Easter Day C
John 20:1-18
April 11, 2004

“Three Little Words”

Dear Christian Friends; Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and from our risen Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen

My message to you this morning is brief, In fact, it is only three words: Christ Is Risen! Christ Is Risen—three little words that are the heart and the foundation of our faith. Christ Is Risen—three words that changed the disciples. Three words that changed our perceptions of life and death. Three words that changed the whole world. Christ Is Risen!

Each of us has come here this morning with a sense of anticipation and longing. There are sobering questions on our minds, and much hangs in the balance. Is there hope? Is there new life? Is there reason for joy? We know that it is a fact of life that life doesn’t go on forever. There is death. There is no military victory, no medical cure that can take that fact away. Each of us must face our own mortality, and as we do, we face the ultimate questions in life. We want reassurance, evidence, proof that our belief in the Resurrection is not in vain. We proclaim that Christ Is Risen, but how do we really know it happened? How do we know that somebody didn’t just make it up?

Ultimately, our belief in the Resurrection is based on faith, not on proof. There is no way that you can prove the Resurrection to someone who doesn’t believe in it, just as there is no way that you can convince a believer that it didn’t happen. So while there is no proof, there is definitive evidence for the Resurrection that can be useful to believers and non-believers alike. Over the years, six arguments for the truth of the Resurrection have been made. I’d like to share them with you this morning.

Number One: The disciples could never have believed in the Resurrection without it being true. It is not the kind of a story that anyone could have made up. It would never have occurred to their First Century Jewish minds that someone could die, lay in a tomb for three days, and then rise again. In order for the disciples to talk about the Resurrection, they must have experienced it as an historical reality, not just as a metaphorical story.

Number Two: Following the Resurrection, the disciples, who had abandoned Jesus at his death, got back together and founded the Church. Remember what they did on the night of the Last Supper and on Good Friday? When it looked like their faith in Jesus had been misplaced, the disciples scattered, in fear for their own lives. Some of them even went back to their old jobs as fishermen. They thought it was over. But after the risen Jesus appeared to them, they reunited. They returned to being his disciples. Why? Only the Resurrection would have given them the conviction to get back together. They lost their businesses, their reputations, their families, their personal well-being, and even their lives when they testified that they ate and drank with Jesus after he rose from the dead. Other than the Resurrection itself, can you think of another reasonable explanation as to why they would make this claim?

Number Three: The Gospels report that the empty tomb was discovered by women. That might not seem like a big deal here in the Twenty-first Century, but in the First Century, women were on the bottom rung of society. Their testimony was considered worthless. If you wanted to make up a believable story at that time, you’d have men discover that Jesus was risen, and write it down that way. But that’s not what the Gospels say, and we take the discovery of the empty tomb by women as evidence that it is reported as it actually happened, and that it actually happened.

Number Four: St. Paul’s testimony supports the fact of the empty tomb. Paul was a respected member of the Jewish community, trained as a Pharisee. But Paul claims that he encountered the risen Christ. In his New Testament letters, Paul writes that “he was buried” and “he was raised.” Paul isn’t talking about a spiritual or metaphorical death and rebirth. Paul is all about the body. So other than the Resurrection itself, what reasonable explanation can you think of that would cause and important, influential, intelligent man like Saul of Tarsus to change his beliefs and jeopardize his life and freedom?

Number Five: The story of the empty tomb was part of the Church’s tradition long before the Gospels were written. Mark was the first to write down a long-standing and well-known oral tradition about forty years after the first eye-witnesses reported it. Plenty of people already knew the story, and so the Gospel writers couldn’t take much liberty with it. In other words, they weren’t making it up.

And finally, Number Six: The story of the Resurrection as recorded in the Gospels is very simple, and lacks legendary development. It’s kind of like a Reader’s Digest Condensed Book, which gives enough of the plot so that you can follow the story, but omits the details that would make for a full narrative. That’s why filmmakers have to fill in the details from their own imaginations. The Gospel writers didn’t do that. They recorded what had been handed down to them. And it is enough.

If you need proof or evidence, this is what can be offered. After this, it is a matter of faith. But I doubt than any of you really needed convincing, anyway.

We come here this morning with a sense of anticipation and longing. There are sobering questions on our minds, and much hangs in the balance. Is there hope? Is there new life? Is there reason for joy? These ultimate questions can be answered in three little words, which sum up the heart and the foundation of our faith. Three little words that changed the disciples. Three little words that changed our perception of life and death. Three little words that changed the world:

Christ Is Risen!

He Is Risen Indeed!

Alleluia! AMEN

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