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.