Why Are You Crying? (John 20.11-18)

Introduction

One of the many distinctive features of our species is that we shed tears. Animals don’t cry, not emotionally anyway. Dogs sort of  whimper a bit, and crocodiles apparently lubricate their eyes when digesting their prey, but sobbing because you're emotional or sad is an experience unique to us in the created world.

But we cry because we’re human. According to YouGov research a few years ago, 66% of men and 93% of women say they have cried in the last year. Almost one in five women and one in twenty men admit that they cry at least once a week. Do women have a harder time than men or are they maybe just better at expressing emotion in a healthy way? Shedding tears is therapeutic; we all know what it is to feel better after having a good cry. Suppressing tears is supposed to be bad for your emotional wellbeing.

It’s part of our makeup in this fallen world. Human tear ducts are connected to the part in our brain that commands the emotions, so we cry when we suffer pain or trauma, when we feel lonely, when we empathise with someone else’s sorrow and most of all when we experience loss ourselves.

I have wept many times before and several times since, but I have never cried with the same intensity, with the same force, as I did when we lost twins through miscarriage back in the 1990s. Grief touches us all and when it grips us what can we do but shed tears at the graveside?

Mary Magdalene

So, there’s nothing strange or particularly noteworthy about the fact that when we find Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb on Easter morning, there are tears running down her face.

She’s gone at first light to wash Jesus’ body, hastily buried the previous Friday, and embalm it with spices. It was to be her last act of devotion for the Lord, to give him a decent burial, and now apparently some jobsworth has relocated the body, probably because the paperwork wasn’t quite right, and she can’t even do that.

When she gets to the grave, as we saw last Sunday, she finds the stone rolled away, and the grave has been disturbed. And all the emotion of the weekend gets the better of her; she can’t even have any closure and she just wells up and starts to sob.

She feels wretched. All she’s got are unanswered questions. Who’s taken the body? Where is it now? Why has it been moved? Who can I speak to about this?

She peers into the tomb again and two figures dressed in white are there. “Woman, why are you crying?” they say.

It’s pretty obvious why she’s crying. This is a graveyard. She’s been sniffing and weeping for three days, ever since her Lord was condemned to death. Her eyes are red and weary from constant crying. “They have taken my Lord away,” she says “and I don’t know where they have put him.”

Why did she love Jesus so much? Ancient tradition says she had been a prostitute although the Bible never says that. She is sometimes identified with an unnamed woman who had lived a sinful life in Mark’s Gospel who poured perfume on Jesus’ feet. No one can say for sure.

Luke’s gospel tells us that Jesus cast out seven demons from her. We don’t need let our fertile imaginations run wild about how that came about. All we need to know is what the Gospels tell us; when Mary Magdalene met Jesus, it took just one word of command from his mouth, and she was free at last, her hellish affliction was over.

Her body and her mind and her soul were made new. She felt alive again. She was forgiven everything. Her record was wiped clean.

No wonder she loved him and was so devoted to him! If the traditional view about her sex life is right, this may have been the first man in her life who ever treated her with dignity. But she loved him enough to stay to the very end at the cross and  she she loved him so much that she was first to arrive at the tomb.

She turns around, and who is standing there behind her but Jesus? 

She doesn’t recognise him. Have you ever wondered why not? It’s the last person she is expecting to see. She watched him die three days earlier. The last time she saw him, his head was crowned in thorns. His body was lacerated all over. And it was covered in dirt from falling into the dust under the weight of the cross and blood.

She watched his head drop and saw how his body suddenly hung limp and lifeless. She witnessed the spear piercing his side. She looked on as they took his cold body down from the cross. She watched as they laid him in the tomb and hastily covered him from head to toe with a linen burial cloth.  

She’d been there as her dreams died when he did.

Jesus asks the same question as the angels had asked shortly beforehand. “Why are you crying? Who is it you’re looking for?”

She thinks he’s just some bloke who keeps the cemetery looking nice. Maybe he knows. Maybe he knows where the paperwork is kept. Maybe he can help. “Sir,” she says, “if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him; I need to see him.”

And then with one word, her whole world is undone and remade. “Mary!”

Reasons to Be Tearful

I want to use Mary Magdalene as a lens through which we see the Christian landscape today. In this fallen world that has turned its back on God, there are tears every day and everywhere. What a pitiful mess we’ve made of God’s world.

Why are you crying? Because, worldwide Christians are under unprecedented attack, as we saw again so tragically last Sunday. 80% of religiously motivated violence in the world today is against Christians. How does it feel to belong to the world’s most hated movement?

Why are you crying? Because Christian belief is under attack; atheism has found a renewed confidence to assault and discredit Christian faith, in particular with science, as if belief in God and the study of how the world works were enemies.

Why are you crying? Because Christian behaviour, as well as belief, seems to be condemned and sneered at more than ever. Everything is tolerated and even promoted now, except what God has revealed in his Holy Word which must be opposed and silenced at all costs.

Why are you crying? Because people keep telling us that the Christianity in our nation and the Church of England in particular is in terminal decline, hopelessly out of touch; nasty, judgmental people in near-empty buildings, mostly beyond repair.

Reasons to Be Cheerful

There are plenty of reasons to be tearful. But, for us, there are reasons to be cheerful.

For us who grieve over the godlessness of our world, the resurrection of Jesus changes everything. Jesus, the indestructible conqueror, looks at each one of us individually today and speaks our name.

And Jesus looks at us and says, “Why are you crying?” Just like it says in the Book of Revelation, “Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed.”

History shows that the more the gospel is attacked and opposed from the outside, the more the church just grows stronger.

Tragically, it also says that the gospel will be attacked and opposed from the inside, and that does far more damage. So, we need to be vigilant, and reject bad teaching which makes the church sick, and commend apostolic, biblical teaching that alone keeps the church healthy.

The New Testament tells us that while there will be increasing persecution and apostasy as the Lord’s return draws nearer, the church will become purer and more glorious, like a radiant bride all ready for her wedding day.

There are three things coming up I want to highlight that give us reasons to be cheerful.

1. Serve Teesside

Firstly, we’re going to be part of Serve Teesside. To those who say the church is weak and divided; a holy club only interested in itself we say this:

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We’re committed to serving and sending teams on two dates; Tuesday 25 June and Saturday 20 July. The Bible says the more you freely give away, the more God freely pours back in. So, as well as blessing our community, which is a great thing in itself, we get an added bonus of God blessing us even more than he already does.

There will be sign-up sheets out very soon for this. I really hope you’ll get involved if you can.

2. REACh Phase 3

Secondly, we are on course to deliver REACh phase 3 by the end of this year. So often, you hear about church buildings that are cold, dark, uncomfortable, musty-smelling, leaking, crumbling at the edges, and wasteful.

REACh is about getting this building fit for purpose for the rest of this century. It’s a debt we owe to the next generation. Phase 3 will give us a new, larger chapel – a place of prayer right at the heart of our building. It will feature some inspirational artwork that will add colour and a sense of movement to this space.

It will improve the ministry area here at the front; better lighting, clearer audio reproduction, enhanced projection quality, improved visibility for service leaders and preachers, more flexibility and, overall, a space much more put to use than at present.

Sacramentally, it will also feature a sunken baptistry to respond to the increased demand for immersion baptism and it will bring the Communion Table and the people much closer together.

We want our worship to be the very best it can be to God’s glory, and the REACh steering group and PCC are confident that this will really enhance what we do here week by week.

3. Newtown Church Plant

And thirdly, we are now just two years away from sending out a team to plant something new in Newtown. We already have a dozen people committed to the great adventure of forming a new, dynamic congregation at Saint Paul’s.

Our goal is to send more like 30 and, in addition to that, hopefully pick up a few from neighbouring churches in the deanery as well.

We believe God is in this and he is going to do extraordinary things. Let me give you just one example of why we think this: February last year a woman called Margaret attended dear Doreen Allinson’s funeral. She was so blown away by what she experienced that she started coming here on Sundays.

Then, some months later, she learned that we were going to be planting a congregation in Newtown. That really excited her because seven years earlier she felt God prompting her to pray for that very area.

By the time we send out our team, she will have been laying foundations in intercession for almost a decade. And she is going there as part of the team to lead the 24/7 prayer there. A member of their congregation has been longing for and praying for a powerful move of the Holy Spirit in that church for 20 years.

God is really in this and all the forces of hell are not going to be able to stop it!

Over the next two years, Paul and his people already there are going to be spending serious money to get that building fit for purpose; a new heating system, double glazing, comfortable chairs, better flooring, and a café area. Our vision is for it to be in use all week.

This year, we are submitting a bid for central Church of England funding that will enable us to really support this venture with additional employed staff. Early indications are that our bid will be looked on very favourably.

At the same time, we’re making a start to get to know people in the area and build bridges. Another God thing that happened a few weeks ago; someone came to Paul and me and said, “I’ve been given some funding for mission, about £1,000, and thought of you in Newtown.”

We said, “Why not put on a barbecue in July, open to all, with free food, invite the whole area and start to ask people, “What would you like this church to be doing for you?” So that’s what we’re going to do.

There’s a reason why God has filled this church up with strong, faith-filled, experienced people over the last few years; some are going to be sent back out as an apostolic team in what will be the adventure of a lifetime. Is God stirring you? Can you hear him calling?

Ending

Why are you crying? Look at Jesus’ next words to Mary Magdalene in v17; “Don’t hold on to me here – but go and tell!” So off she runs telling the men “I’ve seen the Lord!”

The very first evangelist of the resurrection. And we know what happened next. Once she was obedient to the Lord’s voice, and went, others saw the risen Lord too. That’s what it’s going to be like when we send our team out from here.

Why are you crying? The Lord is right here! Turn around, there he is, risen and triumphant. And, with him, the future looks exhilarating.

Let’s pray.

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 28 April 2019

Seeing Is Believing (John 20.1-10)

Introduction

A few weeks ago, I was walking around the churchyard at Long Newton. Many of the limestone and granite tomb stones were weathered and mossy; on some the words of the epitaph were no longer legible.

A cemetery is, for most people, where it all ends. But it’s in a cemetery where Christianity begins. It’s all about the resurrection.

In fact, the Australian academic Professor Gerald O’ Collins writes: “In a profound sense, Christianity without the resurrection is not simply Christianity without its final chapter. It is not Christianity at all.”

Setting the Scene

Let’s take a journey in time back to the first Easter morning, around 30AD.

We find ourselves in a small landscaped estate, tidily cultivated with shrubs and succulents, and around which there are several tombs hewn out of the rock. Each one is concealed by a large disc-shaped stone, weighing about 1.3 tons, lying in a groove that slopes down to make it easy to close, and difficult to open.

Verse 1 tells us that Mary Magdalene leaves for the tomb while it is still dark and, from the other Gospels, we know that she met two other women on the way who then accompanied her.

They see the grave has been disturbed, so Mary Magdalene runs back to tell John and Peter, leaving the others standing there, lost for words.

A pagan philosopher called Celsus, who died in 180AD, called Christians “A council of frogs in the marsh, a synod of worms on a dung hill.” And he dismissed the resurrection as fake news. He said, “You can’t accept the resurrection because it is based on the testimony of women.”

Nobody took women seriously in that culture, and the Gospel writers took a risk by stating that the first witnesses of the resurrection were women – but they recorded it anyway because that is what happened.

All we’ve got in our passage this morning is the puzzle of an empty tomb but no sighting yet of a risen Saviour.

Mary Magdalene is not expecting a resurrection at all. She has only one category for processing what she sees – and it’s that someone, between sunset on Friday and sunrise on Sunday has opened the tomb and relocated the body. 

Verse 2; “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him.” That, for her, is the only possible explanation.

Peter and John, no doubt upset that their hero’s tomb has been desecrated, dash for the tomb.

Notice in v4 that John arrives first. Why? Because John was much younger, so Peter was older and, you may have noticed, as you get older, you slow down. 

I am 57 and I’m still able to run up the stairs. 10 years ago, I ran up the stairs, but my breathing sounded the same at the top as it had at the bottom. Now, I’m a little breathless when I reach the landing. 10 years from now – if I’m still here – I may look back with misty eyes to the era when I could do that. 

Maybe most of us can relate to Peter this morning. In a two-horse race we know we’d be the runner up…

But we know what Peter’s like, don’t we? If he were a car, he’d have no reverse gear; in fact, he’d have no brakes either. Naturally impulsive. Whether or not it needs to be said, he’ll say it. Whether or not it should be done, you know he’ll do it.

So, despite arriving after John, it’s no surprise that, without hesitation, decorum or precaution, he just walks straight in.

One of the striking things about Jesus’ ministry is the reaction of onlookers.

All the Gospel writers use three different terms for this reaction, as if building into a crescendo of wonder. The first Greek word means to marvel at something breath-taking, like a firework display or the Niagara Falls.

The second word derives from a verb meaning to physically strike someone. We might say in English ‘bowled over’ or ‘knocked sideways’ by something.

The third word has the sense of being so astounded that all your previous categories for reality simply fail, and your preconceptions become undone.

But this language is mostly attached to Jesus’ early ministry. As we move into the accounts of Jesus’ passion, crucifixion and resurrection there is a gear shift.

You might have thought that they’d ramp the language up a notch when it comes to the resurrection – and that’s what you would do if you were writing fiction – but the language of ‘wonder’ and ‘amazement’ is almost absent. 

What we actually find, in all four Gospels, concerning the resurrection is a sense of bafflement, bewilderment and disorientation. 

Mary Magdalene doesn’t understand. Peter doesn’t get it either. In Luke’s Gospel, it says, “Peter… got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and went away, wondering to himself what had happened.”

Only for John is seeing believing. In v8, it says, “finally, the other disciple who had reached the tomb first, went inside.”

Why did he hesitate? Was he just a bit freaked out about going into a creepy burial chamber on his own? It's understandable. Wouldn't you be? Was he perhaps upset that his friend’s final resting place might have been disturbed, even desecrated?

Actually, it wasn’t a final resting place, it was just a resting place. Jesus was already raised and at the end of v8 it simply says of John, “He saw and believed.”

What did he see? An empty grave with the strips of linen cloth lying in their place. How many of you men ever fold sheets? Was it the fact that a man actually thought to make the bed proof to John that a miracle must have taken place?

There are two reasons why John saw and believed.

1. He saw no body

First, he saw no body. Tomb raiders, very common in those days, only took what was of value to them, and left everything else.

Remember, two days earlier, soldiers played dice for the robe that had mockingly been put on Jesus. Fine linen, the sort that a wealthy individual like Joseph of Arimathea would have, was costly and there was a market for it. A dead body, disfigured by blood, was worth nothing to anyone.

But the body was gone. And the linen was still there. The penny dropped; nobody had broken into that tomb. And that could only mean one thing – somebody must have broken out of it!

2. He saw the grave clothes completely undisturbed

But it wasn’t just that the linen was there. It was the shape of them. When they buried a body in those days, they wrapped it in about 30-40 metres of linen. And they didn’t just lay the corpse between two sheets like the image on the Turin Shroud.

No, they wound the cloth round and round the body, beginning with the feet and wrapping it, up to the shoulders, sprinkling spices as they did to mask the foul smell of decomposition.

Then, they took a shorter cloth and starting at the eyes, they wound it around the head and neck, until the two cloths met.

What John saw (v6-7) was the two cloths still wrapped around, but no body inside the wrapping. It’s as if the body passed through the cloths, leaving them like a discarded cocoon.

Ending

Verse 9 says they had all this in their Bibles all the time but they didn’t see it.

They could have looked at Psalm 16, which we had read today:

My body also will rest secure,

because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead,

nor will you let your faithful one see decay.

They could have looked at Isaiah 53:

He was despised and rejected,

a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.

He was cut off from the land of the living;

for the sin of my people he was punished.

He was assigned a grave with the wicked,

and with the rich in his death.

After he has suffered,

he will see the light of life and be satisfied.

They could have seen it all over in the Old Testament, if only they had eyes to see. 

Many people in Britain today have a Bible on a shelf somewhere, no doubt collecting dust? “They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.”

How many, like Peter and Mary Magdalene, are confused and bewildered? How many have begun to understand, like John, that here is the key to life - in this world and the next?

Let’s pray…

Short sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 21 April 2019