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April 18, 2004
Have You Seen Jesus Yet?
Have You Seen Jesus Yet?
Psalm 16 / Job 19: 1-4, 14-18, 23-26
Luke 24: 20-43
April 18th, 2004
At this time of year I go out into our back yard each morning with my coffee cup to watch the progress of the trees Bonnie and I planted. I go to our young peach tree and am so glad to see it loaded with pink blossoms. The golden delicious apple tree had no blossoms last year, but is covered with them now. The grape arbor has little explosions of new life along the branches. I marvel at this. I never get used to it.
But as marvelous as this is, it happens every year. I'm accustomed to it. Can God do anything new out there? As wonderful as the cycle of the years is, can God innovate? Has He ever innovated? Is there, can there be anything new under the sun.
The Book of Revelation quotes the glorified Jesus, "I make all things new." Twice the New Testament says related things about Jesus. First, Paul writes, “By Him all things hold together.” And then, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, “He upholds the universe by his word of power.” He makes all things new, and upholds everything that exists, but does He ever do something new?
We seldom think of Jesus specifically behind the cohesion of nature. I believe we think like Deists, with a clock-maker Deity who has made the world, wound it up, and let it run on its own. But the Bible tells us, “He upholds the universe by His word of power.” We may sing in church, “Jesus shall reign where e’er the sun does his successive journeys run,” but we don’t think of Jesus’ reign like the presiding of the Prime Minister in London. It's all so behind the scenes that it very nearly seems like a figure of speech to speak of Jesus this way.
We expect the process to continue unchanged, perhaps with Jesus watching, but His hands are off the controls.
But there was a day a little over two thousand years ago when God did something new. He interrupted the cycle of birth, death, and decay. Last Sunday this place was full of people, and I learned from other people who attend church elsewhere that it was this way there too. People wanted to celebrate Easter. “He is risen! He is risen, indeed!” This was something totally new! Christians around the world greeted each other exuberantly with these words. Why? Because as we sang, “I serve a risen Savior, he’s in the world today.” Had this Savior not first been dead, as dead as Marley's ghost, before He came to life, this would all be rhetoric, nothing more.
Indeed, this is sort of how it was the first Easter. We have read together this morning that all of Jesus’ closest women friends came to the tomb where He had been laid to pay their respects to a dead Jesus. Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James and other women came with spices to anoint His dead body. They wanted to alleviate the stench of decomposition out of love for Him.
When they learned that Jesus was alive, they ran to tell the men who had been with Jesus for three years. “These words seemed to them an idle tale,” Luke tells us. The women said, “He is risen!” But the men did not answer, “He is risen indeed.” They said, “No He isn’t. That’s woman-talk.” They still loved Jesus, but it was form of love people feel for the beloved departed.
I wonder what they would have done if they had not been convinced before too long that the women told it like it is. It took some convincing. Luke tells us of interesting encounters Jesus initiated with the Disciples.
First, He appeared to two of them walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus, a town about seven miles away. As they spoke gloomily about Jesus’ death, He asked them, “What are you talking about?” One of them scolded Him, “Have you had your head in the sand?”
Jesus began to talk, explaining how their Bible pointed toward all of this. We wonder what passages in the Old Testament He mentioned. Did He cite Job’s words that we read this morning, “I know that my Redeemer lives, and at last he will stand upon the earth . . . then from my flesh I shall see God.” To us, Job’s confession of faith seems to point right at Jesus. Did Jesus cite the psalm we read, saying it spoke of Him: “Thou dost not give me up to Sheol, or let thy godly one see the pit.” Sheol was the place of the dead. The angels asked the women, “Why do you seek the living in Sheol?”
These two men at least found this strange person who joined them on the road interesting. They invited him to spend the night with them. Then, at supper, everything changed. When He took the bread in His hands and blessed it, and then broke it, acting like the host, they suddenly realized who this Man was. They had seen Jesus break bread just this way before. Luke says, “Their eyes were opened.” And then Jesus disappeared. You can imagine how excited they were, and perplexed. Who has ever had someone simply disappear like a picture off the TV screen when you switch channels?
Even though it was almost dark, they ran all the way back to Jerusalem. They were so thrilled they couldn’t stand going to bed. I wonder if they set a world record for the seven-mile run, but nobody was there with a stopwatch.
They burst in on the eleven disciples, out of breath. “The Lord has risen indeed,” and then, seeing the doubting looks on everyone’s face, they added, “and has appeared to Simon.” What does that mean, we wonder? Maybe Peter wasn’t there at the moment. Or maybe they looked over at Peter to get a nod of agreement. Peter had kept quiet, for a change, aware how often he’d opened his mouth too soon.
At that very moment Jesus appeared to them. But instead of taking this as evidence that the two men who burst into the room excitedly two minutes before were telling the truth, Jesus faithful disciples were startled. They were afraid. They thought it was a ghost. Luke says, oddly, “They disbelieved for joy.” I don’t know what that means. But I know people sometimes respond to unexpected good news oddly.
It wasn’t until Jesus ate some broiled fish and honey right there before them that they were convinced that He had really risen from the dead.
But many folk today, even Christian folk, find it hard to take this all in as actual fact. They are in good company, of course. Even the immediate disciples of Jesus didn't believe He was alive.
I heard a curious sermon on the radio Easter Sunday afternoon from one of the prominent churches in Indianapolis. The kindly preacher spoke about “resurrection moments” happening to us all. The disciples were gloomy because Jesus died, but then they felt better. “Easter faith” encouraged them. Of course, Jesus was dead, but they weren’t depressed any more. They got over it and life moved on for them. Somehow, I don’t think this is what happened.
We have this odd way of thinking that things that happened a long time ago are less real than things that happen now. People who lived a long time ago reported that they saw something, but we assume because it’s out of the ordinary, that they were gullible. The game of phone-tag played out over the centuries, and so we celebrate Easter Sunday as though something happened to Jesus’ dead body, when it was all in the disciples’ minds.
Why do we have this skepticism? Isn’t it because we find it hard to believe that anything really new can happen? God could make this remarkable universe thirteen billion or so years ago, but God couldn’t do anything new on the first Easter morning.
But if Jesus didn’t come alive on Easter morning, it is pointless that we should be here today. If Jesus didn’t escape the tomb alive that day, I’ve wasted my career. Thirty-two years so far of climbing up into the pulpit, often with anxiety, and all for nothing? Christianity is a house of cards if Jesus did not come alive again on Easter morning.
Of course, that we are here this morning, and that I’ve spent thirty-two years preaching the Gospel doesn’t prove that Jesus came alive on Easter morning. But we’ve got some explaining to do about the staying power of this faith if it was all make-believe.
Jesus has strangely changed the hearts of people as though He is alive and well. I mentioned to you the remarkable effect of this Good News in the Bellavista Prison in Medellin when I came back from there in February. The on-going intensity I saw in Julian’s face—a hit man for Pablo Escobar--was this all due to a fairy tale?
What could Jesus’ command mean to His disciples, “Follow me!” have meant if He died, and that was it? What would this new thing that developed from Judaism be if Jesus had stayed dead? I don’t know. The effects suggest that something new and strange happened on Easter morning.
Without the resurrection, the Christian faith falls flat on its face. Without the resurrection, our faith is just a memorial, an allegiance to a dead hero of faith.
But our faith is far more than a memorial to Jesus. In fact, looking down the corridors of time, the Apostle Paul tells us that what happened to Jesus will happen to those who trust in Him. “As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." We understand the dying part, because we’ve seen this happen. We struggle with the being made alive part because we’ve not seen it happen. We’ve got that idea lodged in our minds, “God can’t really do anything new.” Birth, life, and death—that’s it, because that’s all we’ve seen happen.
Two questions I put before us: First, why do we find it so hard to think that the One who created the heavens and the earth cannot do something new? Second, what can we do to combat our own inability to believe what is basic to the life of faith?
The answer to the first question I think is this: we have to willingly suspend our disbelief when we come to the end of what is easy to understand. We study hard to learn to understand fields of inquiry beyond our ken that have to do with literature or the natural world. Why are we limited to so narrow a sphere?
Each Friday at noon a number of us men meet together to read interesting books that help us understand our faith better. Around that circle are fellows with different areas of expertise. I often feel like a dwarf among giants, intellectually. But I treasure those days when one or other of these friends explains to me what they understand, that is beyond my understanding, beyond my experience.
When we come to the resurrection of Jesus, we have all come to something beyond our understanding, beyond our experience. We understand the grammar of the sentence: "Jesus came alive again." But the meaning is hard because the mechanics of resurrection are unknown.
Here we park our pride at the door and admit, “God, you’ve got me on this one. But I’ll trust you.” We do not crucify our intellects when we admit that here we must walk by faith and not by sight. As I must trust that what a physicist explains to me is accurate, though I barely understand the grammar of what he says, so maybe there’s something beyond the brightest of us to be understood. It is the height of wisdom to trust that God can do something beyond us. God did something beyond us, something new on Easter morning.
Second, what can we do to combat our own inability to believe what is basic to the life of faith?
To the extent that our faith remains something that goes on in our heads and hearts and does not translate into action, we will never come to grips with the Resurrection of Jesus. You and I persuade ourselves that what we believe is true when we act on what we believe. The connection between act of faith and faith itself is uncanny.
Jesus first disciples acted on the information their eyes saw and their ears heard. They acted on what their hands felt, having touched Jesus’ hands that had been nailed to a cross three days before. As they acted on this awareness, they developed a way of life that was convincing, that coordinated with the Gospel they spoke.
Why should you forgive others as Jesus forgave? Why should you care for others with your energy, your time, and your money? Why should you love each other here? Why should you be trustworthy and true? It would seem that it’s easier to get ahead if you look out for yourself and not for others.
You should follow in Jesus’ way, learning of Him who was meek and gentle of heart, in order to fortify your trust that you serve a Risen Savior. You train your own heart as you train your habits. If your habits and heart in alignment, you will be asked why. It's bound to happen. At this far remove from the first Easter morning, Jesus intends that you and I raise this question in peoples' minds.
If you and I have trusted in Jesus, we’ve come as close to seeing Him as it is possible to get. And the more we study Him and follow Him, the more we will resemble Him. And the more we resemble Him the more convincingly we can present Him. And that’s our biggest call in life—to represent Jesus to others. How are we doing?
I pray that God will refresh us to represent Jesus well, so that others may find the joy of trusting Him, and following Him too.
Let us pray: O Lord God, we trust Him whom we have not seen, our hearts having been stirred that You did something new on Easter morning. Help us to live in newness of life, a credit to Jesus and the Gospel, that others may see Jesus too. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, Indiana
Posted by faithpres at April 18, 2004 09:30 AM