When I was in middle school and high school, one of the things that my brother and I would do and later just me was we would go mow at my grandparents and of course that was an opportunity for me, we’d go mow and then at the, when we got it done, we got to go down to the basement and open the fridge from the 1960s or 50s, it was pretty old and you’d open up that ice box and my grandpa would always have bottles of Pepsi or Sprite or something else in there, 7-Up and so we’d go up, then we’d get the bottle and we’d go upstairs and we’d sit on the couch and that was the opportunity to spend some time talking with the grandparents and one day, I was talking to my grandmother, Virginia Rook and she started, she was just rocking and she looked over at me and she goes, you are a mule and I was going, well, thank you, Grandma. Don’t know what that means. Actually, I called her Mimi.
Thank you, Mimi and she said, you were born in Kansas City, Missouri, right? And I was like, yeah, that’s right. I was born in St. Luke’s Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri and he goes, well, the state animal is a mule and I was going, boy, that makes me feel good right down here and then she said, you know what you are? You have to see it to believe it because you’re born in the show me state and I was like, if you say so, I guess I’ll go with that but the show me state is kind of what we all have a little bit within us and as we are looking at this Easter Sunday, there’s a little bit of show me in all of us in order to believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. John 20, verses one through 18.
We stand for the gospel of our Lord on this resurrection day. On the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early while it was still dark and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved and said to him, they have taken the Lord out of the tomb and we do not know where they have laid him.
So Peter went out to the other disciple and they were going towards the tomb. Both of them were running together but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first and stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying there but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came following him and went into the tomb.
He saw the linen cloths lying there and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen cloths but folded up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple who had reached the tomb first also went in and he saw and believed for as yet they did not understand the scripture that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples went back to their homes but Mary stood outside the tomb and as she stopped, as she stooped to look into the tomb and she saw two angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet.
They said to her, woman, why are you weeping? She said to them, they have taken away my Lord and I do not know where they have laid him. Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, woman, 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.
Jesus said to her, Mary. She turned and said to him in Aramaic, Rabboni, which means teacher. Jesus said to her, do not cling to me for I have not yet ascended to the father but go to my brothers and say to them, I am ascending to my father and your father, to my God and to your God.
Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, I have seen the Lord and that he had said these things to her. The word of God. For the people of God.
Amen, you may be seated. Pisteul, we say that word a lot but only in English. The Greek word pisteul is the Greek word believe that we see John especially using that a lot and in this tense, to believe, to entrust, to affirm, to have confidence persuaded by the Lord believing that leads to, proceeds from the in-birthing of faith.
You see, a lot of words we throw around today that are not the way they use them in the Bible like love, you know? Love, agape love means that it’s sacrificial, that you give so much for it. It doesn’t mean the same thing as I love my car or I love when the Royals don’t give up runs in the ninth inning and lose. It means I love you so much that I will give sacrificially.
In fact, with Jesus, it means I love you so much that I will die for you. I hold nothing back. There is nothing that comes in between our love.
Another one is believe. Like we say, do you believe in Jesus? What’s the answer out here? That’s good. We’re gonna have a longer sermon if I got some different answers.
Do you believe in Jesus? And it’s a question not of do you believe in Jesus, not just mental assent, not just to say, yeah, I believe it, and you go on as life as usual, but a belief that says it changes everything, a belief that says I act on those beliefs. You see, biblically, they had no concept of if you didn’t believe it, then you didn’t do anything about it. I believe that, but I’m just gonna go on as life as usual.
Now, a lot of people, when it comes to believing, especially in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, need a little something more. I mean, how many of you experienced someone who died and three days later got up and walked away? So there’s a lot of faith involved in this kind of belief, and not everybody has that kind of faith. And we all probably need a little something from Jesus to help us along in this.
George Conger shared a story about William Warner Wallace, J. Warner Wallace, who wrote Cold Case Christianity, a homicide detective, and investigates the claims of the gospel. Now, Warner Wallace was a forensic detective, specializing in cold case investigations. As an atheist, Wallace became intrigued with the gospels and their account of Jesus’ resurrection because the most important question I could ask about Christianity just so happened to fall within my area of expertise.
Did Jesus really rise from the dead? It would prove to be the ultimate cold case forensic investigation because eyewitnesses and material evidence could be used to prove or disprove what happened, what have been gone for nearly 2,000 years. As an atheist, Wallace had always assumed the resurrection was a lie, believing that the 12 apostles concocted, executed, and maintained the most elaborate and influential conspiracy of all time. When Wallace looked at the evidence as an unbeliever, he found four facts that had to be minimal that were attained, they were attested to by both friends and foes.
Number one, Jesus did actually die on the cross and was buried. Now, that fact is not a fact in many religions. They don’t believe Jesus actually died because he couldn’t have suffered.
Two, Jesus’ tomb was empty and no one ever produced his body, fact. Jesus’ disciples believed they saw Jesus resurrected from the dead, fact. Jesus’ disciples were transformed following their alleged resurrection, oh, I gotta say, alleged resurrection observation, fact.
Wallace tells us how he then used a kind of abductive reasoning that he would use at a crime scene inferring the most reasonable explanation and came up with several hypotheses. One, just shout out yes or no after I read the sentence to see if this hypothesis is correct in your view. The disciples were mistaken about Jesus’ death.
Not much excitement, but we’ll take it. Jesus survived his crucifixion and appeared to the disciples after he recovered. This theory fails to explain what the disciples saw when they brought Jesus down from the cross.
Didn’t they check to see if he was breathing, if his body was cold, or if rigor mortis had set in? Is it reasonable to believe that they would have not noticed any of these conditions common to dead bodies? Hypothesis number two, the disciples stole the body and fabricated the story of the resurrection. Little more excitement on that one. While this explanation accounts for the empty tomb, it fails to account for the transformed lives of the apostles.
The apostles, who had been cowards, were now suddenly as bold as a battleship because of the lies they themselves had concocted. Hypothesis number three, the disciples were delusional. This fails to account for the empty tomb.
More importantly, Wallace argues that he has never encountered large groups having identical hallucinations. Does that make sense? Okay, hypothesis number four, an imposter actually tricked the disciples, convincing them that Jesus was alive. A stand-in double.
The theory fails to account for the empty tomb and requires an impersonator. The disciples were highly skeptical, and the impersonator would have had to be adept at copying Jesus’ mannerisms. Above all, he would need to possess miraculous powers since the disciples report Jesus working miracles after the resurrection.
Hypothesis number five, the resurrection is a wildly exaggerated legend that grew exponentially over time. From the mouths of a babe. This theory clashes with the record of witnesses making claims about the resurrection from the earliest days of the Christian movement.
Final hypothesis, the resurrection is reasonable. The answers are available. You don’t have to turn off your brain to be a believer.
Wallace joins a long list of people and a line of intellectuals who are part of the resurrection genre of writers and skeptics who started out to disprove the resurrection and ended up believing it was true. Now, all of us in our faith journeys probably had to do something. Maybe we didn’t go to that extreme.
But what is it that makes us believe? How does that belief transform us like it did the disciples? I mean, if you look at the words in the book of John about John and Peter running to the tomb, he says, then the other disciple who had reached the tomb first, you know, that’s only a guy thing that he has to throw in that he beat Peter to the tomb. Pretty relevant to the whole story. But just so you know, John was faster than Peter, no matter what the legends say.
Also went in and he saw and believed, for as yet they did not understand the scripture that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples went back to their homes. Okay, John said they saw and believed, but they didn’t understand the scriptures.
Okay, that is the gap that they had then. They didn’t understand the scriptures till the resurrection and Jesus teaching them and then the Holy Spirit coming after Pentecost to put all of Jesus’ teaching back in their mind. They saw and believed, but it was the kind of belief that where did they go after this? Back to their homes.
There is a level of belief that when we don’t understand the scriptures, we just go back home. Life as usual. There is a level of belief that says, yeah, I believe, I understand that, that makes sense to me.
That evidence is reasonable. I mean, it’s obviously not here in the tomb, but we go back to our homes. We go back to our normal life.
We go back to business as usual. And that’s not the kind of belief they would end up with that Peter and John needed a little more to really fully understand and live out their belief in Jesus. Mary didn’t recognize Jesus.
She saw the angels and the angels said, asked her who she was looking for. And she said, I’m looking for Jesus. Somebody came and took his body.
He’s supposed to be here. I mean, in my act of respect, I, with the other women, was going to anoint his body with the burial spices so he could have a dignified death. And then she turned around and Jesus was standing there.
She didn’t recognize him. We don’t know if that was the tears, if it was the early morning dusk and not dawn and not seeing clearly in that, or if Jesus in his transformed body was not easily recognized. Like the Cleopas and the other disciple that walked with him on the road to Emmaus.
Mary said, where have you taken him, Mr. Gardner? Where is he? And then Jesus said these words, this one word that changed her life forever. Mary. He spoke her name and it was clear.
And the name of the one who had rescued her, who had delivered her from seven demons, the one who loved her when the world hated her, all he said was Mary. You see, the difference is when Mary believed, it doesn’t say, and she went home. It says, and she went and told the disciples.
She evangelized, she told others. It was too good to be true. It was just like when you have children, it’s just too exciting to keep the news to yourself.
Did anybody not tell anybody else when you had a child? Did you ever miss an opportunity to talk about your children because you loved them so much and you were so excited? And you knew that someday you’d see this right here off the phone, dude. And then you share it. And that’s how excited she was with Jesus.
And all he had to do was speak her name. And when Jesus speaks our name to us, when it’s personal, it just breathes in that life. Now, there’s another type of belief that kind of comes in between these two.
And this happens later in the chapter. And it happens with a guy named Thomas. Has anybody ever heard of Thomas? What’s the, doubting Thomas.
He has a tough rap because he didn’t, he wasn’t there when the other disciples were there. You know, Peter and John needed to know more. All the disciples got to touch Jesus’ hands and feet.
But Thomas wasn’t there. I don’t know if he had a prior engagement, not wanting to, needing to show up and see the Savior for the first time. Well, they didn’t know he was coming, but Jesus had them do that.
And then Thomas came back and he said, he played the role of the skeptic. And he said, I’m not gonna believe he’s alive because the other disciples were going, Thomas, we saw the Lord. He is alive.
We touched his hands and his feet and his side. And it was amazing. And Thomas said, I’m not gonna believe it unless I see it, show me.
Thomas was born in Kansas City, Missouri too, like me. And so Jesus walked in and Jesus knew what they were talking about. So he said, Thomas, come here.
Come on, touch my hands, touch my feet. See, I still have this hole for you in my side. And Thomas fell at his feet and he made one of the boldest declarations of anyone in the New Testament.
He said, my Lord and my God. The resurrected Jesus Christ was known to be part of the Trinity, was known to be God, and he boldly said this. If you have anything holding you back, anything keeping you from believing that kind of belief that is gonna transform everything in your life, that is gonna change the way you go about your daily business.
If you have that kind of belief, that is going to say, I am just too excited that Jesus Christ came and he taught and he lived and he died and he rose again. For 40 days, he walked the earth and he taught and all this happened. And the disciples were so excited, they could respond.
He is risen. He is risen indeed. That indeed is that excitement and that enthusiasm and that belief that we have in our lives that by having a risen Lord, we are not walking this life on our own.
We are not just talking about fairy tales or myths or something that didn’t happen. We are talking about our Lord who rose from the dead, who gives us life, who changes everything. He changes the whole world and he works through each one of us.
That’s the kind of belief that we need to be disciples of Jesus Christ. Let’s pray. Almighty God, thank you so much for Jesus.
Thank you for this morning, for the resurrection of Jesus that gives us hope that one day there’ll be a resurrection of the dead. Just as Jesus rose, so we will rise. Help us, God, to have faith.
Help us to face any skepticism, not with anger or doubt or doubting our own beliefs, but to face it with confidence because we know he lives. We know he is with us. We know he is alive and we know he will give us strength to face today, to face whatever the world has and to see new life because we have one hope in Jesus Christ.
Thank you, God, that he lives. Amen.