We Shall See Jesus (John 20:1-18)

The Reverend Shirley Smith Graham

St. Martin’s Episcopal Church, Williamsburg, VA

March 23, 2008

 

            If we were looking for a full-color, Disney version of Easter, we would have to change our gospel readings.  If we were seeking an entertaining counterpart to Christmas, we’d need something other than the scene that confronts us today.  Because, no matter whether we read the version of the story from John or from Matthew, the bottom line is the same.  The disciples go seeking Jesus’ body in the tomb, and it is not there.  As the angel unglamorously says in Matthew’s version of the gospel: “He is not here” (Matthew 28.6).  This is the good news of Easter?  This is worth the fanfare of trumpets and the cascades of white flowers?  This is the good news of Easter … that “He is not here”?

            And the news isn’t any better in John’s version of the story.  Mary Magdalene, who thinks nothing worse can happen after her Lord is violently crucified, Mary Magdalene then finds that his body is gone.  Isn’t it bad enough that they have taken his life? … and now, to shatter grief with a deeper grief, even his body has been taken away.  So she runs back to town and goes directly to Simon Peter and the other disciple and says to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and I do not know where they have laid him” (John 20.13).  Again we hear the harrowing testimony: “He is not here” (Matthew 28.6).  Panic seizes the two disciples, and they run for what must have seemed like an eternity, their blood pumping, their hearts racing, their imaginations running wild with possibilities.  Would the religious authorities have taken the body away?  But a heavy stone had been rolled against the opening of the tomb.  And too, the stone had been sealed.  And a guard had been posted.  How?  Who?

            The two disciples race each other, running to the tomb.  They reach the cave cut in the rock, and they see the stone rolled, amazingly, away.  They bend down to look in, and they see the linen wrappings lying there.  They go in.  They examine all the linens; they even see the cloth that had been on Jesus head, not lying with the linen wrappings but now rolled up neatly in a separate place, as if someone had unwrapped his head and then, in no particular rush to be going, had carefully rolled the cloth like a bandage and put it aside like a remembrance or a memorial of some grievous event now passed.

            “He is not here.” 

            And, as if this statement were not wild enough, we get the following description, immediately afterward in the Gospel of John: after the disciple whom Jesus loved had bent over, looked into the tomb, examined the funeral wrappings and seen that the body was no longer there, John says, the disciple “saw and believed” (John 20.8).

            The disciple saw and believed.  He saw … what?  Nothing.  Unlike Mary Magdalene, this disciple sees no body, no person, no angel, no Rabbouni … only funeral wrappings.  And seeing nothing, he believes.

This is one of the outrageous and wonder-ful realities of our Christian faith – that our pattern of life is modeled upon a disciple who sees nothing and believes.  It would be thirty to fifty years after this historical moment that the Apostle Paul puts words to this faith reality:  [for] we hope in that which is not seen; hope that is seen is not hope (Romans 8.24).   Even older in our religious imagination is this different way of describing the same: “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2.9).  How could an eye have faith in something if it is not seen?  Yet this disciple, he sees (nothing) and believes.

            What a powerful point of entry for us into the Easter story.  We see nothing.  He is not here.  Yet, the core values of this community of St. Martin’s center on this statement emblazoned on our pulpit: “We would see Jesus.”

Like the disciples who first reach the empty tomb, we are gifted to see nothing, yet we believe.  We believe without seeing that He is here.  It’s a gift of faith, but it’s also a skill that improves with practice.  God entices us to believe in his power even though we do not see him in his incarnate earthly presence.  Even though “he is not here,” nonetheless God is here powerfully at work, enabling us to believe in that which we do not have the comfort of seeing.

            And when you think about it, believing in Jesus, the Lord who is not here, is only the tip of the iceberg of our faith.  The disciple who peeked into the tomb saw nothing and believed that Jesus was raised.  He didn’t understand “the scripture that [Jesus] must rise from the dead,” but, even not understanding, he believed.  Jesus is asking us to be like that disciple -- not only to believe in him, whom we do not see, but also to believe in God’s power, which we do not see. 

Specifically Jesus is asking us to believe in God’s power to forgive us.  I would suggest that, for some of us, even more challenging that believing in a Lord we do not physically see is the task of believing in that Lord’s power to forgive us, to heal us, and to make us whole.  The Lord whom we do not see asks us to believe in a power we do not see: to believe that our sins, our betrayals, our lack of fidelity, that none of these will stop God from loving us and, in fact, that God erases these sins entirely.  Jesus, whom we do not see asks us to believe in a power we do not see – the power of God’s love loving us, even though we are no better morally than the crowds who stood below Pilate and shouted, “Crucify him!”  Jesus asks us to believe that, even though we are like the disciples who did not remain awake to watch with Jesus and even though we routinely neglect the Lord who calls upon us, that nonetheless God persistently awakens us to his presence in our lives.  Jesus asks us to believe that, even though we, like Peter who denied him, allow our attention to stray from God’s work in our lives, that nonetheless God keeps reaching across the table to feed us with the bread of life and satisfy our thirst with the cup of salvation. 

He is not here, yet we who are here are terribly prone to hurt our selves or others.  In the millennia of years of human history, we have not yet learned how not to destroy.  Yet God dares us to believe in what we cannot see, to practice faith – that Jesus is not “exhausted and consumed by the world’s mortal violence (Rowan Williams, “The Risen Body” in Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel).  By our Christian DNA we seem wired to believe in that which we cannot see … such that “he is not here” becomes the beginning of the Good News; such that “he is not here” means that Jesus is not dead but alive; not here but risen.  As we proclaim in our burial liturgy for all those saints who have died and gone before us to the nearer presence of God: “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and giving life to those in the tomb” (Book of Common Prayer p. 483).

            In a real way, the life-task for us as Christians is to learn to believe in that which we do not see; to train our inner sight so that we would see God’s power, so that we would see Jesus.  A story from routine daily life might serve as an example.  After my family’s move to Williamsburg this year, we found ourselves carrying some debt from unexpected expenses.  I had telephoned our credit card company to change our mailing address and found myself talking to a winsome man in Bangladesh.  He was very courteous, and after changing my address in the company’s database he asked me if, ma’am, there was anything else Company X could do for me today, since I was such a valued customer.  Well, I was feeling a little impish that day, so I said what I thought.  Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I said, it would really help me if Company X would reduce the interest rate on my remaining balance.  Now, I must tell you, I expected the man on the other side of the world to laugh at my gusto.  Instead, I was met by a brief pause.  Yes, ma’am, the gentleman in Bangladesh said.  He was not authorized, he said, to answer such a request, but he would be happy to consult with his supervisor if I would be pleased to wait on the line.  Shocked, I was willing to wait on the line – although it did occur to me to wonder if the supervisor of the man halfway across the world in Bangladesh was himself halfway across the world, and therefore closer to me than the gentleman in Bangladesh.  Two minutes went by, and I readied myself for a standard but dismissive response from the customer service manual.  Instead the gentleman from Bangladesh came back on the line and, after apologizing for keeping me waiting, he asked whether it would help me to have the interest rate on my balance reduced to zero?  I managed to keep my composure long enough to say, why yes, zero interest would be lovely.  I had not seen it coming.  I did not know that such a thing was even possible, but even though I hadn’t seen it coming, I found myself willing to believe.

            As I reflected on my credit card story, I realized it stretched me, it opened me up to a new world of possibility to have this happen.  I found it amazing that someone would be willing to suspend my debt for a time, without exacting any penalty for interest on that debt.  How much more amazing then, to have God, in the gift of Jesus, not just wipe away the interest but wipe away the debt, entirely.  We are so conditioned in our culture of necessary debt; households are leveraged to varying degrees, but it is a rare person indeed who isn’t indebted at least for a car or home loan.  We have come to accept that being in debt is a necessary condition of our post-modern lives.  How challenging then to believe in that which we do not see – to believe that in God’s sight we are debt-free?

            God’s challenge to us to believe in that which we do not see is our work for this fifty days of the Easter season.  As an act of grace, Jesus’ death by crucifixion and his rising to life again is God’s demonstration to us that our sins have no power.  In the face of grace, our violence has no effect.  In the face of grace, our destructiveness has no lasting effect.  In God’s sight, our sins have no power over us.  We are utterly free – debt free -- to live the life of God’s freedom, if only we will let God forgive us; if only we will let go of our sins; if only we will allow ourselves to believe in that which we do not see.  And then, because we believe, we shall see Jesus.

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