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