John 20:19-31
April 15, 2012
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
For pastors, Easter is a busy time. We start with 40 days of Lent and conclude with a whole holy week with Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, sunrise, and Easter Sunday. No wonder most pastors take the week after Easter off. I went to Disneyland, the happiest place on earth!
After all the fanfare of palms waving and Easter pancake breakfasts, it’s time to reflect on the real meaning of Easter. It may be tax time according to today’s date but Easter continues.
As we all know, Christmas got away from us many years ago. Toys ‘R Us stole it. Now I fear that Macy’s and Honeybake Ham and Disney Incorporated want Easter as well. Remember scarcely before we put away the Christmas decorations that stores began decorating in pastels and eggs. “Only 40 more days of shopping left before Easter!” the newspapers tell us as we begin the annual countdown to buy spring clothes.
Now that Easter is over for commercial America, if you were to go into CVS today, you wouldn’t be able to find a trace of Easter left. Now it’s time to move on to Mother’s day!
The commercial world would like to make Easter as fun as Christmas. But we know that it will never happen. They will never make Easter as fun as Christmas; even as children, we know this. The Easter story just won’t cooperate. Easter is not what we make out of it, somehow making this mystery relevant to our purposes; but rather Easter is God’s supreme act of enlisting us in God’s purposes and that’s an adult matter.
We may try to reduce the resurrection of the dead Jesus to something more manageable, but it never works. Butterflies emerging from the cocoon or the return of the robin in the spring just are not sufficient for the large, cosmic, death-defeating mystery that unfolds before us in the resurrection.
This is the reason why Christmas is a bigger deal than Easter. Christmas tends to specialize in wonder, the innocence, the joy, and the spontaneity of children. Christmas is packaged and sentimentalized for children but Easter is distinctly a grown-up affair. Easter deals with the grown-ups and thoroughly adult concerns—the sadness of life, the unfairness, the injustice, the pain, and the deep tragedy of death itself. In the middle of these big, desperate, adult concerns, we find Jesus, battle flag in hand, rising triumphant from the grave, defeating the final enemy of death victoriously. If it weren’t for the Easter bunnies and Easter eggs, we probably wouldn’t see any children coming to church on Easter. Easter is an adult event.
Fear Not!
Easter is about a war, not a party. Easter is political—God Almighty going head-to-head with the powers-to-be. I think this explains why at the first Easter one of the first things that the risen Christ said to his astonished followers when he came back to them was, “Fear not!” The angel said to the women at the tomb, “Do not be afraid!”
In a way it is a curious thing for Jesus to say to them. Not saying that I am Christ but, rarely do I say, upon entering someone’s house, “Fear not!” If I did that you might call 911! I don’t begin a conversation with you by warning you not to fear.
But the predominant initial emotion, at the resurrection was not joy, but fear. The risen Christ did not say to them, “Merry Easter!” He said, “Fear not!” Not, “God bless us everyone,” but “I’m back and I’ve got work for you to do, I’ve got places for you to go and things for you to say before the whole world.”
In our passage for this morning, we read, “When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house were locked for fear of the Jews.” The disciples were afraid.
Why on earth would they be afraid? Some people think that they were afraid of the people who crucified Jesus and thinking that they were next. Some people think that since the disciples forsook him and fled when the going got tough that they were afraid that Jesus after being raised from the dead would get back on them by punishing them for their infidelity and cowardice.
But Jesus had done none of that when he was with them. Why would he do that to them now that he had risen from the dead? The disciples were not afraid of punishment, but they were afraid of the resurrection. They felt fear because they, in that instant, saw the real meaning of Easter. Jesus Christ came back to them and is now summoning them to carry out his work. Jesus is on the move and if we want to be with him, we must move with him.
Easter Continues Now
Now that we are in the Second Sunday of Easter in 2012, what does it mean that Easter continues? First, we are given an assignment to never give up on anybody. We are not permitted to say, “People never change.” Now, even in the worst situations in life, we are not permitted to despair, to give up, to give in or to have no hope.
Now, in the resurrection, the face of God is revealed. God is on the side of life. God will get God’s way in the end, no matter what. Since Jesus’ death on the cross has been defeated by the empty tomb at Easter, God will continue to have victories in everything else in our lives and in the world.
Some people think Easter is all in the future tense. One day, some day, we shall live forever; we shall be raised as Jesus was raised. One day we’ll get resurrection. And why would anybody be afraid of that? No, Easter is in the present tense. It is about following Jesus now. It is about living as if God is victorious, unstoppable, and triumphant now.
Easter is not so much, “Do you believe that Jesus was raised from the dead?” but. “Will you dare to follow Jesus now that he rules?”
Where in our world today that we must not give up on? Who in our lives we need to tell that they must not have despair and give up or give in? I think about the youth and young people who are undocumented members of our country because their parents came to the United States illegally. These young people have been raised as Americans but because of our fear of being too relaxed in our laws, we are deporting our country’s future back to countries that they can’t identify with. Passage of the Dream Act and an immigration policy that recognize that we live in a global society that is increasingly seeing borders as artbitrary would mean that Easter is in the present tense—not someday in the future.
Easter Continues Even in our Doubts
When Easter continues with us, the second point is that we will undoubtedly have doubts. In our passage, we read about Thomas. In the Christian tradition, he is called “Doubting Thomas.” Thomas insists on seeing what the others have seen. A week later Jesus appears among them and he invites Thomas to touch his wounds. Thomas sees and believes, though he does not seem to have touched Jesus.
Thomas believes because he sees, but all the more so are those blessed who have not seen and yet believe. Thomas represents every one of us who hears the gospel on the Second Sunday of Easter and wonders what really happened on that Easter morning. If only we had seen what the women saw, or what the disciples gathered in that locked room saw, or what Thomas saw. If only we had seen Jesus.
But do you know that no one sees the resurrection? Mary sees an empty tomb and mistakes Jesus for the gardener. Jesus is recognizable in his body to his disciples, yet twice he enters a room through locked doors. From the beginning we are dependent on the witness of others to believe.
The epilogue addresses believers of every time. This book, which we call the Gospel of John, was written that we may continue to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, whom God raised from the dead and promises us life in his name. While we know that God’s revelation is made visible to us, believing in Jesus Christ does not depend on seeing him.
Thomas is a model for people who struggle to believe. If you are having trouble believing you are not the first or the last and you are not alone. Jesus was rebuking Thomas not for asking for evidence, the same evidence Jesus had already granted to the others but Christ was focusing on his biggest problem of refusing to trust the witness of sisters and brothers. Thomas wanted a private, personal experience; a revelation of his own and he doubted the witness of the others.
Wouldn’t it be great if each and every one of us could have a personally tailored revelation from Jesus Christ himself so that we might believe? The Risen Christ challenged Thomas for doubting that the church has faith and wisdom to give.
The church is the fellowship of believers by the grace and power of the Spirit, edifying one another in strength and supplying one another who lacks. The company of disciples learns to pool the gift of faith while eagerly inquiring into and trusting each other’s experience of God. The church is ever building thereby a storehouse of small faith encompassing the great, the new, and the seasoned as well as the questioning and the searching. It is from each other that we borrow and to which we lend, generation after generation, until Christ comes again.
Do you remember the testimonies that our new members gave three weeks ago? They shared about the many people, the company of disciples, the fellowship of believers who were present in their spiritual journey. The new members may indeed had their personal relationships with the Risen Lord but for the most part, they too borrowed and inherited the witness of the risen Christ from others who believed in their hearts.
Easter Continues in our Commissioning
Easter isn’t only a great, grand truth about our ultimate destiny in God. Easter is also an assignment from God.
When Jesus appeared to the disciples, he said, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
The good news is that Easter continues. The Easter story is not over for us, just as it was not over for Thomas. Thomas exclaims, “My Lord and my God!” Eventually he follows his Lord through those closed doors, bringing the good news of Jesus Christ to India.
Easter is a gift from God, to be sure. But Easter is also an assignment for us. Easter continues in our commissioning. The women who came to the tomb on Easter are not only told that Jesus is risen from the dead; they are given an assignment. They are told “Go” and “Tell!”
Clarence Jordan is one of the great preachers of the church who not only talked about the gospel but lived it every day of his life. Jordan bought a farm in rural Georgia and invited others—both black and white—to join him in a communal Christian venture. Though frequently harassed by the Klan, the Koinonia Community persisted.
Jordan said that it was one thing for him to endure such threats, but quite another thing to ask his young family to bear threats as well. One day, his little daughter came in from school crying. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Daddy, some of the kids are mean. Bob Speck, when he sees me coming down the hall comes up and knocks me down. He says ugly words to me too.”
Jordan’s heart went out to his daughter. “Honey, you’ve got long fingernails. Why don’t you scratch his eyes out?”
And she said, “Well, I thought about that, but I heard you say in your sermon that Jesus said we’re supposed to love our enemy, so I thought I shouldn’t scratch his eyes out.” He said, “Well, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do: tomorrow I’ll go to the school and I’m going to ask Jesus to excuse me from being a Christian for about 15 minutes while I beat the daylights out of that Bob Speck.”
“Daddy, you can’t do that,” she said.
“Why not?” Jordan asked.
His daughter replied, “You can’t be excused from being a Christian for 15 minutes.”
Easter continues today. Jesus has defeated death and returned to us, commissioned us, breathed his Holy Spirit upon us to do his work. Easter continues. We can’t be excused from following him for 15 minutes.
Easter is not about bunnies, eggs, pastel colors, and honey-baked hams. Christ is with us now in life, in death, in life beyond death, for all time.
Merry Easter to you!
Let us pray.
Lord Jesus, in your resurrection you not only defeated death and triumphed over Satan, you also returned to us, breathed your Holy Spirit upon us, and empowered us to follow you all the days of our lives. Continue to return to us and strengthen us in our manifold weakness. Continue to empower us. Continue to call us and to raise us from our deadly enslavement to sin and death. Let the good news of new life continue with us. Amen.