Working Notes
by
Sylvia Dooling
Read Luke 24:1-12
I was sitting in my office one day, several weeks ago trying to finish two
things: preparation for the funeral of a friend, and finishing a sermon on
the burial of Jesus. With all that emphasis on death, life peeked through.
Underneath all the clutter on my desk is a clear blotter with special
photographs, the kind of pictures that I want to see as often as I can. I
pushed the clutter aside to make room for a Bible and a notepad. There I
was, focused so much on death, and life peeked through. First it was a
picture of my three children, sitting on a boulder overlooking the
Shenandoah Valley, all of them with smiles on their faces. Then, a picture
of my bride on our wedding day, and a picture of little boy on his mother’s
shoulders, and my sweet little girl eating chocolate. All of these images
whispered to me of something more, something glorious. It’s life. And they
reminded me that even in those times of life when we have to focus our
attention on things like funerals and grief, and death and suffering, that
there is still life. And there is still love. And if there is still life and
love, then there is still something worth celebrating.
Luke reminds us of the same thing, not with photographs, but with words. He
reminds us with one little word. In Greek, Chapter 24 begins with ‘But.” My
English teacher taught me that ‘but” is a disjunctive conjunctive. My Greek
teacher taught me that a disjunctive conjunctive is a word pregnant with
possibilities. It tells us that we are about to go in the opposite direction
now. Ever since Chapter 22, Luke has been dealing with betrayal and denial,
arrest and trial, crucifixion and death. ‘But.” There is something more.
Death doesn’t bring an end to Jesus. Suffering doesn’t have the last word.
Evil doesn’t win the battle.
_’But on the first day of the week, early in the morning, the women came
with spices….”_
Mary Magdalene was among them, and do you remember what she found? The stone
was rolled away, the tomb was empty, and the linen shroud they wrapped
around His lifeless body was neatly folded. There she was, under the heavy
burden of grief. Mary Magdalene had come to embalm His body, and very soon
Life will peek through. John expands upon her experience. Overcome with
grief, Mary Magdalene runs to find the disciples to report that His body has
been taken. Peter and John race to the tomb only to find it just as she
said. They leave. She stays. Loyal. Faithful. She stays.
Mary Magdalene stoops to peer into the tomb once again. Through her tears
she sees two angels clothed in dazzling light. ‘Woman, why are you
weeping?” they ask. ‘Because they have taken away my Lord…” And then a
most remarkable verse:
_’When she had said this, she turned and beheld Jesus standing there,
and did not know that it was Jesus.” _(John 20:14)
I bet you too know what it is like to be blinded by grief and pain. Mary
Magdalene wasn’t the first to be unable to recognize Jesus. Remember the
Palm Sunday crowd? Remember the crowds that lined the city streets as Jesus
carried the Cross? Some of them looked up to the Man on the Cross and saw a
liar. Some of them saw a failed expectation. Some of them saw a hope that
never materialized. Some of them saw a dream that didn’t come true. And none
of them saw Jesus as He truly is.
Are we seeing Him clearly?
If you see Him as Master, do you obey?
If you see Him as the Way, do you follow?
If you see Him as the Life, are you living in Him?
If you see Him as the Truth, are you trusting Him?
If you see Him as Friend, are you sharing your life with Him?
If you see Him as Lord, are you serving Him?
But Mary Magdalene did not remain in her blindness very long. ‘Mary!” Jesus
says. At the calling of her name, Mary looks again and sees not a gardener
or another angel, but her Lord. She saw the Risen Lord standing there before
her. ‘Rabboni!” One of the great lessons that Mary Magdalene teaches us is
this: You really don’t know Jesus, you really can’t see Jesus, until you see
and know Him as the Risen Lord. And that’s her sermon that first Easter
morning – _’I have seen the Lord!”_
Stand there with Mary Magdalene in that glorious moment. What do you see?
What do you learn about the Lord, and about difference the Risen Lord Jesus
makes in our lives?
*First, the Resurrection of Jesus is the proof of your forgiveness.*
If there is one thing that prevents Christian people like you and me from
living life with the fullest joy, it is the difficulty we have in accepting
forgiveness. We can muster the fortitude to forgive people who have hurt us,
and when we do, God is well pleased, but for some reason or another, we have
such a hard time forgive ourselves, and really believing deep down inside
that God forgives us. And that’s what robs us of the fullness of the life
God wants us to live. We can’t let go of the past. So we carry around an
oppressive burden of guilt and regret, and self-loathing.
James Garfield was an impressive figure in history. A Disciples of Christ
lay preacher, of whom it is said, that he was both brilliant and
ambidextrous. They say he could simultaneously write Greek, with one hand
and Latin with the other.
In l880, he was elected president of the United States, but after only six
months in office, he was shot in the back with a revolver. He never lost
consciousness. At the hospital, the doctor probed the wound with his little
finger, hoping to find the bullet. He couldn’t find it, so he tried a
silver-tipped surgical probe. Still he couldn’t find the bullet.
They took Garfield back to Washington, D.C. He was growing very weaker every
day. Teams of doctors tried to locate the bullet, probing the wound over and
over. In desperation they asked Alexander Graham Bell, who was working on a
little invention called the telephone, to see if he could find the metal
inside the president’s body. He came, he sought, and he too failed. The
president hung on through July, through August, but in September he finally
died-not from the wound, but from infection. The repeated probing, which the
physicians thought would help the man, eventually, killed him. (Story told
by Sen. Mark Hatfield)
And that is exactly what you are doing to yourself when you can’t accept the
forgiveness God wants to give you….when you refuse to let go of your guilt
and regret. You probe the wounds at night when you lay down to sleep,
rehearsing the past over and over again. You probe the wounds every time you
look in the mirror, and you see yourself not as a forgiven child of God, but
a terrible person, the source of your regrets. And it will fester and it
just might kill you. But you can live again, and grow again, and experience
joy again, if you will accept the forgiveness that God has PROVEN through
the Risen Lord. He comes forth from the tomb and He lives as the proof, that
the price was fully paid.
When He came back, Jesus wasn’t an apparition. He stood among people and
said, put your finger in the wounds. Touch Me. See that I am real. And if
the Risen Lord is real, then the sacrifice was real. The suffering was real.
The penalty and the consequences of sin are real, and Jesus really paid the
price. The Risen Lord is the proof of your forgiveness. The day you say
‘yes” to that, is the day you begin to really live in the fullness of life
that God wants you to live.
*Second, the Resurrection of Jesus is all the proof you need to know that
your future is great.*
There was a great preacher a generation ago, named W.B. Hinson. He lived a
great life, and one day a doctor said, ‘You have an illness from which you
won’t recover.” That couldn’t rob W.B. Hinson of his joy in life, because
he had a relationship with the Risen Lord. Not a dead messiah, but a Living
Lord. Hinson said when he got the news from his doctor, ‘I walked out to
where I live 5 miles from Portland, Oregon, and I looked across at that
mountain that I love. I looked at the river in which I rejoice, and I looked
at the stately trees that are always God’s own poetry to my soul. Then in
the evening I looked up into the great sky where God was lighting His lamps,
and I said, ‘ I may not see you many more times, but Mountain, I shall be
alive when you are gone; and River, I shall be alive when you cease running
toward the sea; and Stars, I shall be alive when you have fallen from your
sockets in the great down pulling of the material universe!’ “
And all you have to do to live and even encounter death, with the same
confidence and joy, is to stake your faith in the Risen Lord. Because He
rose from the dead and conquered death, you and I can live forever. All your
tomorrows are in the hands of the Risen Lord! Long after our beautiful
sanctuaries have crumbled, we will still be alive. Long after the realities
that trouble you have vanished and been forgotten, you will still be alive.
Really alive. Joyfully alive. Why? Because He lives. The Risen Lord is all
the proof you need to know beyond a shadow of a doubt, that your future is
great. Put your trust in the Living Lord Jesus, and you will live.
*Finally, the Resurrection is the proof of the power available to you right
now.*
I love the story of the missionary who was given a car that wouldn’t crank.
We give our missionaries, used clothing, and outdated computers, and cars
that don’t crank. This particular missionary wasn’t much of a mechanic, but
he was resourceful. It was a car with a manual transmission, so he knew that
if he could roll it fast enough, he could slip it into gear, and the motor
would fire and it would drive just fine. And, all he had to do was to keep
if full of gas and always park on a hill. For several years, he drove the
car that wouldn’t crank. It was the only car in the village so all the
villagers were happy to help push him off in the event that he couldn’t park
on a hill. And then one day, he got the news of his furlough. A replacement
was sent in for a year so the missionary could go back home to the States.
His replacement arrived. The missionary had left written instructions on all
his normal duties, and how to crank the car that wouldn’t crank. ‘Just be
sure you park on a hill, get her rolling fast enough, slip it into gear and
she’ll drive just fine.”
Well, this missionary replacement knew a little about cars. He had tinkered
around in his highschool days. He looked under the hood and lo and behold,
he found a loose battery cable. He scraped the lead shiny bright with his
pocket knife, put the battery cable back on, tightened it up. And the car
that wouldn’t crank, roared to life the first time he turned the key!
And to think of all those days when villagers pushed the car to a
start…..and to think of all those inconvenient parks on hilltops, when the
power to crank the car was right there under the hood, disconnected. Does
that experience ring true? Not mechanically, but spiritually? In his letter
to the Ephesians Paul said, ‘How tremendous is the power available to us who
believe in God.” (l:19-20) You see, the Resurrection isn’t simply an event
in history, and it isn’t merely a promise of a life to come. It is the proof
of the kind of power we can live in right now. The power is available to us,
right now, and all we need to do is to make a good connection with the
source…..with the Risen Lord.
What does the Resurrection have to do with your life in the here and now?
I’m convinced that if you asked Mary Magdalene, she’d preach a sermon at
least 20 minutes this time around, maybe longer! With passion, she would say
the Risen Lord is the proof of your forgiveness, and the proof of your
glorious and eternal future, and the proof that there is power for the
living of today.
Claim it. Receive it. Rejoice in it. And live in it!