Anchored: An Unbelievable Morning

Introduction

Luke 24:1–12 ESV

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel. And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.” And they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb they told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles, but these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter rose and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; and he went home marveling at what had happened.

On this past Wednesday, April 1, NASA launched the Artimis II Moon Mission. Four astronauts, three Americans and one Canadian make up the crew that is journeying on this 10 day mission that will make them the first people to see the far side of the moon over 250,000 miles from the earth.

As they raced through the low point of their elliptical orbit around the earth, Jeremy Hansen, the Canadian astronaut, was responsible for closely monitoring the “trans-lunar injection (the TLI),” which was the make-or-break engine firing necessary to adding over 850 mph of additional speed to their orbital velocity.

When the burn was complete, Hansen radioed Mission Control in Houston to say that they had integrity in the burn. Then he said this,

"Just wanted to share a little bit of the sentiment up here as we came around the planet and were zooming over just a hundred nautical miles above it, if you've got a moment."

"Please, Jeremy, we're all ears," mission control replied.

"Well, with that successful TLI, the crew's feeling pretty good up here on our way to the moon," Hansen replied. "We just wanted to communicate to everyone around the planet who's worked to make Artemis possible that we firmly felt the power of your perseverance during every second of that burn. Humanity has once again shown what we are capable of, and it's your hopes for the future that carry us now on this journey around the moon."

Those are powerful and inspiring words. “It’s your hopes for the future that carry us on this journey around the moon.” We are on this mission motivated by hopes that everyone around the planet holds for the future.

Afterward, the four astronauts gave a live interview to an ABC reporter. The reporter said,

I truly cannot believe that you are quite quite literally on the way to the moon right now and still speaking with us. Tell me how do you feel? What’s going through your mind? I mean, this must be so incredible. Have you allowed the weight of the moment to really really fit in here? Have you allowed that to happen?

Commander Reid Wiseman replied,

Well first and foremost we all wanted to give a shout out to our family first because we are pretty far from earth and we have not gotten to say hi to them yet.

Then he said,

But there was a moment about an hour ago where Mission control Houston reoriented our spacecraft as the sun was setting behind the Earth, and I don’t know what we all expected to see at that moment, but you could see the entire globe from pole to pole. You could see Africa, Europe, and if you look really close, you could see the northern lights. It was the most spectacular moment, and it paused all of us in our tracks.

They were nodding in agreement when Commander Wiseman said that was the most spectacular moment. I immediately thought of King David’s words in Psalm 19:1

Psalm 19:1 ESV

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.

But, even more, when I consider this combination of awe that the astronauts experienced when viewing the earth from space, together with the sense of responsibility they feel to carry the future hopes of people around the world on this mission, I ask, “Who is sufficient for these things?”

As capable as people are - and this lunar mission is a clear demonstration of the extraordinary capacity of human beings - in spite of our capacity, no one or group of us is really able to carry humanity’s hopes for the future to a successful outcome. Their 10 day mission may be a successful one, but when they splash down in the waters of the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California, war will still be raging in Iran. The celebrating we will rightly do upon their return will be mixed with the hard realities that still exist in this life.

Here is a primary and necessary thing for us to grasp on this Resurrection Sunday, there is only one who is capable of holding the future hopes of humanity in his hands and bringing those hopes to a successful outcome. It is none other than Jesus Christ, the one who rose victoriously from the dead. And just like those astronauts marveled in awe as they gazed at the earth from space, we are meant to not only rejoice in the resurrection, but to marvel at it. 

I have been sharing with you in my devotionals this week, that Holy Week is the week that changed the world. Well, today is the day that changed the world. It is, as one writer put it,

The Message of Luke The First Day of the Week (24:1–53)

It was the first day of a new era, a new creation. A whole new world was coming into being on that first Christian Sunday.

And what we find from our text is that no one expected it. No one anticipated it. No one believed that it would happen. This was the truth 2,000 years ago, and it’s the truth today. There is nothing in us naturally that prepares us to deal with the resurrection of Jesus Christ. These 12 verses in Luke 24 are centered around the empty tomb. We hear five emotional responses - perplexity, fear, clarity, unbelief, and amazement. This clarity right at the center only came with divine revelation. And it is still the case for us this morning that clarity around the reality and significance of Jesus’s resurrection only comes by way of divine revelation. My prayer for us this morning is that no one will leave this place this morning without the assurance that Jesus Christ rose from the dead for you. And that, because of this, he is able to hold all of your hopes in his gracious and loving hands. What remains for you and I is to give those hopes over to him in faith.

We’re going to work through our passage this morning with three points: A Devoted Return, A Divine Revelation, and A Disbelieving Response.

A Devoted Return

It is the crack of dawn, we’re told in v. 1, the day after the Sabbath. It’s the first day of the week, but for the women in our passage, it is still a time of mourning. We hear names of specific women in v. 10. As Jesus hung on the cross, gasping for breath, dying; as he cried out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit”; and as the crowds who had assembled for this spectacle returned home beating their breasts; Luke says in 23:49 that the women who had followed Jesus from Galilee stood at a distance watching these things.

They had watched him die. They followed Joseph of Arimathea as he took Jesus’ body down from the cross and lay it in the tomb. But something remained to be done. His dead body needed to be embalmed with spices. So they went home and prepared the spices. And as devout Jewish women, because the Sabbath was upon them, they rested. But I don’t know how well they rested from their works on that Sabbath day. I would imagine that it was a Sabbath like no other Sabbath they had ever lived through. I imagine that the thought and the imagery of Jesus’s dying in anguish on the cross, dying the death of one who is cursed, weighed heavily on their minds that day. So much so, that as soon as the Sabbath was over, bright early in the morning, they were compelled by their devotion to him to return to that tomb, carrying the spices they had prepared immediately after his death. They didn’t know how they were going to get to the body, for the entrance to the tomb had been closed with a great stone. Not only that, but imagine how you would have been preparing yourself to see his body up close. How deformed would his face be from the beating he took at the hands of the Roman soldiers? How would they respond to seeing the scars and holes in his head from the crown of thorns that had been pressed down upon his head. Would they be able to keep it together when they saw his back; when they saw mangled flesh on his back - not just from the Roman scourging, but from the continued tearing he experienced every time he would push himself up by his nail-pierced feet to gasp for breath? They were not going to encounter the body of someone who died a peaceful, quiet death. What they were preparing to encounter was going to be a most gruesome scene.

Nevertheless, they had to go to the tomb.

What compelled this devotion? What was it about Jesus that led them to take this almost non-sensible action? They knew that

Jesus had died an undeserving death. They knew that what they had witnessed was a murder. But here’s what else they knew, and what may have been a driving force for their devotion. They knew that as women in a male dominated culture in which they had little rights, in which their words, their testimonies, and very lives meant next to nothing, they knew that this Jesus had elevated them to a place of respect and dignity. In following him they knew that they began to feel as if they too had been made in the image of God. And so, as everyone ran, they still followed and had to go to the tomb. Here’s what happens when people encounter the real Jesus. Yes, your sinfulness is revealed, which humbles you. But your dignity is elevated. When people encounter Jesus, they know that they are seen. They know that they are loved. They know that they are valued in spite of how others view them. These women had that experience.

However, in their sorrow, as disciples before this day, ultimately they knew him as a good teacher. They knew him as a miracle worker. They knew him as a faithful Rabbi who taught with authority; one who was obviously from God because of the great miracles he performed. In other words, they knew him in the way that many will acknowledge him today. You’ll still find many people who will acknowledge that Jesus was good teacher. They will even acknowledge that he was a great prophet sent from God. They will acknowledge that he was a guru whose teachings are worthy of following. People are generally OK with Jesus if the Gospel can be reduced to simple moral and ethical instructions that guide us in how we ought to live. But that’s not the Gospel! Was Jesus a good teacher? The best. Was Jesus a great prophet? The supreme prophet. Are Jesus’ instructions worth following? You’d better believe it. But what these devout women are about to find out, is that the crown and jewel of the Gospel is not in the moral instruction, but it is in the fact that the Father accepted the sacrifice of the Son and the proof of that is that he raised him from the dead. The crown and jewel of the Gospel is that what humanity needed was not simple instructions on how to follow God, how to find their way. Someone developed a pithy acronym for the Bible. I used to hear it said that the B I B L E was God’s Basic…NO. The Scriptures are not principally about moral instruction. The Bible is about Jesus Christ and the salvation that he brought. Humanity did not and does not simply need instructions on how to live. We needed and need a big miracle, something that we could not do by ourselves. And the women are about to come face to face with that miracle.

The women get to the tomb and they are absolutely perplexed. Nothing is as they expected. Luke dramatizes this for us by telling us what they found and what they didn’t find. They found the stone rolled away and the tomb open. And they are not thinking resurrection. Their response to the open tomb is not joy. Their sorrow doesn’t turn to gladness.  Why would it? The best they could hope for was to get to Jesus’ dead body and embalm it with the spices they had brought. But Luke says that when they went in they didn’t find the body. The only thing inside of the tomb were the grave clothes that had been wrapped around his dead body. 

Understand the perplexity that they felt. In the first part of v.4 Luke says that they were at a complete loss concerning this thing. Nothing that they had ever experienced prepared them for this. They did not understand what was going on. They had no explanation. And that theme runs throughout this last chapter of Luke’s Gospel. No one understood that suffering preceded glory. Not these women, not Peter, not the disciples on the road to Emmaus (next week). Nobody. Nobody grasped in their heart and mind that the suffering of Christ was not the end. I like the way Eugene Peterson puts it in his book, Living the Resurrection, 

Living the Resurrection: The Risen Christ in Everyday Life The Nature of Wonder

Two of our primary ways of dealing with reality are by understanding and by using. Understanding takes a new item of experience or information and makes sense of it by fitting it into all the other things we already know. Using tests out the new experience or information in the actual routines of what can be or has to be done. But this resurrection is inaccessible to either of these. Understanding and using are displaced by sheer wonder, astonishment, amazement—first by the women and then by Peter, who was just as stumped by what he was dealing with as were the women.

We, like these women, don’t have a place to fit it into our grid. When we’re confronted with the reality of the resurrection a natural response is perplexity, lack of understanding. What we need is for the natural perplexity that is ours when confronted with the resurrection of Jesus Christ to be replaced by clarity that only his Spirit can give. Not clarity to understand how Jesus got up from the grave, for none of the Gospels tell us that. They don’t tell us how God raised him from the dead, but may God give us the clarity to understand and believe why he raised Jesus from the dead.

A Divine Revelation

Their devoted return puts them in a place to receive a divine revelation. The divine revelation, the supernatural clarity that comes through the resurrection is the unfathomable fact that suffering and glory were inextricably tied together in the person and work of Jesus Christ. 

In the middle of their perplexity, as they are unsuccessfully trying to process what’s going on, they are shaken by the appearance of two angels in dazzling apparel. And they are terrified. Perplexity has been overtaken by fear. They are no longer asking what happened here. Just like Zechariah and Mary respond in fear to the presence of the angel Gabriel in the first chapter of Luke’s Gospel, here in the last chapter these women are overwhelmed by the presence of the holy, and they fall on their faces. But just like God’s messenger Gabriel in chapter 1, these angels have a message of comfort for the women.

Why do you seek the living among the dead? Why do you think that you’d find him here? The God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living. And you should have known that he wouldn’t be here. Remember, they say, and that ‘remember’ is an imperative. This is not a question. They’re not saying, don’t you remember what he told you. They are compelling them to remember his words. It was necessary for the Son of Man to be given over into the hands of sinful men, and to be crucified. And on the third day rise. He told you this. Didn’t you understand that?! The answer, of course, is no. But here’s the point. Verse 8 says then they remembered his words. The light came on. Divine revelation is necessary before the light will come on. If that was so for those who walked and talked with Jesus, how much more is it for us today?

Why are you looking for the living where you only find the dead? This is why divine revelation is necessary. One thing that we know how to do well is look for life where life cannot be found. What do I mean? Part of our striving as human beings is to do all that we know how to do to live as long as possible and as well as possible. Divine revelation of the resurrection is necessary because we’re looking for life in all the wrong places. We put all of the eggs of our hopes for life in the baskets of physical health and well-being, of our work and accomplishments, of our technological and scientific breakthroughs, of things the Bible calls idols, even if they seem to be spiritual. But here’s the deal. Things fall apart. Our bodies fall apart. Our jobs disappoint us. Technology fails us as an ultimate source of hope and life. And when you and I are deceived into thinking that we can put our ultimate hopes into these things, we are looking for life among the dead.

There are wonders in this world, but there is no wonder like the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Because that’s the thing that brings true life to you and I such that we can find ourselves, as Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4, afflicted but not crushed, perplexed but not driven to despair, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed. Resurrection life is true life.

A Disbelieving Response

The women believe. Their eyes have been opened and their hearts enlightened. And they return to the eleven apostles and the rest of the disciples who were gathered. And these women report everything that happened. Just so we get the impact of what’s going on here, Luke repeats the fact that they reported everything they had just experienced

Luke 24:9–10 ESV

and returning from the tomb they told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles,

What was the response of the apostles and the rest of the disciples? What was the response of the 11 apostles whom Jesus had called specifically to himself after praying all night? What was the response of those who had heard his preaching and seen his miracles for the past three years? It was a disbelieving response. Are you wrestling with belief? Are you struggling to embrace the reality of the resurrection? You’re not alone. Luke says that the report of the women seemed to them to be like idle chatter. Their report seemed like nonsence. Let’s be plain. They thought these women were lying! They did not believe them. In fact, v.11 says that the refused to believe them. You can give reasoned proofs and arguments for the resurrection till you’re blue in the face. But those reasoned proofs and arguments of themselves are not enough to convince people of its truth. The human heart is hard. The human mind is fallen. It refuses to believe. 

John 5:39–40 ESV

You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.

Belief requires more than reasoned arguments. I didn’t say don’t make reasoned arguments. Always be ready to give a defense for the hope that lies within you with gentleness and respect Peter says (1 Peter 3:15). But what is required is the work of God to open the eyes, change the heart, and renew the mind that people might believe. 

You have to love the fact that God does not give us a sugar-coated story in Scripture. The apostles here are not presented as super-saints. They are not presented here as full of faith, standing firm in the truth of the Gospel. They refuse to believe. This morning is unbelievable even for them. They are not in need of some simple moral instruction. Just like for you and for me, for your cousin, for your child, for your neighbor, for your parent, for your co-worker, for every human being, they are in need of the gift of faith to be given to them. When do we see the disciples and the apostles believe?

Luke 24:30–31 ESV

When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight.

Luke 24:45 ESV

Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures,

They didn’t open their own eyes in v.31, and they didn’t open their own minds in v.45. And neither do we. And that’s why we cry out to the Lord. That’s why Christians spend time repenting for our lack of faith and calling out to God for his Spirit to be at work in us and through us serving and transforming people around us. We are desperate for Jesus. We need him to be at work opening eyes and opening minds to the truth and glory of his resurrection.

Even the picture Luke gives us of Peter in v.12 is not one of a full apprehension of what has occurred.

Luke 24:12 ESV

But Peter rose and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; and he went home marveling at what had happened.

He doesn’t have the insight that the women do. But Peter does not respond in absolute disbelief. Maybe it’s because he’s seen Jesus’ word come to pass in his recent experience with exact precision. Jesus told him during the Passover meal that before the rooster crowed he would deny Jesus three times. You remember, Peter said, not me Lord! I’m ready to go with you to prison and death. And it’s not hard for me to imagine that as Peter hears the women’s report, in the back of his mind is his third denial of knowing Jesus, the sound of the rooster crowing, and the piercing of his soul as Jesus looked at him. Back in Luke 22:61, Luke says that at that moment Peter remembered the saying of the Lord. So, as the women report that the angels told them to remember Jesus’ words, and they remembered, it may be that Peter remembers Jesus’s words coming to pass in his own life. 

I love the fact that our passage ends on a cliffhanger. It’s not going remain a cliffhanger for long because we have the rest of the chapter next week. And we can look at the book of Acts to find Peter boldly preaching resurrection life in Jesus Christ even to his own harm. Peter is the one who will tell the church in 1Pe3.15

1 Peter 3:15 ESV

but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect,

I love that his first response to the empty tomb is to marvel at what had happened.

Because, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is perplexing and unbelievable. But more than that it is marvelous. And it cries out for that response from every one of us. You will not believe unless you marvel at what God has done for you. You will not believe unless you marvel at the beautiful truth that Jesus’s resurrection is the victory of God over death. It is God’s conquest over all of the corruption, injustice, pain, heartache, and suffering that permeates this world and that resides in your own heart. And when you believe, the resurrection still cries out for us to marvel. It’s brightness never fades. There is no diminishing of the glory of the resurrection.

The title of our sermon series through Luke is, Anchored, and the subtitle is, A Sure Hope in Uncertain Times. This is what Luke has been building toward. The sure hope of the Christian faith is rooted in the resurrection. In his book Surprised by Hope, this is what N.T. Wright says about the surprising character of early Christian hope,

Surprised by Hope 3. The Surprising Character of Early Christian Hope

the early Christian future hope centered firmly on resurrection. The first Christians did not simply believe in ‘life after death’; they virtually never speak simply of ‘going to heaven when they died’

What this hope looks forward to is

Surprised by Hope 3. The Surprising Character of Early Christian Hope

a new bodily existence in a newly remade world.

What does that hope mean. It means this, as my friend Pastor Scotty Smith reminded me this morning, “Because Jesus has risen, living hope claims today and defines our future. Peace not panic is our daily bread. Worship not worry is the air we breathe. “In Christ ”not “stressed out” is our current and permanent address. On mission not “checked out” is how we live. Hallelujah!

Those astronauts on the Artemis II lunar mission are marveling at what their eyes are beholding. They were interviewed again yesterday. This time by NBC. Astronaut “Hansen said the flight so far has been emotional, full of joy, happiness and disbelief.” Then he said, “Right away, you are humbled. The fact that four of us get to be out here just brings you to your knees.”

I have no doubt that he’s right. May it be for us that the glory of the resurrection always elicits the same response from you and I.