Though they escaped with their lives and several days had passed, their memories were forever chained to that dreadful day that Jesus was brutally murdered. In their mind's ear the disciples kept hearing the guards' whips snap as it slashed into Jesus unsullied skin. They kept hearing the enraged crowd chanting in unison, "Crucify, crucify." They kept hearing the sounds of people spitting on Jesus as he passed by. They kept hearing the deep hollow thumps that emanated from Jesus' tattered body as soldiers delivered blow after blow to his weakened body. They kept hearing the crisp thwack of an iron sledge ringing throughout the hillside as oblivious soldiers pounded iron nails through the center of Jesus' wrists and the center of his ankles. And worst of all they kept hearing the cowardly denials that they themselves made. "I never knew him. I'm no friend of his."
With their memories of Christ's death tormenting them, one by one the disciples retreat to an out of the way room atop a house in the inner city of Jerusalem. They take great care not to be seen as their greatest fear is to be identified as having been followers of the now crucified and deceased Jesus Christ. Gathering together was everyone who had been impacted by Jesus' life. There were Peter, James, John, Nicodemus, Matthew, Lazarus, Joseph of Arimathea, and others. There were the rich and poor, people of high social status, and of course the outcasts who Jesus reached out to.
The initial gathering of this odd group after Christ's death must have been like a strained, tense funeral where the only reason for their gathering together was what the deceased meant to them. All they really had in common was a common loyalty to Jesus Christ. And now Jesus was gone, he was dead, he had been crucified, and he had been buried in a tomb, never to be seen again.
In a scene that is common in many funerals even today, we can only imagine that the disciples must have begun reflecting on the Jesus who changed their lives. Perhaps in that upper room, after Jesus' death they took turns eulogizing Jesus. First Matthew, then Peter, Thomas, and Lazarus. Let's listen.
[Note to Reader: This message was preached in two parts. The following drama was enacted in between the first part and second part of the message.]
Matthew
For most of my life I was known as Matthew the tax collector. I first became a tax collector because I needed to put bread on the table. When you are hungry you will go to work even for the Romans.
At the time I knew that tax collectors weren't popular. After all, they collect taxes! But good people, even my once close friends, assumed the worst possible motives of me. They constantly accused me of cheating them. They called me a traitor just because I worked for the Romans!
Even though at first I tried to collect taxes fairly, one by one my friends stopped talking to me, and then my neighbors, and finally my own family. Pretty soon it was no longer my friends that I was taxing, but only my enemies.
And then I met Jesus. Jesus was the first person who reached out to me. I'm never going to forget that day he came to my tax booth and said, "Follow me." That night he had dinner at my house and we invited all the tax collectors throughout the city to come as well. I remember the mob that stood outside my home criticizing Jesus asking, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?" (Matthew 11:19)
That's what I'll miss most about Jesus. He didn't condemn me. He didn't label me. Instead, he did what no one else would do. He befriended me.
Peter
The one thing I will remember most about Jesus is that he forgave people. Someone who was near the cross as Jesus was being crucified actually heard Jesus pray, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." Luke 23:34 (NIV)Father forgive them? That's absurd! Why would Jesus, how could Jesus possibly forgive those rogues? Those murderers! I wish Jesus would have let me slay them with my sword in the Garden of Gethsemane!
The truth is that I hope Jesus can forgive me. When I was following Jesus as they led him out to be crucified a young servant girl started looking me over and said, "This man was with Jesus." I panicked! I lied to a teenage girl of all people and said, "I don't know Jesus." Then someone else saw me later and said, "You are one of them." Then again someone said, "Certainly this fellow was with him, for he is a Galilean."
Both times I said, "Man, I don't know what you are talking about! I promised Jesus that I would never deny him and that I would even be willing to die rather than deny him! Do you think if Jesus were alive he would ask the Father to forgive me? (Luke 22:54-62)
Thomas
Just remember that you first heard it from me, Thomas. Something in my gut told me that things were going to end up this way. Don't you remember Jesus telling us, "The Son of Man must first suffer and die." (Mark 8:31-32) It was great, some of those miracles Jesus performed, but deep down I knew all along that he was a man just like the rest of us. That's why he is dead!
My dad used to say, "Son if it's too good to be true, it probably is." Oh well, guess we learned a valuable lesson.
Lazarus (Interrupting Thomas)
Now wait a minute Thomas. Don't you guys remember what Jesus did for me? I was deathly ill for months as my sisters Mary and Martha cared for me. That is really all I remember because I kept fainting from exhaustion. Everyone tells me that I passed away, that there was a funeral, and that I was prepared for burial and laid in a tomb, just like Jesus has been laid in a tomb.
I know that I had been laid in a tomb because the only thing I remember is hearing Jesus' loud booming voice shout, "Lazarus, come out!"(John 11:43) You guys were all there. You saw it. They say I'd been dead for four days! I was covered from head to toe with strips of linen. My face was covered with a burial cloth. The burial spices were stinging my chest. I remember Jesus saying, "Take off his grave clothes and let him go."
And what about Jairus' daughter? They say she was dead too! Thomas, what if you and your dad are just plain.........
The Women (Racing from the tomb, bursting into the room, interrupting)
No! No! Stop everything! Come quickly! Jesus is not dead, he is alive! He is risen! We just saw him!
Lazarus (Continuing his thought)
Thomas, what if you and your Dad are just plain wrong?
[Message continued after drama...]
Over the years I have preached dozens of funerals and graveside services. Before I moved to Springfield I lived next to a cemetery for over four years. Every time someone was buried in that cemetery, a long procession of vehicles would wrap around the street corner and down the road in front of our house. At all hours during the day and night, even after midnight, I would see people driving back into that cemetery to remember and grieve over their loved ones.
From my vantage point every person who visited that cemetery wrestled with same thing. They wrestled with the finality, the permanence, and the irrevocability of death.
I can remember the first funeral I ever attended in my life. It was for my grandpa. I was pretty young, and looking up into the casket I couldn't understand why my grandpa wasn't moving. My parents, my grandma, and other adults tried to explain to me what had happened but it was no use. None of it made any sense to me. During his visitation I sat in the row of chairs closest to the casket and closed my eyes. Every so often I would open them up and look toward the casket. My hope was to see that inanimate body rise up and begin walking and talking just as it had done for so many years!
Later the next day we drove to the cemetery for a graveside service. My mom was crying. The minister spoke a few words, prayed, and then we all hopped in the car to drive home. As we drove away I looked out the back window and noticed two men lowering his casket into the ground. They uncovered a pile of freshly turned dirt. One man grabbed two shovels out of his truck. Suddenly I understood that things would never again be as they were. His death was so final, so permanent. It was so irrevocable.
Death is final and irrevocable, isn't it?
Jesus' disciples had gathered to grieve the loss of their close friend Jesus. They too were coping with the finality, permanence, and irrevocability of Jesus' death. They were all grown men. They had each lost loved ones before. They had all been through the routine of burying their own. Jesus was gone. He wasn't coming back. He'd been crucified. Death was final.
But suddenly, rudely, their grieving is interrupted by intrusive shouts of dismissal. Some women burst into the room claiming that Jesus was in fact alive and that he had come back from the grave. They claimed that God had raised him from among the dead. Talk about being jerked around on a wild roller coaster of emotion!
The disciples react to the news with intense skepticism and doubt. Matthew 28:17 (NIV) tells us that some of them, "doubted" the news. Mark 16:11 (NIV) tells us that when the disciples, "heard that Jesus was alive and that she had seen him, they did not believe it." Luke 24:11 (NIV) tells us that the disciples did not believe the women's account, "because their words seemed to them like nonsense." Luke 24:12 (NIV) tells us that even after Peter had seen the empty tomb for himself, "he went away, wondering to himself what had happened."
In Luke 24:17 (NIV) as they discussed the rumors of Jesus' resurrection, Luke tells us the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, "stood still, their faces downcast. In John 20:25 (NIV) Thomas said, "Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it."
It is at this point that we most find ourselves able to identify with the disciples. The disciples refused to be comforted by what seemed to be a totally irrational proposition. They refused to be comforted by what appeared to be wishful thinking or pure fantasy on the part of these women, or by what was most likely a blatant lie!
I'd suspect that the disciples may have even reacted with a degree of anger. Who would be so callous as to naively set forth such foolishness? How would you react if after having buried your loved one, someone knocked on your door and said, "Hey, I just saw Bob walking down the street."
When Jesus finally caught up to the disciples in Mark 16:14 (NIV) we're told, "he rebuked them for their lack of faith and their stubborn refusal to believe those who had seen him after he had risen."
Is it difficult for God to recreate or resurect a life?
This past week The State Journal Register published two pieces to an untold story. I would not even know about this story had it not been for a family in this church who personally know this family. Last week a young lady of just thirty-two years of age gave birth to a beautiful daughter. Like every couple, they gladly welcomed their new child into their home. But early this week this young mother suddenly and tragically died in her sleep, leaving her husband all alone to raise and care for this one-week-old child and their four-year-old son. This week, the same newspaper ran the child's birth announcement on one page and the mother's death notice on another page.
That family's story has been on my mind since the day I first heard about it.
You know, every single day the newspaper runs dozens of birth announcements. But I want you to imagine for a moment that someone was explaining the whole birth process to you for the first time. Imagine that someone is explaining how after a husband and wife come together, a microscopic process that is invisible to the naked eye is initiated. And you're told that through that process God knits together a complete human being, a living soul that can see, hear, smell, taste, touch, and choose good or evil. And you are told that that this whole process takes just nine months from start to finish.
Everyday we have before us the mind-boggling miracle of birth. And yet I've often wondered what is more difficult for God. Is it more difficult for God to knit together a human life from nothing, from microscopic matter that is invisible to our eyes? Or is it more difficult to re-knit a life, to recreate or to resurrect a life from something that was once alive, and that only needs the breath of life?
Our tendency is to call everyday miracles like birth, natural processes. All the while, we are forgetting that God can create or re-create life whenever he wills.
And so there is a birth announcement and a death notice in the same paper. And it is Easter and Jesus Christ has been raised from the grave through the power of God. Just as her child was born through the miraculous process of birth, so one day when Christ returns she will be resurrected from the grave through the miraculous process of the resurrection. Just as we are overjoyed at the announcement of every new child born into this world, so there will be joy in heaven as God uses a birth-like process to resurrect his children from death to eternal life in his kingdom.
This Easter, death does not have the final word over anyone who is in Christ Jesus. In 1 Corinthians 15:54-57 (NIV) Paul sums up well the message of Easter. "Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."
I understand from the friends of this family that I mentioned that the mother had a vibrant Christian faith and that she had given her life to Jesus Christ. Today she has victory in Jesus Christ and today you can have that same victory. This is the victory that was accomplished for us through Christ's death and resurrection.
Won't you respond to this hope just now?