Running To Easter
David C. Myers
March 23, 2008
Easter
John 20:1 - 18
Text: "The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first." . . . John 20:4
It is with keen observational powers that I - over the course of 32 years of serving churches - have come to realize that church crowds are generally larger than normal on Easter Sunday. Coupling that with my background in logic as a philosophy major in college, I have also deduced that means there may be a greater diversity of reasons for attending church than usually exists in our congregation.
I expect that some of you have come here because you are always here, even when it's not Easter. Others of you may have come because, . . . well, it's Easter! Still, others of you have come because someone invited you, you're visiting people who worship here, or you simply came out of curiosity. I even suspect a few of you came, because someone forced you. And that's normal.
I want to assure you that I have experienced each one of those feelings myself - even after I became a preacher!
I also watched some of you arriving this morning and I noted that, though you came by automobile or lumbering up the steps, I didn't see anyone who came here running. None of you ran toward Easter, which is curious because, according to Gospel accounts of the resurrection, there was a great deal of running on that first Easter.
But first we need to remember that all this occurred on "the first day of the week". This is not the day we, twenty centuries later, call Sunday, but the day we call Monday. In other words, it is the day we are trying to get back in our normal routines, particularly after that very traumatic weekend. Our natural inclination to return the familiar, if not the comfortable, routines of life was to be forever changed by the resurrection. No comfortable routine here, instead we find people running everywhere.
First, according to John, Mary Magdalene came (John 20: 2) and she, seeing the stone rolled away and the tomb empty, started running. Not that she believed in resurrection at this point, for that would come later (John 20:11-18). For now, in the predawn darkness, she just begins running back to tell the rest of the disciples that Jesus' body is gone.
Mary's shock, her fear and subsequent running reminds me of Wayne Smith - a friend in my high school chemistry class. During some chemistry experiment gone wrong, there was an explosion. As it turned out there was nothing serious, just a loud bang. But Wayne bolted out the door, ran down the hall, and was not heard from again that day.
"What on earth were you thinking about?" Gramps Griffin, our chemistry teacher, asked Wayne the next day.
"I wasn't thinking about anything," he said. "I was just running. I didn't know what to do, so I ran."
Mary Magdalene, in her grief, ran. Jesus was crucified, dead, and buried. Now someone had taken His body. So she ran. And I think we would run too. Imagine taking flowers to the grave of a loved one a few days after the burial, and finding the grave empty! Well, . . . wouldn't you run?!?
On her sprint back to town, she meets Peter and the beloved disciple. She tells them what she saw, or didn't see, namely that "They had taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they laid Him." And that news causes Peter and the "beloved disciple" break out into a run! Mary ran away from the empty tomb, but they ran toward it. And it is interesting to note that these two disciples didn't just run together toward the tomb, they ran - raced - against one another toward the tomb. They get in some sort of race, rushing - now one gaining on the other, then falling behind, gaining again - toward what?
Why did they run against one another? What did they think they were running toward? Mary Magdalene interpreted the empty tomb as further tragedy. But they had to see it for themselves; so they were running toward that awful, terrible, last insult.
I remember the day well. September 11, 2001. As Treasurer of the New England Conference, I was trying to make the August financial reports balance. Our Benefits person, Diane Peak, came running in, almost shouting, "We have the TV on in the lunch room - a plane crashed into the World Trade Center"; and Diane ran back to the lunch room. We all ran after her. Why run? Why run toward the tragic? We run toward both good news and bad. We must know, and quickly, if the news is for us.
Throughout John's Gospel, it's Peter who is the leader of the disciples, the one with a ready word on most occasions. But it was this "beloved disciple," whoever he was, who seemed closest to the heart of Jesus. They ran to see which one of them - Peter the leader, or the disciple who was beloved - would arrive first.
As these two disciples run, surely there was something in them which told them that, in this strange event, they were running toward some strange, new, possibly, terrifying future. Someone says to us, "Come! Look at this!" and we come, we run, toward exactly "what" we do not know. But we run.
Perhaps that describes you this Easter. You have come here. But when I ask you, "Why, how have you come?" you have no ready answer. Perhaps you do not know why you have to come here. You have no clear picture of what you think you'll see or experience here. Maybe it's habit, maybe its tradition, maybe it's curiosity; or . . . just maybe you've come hoping that this day will be the day that you finally find something that will make your life have sense; that will pull together the loose end; that will turn the tragedies of your life around, and again your life will have meaning.
So many try to find meaning out of this day.
"How I wish I could have been there on that first Easter," a man said wistfully. "Wouldn't it have been great to have seen it for yourself, an eyewitness?"
He assumed that his problem with the resurrection was that he was 2,000 years away from it. If he could have run to the empty tomb himself, he thinks that faith would be easier. I got news for him - he can still run to the empty tombs - all of the sights in Jerusalem that may have been the possible burial tomb for Jesus; they're just as empty now as they were then! I know, I've been there and seen them all - and all of 'em are empty!
You see, such a view denies the way in which the gospels tell about the first Easter. Was it easy for those who were eyewitnesses? Not really. They saw an empty tomb, but what did that mean? It might just as well have meant that someone had stolen the body of Jesus.
The gospels report the first Easter as an occasion for fear, disbelief, and astonishment. We celebrate today with joy, but on that first Easter, joy came after the more understandable emotions of disbelief and incomprehension.
Easter is like that. What we have here is a problem of faith. Not faith as blind belief in something, but rather faith as the ability to trust even that which we do not have the equipment to comprehend. The problem is not one of time, a gap between our modern time and their pre-modern time. The problem is having faith in God's ability to work life from death.
I think John says that these two sprinting disciples came to Jesus' tomb just like that, not knowing, running toward some new, strange event which they instinctively knew would mean a change to their world. John says that the "beloved disciple" outran Peter, won the race, and got there first (John 20:4). That may seem a small detail, but isn't it interesting John mentions that the "beloved disciple" got there first? Not only that, John says that he was the first one to peer into the empty tomb and believe was the "beloved disciple".
I think that John not only wanted to tell us that the "beloved disciple" got there first, but also the way he got there. Others came to Easter and an Easter faith in different ways. Mary will not believe until she stands face-to-face with the risen Christ and hears Him call her name, "Mary!" Thomas doesn't believe until the risen Christ offers to let Thomas touch his pierced hands and wounded side. But the beloved disciple comes to Easter another way. He believes without seeing. He doesn't hear Jesus. He doesn't see the risen Christ. All he does is come, peer into the dark, empty tomb, sees the carefully folded grave clothes, and he believes. The beloved disciple, unlike the others, believes in the resurrection in light of Jesus' absence. There is nothing there, no evidence. There was no Shroud of Turin, no photos, just an empty place.
Well, there were some folded grave clothes.
Awww, . . . but the details. Details are so important in the Gospel stories. Maybe you picked it up. When the "beloved disciple" looked in the tomb he saw the linen grave clothes carefully folded. Details are important. If people were really stealing Jesus' body, why would they bother to "fold the grave clothes." Perhaps the "beloved disciple" saw these folded grave clothes as an indication of the careful, deliberate way in which Jesus was raised. And . . . , "He saw and believed" (John 20:8)
Now, perhaps you can see why John probably went into all that details. The very first believer in the resurrection, the first to believe in the triumph of God, came there by the same path that you and I do. We run about in our confusion; seeing tragedy - the loss of one we loved - and not knowing what to make of it. And then there is some small detail that makes things fit. In the "beloved disciple's" case it was seeing folded grave clothes. And taking that a step further it was by what he did not see that was the clue - not seeing the risen Christ.
"Blessed are those who have not seen" says Jesus, which means all of us here, "and yet have come to believe."
And yet historically we yearn for verifiable proof.
Every Easter someone asks why the risen Christ didn't appear to the High Priest Caiaphas or to the Roman Governor Pilate, the implication being that such an appearance would have cleared up a lot of misunderstandings.
But we have to remember, if the resurrection were meant to be a historically verifiable occurrence, God wouldn't have performed it in the dark without eyewitnesses.
"We're you there when God raised Him from the tomb?" the spiritual asks. No, in fact we weren't. And neither was anyone else! And we don't have a shred of evidence anywhere in the Gospels as to how, or, for that matter, even precisely when, it happened. We only know that when Mary got there the tomb was empty! And when the "beloved disciple" looked in the tomb, all he saw were folded grave clothes.
It really happened, but we will never prove it (or disprove it) historically. There is no scientific evidence. There is no verifiable history.
And the risen Christ will not give up. Mary, after telling Peter and the "beloved disciple"; Mary stays at the tomb in her grief. She is still an unbeliever. And then there is this vision of two angels, and even after that a person she thought to be the gardener. And even when this "gardener" speaks to her, she doesn't yet know or believe. But then this "gardener" speaks her name. And then she knows it is not a gardener, but it is Jesus. And her understanding of her friend, the historical Jesus now moves to the realm of the Risen Lord!
You see it takes a lot to move us from unbelief to belief!
But the story doesn't end there. Mary becomes the first evangelist of the Risen Lord. And Jesus tells her to spread the news - but with one important caveat - "do not hold on to Me." (John 20:17)
How easy it is for us to understand our Risen Lord as something static, something to be worshipped in "its proper place" with proper decorations. That way we can restrain Jesus - every bit as much as the religious leaders tried to restrain Jesus by crucifying Him. But we are told not to do that. Jesus always "goes on before us" leading us into places outside our comfort zone; transforming our comfortable beliefs and worship patterns. Jesus calls us to do mission in places we never dreamed we should go! Jesus tells us to welcome people we normally wouldn't want to be caught dead with.
Back to the running disciples. How did Mary and the beloved disciple come to have faith on the first Easter? Trust and a willingness to embrace something new. The "beloved disciple" knew his beloved Jesus. Mary, after a lot of convincing, finally recognized Jesus' voice, and then and went to "preach and teach" to the disciples about believing in something wonderfully new and different. The "beloved disciple," when he saw the empty tomb he did not think abandonment, defeat, and death. He thought freedom, victory, and life. In a moment he sensed that Jesus had taken their relationship to a new, unexpected and more wonderful area.
And in that same moment, you can enter the new era of the resurrection too!
B E N E D I C T I O N
"How did you like the sermon this Easter?" the preacher asked.
"Fine," she said. "Fine, yet I confess that the sermon is rarely the main thing for me on Easter," she said.
"What is the main thing for you on Easter?" the preacher persisted.
"I always find music a bit more to the point of Easter," she responded. "Easter strikes me as something not to be argued, reasoned out, or demonstrated. It's something to be experienced, enjoyed, and wondered at. Therefore on Easter, the music seems most to the point."
Even I, as preacher, have to agree. We sing our faith, we live our faith. And that is far more convincing than our arguments.
May you know through your trust and your faith - the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord! A power and faith that will open up entire new worlds to you! Alleluia! Amen!
Everyone sings Handel's Hallelujah Chorus!