You May Not Believe This...

Beloved here we are. Another resurrection Sunday morning.Another time to celebrate the triumphant victory of our lord Jesus Christ over death, hell, and the grave. We come to recall salvation history, about how a God who lived upstairs, knowing the adoration of angels moved downstairs to know the cursing of men. About how a God mysterious, mystical and terrible wrapped himself in human flesh and made his way to Bethlehem with baby clothes in his hand, supped in Bethany, wept in Gethsemane, died on calvary and rose triumphantly to save you and I. To celebrate the sacrificial lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. We come to remember the sight of an empty tomb, to relic in the glory of a vacant cross, and to re-experience a risen christ. Jesus is alive. He is not dead. He does live. And the good news of resurrection Sunday is not simply he got up, but news equally as exciting and important is that you and I can get up. No matter what pit we fall into, no matter how big the problem. No matter how great the fall, we too can get back up again and be victorious. This great salvific act is best described by the hymnologist who penned these words that we sang this morning; “To God be the glory. Great things he has done. So loved he the world that he gave us his son. Who yielded his life an atonement for sin, and opened the life gate that all might go in…”

Our text this morning takes us back to this resurrection narrative. Come with me there in the passageways of your cerebral cortex. Hear with me the birds singing their morning hymns outside the city gates of Jerusalem. Feel the morning dew on the ground fresh from the storehouse of heaven. See with me the tulips, sunflowers, azaleas, and lilies there at the entrance of this garden tomb where Jesus has been laid. I must admit that there is something strange about this sight however. Because the guards there who were commissioned by Pilate and the High Priest Caiaphas to guard the tomb, to make sure that nobody gets in, and nobody gets out are compromised. They are laying on the ground unconscious. But not only that, the stone that was placed there to make sure that nobody gets in, and nobody gets out has been rolled away, leaving an open entrance, and an open exit. What a strange sight to behold. There off in the distance, Some women, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and some other women have come to care for the body of Jesus; to anoint his body with traditional burial spices. And much to their surprise, they saw the same sight. An open entrance and an open exit.

There appeared to them two men clothed in white and posed to them a timeless question. “Why seek ye the living among the dead?” Then said one of them, He is Risen! These women puzzled, confused, and perplexed at what they had said, left the tomb and went to tell the eleven. And the text says in verse 11 that the resurrection message these women told to them seemed to them as idle tales. The message of the resurrection seemed as fantasy, fable, and fiction. And the disciples did not believe it.

Beloved essentially these disciples were the first to hear the good news of the gospel. They were the first to have the opportunity to celebrate resurrection Sunday. The first to receive the message of redemption. The first souls to have the opportunity to accept the risen christ and they did not believe. Beloved don’t be too hard on the disciples, because here today there are those who have sat through this service, who have heard the good news that he lives. There are those who have heard the voices of the redeemed singing praises to a risen savior and still do not believe that Christ is risen. There may be someone on your row who does not believe. There may be someone sitting next to you that does not believe. There may be someone in your seat who does not believe. It would be naive to believe that everyone who came to worship believes in the resurrection, especially if the apostles had a difficult time believing that Jesus rose.

And truthfully, when it comes to the resurrection one can easily find themself in utter disbelief. It defies all natural law. It defies the law of life, the law of death, the laws of nature, it defies physics and anatomy. To believe in the resurrection is to believe in the impossible. It is to believe that a square peg can fit into a round hole. It is to believe that up is down and down is up. It is to believe that dead things, rotting, decaying, decomposing, lifeless, breathless, and pulseless can live. It is to believe that mortality is subject to immortality. That the terrestrial is subject to the celestial. It is to believe that time is under the authority of eternity. Doubt in the resurrection is not misplaced, but it is a mistake.