"The Outward Journey Begins...RESURRECTION"
- Rev. Bob Thomas
Senior Pastor
New Testament Lesson:
Acts 10: 34-43
the Easter Gospel:
John 20: 1-18
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A harried father trying to meet a work deadline, was forced to take his 5-year old son to the office with him on a Saturday.
Eventually, the little boy tired of all the toys and amusements they’d packed and started pestering his dad for something to do… “I’m bored.” The father grabbed a travel magazine that had a large fold-out map of the world, used scissors to cut it into lots of pieces and spread the pieces on a glass-top table.
“See if you can put all the pieces back together, and when you get finished, it’ll be time to go.”
The boy settled down and began studying the pieces and the father, thinking he had at lease a half-hour before another meltdown, went back in to the office to work.
A few minutes later, the boy was back. “I put all the pieces together,” he announced proudly.
Amazed, and a little skeptical, the father bent to look and sure enough, there was the world, every continent in place. “How did you do that so quickly?” he asked his son, marveling.
“It was simple,” the boy replied, scooting underneath the glass table top. “On the back of the world was a picture of a man. When I put the man together, the whole world fell into place.
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For the past six Sundays we have been on an inward Lenten journey. Today is Easter and our Outward Journey begins with Resurrection. The whole world takes on a new meaning when the man Jesus is put back together. Christ is Risen! He is Risen indeed!
It’s early in the morning, still a little dark. Mary Magdalene makes her way to the tomb of Jesus, perhaps carrying spices to complete the burial ritual. Perhaps she is simply making a visit, trying to recapture a bit of closeness to Jesus, even though death has separated them—or so she thinks. She sees that the stone has been rolled away from the entrance to the tomb. She runs to Peter and says, “The Lord has been taken from the tomb! We don’t know where they have put him!” Peter and John rush to the tomb and see for themselves. Mary lingers at the garden tomb. Jesus appears to her, but at first she doesn’t recognize him. She things he’s the cemetery groundskeeper. The risen Lord, the Son of God, the Savior of the world stands before her, but she sees only a groundskeeper…until He speaks her NAME.
One of the key doctrines of the Christian faith, the resurrection of Jesus is also one of its greatest mysteries. With the rise of new age philosophies and the growth of personal spirituality in our day, the idea of the immortality of the soul is fairly commonly accepted even in the secular world. But there is a world of difference between immortality and resurrection. Immortality is about the soul; resurrection is about the body. Immortality is a pagan theory; resurrection is an article of faith…we affirm in the Apostles’ Creed: “…I believe…in the resurrection of the body.”. Plato wrote a book on immortality; Jesus ROSE FROM THE DEAD!
To appreciate the resurrection we have to know what a human is and what happened when we die. To be human is to be an en-fleshed spirit, a spiritualized body. These are not two separate components welded together to make a unit. We are an organic unit, indivisible.
The body is not an instrument of the sol. The body is how the soul expresses itself in the world. The soul has a happy thought and the mouth smiles; the soul wants to go over there and the feet move it. The body is how we relate with each other. You tongue tells someone about your soulful being; her ears tell her soul what you said. Unless the body is an expression, an extension of the soul, we simply could not relate to each other in the world at large.
The value of our bodies is not their molecules—did you know that our whole molecular body changes every seven years. Your present molecules belonged to something or someone else…It is your body only insofar as it is the physical expression of your soul. All through life, our bodies relate messages tour soul, our soul issues orders to our body. Over the years, this interaction creates a lifetime of experiences that become our personality. We actually become the personal product of all we have thought, said, and done. Then we die.
All of us dies, not just our bodies. Bodies obviously deteriorate and die. But the soul also dies, in a way. It is not annihilated, it stays in existence; but without its body, it can’t function. The disembodied soul cannot smile or sing or speak. With no way to express itself, it is like being in a coma. The Ancient Jews called it an underworld shadow.
Until God resurrects it from the dead! God empowers the soul to reorganize a spiritualized body around itself. Paul called it a glorified body: new realities demand new words, mysterious words. The soul can now smile in a way, eat in a way, speak in a way. In the same way that the resurrected Jesus smiles and ate and spoke.
The new body is not just any body. It is the body that holds in its transformed cells every good experience you ever had on earth. You are finally the complete, perfect you, now dealing directly with God. In whom you experience perfect beauty, goodness and love. In the company of all of your family and friends, who are also God’s friends. Knowing this, who would ever settle for immortality of soul?
This Easter morning the outward journey begins with Resurrection. But in some ways a resurrection is more difficult to deal with than a crucifixion and death. Most of us think of resurrection as something that happens to us after we die, when we are taken into another world. The resurrection of Jesus did not happen in the distant future, did not occur in some other world, it was here and it was now.
When the risen Christ encountered Mary and his disciples, they were not up in heaven; they were in the garden tomb, in the upper room in Jerusalem and at the seaside out in Galilee. They weren’t strumming harps of gold, in the encounter they were pulling their fishing nets. Let me share the third resurrection encounter from John’s Gospel (Read John 21: 3-14)
When the risen Christ encountered Mary and his disciples, they were not up in heaven; they were in the garden tomb, in the upper room in Jerusalem and at the seaside out in Galilee. They weren’t strumming harps of gold, in the encounter they were pulling their fishing nets. Let me share the third resurrection encounter from John’s Gospel...
John 21:3-21
“3Simon Peter said to them, ‘I am going fishing.’ They said to him, ‘We will go with you.’ They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing. 4 Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach; but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. 5Jesus said to them, ‘Children, you have no fish, have you?’ They answered him, ‘No.’ 6He said to them, ‘Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find some.’ So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in because there were so many fish. 7That disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, ‘It is the Lord!’ When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on some clothes, for he was naked, and jumped into the lake. 8But the other disciples came in the boat, dragging the net full of fish, for they were not far from the land, only about a hundred yards off. 9 When they had gone ashore, they saw a charcoal fire there, with fish on it, and bread. 10Jesus said to them, ‘Bring some of the fish that you have just caught.’ 11So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, a hundred and fifty-three of them; and though there were so many, the net was not torn. 12Jesus said to them, ‘Come and have breakfast.’ Now none of the disciples dared to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ because they knew it was the Lord. 13Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish. 14This was now the third time that Jesus appeared to the disciples after he was raised from the dead.”
Think about it: for the disciples the resurrection had moved from the future tense to the PRESENT MOMENT. Here is Jesus, here, now. You can feel the shock that this had on the disciples, reading between the lines. The accounts of the appearance of the risen Christ in the various gospel accounts describe him as looking almost like a ghost, moving through locked doors but still being able to be touched, sitting down at a table…it is almost indescribable. Conventional modes of thought don’t seem to work. The biggest trouble they seem to have with the resurrection of Jesus is that is was right here, right now.
Perhaps that is why we find the disciples back in Galilee fishing…they just needed to go back to the familiar scenes of their lives, the sea, the boats, the homes where they grew up. They aren’t trying to get over the trauma of Jesus’ death…they were trying to deal with the OVERWHELMING mystery of life, eternal life, resurrection right there before them. So they went fishing.
They have fished all night and they have caught absolutely nothing. They don’t like failure. But they can deal with failure. This is the way the world works. The cross fits perfectly into the world’s scheme of things…tragedy is a part of the fabric of existence. You try, you struggle, but death has the last word. Empty nets and empty lives. This may not be a very pretty picture, but at least it is a picture that we can understand. This is the real world. These are the facts of life. Failure and its corresponding deviant, conniving responses is the stuff that makes for great reality TV. It’s all over the airwaves and cable.
But as the sun rises, the fishermen are surprised to look out and see Jesus on the beach. They are a long way from Jesus, about a hundred yards, and they do not recognize him. He calls to them, asking them how their fishing is going. Then he directs them to cast their nets on the other side of the boat. They do and their nets fill with fish.
They pull in nets now bursting with fish. John is the first to see and to cry out, “It is the LORD!” Peter dives into the water and swims to shore. Jesus has prepared a fire, and has made breakfast for them on the beach. He invites them to eat. Once again, Jesus will feed their hungry souls. Because they have eaten from the work of his hand before, surely this helps them recognize him.
But the scene is so ordinary, so everyday, with these seven fishermen squatting around in a circle, and Jesus offering them a breakfast of grilled fish. And yet that is Jesus’ peculiar glory. It is not simply that He was raised from the dead, it is that he appears to us, here and now. He feeds us too. There, in ordinary Galilee, during an ordinary workday, he shared an ordinary meal with his disciples. Here on an ordinary Ester Sunday, we meet the risen Christ, or more to the point of the story and reality, here is where the resurrected Jesus meets us.
The story of the Easter breakfast on the beach does not record any great ethical instruction by Jesus. I can’t find anything there that you are supposed to go and do tomorrow. Rather, I think this story is told to us as a kind of gracious promise about the nature of RESURRECTION. We will go back to Galilee, our homes, resume whatever it was we were doing before we came to this holy place this morning, take up our everyday duties. That is where he promises to meet us. He comes to us, he calls us, feeds us, gathers us, strengthens us, is deeply, undeniably present to us. In so dong, he redeems all of our lives, not just our Easter Sunday lives, but also Easter Monday lives and every day beyond. The glory of Easter is in its wonderful ordinariness. Remember the story about the little boy that I started with? The puzzle map of the world…and his solution: “When you put the man together, the whole world falls into place.” All through Lent we have been on the Inward Journey and it brings us here…the beginning to the outward Journey…”when God put the Jesus back together, the whole world falls into place…We believe in the resurrection of the Body.
Let us pray: Lord Jesus, Christ, in your glorious resurrection, you not only defeated evil and the powers of death but you also came back to us. You revealed yourself to us; you spoke to us; you fed us. For your continuing presence with us, we give thanks. All praise is yours, risen Christ. You came back to us, that we might live with you and for you now and always. You are the Christ. You are the king of Kings. You are the first-fruits of the new harvest. And by faith alone in your precious name, we too shall live. We believe in your resurrection and our own. Thanks be to God.
Amen and Amen.
