“I Have Seen Jesus: Have You?” – Series: Seeing Jesus
Apr 15, 2007 John 20:11-18
Intro:
Christ is Risen! It is true, it is gloriously true – Christ is Risen! So, now what?
The greatest story, our most important story, has just last week reached its climax. Our Lord, crucified, but then resurrected. Killed, but then raised to life!! Death grabs Him, then death loses Him and is defeated. It is amazing, incredible, it is fantastic. But, now what?
Where do we go from here? What do we do once we have stood at the empty tomb, and recognized that Jesus is no longer there? As a church, as individuals, what comes next??
I really believe that the absolute worst thing that could happen next is this: nothing. We go back to the same old life, the same old sins, the same old self we were before we celebrated Jesus’ death and resurrection. Even if you feel you are doing well in your relationship with God, to come through a season of Easter without being renewed, rekindled, re-energized, re-committed to pray and to worship and to seek God, is just about the worst thing possible.
What is the best thing that could happen? Seriously, I want you to think about that. And not in some simplistic, Sunday school type answers, but in terms of your life today. Jesus is risen – what is the best thing that could happen in your life and in the life of our church? We could be healed. We could be filled with an indescribably great joy. We could live lives that were full of power to do the right thing, lives full of power to reach out to people we love who are hurting and make a real difference, lives full of power to see people who do not know Jesus and who are currently dead be made new, their lives redeemed from sin and now full of the life that Jesus died so that they might have.
Could I have 10 minutes of your time? We’ll come back to that…
From Hearing To Seeing:
As we walked through Lent and towards Easter, we concentrated on listening. Trying to hear God’s heart, for us and for others. We listened to Scripture, we listened to the poor, we listened to the sounds of the cross on Good Friday. We wanted to hear God’s heart. We wanted to be transformed as we heard the longings of God’s heart for us and for our world.
It was, on purpose, focused on just one sense: the sense of hearing. Now that we’ve finished the season of Lent, now that we’ve stood once again at the cross and the empty tomb, we are entering a new season and a new series, called “Seeing Jesus”. We continue to listen, but now we are also going to look.
All it is going to take is 10 minutes. Will you give 10 minutes?
As we try to see Jesus, our resurrected King, we are going to tell the stories of Jesus’ appearances to His disciples after He rose from the dead. We are going to walk with those disciples, listening and looking, as we journey towards Pentecost Sunday on May 27.
The Story of Mary:
The first story is one of my favorites. It is early resurrection morning, and a group of women are walking to Jesus’ tomb with burial spices to embalm Jesus’ body. Along the way, the realize that they have a problem – the tomb is sealed with a huge stone rolled across the entrance, and they haven’t figured out how to get that stone rolled out of the way. They come around the corner and into sight of the tomb, and immediately notice that the stone has already been rolled away, and they run up and look in and see that Jesus’ body is gone, and so they run back to find Peter and John who take off running for the tomb, and they get there and John looks in and Peter runs right in, and Jesus is gone – no body – and John 20:8 says they “saw and believed”. And then, they go home. Interesting, but that is what it says.
One of the people from that group of women has returned, it is Mary Magdalene. Listen:
John 20:11-18 (NLT)
“Mary was standing outside the tomb crying, and as she wept, she stooped and looked in. She saw two white-robed angels, one sitting at the head and the other at the foot of the place where the body of Jesus had been lying. “Dear woman, why are you crying?” the angels asked her. “Because they have taken away my Lord,” she replied, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” She turned to leave and saw someone standing there. It was Jesus, but she didn’t recognize him. “Dear woman, why are you crying?” Jesus asked her. “Who are you looking for?” She thought he was the gardener. “Sir,” she said, “if you have taken him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will go and get him.” “Mary!” Jesus said. She turned to him and cried out, “Rabboni!” (which is Hebrew for “Teacher”). “Don’t cling to me,” Jesus said, “for I haven’t yet ascended to the Father. But go find my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” Mary Magdalene found the disciples and told them, “I have seen the Lord!” Then she gave them his message.”
Weeping Mary:
This is a beautiful, tender story, the opening scene of which is of Mary weeping. Think about it for a moment from Mary’s sandals… here she is, outside the empty tomb: stone rolled away, dead body gone, the greatest miracle in all of history, the one single event that has determined more of the course of human history than any other single event, she has front-row seats, she is a part of this incredible story,
and she is standing there weeping. I think she feels overwhelmed. I think she feels confused. I think there is a part of her that wants to hope, that wants to believe, that desperately wants this to be true, but there is a bigger part that saw the cross. That knew Jesus was dead. And dead people don’t just come back to life, right?
So, the tears come. The weeping starts. The feelings of love and loss and hope and grief all coming out through her tears. And all this happening while she stands outside of the empty tomb on the moment of Jesus’ resurrection.
This is striking to me: the miracle has happened. The battle is truly finished, death has been defeated, the event is passed – but Mary does not yet know it. Her mind, her heart, her vision of reality is still back in Good Friday, but now it is Resurrection Sunday, but she doesn’t yet know it. From her perspective, the angels ask a silly question: “why are you crying?” From Mary’s point of view, it is obvious: the dead body is gone, and she needs to know where it is, where did Jesus go? Where did they take His body? Please, tell me!
From the angel’s perspective, however, the question makes perfect sense. Jesus is risen! He is alive! Praise God, it is finished!! Why are you crying, don’t you see what is going on here! It is incredible, it is beautiful, it is perfect!!
Fast-forward into today, and let me ask you a direct question: when you look at your life today, do you see it from Mary’s perspective or from the angel’s perspective? I don’t ask this in a trivial way. Are you, like Mary, standing there weeping because from your point of view, things look hard, or hopeless, or full of grief and pain? There is another perspective: you see, like Mary we stand on this side of the empty tomb. Jesus has won, Jesus has risen, Jesus is alive. How do our lives look from the angel’s perspective? Yes there are difficulties, certainly there are struggles, absolutely there is grief. But the one, central, all-encompassing truth is this: Jesus is alive, and that makes every bit of difference.
Lift your eyes. Lift them up. Look at Jesus, look to Him first and foremost, and THEN look back at your life. I guarantee, it will look different. And it might only take 10 minutes.
Surprised Mary:
Weeping Mary quickly turns into surprised Mary, but only after she mistakes Jesus for a gardener. I love this part of the story: Jesus asks the same question as the angels, “why are you crying?”, and Mary thinks she is talking to the gardener. What does that tell us about Jesus? It tells me he looked normal. No bright lights, no sound track playing harp music, no golden halo hovering above His head. Jesus looked normal: so normal, in fact, that Mary thought He was just a simple gardener.
It is pretty easy for you and I to do the same thing today – to have our expectations so skewed that we mistake Jesus for someone else. Maybe our grief or pain gets in the way. This is why we need to look, and to look closely. Because Jesus is all around us. We can see the presence of God and the goodness of God everywhere, everyday, if we are looking. It is easy to say, “that’s not God…”, in direct contradiction to Jesus promise: “And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” (Matt 28:20).
The turning point is the moment that Jesus speaks her name: “Mary”.
There it is, the moment that changes everything. The moment that Mary changes from the weeping woman of grief into a woman of hope and believe. The moment that Mary leaves the death of the cross and instantly knows the life of the empty tomb. When the resurrected Jesus speaks her name.
Now, what about you? It happens the exact same way today. For each of us, at some point in our lives, God speaks our name. He does it deeply, to our souls, He calls to us and He does so intimately, personally, and deeply. The words of Isaiah 43:1 are true for us: “listen to the Lord who created you… , the one who formed you says, “Do not be afraid, for I have ransomed you. I have called you by name; you are mine.”
Do you remember that day, when you first heard Jesus call your name? When you left death and entered life? When your life changed forever? I hope you do, with as much gentleness and tenderness as we see in this story. And, I really hope that wasn’t the end, but that that moment began for you a journey of walking closely with Jesus.
It’s a journey you can begin with only 10 minutes.
Responsive Mary:
The next part of the story is beautiful. “Surprised Mary” embraces Jesus, who gives her a command: “go and find my brothers, and tell them.”
It is very simple: “now that you have stepped from weeping at my death to rejoicing in my life, go – share it, tell it, let them know!” You see, the others were also still in the weeping place. They were still in the death. And the news was so incredible, it had to be shared. Because it makes all the difference to your life and to my life. If Jesus is alive, then I can look at my life from the perspective of the angels – it can be filled with power and life and goodness. Hopelessness and weeping and even grief don’t win, they don’t prevail, they don’t stand underneath the reality of the resurrection. Because Jesus is alive, for us who are Christians even the very worst thing – dying – is no end, is nothing to fear, has instead been “swallowed up in victory”. The empty tomb changes everything.
The question from this part of the story is obvious: once Jesus has called our name and rescued us from death, how can we not allow that incredible miracle to spill out of us to others who need to know? How can we keep it to ourselves, how can we keep silent? I submit to you that if we truly understood the love of God for us that we see when Jesus calls our name, we like Mary would run to tell others, “I have seen the Lord!”
What is with the “10 Minutes” thing??
How long is 10 minutes? It is 0.69% of your day. It is just slightly longer than the amount of time spent watching commercials during a half-hour TV show. It is about the same length of time it takes the average person to take a shower (of course, excluding teenagers). It is half the time the average Edmontonian spends commuting to work.
And, it is the length of time I’m asking you to set aside, per day, to see Jesus. 10 mins, every day. To do 2 very simple things: read your Bible and pray. Every day, for ten minutes.
Now, I don’t want to be manipulative or use guilt, but do need to ask you this: is 10 minutes each day too much to give up for your Lord Jesus? Jesus, who died and rose again for us? Is that too much? In our recent NCD survey, we reported that for the most part, we are not reading our Bibles and we are not praying. I’ll show you those results during the Sunday school time. My friends, that needs to change!
And I believe this: if we’ll commit to 10 minutes a day of reading Scripture and prayer, we’ll start to see our lives more from the perspective of the angels and Jesus than from the perspective of our pain and grief. We’ll move from lives that are groggy to lives that are alert; from lives like lukewarm coffee to lives like a fresh hot cup; from lives of boredom to lives of significance. In just 10 minutes per day.
Maybe you already do – great, keep it up, I’m not asking you to add this on top. But I’m guessing that most of you don’t. I’m guessing that most of us don’t value our relationship with God enough that we currently set aside less than 1% of our 24hr day to spend in exclusive, focused time with Jesus. Yes, I did just say “exclusive and focused.” I think Jesus deserves our undivided attention.
The point of the next part of our journey, until Pentecost Sunday, is to see Jesus. We’ll only do that if we look. We’ll only see if we take the time to read Scripture and to pray.
Will you make that commitment? Here is what you need to be successful: right now, answer these questions: when will you spend this 10 minutes? Choose it now – before bed, first thing in the morning, during your lunch break, before sitting down to watch TV? Where will you do this? Pick a place, and keep it consistent. What distractions do you need to eliminate (ie: turn off the cell phone, lock the bedroom door, let the kids know you are unavailable for the next 10 mins. What will you read? See the handout for ideas and options and sources. Which other Christian are you going to tell about your commitment, so that they can hold you accountable? Finally, when are you going to start: today or tomorrow?
You see, when I imagine the story of Mary, and how weeping Mary turned into surprised Mary turned into responsive Mary, I see the power, the potential, the possibilities that come from lives that are lived in relationship with the living Lord Jesus. And if we’ll start with just 10 minutes every day, we’ll start to live out of that relationship, and I believe we’ll be transformed.
Next week, I’m going to ask you how it is going…
