Are You Expereinced?

Scripture

John 20:1–18 NRSV

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. 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.” Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes. But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. 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.” When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” 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.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because 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.’ ” Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her.

John

Introduction

I know there are a number of you who were really looking forward to the series on the will of God. I will preach that series starting on Feb. 16 so stay tuned.

So why have I delayed this? Your Leadership Team met last weekend. We used a new process to plan for the year which involved a lot more prayer and contemplation to discern God’s will for McEver Church this year.

So why

Part of our preperation was to read a book by Michael Slaughter called: “Unlearning Church.” It is a book about how churches need to change in the 21st century to remain relevant. In the book Mike writes that people today are not so interested in leaning about God, but wanting to experience God. This is why so many young folks today do not attend worship but will participate in any activity in which God can be experienced, especially in service.

Mike says the goal of the church is still the great commission:

Matthew 28:19–20 NRSV

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

But, he say we need to do this by connecting people to an authentic experience of God in this world.

UnLearning Church: New Edition Born to Be Wild

We are literally the body of Christ on earth, where people come and experience love, acceptance, forgiveness, freedom from fear, release from guilt and discouragement, delivery from loneliness, and empowerment for living.

God led us to discover that from of our vision of making disciples:

Loving Christ. Loving People.Helping People Love Christ

That the last phrase, Helping People Love Christ is where we need to do the most work.

In doing more research on this I have discovered that faith development in the ancient church was experientially based not information based. One example of this is that people were baptized and then were taught what baptism meant. You will learn more about this as we go on. Also you will be seeing videos over the next several weeks of how people experience God in service. The you will see videos throughout the year on how people are experiencing God in their lives.

Finally let me say this, we are a missional church. That is our church is focused on serving and creating community. The ancient churches were too.

“The model for the missional church differs from mass evangelism and from seeker evangelism because missional evangelism locates the focal point of evangelism in a community of people who embody in their lives the message and reality of the Christian faith. Let me explain. In modern forms of evangelism, the faith is primarily verbalized and communicated directly. For example, an evangelist will proclaim the Good News in a rally, or one-on-one evangelism will have as its goal explaining the gospel in a simple format such as the Four Spiritual Laws. The seeker church provides time and anonymity to consider the message. The missional church, on the other hand, evangelizes primarily by immersing the unchurched in the experience of community. In this community they see, hear, and feel the reality of the faith or “catch” the faith. The social context of the neighborhood community is that of extended family and friends. According to recent statistics, 79 percent of people who convert and enter into the church do so because of personal contact with a relative or friend.”… Robert Webber

For us the focus is not quantity as the old seeker model strived for, it’s quality. So if experience of Christ in our lives and in community is needed

“How do we provide opportunities to connect all God’s children to experience God?”

Answering this question and providing those opportunities is our focus for 2020. This will effect everything we do from our building design to Wednesday night dinners.

Exegesis

Today we are looking at experiencing the risen Christ.

Webster defines this kind of experience as a direct observation of or participation in events as a knowledge or the fact or state of having been affected by or gained knowledge through direct observation or participation.

In other words experience precedes reflection. Let’s unpack this story we know oh so well and see what we can learn.

Mary comes to the garden tomb early Sunday morning after the sabbath. Doesn't say anything about spices in John’s story for Nicodemus bought over 100lbs of spices and ointment to prepare Jesus body for burial. She is going because it was customary for families to visit the graves of the deceased for up to three days after entombment. They believed the soul or the spirit of a person hung around for three days after death but then left because the body became unrecognizable because of decay.

Mary is going there to grieve the loss of the master. But when she arrives not only is she grieving death, but she is grieving the fact that she believes someone (s) had stolen Jesus body. She makes this assumption because the stone is rolled back, but at this point, she never enters the tomb.

She runs to tell Peter and the other disciple (that I will refer to as John, even though he’s never referred to as that in the gospel). They run to the tomb. John get’s there first but Peter enters. Where it says they saw the linen wrappings. This Greek word for saw is really closer to behold or observe. It is more than just saw, they are really thinking on this in an adrenaline fueled state.

The description of the linens make it obvious that no one stole the body. They would have never taken the time to fold the linens so. They would have gone with the body.

Peter leaves perplexed, but John believes. We have no idea really what he believes. John Wesley and some of the ancient Fathers such as Augustine think that belief is like Mary’s belief that the body has been stolen! Because the verse right after that says

John 20:9 NRSV

for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.

They go back home walking right by Mary as she is distraught and crying outside the entrance. Ain’t that just like a guy, we can only focus on one thing at a time! They were focused on that empty tomb!

Now Mary decided to look in. Behold! 2 Angels! They ask her why she is crying. As she tells them Jesus comes up behind her. The angels most likely see Jesus, that is why they say no more. She must have noticed from the angels that there was someone behind her. She turns and doesn’t realize its Jesus. I mean people do not come back from the dead, right? Easy to see how she could think Jesus is the gardener. But when Jesus says her name wow! What an experience that must have been! She has gone from total despair to total hope in nano seconds. What an emotional ride!

and doesn;t realize its Jesus.

She must have hugged him or his feet as reported in the other 3 gospels because he says not to hold on he hasn’t ascended yet.Nobody knows what is meant by this. For in a few verses Thomas will touch Jesus.

The the best line of this whole story, Mary goes back to the disciples and says “I have seen the Lord.”

Application

We have the prime example of experience preceeding reflection. Mary has experienced the risen Christ. She has seen the Lord, but “as yet they did not understand the scripture, the he must rise from the dead.” Soon, that evening, Jesus will be among the disciples. But they still did not understand the scriptures.

The experience of the risen Christ came first. “I have seen the Lord.” We do it the other way around now, and shouldn’t. The experience of the risen Christ is what a disbelieving world wants. William Barclay makes a great observation of this:

We can neither understand Jesus nor help others to understand him, unless we take our hearts to him as well as our minds. William Barclay

I have heard said for a number of years that the longest journey is from here to here. That is because we have had it backwards, because it should be from here to here, and I believe as the early church did and that’s the best road to travel.

It is important that we see or experience the risen Christ in us and each other. Come and see is what discipleship is all about as we will see next week. The disciples learned by direct observation of Jesus before anything else. Even in Luke the shepherds “come and see.”

We have to look for Jesus. We have to be aware of Jesus. God is an incarnational God and Jesus is the incarnation of that God. God is in the everyday ordinary events. Mary has to turn to look, when she does she can say “I have seen the Lord.”

I do not know how resurrection works, but seeing Jesus, experiencing Jesus is way more important than solving the mystery of the empty tomb. The tomb is history. It is the living, risen, resurrected Jesus that matters. In other words, Mary has actually discovered a deeper meaning of the empty tomb, through her experience, even though she has no idea the larger biblical and theological context in which her experience has taken place. In other words she knows, as one person wrote, “Jesus is alive but has no idea about the scripture that made this event inevitable.”

I like how this scholar puts it:

Jesus is not an idea whose ongoing validity finds a home in our ideas or our ethics. Jesus is a person—he is God incarnate in human history—and in coming into history, he has left marks that we can see and measure and trust.

In other words Jesus is very real, and very much alive in the world today. He is alive in the community of believers who need to help others experience this risen Jesus. We have to show people that we have seen the Lord. They do not care about doctrine, or theology, or even the Bible at this point. What they care about is the experience of Jesus in our lives to see if that experience is relevent to their lives!

The gospel is better caught than taught.

One person put it this way:

“I became a Christian sitting in a pew, experiencing worship. It wasn’t the sermon that did it. No one presented me with the plan of salvation or led me in a prayer of commitment (though that did come later). I simply basked in the presence of God as the worship service progressed around me, and when I left the church I knew that God had entered my life. He was alive. I had encountered Him. That day I was born in the Spirit.”

Robert Webber comments: “The experience of conversion is not dependent on an invitation at the end of the service. Rather, it happens because the unchurched are in church as a result of relationships in which they see faith embodied. Through an association with authentic [conforming to an original so as to reproduce essential features] Christians, truth is assimilated. At some point the Christian faith is internalized and a personal commitment to Christ as Lord and Savior is made public. This may happen in a direct moment of decision within worship or with a friend, or conversion may be more gradual and dawn on a person who wakes up one day to exclaim, “I’m a Christian!”

conforming to an original so as to reproduce essential features Christians, truth is assimilated. At some point the Christian faith is internalized and a personal commitment to Christ as Lord and Savior is made public. This may happen in a direct moment of decision within worship or with a friend, or conversion may be more gradual and dawn on a person who wakes up one day to exclaim, “I’m a Christian!”

Steve Thompson Story

Here’s the point, you can’t help someone experience the risen Christ if you haven’t experienced him. Our problem is we become preoccupied with the wrong things like Peter and John’s preoccupation with the empty tomb. We need to turn around like Mary and then we can share our experience with others: “I have seen the Lord.”