Unrecognized Victory
Rev. Dr. Michael H. Koplitz
John 20:13
13 And they *said to her, “aWoman, why are you weeping?” She *said to them, “Because bthey 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 *asaw Jesus standing there, and bdid not know that it was Jesus. 15 Jesus *said to her, “aWoman, 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 ain 1Hebrew, “bRabboni!” (which means, Teacher). 1
The resurrection of Jesus from the grave is the most divine sign from the LORD that has ever occurred and will ever occur in human history. However, sometimes we do not think about the full impact of the first Easter morning. Indeed many Christians have come to ignore the remembrance of the event. As a people, we have a cyclic calendar. We celebrate birthdays and anniversaries every year. For example, as the church, we celebrate Easter and Christmas every year.
Why do we do this? It is so the magnificence of the event will be passed down to the next generation. If we did not celebrate Easter every year eventually, the event would be forgotten. It would be lost to the annals of time. The most divine thing God did on Earth cannot be allowed to be lost to history. Easter, like Christmas, needs to be celebrated by Christians for its historical significance. When families gather together at Christmas and exchange gifts, do you think that they are retelling the story of the birth of Christ, which is a divine sign from God? On Easter, do these Christians talk about the empty tomb or about what the Easter bunny left for the kids and grandkids?
Indeed, this is a fair question. The biggest shopping event for merchants is Christmas. The second biggest is, [PAUSE], Easter. Society has taken away the most critical message of Easter and Christmas so that they can make money. What is the church doing to restore the true meaning of Easter and Christmas? Whatever it may be, it is certainly not enough. Attendance for church members at Christmas and Easter has been steadily dropping for the past twenty years.
Do you know that the Easter season lasts for seven weeks? This is the last Sunday of Easter. The resurrection of Christ has given us some of the most tender and human stories, which tell us about God's miracle of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead to life. The walk to Emmaus is a wonderful story about the risen Christ. The risen Christ appeared to His eleven disciples in that upper room in Jerusalem. Certainly, we cannot forget the story of Thomas, who challenged Christ to prove that He was the risen Jesus.
Let us concentrate on today's story. Mary Magdalene traveled to Jesus' tomb on that first Easter morning to say her final goodbyes to Him. She was surprised that the stone in front of the tomb was moved. Jesus' body was not in the tomb. From her point of view, Jesus was dead, and someone had stolen his body. She loved Jesus, who brought her from sin to salvation. She did not recognize Jesus' victory. She was sad that His body was gone. However, He told her that He would rise from the dead three days after His death. She wept over the loss that was not a loss but was a victory.
The risen Christ stood before her. This changed the entire mood of the narrative. She stopped crying and went to worship Him. The three days of weeping and sadness were over. Jesus convinced her that he was alive and standing right in front of her. It was at that moment that she realized that Jesus was victorious over death. Jesus was not defeated by death. Instead, he triumphed over it. Unfortunately, Mary misread the entire story. I think that if anyone of us had witnessed Jesus' death and did not know about Easter, we would have wept in despair with Mary. Instead, she witnessed the greatest of all victories. She came to realize that she did not lose Jesus, but instead, she gained the risen Christ.
As Paul said, God's ways may seem odd and different to us, but we have to place our faith that God did what needed to be done to bring salvation to the world. The risen Christ released all the human constraints that came with a physical body. He could go from place to place almost immediately. Satan could not harass the risen Christ because Jesus' victory over death broke the shackles of Satan's control. The resurrection liberated Jesus so that He could consider doing even more for the peoples of the Earth than He could when He was in human form.
It is easy for us as humans to misconceive God's works. Jesus having to die on a cross so that God would resurrect Him three days later to life is difficult to grasp fully. The mechanics of the process alone is fascinating. We do not know how to resurrect flesh. Once the heart stops and the body shuts down, all of our medical science can not help. Dead becomes dead. In Jesus' case, he died on that cross. A Roman soldier stabbed Him just under the rib cage. His blood flowed out of Him. He did not make any sound or movement when He was stabbed. He was definitely dead.
Theologians have discussed this method of atonement for decades, well actually for centuries. Why did the Son of God have to die in such a manner? That is one of the questions that I will be asking God about, and not very soon, I must add. The secrets of God's ways will be revealed to us in time. Until then, we have to wait and see what's going to happen.
The church has developed over the centuries many doctrines about what the resurrection of Christ is all about. Many of them conflict with each other, while many have gone the way of the dinosaur. What this shows is that the church has been trying to define a divine act in words. The church has tried this many times and has failed. Why do this exercise? Because people want a definitive answer to the question: "What does the resurrection mean?" Since the church has not been able to come up with a sufficient answer, different forms of Christianity have emerged trying to answer the question. At the beginning of the church, the proto-orthodox church did everything it could to surpress any theology different from its own. That power to surpress ended when Martin Luther's thesis about the sin of indulgences was nailed to the door of the church he served.
Today we see people turning away from Jesus, even devout church people. Has the church lost touch with the actual events of Easter? There has to be a reason that people are leaving the mainline churches. Many of these people join independent churches, while many are simply watching the TV evangelist on Sunday morning. It is as if these people have turned their eyes away from the risen Christ and are now staring at the tomb. They seem to believe that Jesus and His ways that He imparted to us are gone. We hear about famous people in our society who claim to be Catholic, Baptist, and even Methodist. They do this proudly and loudly.
Nevertheless, their actions and words are completely opposite of what the church espouses. Therefore, the public sees them as hypocrites. When they see the same thing with their neighbors who claim to be Christian but never attend church, what can they think? They see the hypocrisy, and they too turn away from the church. New converts are baptized in churches where maybe 15% of the sanctuary seating capacity is filled. They learn quickly that apathy in the church is accepted.
Church apathy is the turning away from the risen Christ and back to the tomb. A story develops from church apathy that one does not have to do anything for Jesus beyond saying "I believe." Turning to the risen Christ says that Christ is alive and that the disciple must be alive in Christ. That leads to church attendance and ministry work for Christ. The body of His church needs to turn back to Him. We need to view the work of the risen Christ as our own. To be a true disciple of the risen Christ means to live a life pleasing to God, which includes doing the mission work that Christ sets before us.
We must turn away from the empty tomb, which compels us to say there is nothing we can do for Christianity. Instead, we must turn to the risen Christ and do everything possible for Him.
I urge you to ask what you can do for the risen Christ? Then, once you know what that is, go out and do it. If you are already serving the risen Christ, I know that His love and grace will always be with you.
