Four Reactions to an Empty Tomb
Notes
Transcript
[Introduction] In 1969, with much of the world watching on their black and white TV screens, Neil Armstrong became the first person to set foot on the moon. This event was considered by many to be the crown jewel of human achievement and a demonstration of the technological superiority of the USA. All of human history mankind had approached the heavens with reverence and fear, yet here was a mere man leaving the earth and walking among the stars.
But…did it really happen? Forty years later, many people doubt that the first lunar landing, let alone the other missions to the moon, ever took place. To these skeptics, this event was one of the most elaborate hoaxes in human history; a product of the cold war meant only to intimidate our Russian enemy.
If we have video footage of event that took place only 40 years ago, yet people still doubt, what chance does an event have, that took place almost 2000 years ago? Some people are not convinced of the moonwalk because they believe people who claim to be eyewitnesses of the hoax. With the resurrection, we also have several eyewitness accounts that are recorded in a book we call the Bible. Yet today many people doubt that the Bible can be trusted. So, how do we react to the resurrection in an age where not even video footage is conclusive?
When faced with the evidence for or against the Lunar landing, people react very differently. Some people are passionate that it happened. While others are passionate that it didn’t. Some are curious and want to learn more while others simply don’t care. Nevertheless, it is always the reactions of the eyewitnesses that carry the most weight. The biblical passage we’re going to deal with today follows the reactions of 4 eyewitnesses to the empty tomb.
[Scripture] – Please turn with me to John 20
It is interesting that the Bible leaves a record of the reactions of witnesses as opposed to just the facts. John doesn’t just tell us that Jesus was raised from the dead, but tells the story in light of the people who actually lived it. We begin in vs. 1.
[NAU John 20:1 ¶ Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came early to the tomb, while it was still dark, and saw the stone already taken away from the tomb. 2 So she ran and came to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and said to them, "They have taken away the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid Him." 3 So Peter and the other disciple went forth, and they were going to the tomb. 4 The two were running together; and the other disciple ran ahead faster than Peter and came to the tomb first; 5 and stooping and looking in, he saw the linen wrappings lying there; but he did not go in. 6 And so Simon Peter also came, following him, and entered the tomb; and he saw the linen wrappings lying there, 7 and the face-cloth which had been on His head, not lying with the linen wrappings, but rolled up in a place by itself. 8 So the other disciple who had first come to the tomb then also entered, and he saw and believed. 9 For as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that He must rise again from the dead. 10 So the disciples went away again to their own homes. 11 ¶ But Mary was standing outside the tomb weeping; and so, as she wept, she stooped and looked into the tomb; 12and she saw two angels in white sitting, one at the head and one at the feet, where the body of Jesus had been lying. 13And they said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?" She said to them, "Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid Him." 14 When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, and 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." 16 Jesus said to her, "Mary!" She turned and said to Him in Hebrew, "Rabboni!" (which means, Teacher). 17Jesus said to her, "Stop clinging to Me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to My brethren and say to them, 'I ascend to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God.'" 18 Mary Magdalene came, announcing to the disciples, "I have seen the Lord," and that He had said these things to her. 19 ¶ So when it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and when the doors were shut where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, "Peace be with you." 20 And when He had said this, He showed them both His hands and His side. The disciples then rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21So Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you; as the Father has sent Me, I also send you." 22 And when He had said this, He breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 "If you forgive the sins of any, their sins have been forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they have been retained." 24 ¶ But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples were saying to him, "We have seen the Lord!" But he said to them, "Unless I see in His hands the imprint of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe." 26 ¶ After eight days His disciples were again inside, and Thomas with them. Jesus came, the doors having been shut, and stood in their midst and said, "Peace be with you." 27 Then He said to Thomas, "Reach here with your finger, and see My hands; and reach here your hand and put it into My side; and do not be unbelieving, but believing." 28 Thomas answered and said to Him, "My Lord and my God!" 29 Jesus said to him, "Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed."]Let us pray.
In this story, Mary, Peter, John and Thomas are each faced with an empty tomb. Each of them reacts in a different way. Their reactions were based off of emotion; appearance; faith; and in Thomas’s case: a lack of evidence. Each of them reacts in much of the same ways that people might react today when faced with the Gospel. Whether, we acknowledge it or not, each of us, after hearing this message, will react to the empty tomb in our own way.
[Transition] At the beginning of this passage, we meet up with Mary Magdalene as she is on her way to the tomb early Sunday morning. When she arrives, she finds the stone rolled away and the tomb empty.
]Main Point 1] Mary’s reaction is very emotional.
As Mary approached the tomb early that morning, we can assume that she expected to find Jesus’ body just as it had been laid.
[Illustration] Mary was grieving the death of someone very close to her in the same way we would grieve a loved one today. That morning she was compelled to visit His grave much in the same way that we would visit the grave of a person that we miss terribly. Had this event not taken place, she may have continually visited this place in memory of her teacher.
Mary was probably still in complete disbelief that Jesus was actually gone. What was all that talk about a Kingdom and the restoration of Israel to world prominence? How could she make sense of it all? To her horror, as she reached the grave she was overtaken by grief at the sight of an empty tomb where her Lord had been buried. Where was His body? And who would do such a thing?
While often cryptic in His teaching, Jesus had mentioned many times that He would have to die and then be raised again. However, Mary could not understand this. In fact, none of the disciples seem to have been able to comprehend this either. Therefore, through her grief Mary assumed that someone had stolen the body in order to dishonor Him.
[Transition] Mary immediately runs to Peter and John and informs them of what she found. Peter and John race off to see for themselves. Peter enters the tomb first.
[Main Point 2] Upon finding the tomb empty, Peter reacts with curiosity.
There is little said concerning Peter’s reaction to the empty tomb. However, what is immediately noticeable is the total absence of emotion on Peter’s part. Throughout the stories contained in the Gospels, Peter is often portrayed as the disciple with a quick temper who always seems eager to speak his mind. In Matthew 16, Peter is quick to proclaim Jesus as Christ and then even quicker to rebuke Him the moment He speaks of suffering and death. In Matthew 26, Peter is quick to passionately state that he would follow Jesus to death (Though later we learn that Peter denies Jesus 3 times). Again, in John 18, when the soldiers came to arrest Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, Peter reacted by drawing a sword and cutting the ear off of Malchus, the High Priest’s slave.
Yet, when faced with the empty tomb, the angry reaction, which we would have expected, is replaced with a calm, speechless, curiosity. As Peter arrives, he enters the tomb without hesitation. He looks around, taking notice of the curious placement of the burial linens. Perhaps he was trying to figure out why someone would steal a body, yet leave behind what the body was wrapped in. Or perhaps some memory of Jesus’ teaching is beginning to click in his mind. While he does not completely understand, Peter is not far from genuine belief.
[Illustration] In the Washington, DC area, you don’t have to drive very far before you see an accident. We hate accidents because they cause traffic. But there are always those people who can’t help but look at the accident as they drive by. They drive slowly, thus causing more traffic. But I always wonder what they are looking for or hoping to see. Perhaps like Peter they are looking for a dead body. The difference is, when they don’t see one, eventually they move on forgetting about the event. But curiosity concerning an empty tomb eventually led Peter to believe.
[Transition] John’s reaction is much more precise.
[Main Point 3] John reacted to the empty tomb with belief.
While Peter curiously looks around pondering the peculiar scene, the Bible states that John clearly believed almost immediately. Did John understand the complex doctrine of the atonement? Or did he anticipate the foundation of the Church age apart from the Jewish Law? No, vs. 9 clearly states that neither Peter nor John understood the prophecies in scripture that would have led them to a complete understanding of the events taking place at that time. Yet John put his faith in what he knew and that was that Jesus’ body was not there. While Mary thought the body had been taken and Peter may have been curious as to what was actually going on, vs. 8 indicates that John believed that Jesus had been raised from the dead. Beyond that, one can only suspect what John understood.
[Illustration] I love children, because they will believe anything you say; even things that are completely ridiculous. Try telling a three year old that you used to have a pet dinosaur and see what happens. This is because children have not been corrupted by the cynical world that questions everything. Children get corrupted when they are lied to (like too many people talking about pet dinosaurs). When a child is lied to and he find out the truth, he becomes cynical. In this case he grows up and begin to doubt even things that are true. This is why Jesus said that it would take the faith of a child to truly accept God’s kingdom. John put faith in Jesus’ resurrection even though it seemed completely absurd. John had the faith of a child.
[Transition] Thomas, on the other hand, had the faith of a cynic. He was not a witness to the empty tomb but reacts to the empty tomb through his reaction to those who saw Jesus first hand.
[Main Point 4] Thomas reacted to the empty tomb with doubt.
As stated, Thomas didn’t go to the tomb with the others and later when Jesus appeared to the group, Thomas wasn’t there. This leaves us to wonder why. Perhaps after Jesus was crucified, Thomas had decided to give up. Without a king there could be no kingdom. Perhaps Thomas had even determined to move on with the life that, for Jesus, he had put on hold. For Thomas, it was over. Imagine his surprise when the other disciples came to him claiming that Jesus was alive and the tomb had been empty. Of course, we know that, Thomas had his doubts.
Nevertheless, eight days later, perhaps out of curiosity or maybe out of hope, Thomas decided to join together with the others. During this meeting, Thomas would get the proof that he wanted and Jesus, again, appeared to them. Without rebuke, Jesus invites Thomas to put his fingers in the wounds in Jesus’ hands and to put His hand in the wound in Jesus’ side. Without hesitation, Thomas worshipped. When faced with the evidence, Thomas believed.
Through Thomas’s encounter with the risen Christ, we find Scripture that speak directly to us. “Jesus said to him [Thomas], "Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed." Shortly after this, Jesus would leave earth and ascend into heaven. Besides Paul, Jesus would not appear physically to another person. The rest of us are left to take the resurrection on faith. But we are not left without the testimony of many witnesses.
[Conclusion] Today each of us is faced with the same question that these four people faced so long ago. And in many ways, we react to the empty tomb in the same ways. Some get emotional; others are curious about this Jesus fellow; others believe without question; but still more have their doubts. We may wonder why Jesus would confirm His resurrection to the disciples while leaving us to base our belief merely on faith. Regardless, of how each of these four people reacted, in the end, their grief, curiosity, belief, and doubt led them to Jesus. Through them and the many others who put their faith in Jesus at that time and throughout history, Jesus has transformed the world. Whatever, we may believe about the Bible; history testifies that something miraculous happened that empowered a few people to change the course of history.
In 2000, Peter Jennings attempted to investigate the origins of Christianity by trying to find the real Jesus of history. His findings were widely publicized in the critically acclaimed ABC documentary, “The Search for Jesus.” While Jennings, categorically denied the Jesus of the Bible and believed the Gospels were fabricated to authenticate the Church’s superiority, he was at a loss when faced with the resurrection. He could not deny that people believed from the very beginning that Jesus rose from the dead. In the end Jennings humbly concluded that something must have happened. Jennings’s final remarks in the documentary could easily have been spoken by one of the great Christian theologians; Jennings said:
And even the most skeptical of scholars and historians agree on this; in his brief life Jesus of Nazareth probably met and spoke with not more than a few thousand people; He wrote nothing; he commanded no great army; and he spent most of his time with the poor and the outcast; but he had a vision for a just world which was so vivid and moved Him so powerfully that he was willing to die for it and after his death his vision somehow transformed the world. Miraculous!
While I believe that Neil Armstrong did, in fact, walk on the moon, I’m not ready to die for that belief. But those who witnessed Jesus’ resurrection were not only willing to die for that belief, many of them did. The reaction of each of these four people (Mary, Peter, John and Thomas) says something about what it means to be human. However what they did with their reaction is a major testimony to the validity of the resurrection. Their reactions led them to a faith they were willing to die for. History backs up that testimony. Because of their testimony, we can react to the empty grave with faith.
