The difference the resurrection makes - Rev Allister Lane

SERMON ON 11 APRIL 2021
READING: JOHN 20: 19-31

I have to be honest: I find this passage from John’s Gospel difficult to preach about. Although I really like this passage, where the risen Jesus appears to the disciples and then to Thomas (often regrettably referred to as ‘Doubting Thomas’), preaching it is a challenge.

Perhaps it’s because I once heard it preached so poorly: you just need faith, …don’t worry about your intellectual and experiential objections. Just have faith that Jesus was resurrected.

Our own culture demands a more satisfactory response than this.

Last week, in my Easter sermon we considered the believability and meaning of the resurrection. Today, I want to build on the reasons we have to trust the Resurrection as an event of history.

This episode with Thomas we’ve heard this morning highlights the Resurrection as an event of faith, (and this IS the meaning) but let’s not jump there without having secured the firm foundation that the Resurrection is an event of fact.

By hearing the biblical witness to this event of history, we are able to understand more fully how the resurrection of Jesus changes us, and gives meaning in our lives.

Last week I summarised the conclusions that The Vast Majority of Historians Agree on…

1. Jesus was crucified and killed
Jesus didn’t somehow ‘survive’ crucifixion – he died and was raised to new (resurrection) life.

2. His tomb was discovered empty
The proof of this is the eyewitnesses. These eyewitness are considered authentic, because if you were making up the story, you’d never make the first eyewitness to the empty tomb women.

3. His disciples had experiences in which they believed the risen Jesus appeared to them
This is further eyewitness evidence that rings very true as historical experience. I will come back to these experiences in a moment (for how they help us today).

4. The early church began because of, and founded on the belief in, the resurrection
The resurrection is the best explanation for the transformation from disheartened and dejected Jews into the most self-confident missionary society in world history. The witnesses of the risen Jesus lived (and died) for this truth and what it meant for them. If it was untrue, why would they give all they were for it?

“Liars make bad martyrs.”

We have to address objections to the believability of the Resurrection, for our own sake, and for the sake of our culture – which (naturally) is sceptical. We all have intellectual and experiential objections to the resurrection. It is something that is beyond what we expect and experience.

But, do you know what…? We aren’t the first people to recognise this.

So today’s reading is really useful for recognising the natural human objection to the resurrection. And saying ‘Just have faith’ didn’t cut it for Thomas, and so we too need something more.

Resurrection is unexpected. We do not expect resurrection now, and no one did then either. Some say of the disciples’ experiences of the risen Jesus:

Back then people were gullible.

They were more likely to believe this. It’s true that Jews believed in resurrection. But it was the resurrection of everyone, at the end of time…not of one person, within human history. Jews were the last people to expect that – it didn’t fit their beliefs.

And can we really say people back then were more gullible?

Matthew’s Gospel says:

When they saw [the risen Jesus], they worshipped him; but some doubted. (Matt 28:17)

You’d never write that if you were making the story up! It reflects the natural human response you and I would probably have if confronted with Jesus’ resurrection. It is beyond our intellectual and experiential expectations.

To say those first witnesses were more prone to be fooled is ‘Chronological snobbery’. I’ve not seen any evidence that peoples’ IQs have got higher through the centuries!

Initial doubt would be a natural response to such an unprecedented and unexpected event.  But the doubt was quickly replaced with conviction…We can have confidence in the claims made for two thousand years; that a man who was executed by the authorities did NOT remain dead.

And, so with a firm foundation that the Resurrection is an event of history, we also need to be clear how the resurrection of Jesus changes us – as an event of faith that gives meaning in our lives.

God has come to us in person.

This is the necessary circumstance for the Resurrection to mean something in our lives.

One of my favourite authors, Francis Spufford helpfully highlights the unique way God reveals Himself to us…

“(Unlike myths), Jesus’s story, by contrast, happens at a definite historical address. As Monty Python’s ‘Life of Brian’ puts it in the opening sequence: ‘Judea, AD 33, Saturday afternoon, around teatime’.”[1]

The Gospel accounts make it very clear that the ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ that Jesus taught and demonstrated, is emerging in our own lives.

Robert Farrar Capon says:

[What Jesus comes to show us is] not about someplace else called heaven, not about somebody at a distance called God. Rather it is about this place here, in all its thisness, and placiness, and about the intimate and immediately Holy One who, at no distance from us at all, moves mysteriously to make creation true both to itself and to him. [2]

The resurrection is the confirmation that God cares about us and creation. Jesus came to bless, redeem and restore the life God intends for us.

The final point I need to make (before this sermon is over) about the Resurrection as event of faith that gives meaning in our lives, is: the story of the Resurrection is not over.

This event of history remains an event of faith. To put it another way: the story of resurrection life continues.

Last week we heard the end of Mark’s Gospel, which leaves us dangling somewhat.  We aren’t told how those very first women witnesses respond. This is characteristic of our own experience of resurrection life.

God is ‘on the loose’; we aren’t doing religious things for him, he is doing things for us.

So let’s be ready!

Maybe then, we can feel Thomas is us – his experience resonates with mine and yours. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus changes us. We can have confidence in the believability and meaning of the resurrection.

Jesus really lived, died and was raised to resurrection life, just as the eyewitnesses believed, and had their lives turned upside down! Objections are not as plausible as the explanation that Jesus was raised from death. What God has done through Jesus changes everything, and we live our lives with new meaning.

And the story of resurrection life continues.

Next week we will consider what it means to be a witness – the good and the difficult.

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[1] (Francis Spufford, Unapologetic: Why, Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense (London: Faber & Faber, 2013 [2012]) p160)

[2] Robert Farrar Capon (p161 in Inspired by Rachel Held Evans)