I Have Seen the Lord! - Easter Sermon

Isaiah 25: 6-9
John 20: 1-18

Why did Jesus have to die? I asked my bible study the other day, “If Adam and Eve had never fallen by eating the apple, would we still need Jesus?”

What is interesting about Adam and Eve’s story is that there is no timeline. We never know how long it was before Eve was tempted by the snake. They could have been in the Garden for fifty years before that happened. The truth is it doesn’t matter if it was fifty days or fifty years, it would have happened eventually. It would have happened if it had been you and me in the Garden rather than Adam and Eve. Human beings are easily led off course.

On Good Friday we finished the last segment of the video, “24 Hours that Changed the World” and in it, Adam Hamilton spoke about John’s version of the Resurrection. That is the bible passage we read today. In it, the author makes several references to Jesus being buried near a garden and Mary Magdalene even mistakes Jesus as a gardener at first. Hamilton believes that the author does this to remind us of Adam and Eve. We are taken right back to the very beginning of creation when Jesus rises from the dead.

Jesus restores what was lost that day; the connection to God that had been missing for so many years. Last week I described what happened when Jesus died for us and was risen from the dead to my Confirmation class. I told them that Jesus is like the peanut butter and jelly in the middle of two slices of bread. Without him, God is up in heaven looking down on us and we are standing on earth looking up at God. We are unconnected and out of touch, but with Jesus mediating between God and humanity, there is a connection and spark. He connects us together.

Now, when God looks upon humanity, He sees his Son and loves us. When we look for God, we see Jesus and his compassion for us, and we love Him. Jesus has restored humanity to God so that we can speak with God, and even walk with God once more.

Jesus had to die so that we could live - one death for many. The scripture in John tells us that Mary Magdalene went to the tomb early that Sunday morning and found Jesus gone. She didn’t understand that he had risen from the dead; she thought that Jesus’ enemies had stolen his body. Jesus had many enemies during his life. What is so scary about his enemies is that they were church going people. They were the pillars of the community and they hated Jesus and his ways.

Jesus died because the Pharisees and the Sadducees could not afford to let him live. Jesus used their fear of him to further his own cause which was his own death, but they didn’t know that. They killed him out of greed and fear and envy. Jesus was a dynamic person with a powerful speaking ability; he had a way with words and could illustrate his points so that everyone could understand even if they had to think about it for awhile.

Jesus did not teach like the others priests. He taught as if he had real knowledge of God. He was not repeating scripture to sound knowledgeable; Jesus would quote scripture as if he had been there when it was written. He was not rigid with the laws as the Pharisees were as shown when he allowed his disciples to pick grain on the Sabbath to eat. He understood human desires and weaknesses better than those who sinned and forgave it, as shown when he stopped the people from stoning the adulterous woman.

Jesus was turning the Jewish religion on its head. He had a new teaching for the people that threatened the Sanhedrin and all those Jewish leaders were scared and angry. They had allowed the laws in Leviticus and Deuteronomy to become so entrenched that there was no longer room for growth and renewal in their faith. They had stopped depending on God for answers and looked only to the laws for what to do. This is the way it has been done for hundreds of years, how dare Jesus try to change it now?!

When we look around the Christian faith and see all the many churches with their less than full sanctuaries on Sunday morning, I have to wonder if we have fallen into the same trap that the Sanhedrin fell into. Have we allowed outdated traditions and ways of doing things to stifle the Holy Spirit? Have we clung so fiercely to our past that we no longer have a future? If Jesus came today and looked around our church and the churches in this area, would he have the same condemnations to make that he had for the Jewish council?

When we allow ourselves to fight over whether to have communion monthly or weekly, when we fight over whether to allow women to be leaders and pastors, when we fight over whether to allow ex-cons in the church, when we fight over whether gay people should have positions of authority in church, when we fight over baptizing children or adults, I have to think that Jesus would shake his head in sadness and say, “Have you learned nothing from the past?”

Jesus loved everyone. Jesus gave everyone a chance to come to him. No one was turned away. No one was told that they couldn’t be part of his disciples. Not the lame, the blind, or the crippled. Not the prostitutes or the tax collectors, not even the Pharisees and the Sadducees were turned away. Jesus accepted the Gentiles even though most Jews would have considered them unclean. We nitpick over certain bible passages trying to figure out if a gay person can be a Sunday school teacher while children go hungry at night. We nitpick over baptism, when some people have no roofs over their heads. We fight over giving money to this project or that one when Jesus is probably yelling in the background, “JUST GIVE!”

Easter is supposed to be about the lighter side of Christianity. We’re supposed to all sing Alleluia and He is Risen! However, Easter is also about redemption. It’s about remembering that Jesus has accepted us into his family, Jesus died for all of us. He suffered terribly, was humiliated over and over, he was spit upon and treated like a criminal so that we could be reconciled to God, so WE could be given grace and eternal life.

How do we respond to that? Is it enough to just shout Alleluia one day out of the year, or should we be doing more? I can’t imagine that Jesus’ idea of being a Christian is a half-hearted yell on Easter morning. That’s a rather bland and pale imitation of the Christianity the disciples helped to create. After seeing Jesus that day, after speaking with Him, they were changed forever. And they acted like it.

We Christians have become a rather lukewarm and pale imitation of what Jesus meant for us to be. We ignore the helpless, we ignore our church, we ignore our God who is calling us to Him.

Mary didn’t recognize Jesus until he called her by name. He said, “Mary” and then she saw, she knew him as Lord. Jesus is calling your name. Jesus is calling us to a vibrant and exciting Christian life, one that is not always easy but it is much better than the faith we’ve shown in the past. Will you heed Jesus’ call or will you turn away? Will you shout, “I have seen the Lord!” or will you quietly walk out of here and pretend that God has never called your name?  

Amen.