2. PÅSKEDAG



http://www.chapel.duke.edu/sermons/MAR30SER.htm



"Getting To Easter"



                                 John 20:1-18



                           The Resurrection of the

Lord



                               March 30, 1977



Easter Day



I wonder how you got here this morning. In my

experience, crowds are always larger on Easter so

that means that there may be a greater diversity

than usual in the congregation. I expect that some

of you have come here because you are always here,

even when it's not Easter. Others of you may have

come because, though you are not usually here on

Sundays, it's Easter. Still, others of you have

come because someone invited you, or someone forced

you, or just simply out of curiosity.



Got a call a few years ago from a reporter for The

Duke Chronicle.



"I'm doing a story on fun things to do during

Spring Break," said the student voice, "and thought

it would be cool to mention the Chapel."



"Okay, I said cautiously, the tone I always use

with The Chronicle.



"Dr. Willimon, what is the goal of Easter?"



"The goal of Easter?"



I had no ready answer. I could see the story,

"Preacher says Easter is pointless."



What has brought you here? How did you get here?



I watched you arriving this Easter and I noted

that, though you came by automobile, or lumbering

up the sidewalk, none of you came running. None of

you ran toward Easter. Which, notes Tom Long, is

curious because, according to John's Easter gospel,

there was a great deal of dashing about on the

first Easter. First, according to John, Mary

Magdalene came (John 20:2) and she, seeing the

stone rolled away and the tomb empty, started

running. Not that she believed in resurrection at

this point, for that would come later (John 20:11-

18). For now, in the pre-dawn darkness, she just

begins running back to tell the rest of the

disciples that Jesus' body is gone. "They've taken

away my Lord and I don't know where to find him,"

she shouts.



On her sprint back to town, she meets Peter and the

beloved disciple. In her shock, her fear, Mary

reminds me of a boy in my high school chemistry

class. During some chemistry experiment gone wrong,

there was an explosion in the back of the class.

Nothing serious, just a loud bang. And he, seated

at the front, bolted out the door, ran down the

hall and was not heard from again that day.



"What on earth were you thinking about?" the

teacher asked him the next day.



"I wasn't thinking about anything," he said. "I was

just running. I didn't know what to do, so I ran."



Mary Magdalene, in her grief, ran. Jesus was

crucified, dead and buried. And now someone had

taken his body. So, she ran.



On her way back she met these two disciples. When

she tells them what she saw, or didn't see, they

break out into a run. She ran from the empty tomb;

they ran toward it.



Tom Long called my attention to an interesting

detail. John says these two disciples didn't just

run together toward the tomb, they ran against one

another toward the tomb. They get in some sort of

race, rushing -- now one gaining on the other, then

falling behind, gaining again -- toward...what?



Why did they run against one another? What did they

think they were running toward? Mary Magdalene

interpreted the empty tomb as further tragedy. Not

only had they killed Jesus; now someone had stolen

his body. Perhaps they were running toward that

awful, terrible, last insult.



"There's been a bad accident on the school ground,"

someone told the mothers at coffee. And everyone of

them jumped up and started running toward the

school. Why run? Why run toward the tragic? If it

is not your child who is hurt, then some other

mother's child is hurt. Odd. We run toward both

good news and bad. We must know, and quickly, if

the news, good or bad, is for us.



Or perhaps they ran as rivals, says Tom Long.

Throughout the Gospel of John, it's Peter who is

the leader of the disciples, the one with a ready

word on most occasions. But it was this "beloved

disciple," whoever he was, who seems closest to the

heart of Jesus. They ran to see which one of them -

- Peter the leader, or the disciple who was beloved

-- would arrive first.



A group of kids walking down the sidewalk arm-in-

arm. Someone shouts from down the street, "There's

free ice cream being given out down at the corner

store," and watch friends become rivals in a race

to the corner. They want to see if the good news is

theirs, if this be good news for them.



As they run, these two disciples, surely there was

something in them which told them that, in this

strange event, they were running toward some

strange, new, possibly terrifying future. Someone

says, "Come! Look at this!" and we come, we run,

toward exactly what, we do not know. But we run.



And perhaps that describes you this Easter. You

have come here. But when I ask you, "Why, have you

come?" you have no ready answer. Perhaps you do not

know why. You have no clear picture of what you

think you'll here see or experience.



And I think John says that these two sprinting

disciples came to Jesus' tomb just like that, not

knowing, running toward some new, strange event

which they instinctively knew meant a change in

their world. John says that the beloved disciple

outran Peter, won the race, got there first (John

20:4). That may seem a small detail, but isn't it

interesting John mentions that the beloved disciple

got there first? Not only that, John says that he

was the first one to peer into the empty tomb and

believe. The beloved disciple was the first to

believe in Easter.



I think, with Tom Long, that John not only wanted

to tell us that the beloved disciple got there

first, but also how he got there. Others came to

Easter in different ways. Mary will not believe

until she stands face-to-face with the risen Christ

and hears him call her name, "Mary!" Thomas doesn't

believe until the Risen Christ offers to let Thomas

touch his pierced hands and wounded side. For

Thomas, only seeing is believing.



But the beloved disciple comes to Easter another

way. He believes without seeing. He doesn't hear

Jesus. He doesn't see the Risen Christ. All he does

is to come, to peer into the dark, empty tomb and

he believes. Long says that, "the beloved disciple,

unlike the others, believes in the resurrection in

the light of Jesus' absence." There is nothing

there, no evidence. No Shroud of Turin, no photos,

just an empty place. But, "He saw and believed"

(John 20:8).



Now can you see why John probably went into all

that about the footrace? The very first believer in

the resurrection, the first to believe in the

triumph of God, came there the same path that you

and I take -- by not seeing the Risen Christ. To

almost no one here, I suspect, has the Risen Christ

personally appeared in a garden and called you by

name -- as he did to Mary. No one here has touched

his wounds and believed. We have believed on the

basis of words, "He is not here."



"Blessed are those who have not seen" says Jesus

(which means all of us here) "and yet have come to

believe."



How did the beloved disciple come to faith in

Easter on that first Easter? Trust. The beloved

disciple knew his beloved Jesus. Thus, when he saw

the empty tomb he did not think abandonment,

defeat, death. He thought freedom, victory, life.

In a moment he sensed that Jesus had taken their

relationship to a new, unexpected, and more

wonderful plane.



Erik Eriksson said that a child develops trust in

the first six months of life. The infant learns

that, when it cries out, momentarily a voice will

be heard saying, "There, there, what's wrong?" or a

loving face will soon appear. The infant learns

thereby that parents care, that the world is

trustworthy.



Eventually, the infant will tolerate long absences

of the parent. The infant does not need the parent

physically present every moment of the day, clearly

in sight, because the young child has learned that,

even though the parent is not right there, in view,

the parent is nearby; the parent will come when

called. Trust.



The beloved disciple did not have "proof," as we

call something proof. He had no legal certification

of the resurrection. Yet he had his relationship

with Jesus. He had his own experience of a sure,

certain, determined love that would not let go,

even in death. The thought he had run toward Jesus

when, in reality, the Risen Christ had run toward

him. And that was enough. He believed.



And so have you. That's how you got here. I made

the mistake, a couple of Easters ago, of asking one

of you (on your way out as you said to me how much

you got from the service) how your liked the

sermon. You said (you know who you are), "Sermon?

Oh, Easter's usually much too great a challenge for

a mere sermon. No, it's the music, the crowd, the

building, I don't know. All that, the feel, more to

the point than the sermon, don't you think?"

Blessed are those who, having not seen, yet have

they believed. Blessed are you.



______________________________



Notes: Forgive us preachers if we search a familiar

biblical text hoping for some new insight, some

weird discovery, some detail we missed in earlier

readings. After all, many of us have been at this

preaching business for some time now. Not only must

we interest our hearers in the sermon, we also must

interest ourselves!



John's story of the resurrection is vivid, rich,

full of fascinating detail. In John, the little

things, the details, are often pregnant with

meaning. John renders a world in which, when Jesus

appears, everything bursts open with meaning,

therefore it seems fair for us to treat the details

of John's narrative in some, well, detail.



Tom Long, great interpreter of the word, called my

attention to an interesting detail in John's

Easter.  Everyone was busy running. The tempo has

picked up in this gospel. After a long, very long,

series of monologues by Jesus in which he bids

farewell to his disciples, after a bloody

crucifixion in which things moved terribly,

tragically slowly, Easter bursts in upon us and

everyone begins to run.



The race of the "beloved disciple" shall concern us

most in today's sermon. He is surely meant to be

the center of our focus. He is the one who, though

he does not see, though he has no conversation with

the Risen Christ, believes. And so shall we.