A MATTER OF PERSPECTIVE
Matthew 28:1-10 + Mark 16:1-12 + Luke 24:1-12 + John 20:1-18
I would like you to imagine standing at a busy street corner. You are standing on one corner waiting to cross. At each of the other corners of the busy intersection stand other pedestrians waiting to cross. Cars are whizzing past. The light changes to red. Cars continue to whizz past. The light is red! You hear screeching tires in the intersection and you look. You see one car smash into another. You hear the mangling of metal and the crashing of glass. People are yelling and pointing. Cars are honking. It is chaos.
You see all of the people get out of their cars and each of them are on their cell phones. You hear sirens in the background and know that emergency services are already on their way. You run into the intersection to make sure everyone is ok. No one is hurt. The fire truck, police cruiser, and ambulance arrive in no time and assess the scene.
A police officer comes up to you as you stand there and asks if you saw what happened. You of course point to where you were standing on the corner and answer yes. He points to a small group of people off to the side and asks you to join them. You are in the crowd of witnesses.
The police officer walks up to the group and asks a simple question: “What happened?”
I hope you realize that your perspective from your street corner will be unique. Yes you saw what happened, but what you saw may differ slightly from the person who was on the opposite side of the street. There was an accident. No doubt about it. Yet as people witnessed it, depending on their vantage point, their details may differ slightly. It is the job of the police officer to investigate each of the witnesses and piece together what happened based on the witness accounts. Only by getting all of the perspectives can the investigating officer put together the whole picture.
So, there are two basic truths then when it comes to something like this. First, witnesses are necessary to help make an event valid. Witnesses corroborate a story and attest to the truthfulness or false aspect of a statement or event. Witnesses make things true… especially in a court of law. Second, the more witnesses the better for it is when piecing together all witness statements that a whole view of an event can be reconstructed.
What does this have to do with Easter?
Jesus physically rose from the dead on Easter morning. There were witnesses. The witnesses recorded their recollections and perspectives in four Gospel Books: Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, and John 20. Jesus did in fact rise from the dead and there are witnesses to prove it. I can imagine the feelings and chaos that ensued when the body of Jesus was discovered missing. Most of the time when it comes to the Easter story, I pick a Gospel and focus on it. I study it and reintroduce myself to the facts of the Gospel message about Jesus’ bodily resurrection from the dead. This year though, I wanted to look at all of them all at the same time. You can do this in certain parallel books that are out there, but I wanted to read all the accounts in one. I wanted to read all the witnesses at the same time and get a full view of what happened that resurrection morning. So I did it myself. I read all four Gospel accounts and pieced each one together adding all the details that each of the Gospels report about the resurrection of Jesus. It does not change what I believe about the resurrection because I know it to be a true event attested to by witnesses, but it writing this out has helped me gain the whole perspective of what happened early in the morning on that first Easter.
I would like to share my small project with you this morning. I will read to you from Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, and John 20 all at the same time giving us a complete picture of Jesus’ resurrection.
SCRIPTURES (cut and pasted together from all 4 Gospels)
After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, Joanna, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus' body and went to look at the tomb. Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb and they asked each other, "Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?"
At that time there was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.
But when they [the women] arrived at the tomb and looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. So she, Mary Magdalene, came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don't know where they have put him!" So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus' head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen. Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) Then the disciples went back to their homes.
As Mary Magdalene wept, the women entered the tomb, they saw two young men dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, seated where Jesus' body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot, and they were alarmed. In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground. "Don't be alarmed," one of them said. "You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: 'The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.'" Then they remembered his words. Now go quickly and tell his disciples: 'He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.' Now I have told you."
Now, Mary Magdalene was outside the tomb, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus. "Woman," he said, "why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?" Thinking he was the gardener, she said, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him." Jesus said to her, "Mary." She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, "Rabboni!" (which means Teacher). Jesus said, "Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, 'I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'"
Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: "I have seen the Lord.” When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others. But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense.
While the women were on their way, some of the guards went into the city and reported to the chief priests everything that had happened. When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, telling them, "You are to say, 'His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.' If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble." So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed. And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day.
So if we do a little investigating about Easter morning at the tomb of Jesus, based on the testimony found in Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, and John 20, we discover a few very important facts and I’d like to make a few observations:
#1 My first observation is about the stone: The stone in front of the tomb had to be rolled away, not to let Jesus out (for He had already risen and the tomb was empty), but to let the witnesses inside the tomb to see that He was gone. The stone could not have been moved by the women, so angels came and removed the stone.
#2 My second observation is about the disciples: Two of the disciples at least ran to the tomb and saw that it was empty. They hadn’t a clue what happened. They were astonished. They were bewildered. They did not recall that Jesus had told them He would rise from the dead. They hadn’t quite figured it all out yet. It wasn’t until Jesus appeared to them later that they would truly understand all that had occurred.
#3 My third observation is about the women: Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, Joanna, and Salome must have loved Jesus dearly because they were up early ready to complete Jesus’ burial process. They wanted to get there early because He was important. He was their priority… even after He died. I love that they found out that Jesus had risen from the dead and they shared that news with everyone they could. They told the disciples. They shared the news that Jesus had risen from the dead.
CONCLUSION
Even though we were not present on that first Easter morning, each of us has a unique perspective to offer. We are not witnesses about Jesus’ bodily resurrection, only those in the Bible were that, but we are witnesses to the continuing work of Jesus Christ in our lives. Only by all of us adding our voices together can the world get the whole picture of Jesus Christ and how He can change their lives through acceptance of His death, burial, and resurrection. Go and be a witness. Tell what you have seen in your life. Add your voice as a witness for Jesus Christ.
