Sermon (April 24) - "This Day in History"

     A couple of months ago, I was listening to an interesting news story on the radio about “The Most Boring Day” in recent history.  The day they were talking about was April 11, 1954.

     And they went on to say that on that day, nobody famous died.  Nobody famous was born. Nothing newsworthy happened on that day.

     William Tunstall-Pedoe, a University of Cambridge trained computer scientist claimed that his super computer program has determined that the second Sunday in April of 1954 was the most boring day since the dawn of the 20^th century.  He backed up his claim by saying that after a computer analysis of more than 300 million facts done by a search engine called True Knowledge which he invented, that nothing great happened on that day. 

     The closest thing of any noteworthy news on that day was the birth of a famous Turkish author, but that’s about it.  Oh, and there were also elections held in Belgium that day. 

     When pressed if there was anything else that might have happened on that day, William Tunstall-Pedoe did say that there was an exhibition game between the New York Giants and the Cleveland Indians who would go on to play in the World Series later that year.

     I couldn’t help but laugh as I listened to this news segment, because the reporter who was interviewing this scientist tried as hard as he could to see if there was something that might have happened on that day.  So it appears that April 11, 1954 might take the prize as the most boring day of our modern era.

     By the way, was anyone here born on April 11, 1954?  Good!

     The evangelist John tells us that on a particular day in history, something so amazing happened that changed the world forever, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.   The problem is that none of us were there to experience that world changing day.  

     This is one of the reasons why I have empathy for those who find it difficult to believe that the resurrection of Jesus Christ really happened.   I mean, if none of us were there and without the advantage of modern day reporting to cover such a story, what would lead people today to actually believe that such an event happened?

     If it helps any, the Gospel writer John is concerned about that same question.  It’s like John anticipates the struggles, the disbeliefs, and the questions we will have when presented with the news that Jesus has risen from the dead. 

     Yes, we have heard of stories of people dying and coming back to life.  But this is different.  Jesus didn’t just die and come back to life, only to die again some day.  Jesus died and rose again in a new body, not to ever experience death again.  What an audacious claim!  If true, this would be the only time in the history of the world that such a thing has ever happened.

     If you were a Jew in the first century, you might have believed that a day would come when all of God’s people would rise again together for a general resurrection of the dead.  But you wouldn’t have ever thought that this could happen to one human being in the middle of history.

     Believing in the resurrection of Jesus Christ isn’t just a problem for us post moderns.  It would also have been beyond comprehension for people in the first century.  Far from trying to cram religion down our throats, John reports on the Easter story by showing us how those first followers of Jesus responded to this amazing news.

     Mary is the first to discover that Jesus’ tomb is empty.  But this doesn’t lead her to an Easter faith right away.  The empty tomb only adds to her sadness over the death of her friend, Jesus.  From the empty tomb, she frantically runs to tell Peter and another disciple that someone has stolen Jesus’ body.  As an old saying of the French Foreign Legion has it: "When in doubt, gallop."  And that’s what Mary does.

     When she gets to Peter and the beloved disciple, she no sooner gets her story out of her mouth, than they too, break out running. They are both running toward the unknown; legs pumping, breathing hard, faces flushed, running toward the empty tomb, running toward the gaping hole in the universe of human expectation left by the absent body of Jesus.

     But gradually, John tells us, instead of simply running toward the tomb, they also begin to run against each other. Turning their eyes away from the finish line and glancing enviously at each other, the adrenaline kicks in, and the mad and mutual dash turns into a foot-race. The companions in sorrow become competitors on the track, Peter versus the other disciple, the pressure of the contest pushing their aching muscles to the limit as they rush along, vying for God knows what.

     And only God knew what they were striving for in this mad dash to the tomb.  But think about it.  Why is everyone in this story running? At one level, of course, the answer is obvious. Mary, Peter and the beloved disciple would probably say that the reason why they have greeted this first Easter with instantaneous wind sprints is because of the fear and the excitement of it all, because they sensed intuitively that the moment was filled with electricity, uncertainty, and urgency.

     Like people who have been startled by a sudden, sharp clap of thunder on a clear, blue day of sunshine, they didn’t immediately know exactly what had happened, but they spontaneously responded by jumping up and letting their feet fly. Whatever it meant that the tomb was astonishingly empty, it surely meant they could not sit still, so they ran.

     But that doesn’t explain why Peter and the beloved disciple suddenly turned their jog into a track meet. If one pressed them a bit, they might sheepishly confess that they were running not only because they were excited and awestruck but also because they were -- might as well admit it -- rivals. They started running out of exhilaration, but then competition between them took over, and they wanted to beat each other to the tomb.

     All through John's Gospel, Peter (the leader of the disciples) and the beloved disciple (the one who seems to be closest to the heart of Jesus) are natural rivals for center stage. When they heard Mary's word and began running, no doubt all that mattered to them initially was the news that the tomb was empty; but as they ran, the old rivalry clicked into place, and, matching stride for stride, it began to become important as to who would get there first.

     But even this doesn’t plumb the depths of their running. They may be running because they are excited, and they may be running because they are rivals, but the writer of John sees something much more profound in their footrace. John believes that these two disciples are not merely racing toward a vacant grave; though they do not yet know it, they are running toward the future, toward the resurrection, toward a radical new way of life. When they started running, they were the pupils of a dead teacher; by the time their running is done, they will be the disciples of a risen and living Christ.

    Why is it important to know that the beloved disciple won the race to the empty tomb? Why is John concerned to report that this disciple took a running jump and became the first human being to leap across the chasm between the old and dying age and the dawn of a new world of God's triumph? The reason is that the beloved disciple is first, not only in foot speed, but first also in the way he came to believe. His way of believing in the resurrection is in John's view, the primary and essential way of believing.

     Others will come to belief, but not like the beloved disciple. Mary will believe when she actually sees the risen Christ and hears him call her name. The other disciples with the exception of Thomas, will believe when Jesus appears to them saying, "Peace be with you." And as for Thomas, he will come to belief when the risen Jesus comes to him and offers to let him touch his hands and his side.

     But the beloved disciple is different. He believes when he sees ... nothing.  He doesn’t see Jesus; he doesn’t touch Jesus; he doesn’t hear Jesus call his name. He just peers into the empty tomb and believes. In other words, the beloved disciple, unlike the others, believes in the resurrection in the light of Jesus' absence. He has no evidence, save the emptiness. He has no proofs, no photographs, no scorched places on the earth caused by a burst of resurrection energy. He doesn't even have straight the biblical background on all this. All he has is an empty place where the body of the one who loved him used to be. But it is enough: "He saw and believed."

     Now we can understand why, from John's point of view, it was so important to record who won that footrace to the tomb. John wants us to know that the very first believer in the resurrection, the forerunner of all Easter faith, came to belief in precisely the same way that you and I do – in not seeing the risen Jesus. The risen Jesus has not appeared to us in a garden and called our name. The risen Jesus has not found us and stretched out his wounded hands for us to touch. The Easter faith is not only "He is risen!" but also "He is not here."  The resurrection of Christ means the absence of Jesus of Nazareth, and the beloved disciple was the first to know that, and the first to believe.

     "Blessed are those who have not seen," Jesus said, "and yet have come to believe." By this, he means us of course, and the beloved disciple, who believed though he did not see.

     The beloved disciple believed in the resurrection when he saw the empty tomb, not because he was a mystic or a psychic but because he knew and trusted Jesus. An infant will cry out in fear when his mother leaves her sight, but eventually there comes a day when the mother goes to the next room, out of the infant's sight, and yet the child is not afraid and does not cry. The mother's love has moved from being only an external reality to being an inner certainty. The child now trusts that the mother's absence is not abandonment, but a different expression of love. Just so, when the beloved disciple saw the empty place where his Master had been, when he realized that Jesus was out of his sight, he did not fear abandonment.  Jesus' love had become for him, an inner certainty, and he bet his life on the wager that this absence was another and even higher expression of Jesus' love.

     In John Updike's A Month of Sundays, there’s a parable about how the Christian faith is indeed, an improbable wager on the impossible possibility. In one episode, a group of men are playing a variation of poker. In this game, each person is dealt several cards, some of them on the table face up and the others concealed in the hand.

     In one round, the main character, a man named Thomas, has been dealt a very strong hand, and he decides to bet heavily. As Thomas keeps sweetening the pot and raising the stakes, all of the other players drop out one by one, intimidated by Thomas' hand, that is, all except one player, a stutterer named Fred.

     Curiously, Fred appears to have a poor hand; his cards showing on the table are as quoted in the book, "nondescript garbage." Astonishingly though, he keeps up the betting pace, calling and raising Thomas at every opportunity. Thomas is puzzled since his own hand is a poker player's dream. It isn't absolutely perfect -- he is holding one poor card -- but other than this single little flaw, his hand is virtually unbeatable. Why does Fred keep on betting against such odds? Why doesn't he fold?

     When the time comes to lay down the cards though, Thomas is shocked to discover that Fred has the winning hand. When he compares Fred's hand with his, Thomas realizes that there was only one card in the whole deck that could have made Thomas the loser, and that was the one bad card that Thomas had hidden in his hand. If Thomas had held any other card, he would have won, and won big. In other words, Fred was betting everything -- everything -- on the tiny chance that Thomas held this one losing card. Dumbfounded, Thomas thinks to himself: Fred had stayed in when only one card in the deck could have made my hand a loser to his. Two truths dawned upon me:

     He was crazy. He had won. He had raised the stakes not on a reasonable faith but on a virtual impossibility; and he had been right. "Y-y-y-you didn't feel to me like you had it," he told me, as he raked in his winnings.

     The beloved disciple goes to the tomb and finds it empty. No body, no visions, no explanation. Just a vacant tomb. This is a poor hand, to be sure, and the world has much stronger cards showing. But the beloved disciple wagers everything anyway. He bets his life on a virtual impossibility, that Jesus' absence was the sign of a new and radiant presence, that Jesus had been raised from the dead. There is but one combination of cards that could make him a winner, and he stakes everything on that possibility. Now we know two truths about him: He is crazy -- a fool for Christ -- and he has won. Jesus has indeed been raised from the dead.

     And so we believe today too. Not because of proofs or evidence, but because the beloved disciple knew and trusted Jesus and we do too. The beloved disciple told the story of the empty tomb and the risen Christ to others and they believed it as well. Then they told the story to others, and those others passed this surprising and wonderful news along, down a great chain of believing all the way to us. And we wager everything.

     Clint Tidwell is the pastor of a church in a small southern town, and one of his blessings -- and one of his curses -- is that the 80-year-old owner and still-active editor of the local newspaper is a member of his congregation. The blessing part is that this old journalist believes Tidwell to be one of the finest preachers around, and wishing the whole town to benefit from his sermons, he publishes a summary of Tidwell's Sunday sermon every Monday morning in the paper.

     The curse part is that this newspaperman, though well meaning, is a bit on the strange and eccentric side, and Tidwell is often astonished to read the synopses of his sermons. The man owns the newspaper; nobody dares edit his columns, and the difference between what Tidwell thought he said and what the editor actually heard is often a source of profound amazement and embarrassment to Tidwell.

     Tidwell's deepest amazement and embarrassment, however, came not when the newspaper editor misunderstood the Sunday sermon but to the contrary, when he understood it all too sharply and clearly. It was early on the Monday morning after Easter, and Tidwell, in his bathrobe and slippers, was striding out the carport door to retrieve the Monday newspaper. The paper was lying at the end of the driveway and as Tidwell approached, he could see that the morning headline was in "breaking news" sized type. What could it be? He wondered. Had war broken out somewhere? Had the local bank failed over the weekend? Had a cure for cancer been discovered? As he drew close enough to focus on the headline, he was startled to read the words, "Tidwell Claims Jesus Christ Rose from The Dead."

     A red flush crept up Tidwell's neck. Yes, of course, he had claimed in yesterday's sermon that Christ rose from the dead, but honestly, was that headline news? What would the neighbors think? I mean, you're supposed to say that in church on Easter, aren't you, that Christ rose from the dead, but that's not like saying that some person who died last week had risen from the grave, is it? Suddenly, as he looked at the screaming headline, what had been a routine Easter sermon had Tidwell feeling rather foolish.

     Indeed, it is foolish -- the foolishness of the gospel. Those who gather on this Easter Day to sing and say that "Jesus Christ is Risen Today" do so, not because we have proved anything philosophically, discerned some mystical key to the Scripture, or found some unassailable piece of historical evidence. We believe in the resurrection because the beloved disciple, the forerunner of all Easter faith, believed and passed the word along all the way into the present, prompting frail folks, like Tidwell and like us, to say what we believe: "I believe in Jesus Christ, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, crucified, dead and buried. On the third day he rose from the dead.”

     And we are left wondering…Dare we believe it? Dare we wager everything on it?