Unrecognized Victory

Unrecognized Victory

Rev. Dr. Michael H. Koplitz

John 20:13

13 And they *said to her, “aWoman, why are you weeping?” She *said to them, “Because bthey have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid Him.” 14 When she had said this, she turned around and *asaw Jesus standing there, and bdid not know that it was Jesus. 15 Jesus *said to her, “aWoman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” Supposing Him to be the gardener, she *said to Him, “Sir, if you have carried Him away, tell me where you have laid Him, and I will take Him away.” 16 Jesus *said to her, “Mary!” She turned and *said to Him ain 1Hebrew, “bRabboni!” (which means, Teacher). 1

The resurrection of Jesus from the grave is the most divine sign from the LORD that has ever occurred and will ever occur in human history. However, sometimes we do not think about the full impact of the first Easter morning. Indeed many Christians have come to ignore the remembrance of the event. As a people, we have a cyclic calendar. We celebrate birthdays and anniversaries every year. For example, as the church, we celebrate Easter and Christmas every year.

Why do we do this? It is so the magnificence of the event will be passed down to the next generation. If we did not celebrate Easter every year eventually, the event would be forgotten. It would be lost to the annals of time. The most divine thing God did on Earth cannot be allowed to be lost to history. Easter, like Christmas, needs to be celebrated by Christians for its historical significance. When families gather together at Christmas and exchange gifts, do you think that they are retelling the story of the birth of Christ, which is a divine sign from God? On Easter, do these Christians talk about the empty tomb or about what the Easter bunny left for the kids and grandkids?

Indeed, this is a fair question. The biggest shopping event for merchants is Christmas. The second biggest is, [PAUSE], Easter. Society has taken away the most critical message of Easter and Christmas so that they can make money. What is the church doing to restore the true meaning of Easter and Christmas? Whatever it may be, it is certainly not enough. Attendance for church members at Christmas and Easter has been steadily dropping for the past twenty years.

Do you know that the Easter season lasts for seven weeks? This is the last Sunday of Easter. The resurrection of Christ has given us some of the most tender and human stories, which tell us about God's miracle of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead to life. The walk to Emmaus is a wonderful story about the risen Christ. The risen Christ appeared to His eleven disciples in that upper room in Jerusalem. Certainly, we cannot forget the story of Thomas, who challenged Christ to prove that He was the risen Jesus.

Let us concentrate on today's story. Mary Magdalene traveled to Jesus' tomb on that first Easter morning to say her final goodbyes to Him. She was surprised that the stone in front of the tomb was moved. Jesus' body was not in the tomb. From her point of view, Jesus was dead, and someone had stolen his body. She loved Jesus, who brought her from sin to salvation. She did not recognize Jesus' victory. She was sad that His body was gone. However, He told her that He would rise from the dead three days after His death. She wept over the loss that was not a loss but was a victory.

The risen Christ stood before her. This changed the entire mood of the narrative. She stopped crying and went to worship Him. The three days of weeping and sadness were over. Jesus convinced her that he was alive and standing right in front of her. It was at that moment that she realized that Jesus was victorious over death. Jesus was not defeated by death. Instead, he triumphed over it. Unfortunately, Mary misread the entire story. I think that if anyone of us had witnessed Jesus' death and did not know about Easter, we would have wept in despair with Mary. Instead, she witnessed the greatest of all victories. She came to realize that she did not lose Jesus, but instead, she gained the risen Christ.

As Paul said, God's ways may seem odd and different to us, but we have to place our faith that God did what needed to be done to bring salvation to the world. The risen Christ released all the human constraints that came with a physical body. He could go from place to place almost immediately. Satan could not harass the risen Christ because Jesus' victory over death broke the shackles of Satan's control. The resurrection liberated Jesus so that He could consider doing even more for the peoples of the Earth than He could when He was in human form.