Sermon by Pastor Mike Buttonnn
The Meaning of the Resurrection
Text: John 20: 19-31
NRS John 20
19 When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." 22 When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. 23If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."
24But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord." But he said to them, "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe."
26A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you."
27Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe." 28 Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!"
29 Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe."
30 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. 31 But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Son our Lord Jesus the Messiah. Amen.
In 1956 Elvis Aron Presley burst on to the American music scene. Tupelo, Mississippi’s favorite son combined country rhythm with Delta blues and a rock delivery that both mesmerized and scandalized. Some of us can still recall Elvis’s original appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” from the waist up. From 1956 to 1963 Elvis ruled the airwaves. He dominated pop music so thoroughly that he earned the title “King.” Even after the 1960’s British invasion, Elvis reigned over a following that never lost faith. His 1972 television special catapulted him back into the limelight and confirmed his hold on the popular imagination. But tragically, while in the grips of a devastating drug problem, Elvis Presley died at his Graceland mansion in 1977. He was 42 years old.
Almost immediately, a host of imitators sprang up in lounge acts around the country, and shortly thereafter, the tabloids began carrying stories of Elvis sightings. According to reports, Elvis began turning up in malls, cafeterias, small town grocery stores, and mountain hide-aways. I recently read an internet posting claiming that an air-conditioned coffin was used to bury a wax image of Elvis so that it wouldn’t melt in the August heat. Somewhere in cyberspace someone always has news that “Elvis Lives!”
It’s not just rock idols that live beyond the grave. Every time a high school drama class performs Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare lives. Every Christmas season some chorus somewhere is bringing Handel back to life in their performance of “The Messiah.” All great artists continue to live in the works they leave behind. In our own lives, too, the memory of our dearly departed often comes to us as a living presence. Many times over the years I’ve had people tell me, and sometimes swear to me, that they’ve seen the face or heard the voice of a dead parent or spouse. In the faces of our children and grandchildren, nieces and nephews, we can often catch the look or expression of a beloved family member long dead. Sometimes I can hear my mother’s voice coming out my own mouth, which is kind of scary. Maybe some time in the future my kids will be saying to themselves (with some disgust!), “Boy, I sound just like Dad!”
In ways great or small, good or bad, we all leave some legacy that lives on after we die. But is that what the New Testament means in proclaiming the resurrection of Jesus? That the memory of Jesus lived on in his disciples following Good Friday is certain. The record of Jesus’ teaching, healing, and mighty acts continues to this day as a living, shaping force in millions of lives and society at large. Jesus certainly lives in all the sermons preached, books written, and lessons taught about him. But is that it? Does Jesus live only to the extent that we actively remember him? What does it really mean to confess that “on the third day he rose again”?
Those are by no means modern questions. From the very first day when Jesus was proclaimed as raised from the dead, there were people who could not or would not believe. Dissenters outside the disciple community insisted that the body must have been stolen, and even inside the band of Jesus’ closest followers, there were questions. This morning’s gospel story of Thomas refusing to believe without touching and seeing is, I think, representative of a debate that has raged through the Christian community from that first Easter to this very day.
St. Paul wrote the earliest New Testament witness to the resurrection. In First Corinthians 15 Paul is careful to report not only that Jesus died and rose, but also that “he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me” (1 Cor. 15: 5-8). The Gospels are no less careful to insist that the tomb was not empty because Jesus’ followers had swiped his body. Matthew claims that the Pharisees posted a guard at the tomb to insure that no one attempted such a theft. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all report that at the burial a large stone was rolled across the entrance of the tomb to keep wild animals from carrying the body off. All four Gospels contend that the first witnesses to the empty tomb were women, which, if the gospels’ sole intent had been propaganda, should have been men, since in Jewish culture only the testimony of men was considered authoritative.
The Gospels also take issue with the argument that the Risen Jesus was a ghost or apparition. The Gospel of John tells how Thomas was made to reach out his hand and place it in Jesus’ pierced side. In the Gospel of Luke the Risen Jesus assures his startled disciples that he is not a ghost. After presenting his hands and feet for them to examine, Jesus takes a piece of broiled fish and eats it in their presence. On the other hand, the Gospels do not present Jesus as a once dead body now made alive, like Lazarus stumbling out of his tomb still wrapped in his grave cloths. In today’s Gospel Jesus miraculously appears to his disciples locked in their room for fear of the religious authorities. Again, in First Corinthians 15, Paul speaks of a resurrection body that is not less than physical, but more than just spiritual: sown perishable, but raised imperishable; sown in dishonor, raised in glory; sown in weakness, raised in power.
Unquestionably, there is a lot of diversity in the way the New Testament recounts the story of the resurrection. Each of the gospels and Paul, too, tell the Easter truth in their own unique ways. Yet all have in common the conviction that Jesus’ rising from the dead was more than just a mental phenomenon in the minds and memories of the disciples. There was something objective about the post-Easter Jesus, and therefore independent of what those original believers thought, felt, or experienced. Or in other words, Jesus lives regardless of how we remember him or what we say about him. Something has happened that we can’t undo. God has acted in way that changes reality.
For the Gospel of John that change has everything to do with the giving of the Holy Spirit. Throughout John’s Gospel Jesus repeatedly states that he must suffer, die, and rise again in order for the Holy Spirit to come. And true to that word, the first thing that Jesus does when he stands in his risen glory before the disciples is to give them the Holy
Spirit. In what amounts to John’s version of Pentecost, Jesus breathes on the gathered believers, and conferring on them the Holy Spirit, he empowers them to make known his resurrection to the world. For John, that Spirit-induced testimony to the risen Lord happens in two ways.
The first is confession. When Thomas is confronted with the objective reality of Christ’s resurrection, he immediately confesses, “My Lord and my God.” Notice that Thomas does not say, “Our Lord and our God,” but instead, “My Lord and my God.” Through the presence of the Risen Lord in the power of the Holy Spirit, Thomas is changed from unbeliever to believer, from skeptic to apostle. Thomas becomes the living proof of Jesus’ resurrection, just as we do when we confess Jesus Christ to be our Lord and our God.
But John also links the reality of Christ’s resurrection with the power he confers on us to forgive. “Receive the Holy Spirit,” he says. “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them” (20: 23). These words shift the truth of Easter from Thomas’ preoccupation with physical evidence to the lives we actually live. We don’t “prove” that Jesus rose from the dead with articles on the Shroud of Turin or the latest archaeology reports from Israel. The only real, incontrovertible proof we can offer is the testimony of our own changed hearts, by being willing to forgive, and through that forgiveness bearing witness to the change Christ has brought and that can’t be undone.
In the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
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