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SEATTLE MENNONITE CHURCH
Easter Sunday, April 8, 2007
Sermon: Weldon D. Nisly
TITLE: Seeing is believing
THEME: Life is the Lord's doing
TEXTS: Isaiah 65: 17-25 God is creating a new heaven and new earth
1 Corinthians
15: 19-26 Being made alive in Christ
John 20: 1-18 Mary “sees” the risen Jesus….finally
Easter Greeting and Sighting
Christ is risen!
Christ is risen indeed!
Do you believe it?
Do you see the risen Christ on this Easter Sunday?
Do you believe that God is
creating a new heaven and new earth as Isaiah proclaims?
Do you see this new
heaven and new earth?
Seeing and believing that Christ is risen is hard -- even when the evidence is in front of our eyes. Perhaps it is hard because we are so familiar with Jesus' resurrection which we celebrate every Easter. Or perhaps it is hard because it is so difficult to get our head around the reality that God raised Jesus from death by crucifixion.
God was wise enough to not let anyone see or report on the act of God raising Jesus from the dead. But we know that Jesus was raised from the dead because there are witnesses to a living Jesus who appeared to women and disciples in a new risen life.
How do we grasp this amazing reality and witness the risen Jesus?
Suppose that this Sunday morning NPR began Morning Edition with “breaking news” announcing that the earth has completed its nocturnal rotation. Dawn will shortly break forth with new sunlight! We'd ask, “How is that news? The sun comes up every morning.” (John Allen, NCR electronic column, 4/5/07).
However much we may know about the earth spinning on its axis giving us cycles of night and day to regulate our lives, each new dawn holds awesome mystery for us. So too with Jesus' resurrection. We know Jesus is risen and that there is awesome mystery in the resurrection. We celebrate it on the annual cycle of Easter Sunday knowing that the other 51 Sundays of the year are “Little Easters.” We do see and know and believe that Christ is alive and we sing and proclaim and live that great revealed truth.
Many pastors consider Easter the most difficult Sunday of the year to preach on. That dilemma has to do with what to say about Jesus' resurrection that is fresh and how to get people to act as if they see and believe the risen Jesus. It may also have to do with more people attending Easter worship than any other Sunday. In any case, there is a lot of pressure over worship on Easter Sunday.
I think most of that pressure is alleviated when we remember it is not the responsibility of a pastor or the people to raise Jesus from the dead. Nor do we need to understand exactly how God accomplished the resurrection. Our role is to bear witness to the Risen Christ, That is we are to recognize and proclaim the risen Jesus and live an alternative life in the Risen Christ. (Anthony Robinson, “Preaching on Easter” column, PI 4/7/07, B2).
This Easter morning I want to name three brief ways in which we bear witness to the risen Christ. These by no means exhaust the inexhaustible riches of Jesus' resurrection.
But it calls us to recognition, proclamation and alteration or application.
First, recognition. For this we look to Mary and the Gospel we heard today. In John's Gospel, Mary went to the tomb before dawn that first Easter Sunday morning. She went to mourn the death of Jesus. Instead she found the stone rolled away from the entrance and ran to tell Peter and John who ran to the tomb. Finding the tomb empty they went home. Mary stayed and wept in mourning outside the tomb. In tears she first faced two angels in the tomb and then a mysterious person outside the tomb. It wasn't until Jesus said her name that she recognized the risen Jesus. She saw and believed in impossible possibility from God. And she went to announce the good news to the disciples.
The eyes of Mary's heart and mind were trained to see the finality of death. Yet she was open to having her eyesight transformed by the living risen Jesus who said her name. The risen Christ calls you by name even on this Easter Sunday.
That brings us to proclamation as the second way we bear witness to Jesus' resurrection. We proclaim the good news of the Risen Christ. We proclaim it in our worship in scripture, song and prayer. The act of worship manifests the living reality of the risen Jesus.
In other words in our bold proclamation we invoke the presence of the risen Jesus. Our proclamation is not dependent on our rational understanding and explanation.
This third way to bear witness to the Risen Christ is the alteration of our lives growing out of our recognition and proclamation of the Risen Christ.
Many Christians see the resurrection as being about mortality – or rather a new kind of immortality and afterlife. Jesus was raised from the dead and after our death we will be raised from the dead and go to heaven to be with Jesus. The resurrection is about the future and heaven.
Whatever afterlife future awaits us, Jesus' resurrection is very much about how we see and live with the risen Christ here and now today and everyday. That truth and reality takes us back to a choice we face in Jesus' crucifixion. So let's go back for a moment to the other side of Jesus' resurrection when Jesus was on trial and sentenced to crucifixion. Here we all face the choice of joining the crucified or the crucifiers.
New Testament scholar and founder of the Network of Biblical Storytellers Tom Boomershine wrote an article about this choice we are confronted with, called, “Barabbas or Jesus? The Jewish Roman War and the War in Iraq.” In a nutshell Tom helps us see that the choice Pilate gave the people to release Barabbas or Jesus was a choice between violence and war or nonviolence and love.
Luke's gospel account of the Jesus' passion, which we heard here on Good Friday night, Pilate gave the people a choice: Release Barabbas or Jesus. Which will you choose?
Barabbas, more than being a thief, is Zealot caught up in violence and war as the answer to the oppression of the Roman Empire. To choose to release Barabbas is to put your ultimate hope in violence and warfare and the sacrificial system. It was to choose empires way of violence and to reject Jesus' way of nonviolence.
This stark and ultimate choice for Barabbas or Jesus was not somehow limited to Jews who were present at Jesus' trial. It is choice continually facing every one of us even today. It is why we need to live the Lenten season and Holy Week culminating in Easter
We have many signs and sightings of a risen Jesus today. I saw them this week. Forty years and four days ago on April 4, 1967, Martin Luther King Jr., preached a sermon at New York's Riverside Church about the war in Vietnam. King embodied the recognition and proclamation and application of the Risen Christ. King clearly and publicly chose the way of Jesus over the way of Barabbas. I read his sermon again on April 4 th and am still amazed and inspired by his bold insight and sight. We could go through his sermon and replace Vietnam with Iraq and be confronted as clearly today as 40 years ago. Exactly one year later King was killed for choosing Jesus over Barabbas.
I “see” Tom Fox who died in Iraq as a member of the Christian Peacemaker Teams abducted on November 26 and killed on March 9 a year ago. Tom was the CPT leader for two of our members Scott Smith and Annaliese Watson on a Team in Hebron a few years ago. Scott and Annaliese now live southern Oregon. On March 9, the first anniversary of Tom's death, Scott gave a personal tribute to his friend Tom who also clearly chose Jesus over Barabbas.
Now we see through a mirror dimly or a glass darkly, as Paul says in a letter to the Corinthian church, but then we will see face to face. May we boldly choose Jesus over Barabbas. And may we boldly embody the recognition, proclamation and alteration that comes with that choice. For we know that Christ is Risen!
Benediction
Beloved, worthy is the Lamb that was slain to overcome sin and death and violence! Declare to the nations that Christ is risen and Jesus is Lord! Worthy is the Lamb to receive blessing and honor and glory and power forever and ever. Amen.
God in the peace of the Risen Christ to enjoy this Easter feast!