Sermons

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The Voice Behind You
Easter Sunday, April 23, 2000
Sermon Series on the Gospel of John
Pastor Dan Baumgartner

I’m so glad it’s Easter. I am SO glad it is Easter. I find it such a hard thing to wait between Good Friday and Easter morning.

Did you ever watch the old TV show of “Batman” when you were a kid? We would come home from school and eat a snack in front of the TV, and watch this show we loved. And about every third or fourth show, it would build to this incredible climax with Batman and Robin tied to a moving conveyor belt, slowly inching their way to meeting a huge buzz saw. The Penguin had finally gotten to them, and the suspense was killing me. I knew something incredible would happen, but what? Would Batman get to his utility belt? Could Alfred the butler get there in time, would Robin think of something quick? And just when they were within four feet of their doom…the show would freeze, and the words “To Be Continued” would flash on the screen! How could a kid wait, knowing it wasn’t the end of the story?

How do we leave on Maundy Thursday or Good Friday, reading and singing of the death of Jesus, but knowing it is not the end of the story? This morning, we get to read the incredible good news of the resurrection. One theologian says, “The gospels do not explain the resurrection; the resurrection explains the gospels. Belief in the resurrection is not an appendage to the Christian faith, it is the Christian faith” (JS Whale). Would you stand with me now for the reading of the gospel?

John 20:1-18

In John Irving’s book, "A Prayer for Owen Meany," at one point the very rough main character says, “If you don’t believe in Easter, don’t kid yourself. Don’t call yourself a Christian.” Easter is our celebration of the resurrection of Christ. It is the central and most undeniable tenet of our faith. Jesus the Christ, God’s Messiah was crucified, dead and buried. And God raised him up again. Not a resuscitation of some kind, as with Lazarus in John 11, to a life where he would again face death. No, God resurrected Jesus, raised him up, totally overcoming the power and permanence of death.

The resurrection of Christ is foundational. Paul says in I Corinthians 15, “If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless, and so is your faith…but Christ has indeed been raised from the dead.” Christ’s resurrection is an event in history, OUR history, in time and space as we know it.

That may seem obvious to you, coming here on Easter morning. But not necessarily. Throughout history, there have been those who would obscure what the Resurrection means. Some attempts have been downright ridiculous…as, for instance, Easter eggs and Easter bunnies which have nothing to do with faith in Christ, but who grab most of the Hallmark card covers.

Throughout history, there have been many who have claimed that the resurrection did not really happen. Some have claimed that Jesus’ body was indeed stolen by robbers. Grave-robbing was, in fact, a problem in the time of Jesus. The Roman Emperor Claudius issued a decree in 50 AD pronouncing capital punishment for anyone robbing a grave. Mary Magdalene, and Peter thought this the case at first. But grave robbers don’t move huge stones. Nor do they neatly unwrap the linen cloths from the body, and from the head, and lay them perfectly in order, when making off with a body. It was in fact, the cloths and the spices on them which were of value. And in fact, if Jesus’ body had been merely moved, they could have easily refuted the disciples’ claims of the resurrection by producing the body.

Others have claimed that Jesus never actually died, that he was just in a coma. But men don't wake up from being beaten and crucified, from being pierced with a spear, from lying in a cold tomb for three days and then wake to move a huge boulder and walk out.

Throughout history, people have claimed that the resurrection did not actually take place in time and space, but was a sort of spiritual experience only. Today this takes the form of self-described “revisionist” Christianity. In fact, just last Easter we were living in the Minneapolis-St.Paul area, and an article appeared in several publications about a very large Presbyterian church there. Several of the members were interviewed, and talked about how they had moved away from traditional beliefs about the resurrection. The resurrection was described as a “spiritual resurrection,” meaning a belief in Jesus’ ongoing spiritual influence. The resurrection celebrated was Jesus’ presence, but not the resurrection of a corpse. The pastor there preached a sermon stating, “it does not matter at all to me if he was physically raised from the dead.”

It mattered to the Apostle Paul. Paul says, “if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, you are still in your sins.” If Christ has not been raised, then the words of Jesus mean nothing, for over and over again in the gospels he taught and predicted what was to happen. If Christ has not been raised, then we must throw out the Bible, because the entire New Testament testifies to the fact that it happened. If Christ has not been raised, then we must write off as purely misguided the resurrection appearances of Jesus which turned a small group of doubting, uneducated, confused, scared followers into the most incredible movement of faith ever launched, still going on today.

If the resurrection is just some sort of spiritual experience…if it can be easily deflected, and defused, and explained away, and allegorized. If our faith is nothing more than an affirmation of the human spirit, or a way of holding up Jesus as a great example of how to live, or a way of affirming moral values…if it’s just a vague memory of a spiritual experience from long ago…then stop the train. I want off. I’ll turn in my pastor’s union card. Let’s wash our hands like Pilate, and be done with it, and get on with life.

But. If…it happened. If we dare believe it, this most unimaginable, unexpected, unbelievable of things…Then we wake up in a new world. You probably read about the woman who woke up after being in a coma for over 15 years. When she went into the coma, she had an infant daughter. When she came out, she had a teenager. Her city was different, her family was different, everything had changed. If the resurrection happened…then everything is different. Death will be different. And life will be different. If we dared to believe that because God raised Jesus from the dead, then death is not the final word…things would be different, wouldn’t they?

Last May, I stood on a bluff overlooking the rolling farmland of Central Idaho…looking at the fresh dirt on my grandpa Charles’ grave…it seemed so final. You have loved ones you have lost, too. Dare we believe it is not the last word? I have visited my grandma Pat, wasting away in a nursing home. You have people who are sick. Dare we believe there is more to be spoken?

Years ago, I visited a friend, Shannon, in the King County Jail, a young friend whose life seemed unalterably damaged and wounded. Years ago, I stayed in the ghetto of New Orleans with a friend who lived there, and met an 11-year-old named LaRon. Statistics rightly told us LaRon would not make it out of the cycle of poverty and drugs. You have people you have lost hope for. Dare we believe there is more? I have pondered my own death, wondering if I would get to do everything I wanted. Dare we believe that the end of life is not the last word?

If we knew that God had taken away the stalking finality, the fear of death… maybe, just maybe, we could live. Really live. We wouldn’t have to run around like crazy people, writing on our palm pilots and our appointment books, cramming in every thing, every luxury, every event. It could mean we didn’t have to hold onto things so tightly, that we could wake up with the morning sun and say, “Lord, what will happen today? Where will I see you today?” If we don’t have to live in fear of death…maybe we could really live.

This may sound funny, but this week I took a walk down to Parson’s Gardens down here on Highland Drive. I looked at the cherry blossoms, and the greenness of the grass, and sat in the corner of a garden and watched a bee roam around the rhododendron flowers. I went home and felt the pleasure of one of our kids taking my hand as we went for a walk; I leaned across the fence to talk with a neighbor. These things are so unproductive. And so full of life. Dare we believe it? And dare we live into this different life?

It seems like we’re so often wrapped up in living the way we guess we’re supposed to live, that we never realize what God has given us. I’ve told you that I love C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books. There’s a marvelous picture in the final book of the series called The Last Battle. If you haven’t read them, a Great Lion named Aslan, who represents Christ in these stories, has defeated all of his enemies. Among them is a group of unhappy dwarves, who have been held captive in a dirty, dark stable. When Aslan comes, rather than treat them like enemies, he removes the stable, and surrounds them with green grass and blue sky and fresh air. But the dwarves, so intent on themselves, remain huddled in a little circle as though they were still imprisoned.

“Aslan…will you do something for these dwarfs?” someone asked. “Dearest,” said Aslan, “I will show you what I can do, and what I cannot do.” … Aslan raised his head and shook his mane. Instantly a glorious feast appeared on the dwarfs’ knees: pies…pigeons…trifles and ices, and each Dwarf had a goblet of good wine in his right hand. But it wasn’t much use. They began eating and drinking greedily enough, but it was clear that they couldn’t taste it properly. They thought they were eating and drinking only the sort of things you would find in a stable. One said he was trying to eat hay and another said he had got a bit of an old turnip and a third said he’d found a raw cabbage leaf. And they raised golden goblets of rich red wine to their lips and said “Ugh! Fancy drinking dirty water out of a trough that a donkey’s been at. Never thought we’d come to this.”

“You see,” said Aslan. “They will not let us help them. They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out.”

We’re a lot like those dwarves, all huddled over in a corner, missing what God has done. In Christ’s resurrection, God was doing a new thing. Dare we believe? Dare we believe that, as Philip Yancey says, “What God did once in a graveyard in Jerusalem, he can and will repeat on a grand scale, for the world”?”

But it’s not only for the world. It’s for you. And for me. The resurrection of Christ…is intensely personal. It certainly was for Mary. It’s such a remarkable part of John’s story that it was Mary who returned to the tomb, and was there weeping in the pain of losing her friend, her hope, her Lord…and now even his body. The tomb was empty. But the story is not so much about an empty tomb, which by itself would only be a great mystery. No, the resurrection story is about what happened to her. As she knelt there, confused, dazed, crying, hopeless. She hears a voice behind her. It was the voice she thought she would never hear again because she KNEW, she KNEW he was dead.

She hears the voice behind her, the voice she had hoped would never go away, the voice that she longed for more than anything else in the whole world. In the midst of being raised from the dead, Jesus comes, and says just one word: “Mary.” Calls her by name, calls her to believe, calls her to stop weeping. “Mary.” Dare she believe it? Dare she believe that she is now living in a world in which God has the last word?

I believe that the voice behind us, the voice of Jesus…speaks to the whole world. But also speaks to you and me. And when Jesus speaks, he calls us to dare to believe that all things are different…and all things will be different. That voice that we long to hear, that resurrection voice calls us by name…all of us. Me and you, and Grandpa Charles and Grandma Pat, and my friends, Shannon and LaRon and C.S. Lewis’ dwarves.

I have to tell you one more thing. Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, and His church has proclaimed it, sometimes with quivering voice, but has proclaimed it through the centuries. From the morning of the empty tomb until this morning, through prosperity and persecution, the church has been called to proclaim, to speak. A story came out of the Bolshevist Revolution in Russia, where a man named Lunachatsky was lecturing in Moscow’s largest assembly hall. His theme was “Religion: Opium of the People.”

“All the Christian mysteries are myths,” he said, “supplanted by the light of science. And Marxist science is a light that would more than substitute for the legends of Christianity.” Lunachatsky spoke at great length. When he finished, he was so pleased with himself that he asked if anyone in the audience of over 7,000 had anything to add. A 26 year-old Russian Orthodox priest, newly ordained, stepped forward. First he apologized for his ignorance and awkwardness. Lunachatsky looked at him scornfully: “I’ll give you two minutes, no more.”

“I won’t take very long,” the priest assured him. He mounted the platform, turned to the audience and in a loud voice declared “Christ is risen!” And with one voice the entire audience shouted back in response, “He is risen indeed!” And so this morning I say to you: Christ has risen! [He has risen indeed] Amen.