A Change Is Coming, Jesus’s Resurrection Is Greater Than Covid-19

A Change Is Coming, Jesus’s Resurrection Is Greater Than COVID-19

4/12/2020 John 1:1-20 1. Corinthians 15:1-8

Change is something that happens to everybody. We can have things going our way one moment, and wondering what on earth happened the next. Some changes that come our way, we do not see them coming until they have knocked us down. How many boxers have been in the ring who have been sure of winning this fight, only to miss seeing a coming left hook that knocked all of the fight of them.

The coronavirus has been throwing us all some left hooks, knocking some of us down, and knocking some of us out. But if you think about it for a moment, the changes resulting from the coming of the virus has put us in a better position of understanding how the disciples must have felt on Easter or Resurrection Sunday.

Just a week before, they had been among the most popular people in Jerusalem. They were in the in crowd with Jesus. People wanted to know them, because they knew Jesus. Everything that could go right was going right. They were in the right place, at the right time, and it all felt good. They had forgotten the warning that Jesus had given them, that a change was coming.

He had told the twelve disciples flat out, in Luke 18:31-33 (NIV) 31 "We are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written by the prophets about the Son of Man will be fulfilled. 32 He will be handed over to the Gentiles. They will mock him, insult him, spit on him, flog him and kill him. 33 On the third day he will rise again."

The disciples didn’t understand Jesus’ message because it had some bad news in it. Sometimes when we hear bad news we miss the good news, because you have to accept the bad news for the good news to make sense. If you can’t accept the bad news of Jesus being insulted, spit up on, whipped, beaten, and then killed. Then you miss the good news that in three days I will rise again.

If we can’t accept the bad news that Jesus gave us when he said, in this world you will have tribulations, then we can’t understand his good news “to be of good cheer for I have overcome the world.”

During the time from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday, the disciples world had been turned upside down. So many of the hopes they had for themselves had simply vanished as a vapor into the air. Some of them had watched the nails being driven in Jesus’ hands and feet and as they did they saw their dreams being hammered away.

Some of them saw the beating he had taken. Some of them saw him, when he cried out it is finished. Some of them saw the tomb where they placed his body and the large stone rolled over the entrance to keep anyone from getting inside.

Think about it. For the first time in the past few years, some of the disciples are now unemployed not knowing how they will pay their bills. Jesus had taken care of all that before.

Their money and their savings are gone. Judas, the disciple who betrayed Jesus, had taken their money and left out in the middle of the night. To make matters even worse, he went and committed suicide without telling anyone where the money was.

There were ten of them locked inside a house. They were afraid to go outside because death was threatening them. The people who had crucified Jesus would love to get rid of them, since already by Easter afternoon rumors were floating around that they had stolen Jesus’ body while the soldiers guarding the tomb were sleeping.

They knew the possibility of death was real. The crucifixion of Jesus had taken away from them someone they loved dearly as a leader, as friend, and almost as a family member.

This Easter is unlike any other that we have experienced thanks to the coronavirus. Many of you can’t remember a Sunday when you were not in a church sanctuary on Easter Sunday. Like the disciples, we too have quarantined ourselves behind locked doors. We too have found ourselves without a job. We too know of someone whose life has been taken from them or someone in intensive care fighting for their lives on a ventilator.

But I want you to know, that in the midst of the fear going through the hearts of the disciples, Jesus showed up to bring about a change. I don’t know how he passed through a door that was locked. All I know is that when Jesus is trying to get to us, nothing can keep him out.