First Presbyterian Church

First Presbyterian Church

Rev. Sam Pendergrast

March 23, 2008 – Easter

John 20:1-18

 

 

“Why Are You Weeping?”

 

The Christian community to which the Gospel of John was written had plenty of reason to weep. The work of those who study the origin of Biblical texts concludes that this gospel was written more or less in the form we have it now between 90 and 100 AD. By that time several major events had occurred that had a profound effect upon the young Christian church.

• A generation earlier, between the years 64 and 68, Christians were persecuted during the reign of the Emperor Nero. At that time the followers of Jesus came face to face with the paradox to which Jesus referred when he said, “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.”
• The church began to struggle with how to deal with believers who renounced their faith to avoid martyrdom. Could they be forgiven and allowed back into the church?
• In AD 70 the Romans destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem and Jews fled Palestine and were scattered throughout the Mediterranean world. A cloud of fear hovered over all who would not worship the emperor.
• At some time between 85 and 95 the leaders of Judaism decreed officially that those Jews who professed faith in Jesus as Messiah and Lord were cast out of the synagogue. They were no longer welcome. Because of this excommunication, they were no longer protected by the Romans’ toleration of Jewish religious practice. These believers were no longer thought of as a peculiar sect of Judaism. They were looked upon with suspicion. They were accused of being cannibals because they met to share the “body and blood” of Jesus.
• Between the years 81 and 96 under the emperor Domitian was a second wave of persecution. The Gospel of John was written toward the end of this time.
• At the same time, many Christians began to question their belief that Jesus soon would return again to usher in the kingdom. His disciples had heard him say, “This generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.” They fully expected him to return in glory during their lifetime. Now that generation had died and the next was aging. Had they misunderstood? Was their faith in vain?

The early Christian community, like Martha and Mary after the death of Lazarus, were complaining, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Jesus’ response to Mary and Martha, his response to the early church, and his response to you and me in our own complaint is: “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, yet shall they live. And those who live and believe in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

 

The question that is repeated twice in John’s account of the resurrection is, “Why are you weeping?” Why are you weeping? Lord knows, we have plenty of reasons to weep. Nearly 4,000 of our troops are dead and 29,000 wounded in a war that now has lasted five years, the reasons for which do not seem clear. Thousands more Iraqis are dead and roughly four million are refugees. AIDS is decimating the continent of Africa. Fear is rising about the long-term effects of climate change. The economy continues to slump. And, looking closer to home, the number of people in prison, a large number of them for drug crimes, continues to multiply. Inmates are sleeping on the floor in overcrowded jails. In our personal lives, many of us have enough reasons to weep to keep us supplied with tears for a long time to come. If we are paying attention and if we are honest with our feelings, the question might be: “Why aren’t we weeping every day?”

 

Our world is a mess. The world that Mary, Peter and John lived in was a mess. Their personal world had been struck by a class 5 tornado. Their teacher, leader, friend and guide had been arrested, killed and laid in a tomb. Mary went to the tomb early in the morning after the Sabbath was over. What she found so astonished her that she ran back to the disciples to tell them. Peter and the other disciple ran to the tomb, expecting to find that grave robbers had stolen Jesus’ body. But what they found there told them otherwise. Could it be true? Could Jesus really be alive, just as he had said would happen?

 

Grave robbers would not have unwrapped the body. Grave robbers would not have rolled up the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. When Jesus called Lazarus out of his tomb, Lazarus came out wrapped up in his grave clothes. Jesus, it seems, had simply left death behind. What did the disciple believe when he went into the tomb and saw all this? The implication is that this evidence pointed to a victory over death. Could he really be alive?

 

Mary, on the other hand, did not have the same experience. After Peter and the other disciple had left she stood by the tomb. Her grief was fresh. Her tears seemed to have no end. When she saw a man she took to be the gardener, she imagined that maybe he had moved Jesus’ body. When grief is overwhelming it’s hard to be sure what’s real. Anything might be possible. “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him and I will take him away.” You can hear the desperation in Mary’s voice. She would do anything for this one who had given her new life and new hope.

 

And then she heard it. He said her name. “Mary.” Then she knew. It was her teacher! It was Jesus! He was alive! And then, Mary had another reason to weep. But her tears of grief had become tears of joy.

 

She must have reached for him, or Jesus knew her thoughts. “Don’t hold on to me,” he said. “I have not yet ascended.” Ever the theologian, John wants the early church to know that Jesus is going to finish the job he started. The one who promised, “I go to prepare a place for you,” will keep his word. For John, the work of Christ is one grand sweep – incarnation, teaching and healing, suffering and death, resurrection, and ascension. By his ascension to the Father, Jesus assures that the disciples will fully share his glory and his relationship with God. That is the comfort that John wished to give to the early church as it struggled under persecution and waited impatiently for the coming of the Kingdom.

 

Bethania Smith was about 98 years old when I knew her. She could do little but lie in her bed in the nursing home. But she loved to tell stories. She was born just after the Twentieth Century began. One of her parents had an older brother who was a soldier in the Civil War. Being from Pennsylvania, he was in the Union army. He was captured and imprisoned at the infamous Andersonville Prison in Georgia. As many as 32,000 men were held there. More than 12,000 of them were buried there. When Bethania’s uncle did not return home after the war, his family gave him up for dead. He had been released from prison after the Confederate surrender, sick malnourished, emaciated, and eight hundred miles from home. Somehow he managed to survive as he walked, begged rides in wagons and made his way back home. Months later, a dirty, skinny, ragged man with a wild beard showed up at a farm in southern Pennsylvania. When he knocked at the door of the house, the woman working in the kitchen sighed with weariness. Another beggar! She opened the door and began her familiar litany: “My husband is dead. My son was lost in the war. But if you’ll have a seat on the porch and wait, you can have dinner with us.” And then he spoke. He only said one word. “Mother!” And by his voice she knew him. Her boy was alive! Then the weeping began, and the tears of joy flowed freely. Bethania claimed that his old horse that he had left behind recognized his voice also. 

 

Mary did not  know what lay ahead at that moment of joy in the garden. The early church did not know what suffering and grief it would endure. Bethania’s uncle and his mother did not know what struggles to recover from the war lay ahead of them. Neither do we know the path ahead of us nor the solution to the obstacles in our path. What we do know is that Jesus says our name. He has ascended to God and has prepared a place for us. He invites us to share the joy and union he knows with his Father. Jesus says our name so that we might say his name and enter into his fellowship. He gives us hope even if we’re standing in a graveyard. There is a poem about Jesus’ life, death and resurrection that comes out of the Iona Community in Scotland that ends like this:

 

He will walk a little in front of us towards Calvary.

He will not be scared, no, he will not be scared.

He will feel the pain of wood and nails.

But more than this, he will feel the weight of all the evil,

all the malice, all the pettiness, all the sin of the world heaped on his shoulders.

He will not throw off that weight, though he could.

He will not give back evil for evil, malice for malice, take revenge on the petty-minded,

      or spew out hate on all who have despised and rejected him.

He will not give back the sin of the world.

He will take it away -- into death, into Hell -- so that he can lead us into Heaven.

Then he will go on, in faith, towards the resurrection.

 

He will walk a little behind us through the graveyard.

He will wait until we are sure he has died and admit our complicity in his life’s ending.

Then he will come up behind us and say our name, so that we can say his forever.

 

Why are you weeping? The tombs of our lives are the places where we weep, where we feel trapped or imprisoned, where something has died, where something has been lost. Whatever tombs there are in your life that hold you captive, go there. Wait. Weep. Be still. Someone will come and speak your name.