The Good News
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It’s Easter Sunday, the third day after Jesus’ death on the Cross. The day Jesus Christ has risen from the dead! The bad news hanging over the head of humanity gives way to the good news of Jesus’ Resurrection. It’s an event so momentous it’s hard to know what piece of the good news we should look at first. So before we start thinking through it, we simply praise God: Alleluia. And then, our hearts ask what is the good news here? Well that good news is so much better than simply taking the bad news about sin that we’ve heard throughout Lent and just reversing it. There are so many dimensions to the good news of Christ’s resurrection that there’s no way to exhaustively go through it. We take a whole season to unpack the depth of this historic moment. But I can’t help just firing off a few pieces of this good news. At Jesus’ resurrection we see that God is just. The perfect man who was killed as a criminal is not so much unkilled, his death still happened, but rather he was made alive again because of his righteousness. Or for Mary Magdalene, her teacher and master is not lost after all, but is somehow alive and with her. Or here’s another, at the resurrection, we have proof that Jesus’ death actually did deal with our sin. There are primary colors to celebrate and shades and nuance. The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is the good news of the good news and from here we’ll explore it’s significance and the ripples it has caused and will cause throughout all of creation until creation is made new again at his return.
This morning, since the event of Jesus’ resurrection is Easter Sunday, let’s begin by simply looking together at how it happened. We’re in the Gospel of John. The beginning of chapter 20 starts us off.
1 Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb.
Why do we worship on Sunday? Why is Sunday referred to as the Lord’s Day? Because Jesus rose from the dead on the first day of the week. One of the early church fathers referred to Sunday as the eighth day of creation because a new creation act happens at Jesus’ resurrection. So it’s a Sunday and Mary Magdalene came to the tomb. It’s so early it’s still dark and she saw that the large stone covering the entrance to the tomb was now rolled away.
2 So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”
Scandal, conspiracy, further dishonor. For Mary, the situation with Jesus death had now gotten worse.
So Peter and the other disciple, we are told later is John, they ran and found the cloths that Jesus was wrapped in. Remember this for Advent. This was not the only time Jesus was wrapped in cloths and laid down. Peter goes into the tomb. Verse 8:
8 Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; 9 for as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead.
John tells us that in the moment, he’s standing in the tomb, he sees the burial cloths and his heart believed. It’s a wild moment to peer into. We move inward with John into the empty tomb. We look with John at the cloths that were left. And we move deeper still, into John’s own heart and mind believing that something unheard of, something impossible had been made possible: Jesus was dead, but was now alive again.
The account pivots back to Mary. After everyone else leaves, she’s weeping outside the tomb. And she looks in and sees two angels.
13 They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” 14 Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus. 15 Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”
Why the gardener? The gospel of John is super theological with extended metaphors and spiritual interpretations. Are there other gardeners in the Bible? There was one named Adam. So there’s a bit of a moment with Jesus as the New Adam on the 8th day of creation happening here. But long before this bit of theology develops, we simply see Mary and her love for Jesus, the desire that he would be honored being crushed at the cross was still playing out at his death. She just wanted to weep at the tomb of the one who had loved her so well, who had treated her with such dignity, who had pronounced the forgiveness of her sins. At his death, he clearly had no power to do so. At his death, she and we appeared to be left in our sin, with only Jesus’ well-meaning words to comfort us with the care they convey. But now even they are drown out by the fact that someone took his body away. Maybe it was this gardener who did it.
But then Jesus speaks and we get to see another moment of faith awakening.
16 Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means Teacher).
Mary’s familiar relationship with Jesus floods her heart. Her joy is at least partly in the fact that it’s just like old times, but also a miracle has happened to him. It’s the Jesus that Mary’s known, but he has become even more special. And in that moment her loss is overshadowed in a beautiful moment of love and respect and wonder.
17 Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ ” 18 Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”—and that he had said these things to her.
Jesus is still on mission. He’s headed toward his ascension and while Mary’s embrace is appreciated, he needs his disciples to learn that he’s alive and what is happening next. So he announces his ascension and gets to work making himself known among his disciples.
So Mary gives her testimony of what happened and told the disciples what Jesus instructed her to say.
So that’s what happened on the morning Jesus rose from the dead. You can see the disciples grasping at what it means, apprehending pieces of it. And the meaning from that event explodes in a new big bang of hope and meaning, filling creation, time, and space. But for the disciples, Jesus is alive and that’s all that mattered.
Our little paragraph from Colossians give us our first piece of what it all means for us. He tells us we’ve been raised with Christ. We were dead in our sins, but Jesus paid for them and is now vindicated as righteous. When he died, we died with him so that when he rose, we rose with him. Our relationship to sin and death is changed. And our relationship to God has changed too. Jesus is proven to be God’s son and we get to be God’s adopted children. And so since we’ve been raised with Christ, this affects us. It affects our identity, our priorities, our hearts and our minds. We need to get our thoughts right, out of the things of this world. Out of whatever our obsessions might be and set our minds on things that are above, on Jesus and what he cares about, on the wisdom, truth, and beauty of his holy Word. To take a breath and apprehend something new of Jesus. Not to see our toys and things and even people as our life, but to find our life in him, in his gracious love for us that he proved by dying our death for us and giving us his eternal life. And all we have to do is believe that he died to save us, from punishment over our sin, from the pollution of sin in our hearts, from our self-sabotage and selfishness. He offers us his new life and takes on our sin and death. If that’s not worth setting our hearts and minds on this Easter Sunday, I don’t know what is. So believe in Jesus’ love for you on the Cross and live his eternal life, because of what he accomplished for you, in all it’s fulfillment, on Easter Sunday. Alleluia.
