Bible Text: John 20:1-18 | Preacher: Pastor Christian Preus
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
The angels ask Mary, “Why are you looking for the living among the dead?” The resurrection of Jesus has to reorient our perspective. We expect to see death. And if you expect to see death, that’s what you’ll see. Mary saw Jesus and didn’t recognize Him. Why? It’s not really, as we sometimes suppose, that He looked different after His resurrection. It’s true that His humiliation is over, the psalm that speaks of Him as a worm and no man, the prophecy of Isaiah, “he hath no form or comeliness, that we should behold him,” “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,” these have passed away and now the psalm applies that says, “You are fairer than the sons of men; Grace is poured upon Your lips; Therefore God has blessed You forever.” He no longer bears the sins of the world, He has carried them in all their horror, and it is finished, His death has ended them. They are no longer on us because He bore them, and they are now longer on Him because His blood has washed them away. Now He is exalted, and to look on Him is to see what was hidden before, that this Man is the Almighty, the Lord of the universe.
But He is the same Jesus. So much the same that He still bears the marks of His crucifixion. It is not because He has changed from humiliation to glory that Mary doesn’t recognize Him. She doesn’t recognize Him because she’s looking for a dead man. And Jesus isn’t dead. If you are looking for an elk when you’re hunting, you will see elk rocks, elk sage, elk logs, you’ll find what you’re looking for. The eye wants to make sense of what it sees, so it will fill in the gaps, and if your mind expects to see death, you won’t find life.
Mary’s not alone in this. None of the disciples recognize Jesus at first. The disciples on the Road to Emmaus walk with Him on the road and don’t recognize Him until He breaks the bread, the disciples in the upper room are frightened, they think they are seeing a ghost, and Jesus has to convince them by eating fish in front of them. They expect to see death, and their eyes try to make sense of what they’re seeing.
Mary thinks she sees a gardener. Because she’s in a garden and that’s what you’d expect to see in a garden. If she had seen a dead gardener, she would have thought it was Jesus, because that’s what she’s looking for.
This teaches us four things. The first is that Jesus’ resurrection doesn’t depend on your belief. Your belief depends on Jesus’ resurrection. Mary didn’t believe Jesus into rising again. She believed the exact opposite. She believed He was dead and that dead bodies stay dead. Only the sheer fact that He was alive convinced her and made her fall down at the feet of her Savior.
The message of Easter is not that Jesus lives in our hearts. Jesus didn’t live in Mary’s heart. It was the opposite. He was dead in her heart. That’s what she believed. The message of Easter is that Jesus lives, period, full stop, and the consequences of that truth are earth shattering and life-changing. Jesus does live in our hearts, but He lives in our hearts because He lives outside of our hearts. The message of Easter is the fact that Christ is risen. And that fact was not dreamed up by wishful thinking. Their eyes wanted to see death, and they couldn’t, because Jesus was alive. He is risen. Alleluia. And because He is risen, He sends the Holy Spirit into our hearts, by whom we cry out, Abba Father, to His Father and our Father, and to His God and our God.
The second thing this teaches us is that we expect death and we are wrong to do it. Christ is risen and we have nothing but life ahead of us in Him. As He is, so we are and so we will be. He is the firstfruits, we are His harvest. We are not better than Mary or the other disciples. The default thinking of our sinful flesh is to doubt and question whatever doesn’t fit into the scheme of our sinful world. The despair of Mary, the insistence to look for death, because she saw Him dead, saw Him buried, is the stubborn blindness of a sinful flesh that cannot submit to God’s Word.
Jesus breaks into this scheme alive and He shatters it. His resurrection changes everything. It is the dawn of a new age, the old things have passed away, behold all things are new. We reorient our perspective, because He has reoriented reality.
His suffering and His death were not for Him, they were for us. He didn’t bear His sins, He bore ours. Death could not touch Him, He is Life, but He let it take Him, because He was dying our death. The curse of God landed on Him because He stood in our place. So His resurrection isn’t simply His life. The truth that Christ is risen is the truth that sin is erased, death is dead, Life reigns, for the whole world. It isn’t enough to say His life is life for those of us who trust in Him. That might make you think that you somehow activate life and forgiveness by believing in Him. But you don’t. It is reality. And you simply put your trust in what IS. He bore the sins of the world, and His life is the life of the world. It is true that only those who trust in Him receive Him, but it is equally true that before anyone trusts in Him, He is already their life and the life of the whole world.
I’ll never forget listening to my first Billy Graham sermon. I was on my way to the movies on Easter evening with my brothers on a very cold, northern Minnesota day. The sermon was absolutely beautiful. Billy Graham preaching with his characteristic fervor, and preaching objectively who Jesus is, the eternal Son of the Father in human flesh, and what He did, bore the sins of the whole world and destroyed death by His death. My brothers and I were being evangelized and we loved it. But we should have just reveled in it and turned the radio off, because then came the characteristic altar call, that makes everything hinge on you, on your believing, on your choosing. He told us that if we accepted Jesus into our hearts, chose Him as our Savior, then His life would be our life.
But it’s the opposite. It is because Jesus is already your life, that you receive life from Him. Before Mary turned and recognized Him, He was her life, because He was alive and He was alive after bearing her sins and her death. It is simply true. He is objective justification, objective life. Before you believe it, before you can make any movement toward it, whether you doubt it or cling firmly to it, it is reality. He is risen, and He rose from your death, after bearing your sins. He is the life of the whole world. He is the life of those who reject Him, the life of those who refuse to acknowledge Him, the life of those who insist on searching for the living among the dead. He is your life and He was your life before you ever trusted in Him.
The third thing this teaches us is that Jesus finds us. We don’t find Him. He is the living one, we were dead in our sins, and the dead don’t find the living, the Living finds the dead.
They don’t find Him. In every single case: John and Peter run to the tomb and don’t see Him. Mary searches for Him and breaks down weeping because she can’t. The two disciples are literally walking away from Him on the road to Emmaus. The disciples are hiding behind locked doors in the upper room. In every case, He comes to them. I cannot by own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to Him. But He came to them and He comes to us.
And finally, when He comes He speaks. Again, every single time. This is what we expect from our Lord. Only speak the word, and my soul will be healed. What convinced Mary to stop looking for death, to stop weeping in despair and helplessness? Jesus spoke. He called her by name. He said, “Mary!” What finally ended the unbelief of the two disciples in Emmaus? Jesus breaking bread in front of them, the words they remembered He spoke to them, “Take eat, this is my body.” What calmed the fear of the disciples and made them recognize their Lord? Jesus spoke the word, “Peace.”
There is nothing greater on this earth than hearing the voice of the resurrected Lord. It is not simply that His words come from the living God. God is living, God is Life, and Jesus was Life, because He is God, before He suffered, before He died. And that Life was inaccessible to us sinners. That life would destroy us, because that Life is holiness and righteousness and we are not. We could not commune with Him.
The glory of our Savior and our Glory is that He is risen, He is the resurrected One, it is that He was dead, and He was dead for us, for our sin, and now He is alive and so our death is dead and our sin is gone. Jesus says to Mary, “Do not touch me, For I have not yet ascended to My Father.” He wanted for Mary what He wants for you. You will join Him where He has ascended. Until then you listen to His Word. The time will come that you see His face, that you fall at His feet, that you touch Him, when your Brother and your God will embrace you and welcome you into everlasting joy. Now He speaks to you, and that word will draw you up to where He is.
Every single Sunday repeats the happiness of that first Easter, when Jesus spoke the words that took away doubt and despair and fear. He calls you by name. He baptizes you. He calls you His own. He breaks the bread and feeds you with His body and His blood. He speaks peace to you, peace with God. And it is objective, true, outside of you, because Jesus Christ is risen, and it is objective, true, inside of you, because He has the words of eternal life and He speaks them to you.
So cling to Him in faith until you cling to Him in the resurrection of all flesh.
Alleluia. Christ is risen.