanted to kill him.  He deliberately rode into Jerusalem in a way guaranteed to cause a stir.  It’s a bit like Robin Hood riding into Nottingham and blowing a raspberry at the Sherriff of Nottingham: an open challenge from a known outlaw to authority.

It is impossible to overstate the courage of Jesus here.  He had been on the road to Jerusalem for some time now as he had travelled from Galilee but always had the chance to turn back.  By deliberately entering Jerusalem in this way Jesus was taking the first inevitable steps to the Calvary Cross.  Even as the crowds cheered him Jesus knew that he was riding to his death.

Even in this moment of celebration for Jesus, even as the crowds were acclaiming him as Messiah, there was a hint of the trouble to come.  “Teacher” some Pharisees said, “Rebuke your disciples.”  In itself it was a fairly mild rebuke, but it speaks volumes of the opposition Jesus was to meet in Jerusalem.  It reminded Jesus, and reminds us, of the verbal opposition and attempts to trick him, of the plot against his life, of Judas’ coming betrayal and of the suffering and death that awaited him.

As disciples we are called to be like Jesus.  Can we claim the courage of Jesus that is available to us through the power of the Holy Spirit?  Are we always willing to pay the price of following Jesus, no matter what the cost?  Are we willing to take up our cross and follow him?  Jesus gave everything for us: what are we willing to give for him?

Jesus entry into Jerusalem riding on a donkey was a pre-planned act, but the reaction of the crowds wasn’t.  Not only were the twelve disciples cheering Jesus on, but so were large crowds.  We are told that they “began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen:

‘Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord.”

‘Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!’

Mark’s account of the same events tells us that they also shouted “Hosanna!”

We are also told that they took off items of clothing and spread them on the ground for Jesus to ride on.  There was no organisation here but a spontaneous celebration, a joyful celebration of the man they believed was the Messiah.  They were throwing caution to the wind, giving their all in praise and worship.  They could do nothing else: as Jesus pointed out, if they had been silent the stones would have cried out in praise of him.

How often do we, in our pre-planned church services, abandon ourselves in praise and worship of Jesus?  How often do we throw caution to the wind, not caring what others might think of us and truly worship with all our mind, heart, soul and strength?

This Palm Sunday we rightly celebrate with those disciples of long ago the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem; joining with them to praise our Lord.  As we do so, let us abandon ourselves in worship and let us pray for the same courage he showed as he rode resolutely to his death; the courage to give all that we have and all that we are in the service of God.

'My Hour Has Come' - A Sermon for Passion Sunday

John 12: 20-28

On the face of it, it seems insignificant, almost unimportant.  A group of Greeks want to see Jesus, to talk with him, to hear what he has to say.  We are not told why they asked to see him, but they must surely have been aware of the stir he was causing in Jerusalem during Holy Week: aware perhaps that he had entered the city on a donkey to cries of “hosanna”; aware of his overturning tables in the temple.  Whatever the reason, they wanted to see him.

When Jesus heard that the Greeks wanted to see him, he proclaimed, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.”  This is the fourth time in John’s gospel that Jesus makes this reference to “the hour” and this is the first time he says that his hour has come.  Clearly there was something significant about the Greeks wanting to see him.

I think Jesus saw in them the future.  For Jesus this group of Greeks represented all those in the world who were not Jewish, all the millions of people for centuries to come who would become disciples and citizens of the Kingdom of God.  For Jesus those Greeks represented each one of us here today.  In them Jesus saw that his ministry had not been in vain, that people of all races and times would be drawn to him as Saviour and Lord.

As Wilbert Howard wrote in his commentary on John’s gospel, “Seldom was our Lord so deeply moved.  Huge tides of thought and feeling raced each other through his mind – exultation, gravity, a measure of uncertainty, utter and absolute and happy resignation to the will of God, whatever that might cost him: and then, as the clouds that had blown up scattered and the sun broke through again, once more and finally exultation.  And all this because a handful of Gentiles were impressed by him, and wanted to go further into the matter and know more about it.”

Jesus knew that he was going to die very soon on a Roman cross and the request of the Greeks to see him brought reassurance that it would be worthwhile; that the whole world could be saved through his sacrifice.

Jesus then went on to say, “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed.  But if it dies it produces many seeds.”

This is a true observation of nature.  If I buy a packet of dried seeds to plant in the garden each pea remains just a dry hard shrivelled thing whilst it is in the packet; but if I plant it in the ground that single shrivelled dry pea will produce hundreds of peas that are sweet and delicious and good to eat.

The impact of Jesus on our world, the reason for the existence of the Christian church today, is not his teaching and it is not the loving sacrificial life he lived: the impact Jesus is that he died in agony on the Calvary Cross and then rose to new resurrected life.

Despite this some Christian preachers have, as Biblical scholar Bruce Milne wrote, “Tried to limit the message and significance of Jesus to his moral teaching, and to reduce his kingdom to the ethical principles within his proclamation.  In other words, they attempted to conclude the ministry of Jesus at the beginning of Holy Week, eliminate the resurrection, and permit no significance to the cross beyond its being an outstanding example of self-giving love.”  He goes on to comment, “What is even more astonishing is that such unbiblical and fallacious versions of Christianity are still embraced at times within the churches.”

Many people, even within our churches don’t understand the cross and don’t really want to; they don’t want to understand the full implication of what Jesus did for them on the cross because it is a direct challenge to human pride.  My understanding of the cross is very much the same as that of John Stott who wrote, “The cross tells us some very unpalatable truths about ourselves, namely that we are sinners under the righteous curse of God’s law and we cannot save ourselves.  Christ bore our sin and curse precisely because we could gain release from them in no other way.  If we could have been forgiven by our own good works we may be quite sure that there would have been no cross.  Every time we look at the cross Chris seems to say to us, ‘I am here because of you.  It is your sin I am bearing, your curse I am suffering, your debt I am paying, your death I am dying.’  And of course people do not like it.  So they steer clear of the cross.  They construct a Christianity without the cross which relies for salvation on their works and not on Jesus Christ’s.  If preachers preach Christ crucified, they are opposed and ridiculed, persecuted.  Why?  Because of the wounds which they inflict on people’s pride.”

The cross is difficult for us to accept and it is difficult for us to understand how Jesus’ death on the cross has saving power for us today.  There are many theories from learned theologians about exactly how Jesus death on the cross saved us from the consequences of our sins and when I was training to be a Methodist Presbyter I had to read about more than a few of them, some are very simple and some very complex.  Yet at the end of it all a simple and profound truth hit me, Christ died on the cross and, as a result, anybody who confesses and repents of their sin and acknowledges Jesus as Saviour and Lord is restored to a right relationship with God and has the assurance of eternal life.

It was only on Good Friday a couple of years ago that the truth really hit me.  For some time I had be wrestling with understanding how Christ’s death on the cross brought salvation.  As I was sitting in church, listening to the sermon on that Good Friday morning, a picture came into my mind, a picture of Jesus in agony on the cross.  The picture was not any painting I’d seen, it wasn’t from any of the film or television presentations of the life of Jesus I’ve watched, it was an image I’d never seen before.  It might have come from my own mind or it might have come from God, but it was very vivid and real to me.  As I saw the agony, the final moments of Jesus life, as I saw him die I felt God was saying to me that Jesus went through all this for me; for me and for sinners just like me.  As Christian believers all we really need to understand is that Jesus’ death on the cross brought forgiveness for our sins and that he died for us because he loves us.

It was to his death on the cross that Jesus was looking when he said, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.”  It was to his death on the cross that Jesus was looking when he said, “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed.  But if it dies it produces many seeds.”  And it was to his death on the cross that Jesus was looking when he said, “Now my heart is troubled and what shall I say?  ‘Father, save me from this hour?’  No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour.  Father, glorify your name!”

As we see later in the Garden of Gethsemane, we see here a very human Jesus who is not in the least bit looking forward to what is to come.  Who would look forward to dying the most agonising death ever devised by human beings?  Yet Jesus is also fully accepting of God’s will that he dies in that way; because he knows that through his death reconciliation between a holy God and sinful human beings will become a reality.

As Christians we are those who have been, and are continually being, reconciled with God.  We have claimed that reconciliation for ourselves by confessing and repenting of our sins and accepting by faith that Jesus is our Saviour and Lord.

As Christians we know, or at least we should know, that we can do nothing to earn our own salvation, that our forgiveness is a free gift from God.  Yet the faith that has led us to proclaim Jesus as Saviour and Lord should also lead us to change the way we live.  As Jesus said in our passage, “The human being who loves their life will lose it, while the human being who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.  Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am my servant will be.”

Jesus lived a life of total obedience to the will of God and he asks the same as us.  We must dare, by faith, to take him at his word; that if we are willing to give our lives to God and to his kingdom then we will live for all eternity.

For centuries Christian believers have given their lives for the sake of Jesus.  Many of you will have heard the phrase, “The blood of martyrs was the seed of the church.”  It was often through their deaths that the churches grew. 

In Celtic times, believers would set sail on the sea in tiny boats made of animal hide called coracles.  They would take no oars or other ways to steer their fragile boats, but would trust God to take them where he willed.  One of those was the Irish St. Columba whose coracle took him to Iona.  It was from Iona that the British Isles were evangelised.

One well known Archbishop of Canterbury was Cosmo Lang!  At one time he had great personal ambitions but a friends influence led to him training as a minister in the Church of England.  One day, as he was praying in the chapel at Cuddesdon where he was training for ministry, he heard God’s voice saying to him “You are wanted.”  It was because he buried his personal ambitions that he became useful to God.

Dare we, by faith, accept Jesus’ challenge to be willing to give him our lives in this world for the promise of eternal life in the next?  Dare we be true servants of Jesus in this world?  Dare we say with Jesus, “Father, glorify your name”?  Dare we risk everything for him who gave everything for us?