[Before the message, welcome the guests and instruct them to fill out the welcome cards (to be used at the ending invitation).]
{Beginning: 1st hand vs. 2nd hand experience}[i]
Good morning! With me up here are ML and MP. Both of them are best friend with one another; and both have a certain opinion about a guy name RJ. [To ML:] Hi, how do feel about RJ? [To MP:] How about you, how do feel about RJ? [To audience:] Now even their answers could be identical, the question is whether or not they have the same experience with RJ or not. [Ask them about how they know RJ, it turn out one of them have never met Ryan and just formed her opinion based on what other have said about Him].
This is the different between first hand and second hand experience. Unfortunately, a lot of our experience about Easter seems to be very second handed. For example, Newsweek wrote about the Resurrection of Christ, the author even convinced that it was taking place historically. [Read the quote from it about the historical reliability of the resurrection]. But if I coould have a conversation with the author, a secular journalist, I would love to ask, "So, you have read, interviewed, and researched about Easter; yet, have you experienced Easter in your life?". I think he would be puzzled, "What do you mean by experience Easter?" Well, Let’s take a look of what a first hand experience of Easter looks like…
{Reading the text - John 20:1,11-31}
{Prayer}
It’s one thing to believe what they had experienced then. It’s another to experience that transformation of Jesus today. Can Jesus comfort your grief and turn it to joy like with Mary? Can He move us from fear to courage like with the disciples? And can He turn my unbelief to confidence like with Thomas?
{Big Idea:} Yes, since Jesus resurrected and is still alive today, you can experience Jesus the same way just as they did before. From this text, there are 3 ways to help us start experience the power of Jesus’ resurrection in our lives today: Love Jesus, Trust Him, and Seek Him with His Followers.
{1} LOVE
The more you love someone, the more grievous you feel when you lost them.
Mary loved Jesus very much. She had sinned much and Jesus had done for her what no one else could do. He had forgiven and cleansed her[ii]. Mary loved Jesus very much and His death grieved her immensely. Love kept her there to witness Jesus’ torturous death until the last minute as he was buried hastily. And love compelled her there to be the first person at His tomb; to anoint His body according to proper custom. When she arrived, the tomb was opened. Jesus’ body is no where in sight. “What cruelty to Jesus; even in His death they won’t leave Him alone!” She must have thought. So she weeps grievously as she looks into the tomb.
The more you love someone, the more grievous you feel when you lost them. Mary was so grieved that she didn’t see the burial linen strips were still lying there. If she did, she would have realized that neither thieves nor enemies would un-wrap the corpse to take just the body. Our pains and grieve often clouded our mind to perceive the work of God.
But that’s OK. God understands our frailty make-ups. In the midst of pains and grieve, God didn’t scold Mary for her lacks of faith or understanding. He sent His messengers to ask, “Why are you crying? Why do you grieve?” But asking “Why” is only the start of the understanding of faith. Often we don’t know the answer of “Why”. So, Jesus personally comes asking the clarifying question, points to the cause of pain and grief, “Why are you crying? Whom are you seeking?” It’s the void of The Lord’s Presence in our lives that make our trouble unbearable!
Then the risen Christ speaks her name - tenderly, but with all the authority of one who has conquered death, “Mary!” It is the familiar tone, and Mary knows the voice. She “turned” to Him; she changes directions. It is the movement from grief to joy, from death to life. And in adoration and wonder, she falls at His feet and utters, “Rabboni! Teacher” This is the title one gives to Jesus at the beginning of faith [and restoration].[iii] This is the relationship we must presume to experience the Living God: He gives instructions, and we follow instructions!
His first instruction was that Mary cannot continue clinging to Him. In His Resurrection Jesus is no longer as whom He was before the Crucifixion, humanity in the flesh, with all its limitations of space and time and the weaknesses of earthly existence. But “instead”, Jesus pointed Mary to cling on to His family, Jesus is sending her; “to my brothers”. He talked before about his disciples as “servants” and as “friends”, but this was the first time as “brothers”. Jesus had risen to establish a new order of relationship: the family of God! Here God the Father becomes Our Father. Here Jesus took on our God as His God. The family of God is a place for us to physically “cling on” to Jesus through the brothers and sisters. This is the first place for us to proclaim “I have seen the Lord!”
The more you love Jesus, the more you are connected with the people belong to Him. Your relationship with God cannot be just an individual matter; throughout the ages you see this one truth prevail: if people encountered Jesus, they will also connect to His family, the community of faith. [Interview a member from the congregation:] 1) When did you encounter Jesus for yourself? 2) Can you share an example of how He give you joy despite some tough time you had? 3) And what does the family of God mean to you now?
It’s no accident that the seemingly insignificant sinner like Mary Magdalene was the first one to encounter the Risen Jesus. The more you love Jesus, the sooner you can experience His power of Life in you. Love brought her there. And love sent her on to His family, the people of God, even at the time the disciples of Jesus were still timid in fear.
{2} TRUST
The more you trust someone, the more fearful you feel when you face the world without them.
The disciples trust in Jesus very much. For the past three years, they have relied on Him for direction and guidance. Now without him, they don’t know where to go and what to do. So with the words from Mary, the family of God gathers, but behind locked door, in the fear of the enemies.
How often the modern church finds itself behind closed doors, fearful and ineffectual, living on the wrong side of the resurrection. The problems are so vast and the enemy so overwhelming and all the talk about Jesus seem futile. What can be done but hide in the sanctuary discussing how desperate the situation is?[iv]
But then Jesus came to these men and “stood among them.” This is an assurance at the center of their lives that He will be with them forever, [that they can continue to trust Him]. And His first word, “Peace be with you”, was far more than a familiar greeting.[v] With Jesus presence in our lives, fear will be replaced with peace.
Jesus shows us that He’s worth our trust. He show them His scars and marks to prove that the same suffering Jesus is now the risen Christ. He chose to retain these gruesome scars on His resurrected body as the credentials of His love for humanity. They are scars that the church, His body on earth, must bear if it is to continue the [work of love] of Jesus.[vi]
Jesus also shows us that we are worth His trust by entrusting His work to us. As He has earlier sent Mary forth with the message of life, so He now sends the disciples. They are given the mission which the Son was given by the Father: [bringing the forgiveness from God to everyone].
But they cannot begin this mission without the power and energy of Jesus’ risen life. So Jesus breathes on these men. As God had breathed His life into that first man [in the Garden of Eden, to create humanity], so now His Son [breathes] His own life [into] His disciples that they may be a new humanity, recreated and empowered for their mission. As Jesus breathes on these men He says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” This is a gift [for us to] accept,[vii] in order to proliferate the family of God into a people of God.
The more you trust someone, the easier it is to listen to them. Jesus is sending his disciples beyond the locked door and beyond themselves. [Interview another member in the congregation:] 1) When did you start trusting in Jesus? 2) If you have your own way would you choose to work with the Jr. High age group? 3) So why do you serve in the Jr. High ministry? 4) How’s that help you to experience God more?
The more you trust Jesus, the sooner you can experience His power of Life in you. God’s Spirit was given to us, so that we can go beyond our doors, so that can go beyond our fear. That was Jesus’ vision for His church: a church beyond closed door, spill out to the street, into the homes and the marketplace! But the first step was for them to care for the one most closed to them, their own friends. The disciples went looking for Thomas. Even though he didn’t have the same believe like they did, but they were accepting him and spending time with him.
{3} SEEK with someone
The more time you spend with someone, the more you will experience what they are going through.
Thomas wasn’t there with the group on that first Easter Sunday. Perhaps he gave up on the whole following Jesus thing, especially now Jesus was killed; or perhaps he was just busy with some other stuff and had to miss out on the gathering that week.
Whatever the case, Thomas had very good friends. The other disciples seek him out and relay the same message of life like Mary previously did for them: “We have seen the Lord!” Thomas simply responded by demanding some proofs.
Now before you condemn him as a faithless doubter, let me admit that I was in his place many times. How could you be certain that that a man of flesh who was actually dead had been raised again to life? Some people would need more data before they can be convinced. I was trained in computer science, and rational and logical reasoning were very appealing to me as methods to find an answer.
It’s not bad to follow Thomas’s example. It’s bad when you don’t follow his example. Here are the great things that Thomas did:
He had his doubt, but he kept on seeking until he found an answer. Many time we had our doubts too, but we brushed it aside and never examine the issue adequately, and our faith never get a chance to get out of limbo one way or the other.
He had his doubt, but he kept hanging out with the people who could point him along the path. Many times we had our doubts about God, but then we don’t spend anytime with people who claim to know God, so we cannot affirm or deny the reality of God at all.
[Interviewing the third member from the congregation:] 1) What kind of religious background did you grow up with? 2) When you started getting serious about spiritual issues, what kind of effort did you put in to follow through your quest? 3) How long did you hang out with your Christian friends until you take the step of faith and trust in Jesus?
The more time you spend with God’s people, the more likely you will experience God just like them. Thomas demands for proofs was satisfied when Jesus personally reveal Himself to him. Jesus seeks to honor the mind and the heart of every seeker or doubter. Did Thomas need to physically touch Jesus any more? No, instead we found him proclaiming “My Lord and my God!” It is in that exalted sense that Thomas now calls Jesus his Lord and his God. [A] little while ago [he] was trying “to lord it over the Lord” ([by] laying down conditions for Him to meet); [now he was willing to submit to His Lord Jesus].[viii]
{Ending}
So, that was the first Easter Sunday two thousand years ago; but it’s still happened today. Jesus wasn’t resuscitated to life and die again. He was resurrected to life eternal and opened a way for us all to have eternal life. The Bible said that, “these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name”. There are many historical evidences in the past proving that Jesus resurrected. There are many current testimonies of His power in the presence proving that He’s still living, working, and transforming lives today. All of this, is the proof that we too will be resurrected to eternal life with Him in the future.
“Life in his name”; you too can experience that life. Not the second hand experience, but the first hand experience in your life. How? Notice that after His resurrection, Jesus only appears to the people who had followed Him like Mary, the disciples, and Thomas (and not the Romans, the priests, or even other good moral men). You too can experience that life first hand, and it starts with your decision to love Jesus, to trust Him, and to seek Him among His followers. Then He can transform your grief into joy like Mary; then He can move you from fear to courage like the disciples; and He can turn your unbelief to confidence like Thomas; and He will rescue you from eternal death to eternal life.
{Responding}
Before we end, I would like to have a word to all of our guests here today. You know, I would love to have a personal conversation with each of you about your spiritual journey. I wish I could invite each of you out for coffee or something and have you tell me what’s going in your life. But I don’t think that would be possible this morning. So I ask you to do me a favor and participate in a personal survey. I would like you to take the welcome card you filled out earlier today, and on the back of it, please write A, B, C or D according to what I now explain: If you have already decided to follow Christ prior to this service, please write down A. If today you’ve made a clear decision to join His family and follow Jesus for the first time, please write down B. If you say, ‘Bumble, I haven’t made that decision yet, but like Thomas, I am considering it – and I want you to know that I am considering it – write down the letter C. If you feel you don’t intend to believe in Christ, I would appreciate your honesty by write down D on the card.[ix]
The worship team will lead us in another song and during that time, I would ask that you take the time to decide how you want to respond. After the song, a pastor will lead the ending prayer. I will be at the door so that you can return the cards and we can talk more if you want to.
For reference notes, formatted text and comments, please go to http://i12know1stdraft.blogspot.com/2005/03/three-starting-points-to-experience.html#comments
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