Hi, I'm Glenn Scrivener. Great to be with you on this Easter day. We have some rainbows in our front window. Are you the same? We've got uh Ruby is five years old, JJ is two years old, and they've done us some rainbows, and all down our street there are rainbows in people's uh front rooms, and universally it's taken to be a sign of hope. A sign that after the storm comes the sunshine. And through the storm, and because of the storm, and then the sunshine, something even more beautiful is birthed. A rainbow. You don't get a rainbow without a storm. And right now we're going through a storm. You know, Sam Wise Gamgee in The Lord of the Rings, he said, the sun will shine out all the clearer because of the storm we've been through. That's an interesting thought, isn't it? Do you believe it? Do you believe in rainbows? Do you believe that somewhere over the rainbow there is hope? And that this storm will pass, and not only that it will pass, but somehow there will be a greater hope, a greater reality that comes from this catastrophe. Do you believe in that? J.R.R. Tolkien believed in it. He was a Christian. He believed in Easter. Do you believe in Easter? I think we want to. We want to believe in Easter. I was seeing online recently these pictures of doctors who are leaving the makeshift hospitals in Wuhan for the very last time. And as they are leaving behind these makeshift hospitals that were required to deal with the coronavirus outbreak, they are taking off their masks and stepping into the sunshine. It's almost certainly propaganda. I'm not sure how much I trust what is coming out of the Communist Party of China in terms of their reporting of these issues, but they are tapping into something we all want to believe in. We want to believe in hope. We want to believe that you can sail through the storm and come out the other side. And as we're going through our peak in deaths, as we are going through our storm, we want to see someone who's gotten through, someone who's come out the other side, and that there is sunshine, that there is, I don't know, a rainbow. Can we believe in Easter? It's hard to believe in Easter, isn't it? Because everything we know about life is that it is life and then death. It's life and then death. It's life and then death. That's reality, right? But Easter tells a different story. Easter tells the most revolutionary story the world has ever heard. It's the story of death and then life. It's the opposite of everything you know when you're looking at life with hard-nosed reality. Death and then life? No, no, no. We know it happens the other way around, don't we? And yet, somehow in our hearts we believe in rainbows. Somehow in our hearts we believe in the Lord of the Rings and that there's a happily ever after, there's a good catastrophe, a good turn of events that brings about some kind of future somewhere over the rainbow. Do you believe that? Recently we brought uh some kids into um watch uh a fairy tale, Beauty and the Beast. Do you know it? It's a it's a story of death and then life. But we did something a little bit cruel to the kids. We brought the curtain down right when the beast died. Let's see what happened.
SPEAKER_01At least I got to see you one last time.
SPEAKER_00Does the curtain fall with the death of the hero? That seems like a cruel thing to do to kids, doesn't it? How could we do that to children? How could we tell a story in which the hero dies and everything is sad? Well, you know what? That's the story we tell ourselves, actually. It's the story we tell ourselves about life. That life is a progression from life to death. But where does the curtain fall? Does the curtain actually fall with the death of the hero and the death of hope? Or could Easter be true? Well, our passage for uh today is taken from John's Gospel, one of the eyewitness accounts of Jesus' life. And here in this biography of Jesus, we come to chapter 20. We've had the death of the hero. And it feels like if this story was being written by anyone else, it feels like that the curtain should fall and that should be the end. Miserable ever after. And yet in John chapter 20, from verse 1, it says, early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, They've taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don't know where they have put him. Now, put yourself in their sandals. Here are Jewish people who have been soaking in the Jewish scriptures all their lives, the Hebrew Bible, what we might call the Old Testament. And the Old Testament is very realistic about life. In the very first book of the Bible, Genesis, in chapter 3, it says, Dust you are, and to dust you will return. That's realism, right? Or perhaps you know the book of Psalms, right there in the middle of your Bible. Psalm 23, we walk through the valley of the shadow of death. That's realism for you. Or you go to the end of the Old Testament, you go to the prophets, and someone like Isaiah in chapter 25. He says that there is a black shroud of death that enfolds the nations. Just think about that. The whole world is engulfed, it's suffocating in a black shroud called death. That is realism, isn't it? And so a Jew who is soaked in these ancient scriptures will know that life is serious and that naturally the progression is from life to death. Dust we are, and to dust we will return. And I guess this coronavirus pandemic is teaching us this. It is intensifying for us what we ought to know at all times. What we ought to know at all times is that we have a finite number of heartbeats, and they are running out one by one by one. We look at the statistics, we see the graphs go up and up in these exponential ways, and it seems very frightening to us, but of course, this is just an intensification of the reality we all must face. Very probably we will not die of coronavirus, but we will most certainly die. I don't know if you've been looking up the statistics of, you know, how likely is it that I'll catch coronavirus? How likely is it that I'll be hospitalized? How likely is it that I'll go to ICU? How likely is it that I'll need to be intubated? And if I'm intubated, what are the survival rates? We've been looking at those survival rates. But you know that the survival rate for planet Earth is 0%. Right? You know that, don't you? I mean, the doors are locked, no one gets out of here alive. See, the Old Testament, in its in its realism, is teaching us something that we ought to know. Dust we are, and to dust we will return. We are walking through the valley of the shadow of death. This black shroud enfolds the entire world. But in the Old Testament, it's not just that they are realistic, it's also that they are hopeful. Because the Old Testament also speaks of this figure, this Messiah, God the Son, the Prince of Heaven, is going to come into this dying world. He's going to take on all his enemies, including that final enemy death. He's going to somehow conquer the grave and bring about a happily ever after. That is the hope of the Hebrew Bible. And it's fascinating, isn't it, that to a Hebrew, to an Old Testament Jew, the answer to the problems of this world is a person. That's an attractive thought, isn't it? The answer to this world, the answer to death, is not a regime. It's not public health policy. It's not a vaccine. It's not a life philosophy. It's not a principle. The answer to death, the answer to all these worlds' problems is a person. The Prince of Heaven, the Son of God, the Messiah, the Savior. And what's interesting is that these guys, Peter and John and Mary, they think they have found the one. Or at least they did think they had found the one. They had hoped in this guy, Jesus, because Jesus shows up in the middle of human history and he walks the walk of the Messiah, and he talks the talk of the Messiah. He is this little pool of paradise walking around planet Earth, setting things straight. And the sick are healed, and the lepers are cleansed, and the dead are raised. And people like Mary, who have been dominated by evil and shame, are set straight again, are saved, are put back into their right mind. You know, Mary, if you read about her story in Luke's gospel, you will see in chapter 8 that if Mary was living today, she would have been hospitalized many, many times for mental health issues that are far beyond the wit of first century doctors to deal with, far beyond the wit of 21st century doctors to deal with. Mary would have been sectioned many, many times, and Jesus heals her. Jesus brings about restoration and sanity and liberation. He sets things straight again. And people start to wonder, is he the one? Is he the one long prophesied? Is he the answer even to death? But of course, Peter and John and Mary, they were there at the foot of the cross on Good Friday. They were there just three days earlier. They were there when they saw the Savior die. They were there to see hope die. At least that's what it would have seemed like, wouldn't it? When they watched Jesus die, they weren't just watching a friend die, they weren't just watching their leader die, they were watching hope die. Because he's the one who's meant to end death, and there he is, choking to death himself. You know, imagine if you're in quicksand and you're sinking down and down and down, and a friend comes. He's heard you. Nobody else has heard you, but this one person has heard you. Your friend comes and says, Don't worry, I'm here to rescue you. They jump into the quicksand and they sink like a stone in front of you. At that point you say, Oh. At that point, you're not just sad that your friend has died, right? You're also sad for you because hope died with your friend. They were meant to be your great savior. And that's who Jesus is. He's the one who's dived into this dying world. And he says, I'm here to rescue you. And we say, Fantastic, please can you just lift us out of the quicksand? And instead, he sinks like a stone to the bottom of it. This is a strange savior. It's a strange kind of hope. It's not a rescue rope that pulls us up. Instead, it's it's this cannonball that is shot from the heart of heaven down into the depths of death itself. And Jesus says, this is the way. Not escape from the valley of the shadow, but through the valley of the shadow. He pioneers a path towards feasting joy. It's not escape out of the pit, it's down and then up. But these guys, Peter and John and Mary, they don't get it yet. They haven't yet understood who Jesus is. And so in verse 11, I want you to put yourself in Mary's sandals right here, as she's trying to process all of what's going on. Verse 11 of John 20. Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white seated where Jesus' body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. They asked her, Woman, why are you crying? They've taken my Lord away, she said, and I don't know where they've put him. At this she turned around and saw Jesus standing there. But she did not realize that it was Jesus. He asked her, Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for? Thinking he was the gardener, she said, Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you've put him, and I will get him. Mary doesn't get it. She is the most devoted follower to Jesus on planet Earth. The most devoted follower. I mean, more, more than Peter and John even. She was there at the foot of the cross, and she's the first there to the tomb to grieve the the body of Jesus. She is the most devoted follower of Jesus and she's completely lost. You know, she's right there at ground zero as Easter is happening and she doesn't get it. The tragedy looms too large in her mind. She can't shake the feeling that it's life and then death, and that's it. She can't shake that belief. She is dominated by the life-then-death story. She can't yet believe in the death-then-life story. So even as she shows up at Easter, Easter has not shown up in her. And I wonder if that's you, even today. Even as you show up at Easter or you log on at Easter, you want to engage with the stuff of Easter. Well, Mary did too. She shows up at Easter, but Easter had not yet shown up in her. She had come to pay her respects to a dead teacher. She was yet to meet the risen Lord. And that's what changes everything. I wonder what you hope to do this Easter. Are you paying your respects to a dead teacher called Jesus? If you are, you'll be as lost as Mary is. I mean, think of Mary, she's paying her respects to her teacher, but she's ignoring what he always taught. He always taught that he'd rise again. On Easter Sunday, she feels like her world has fallen apart. Actually, this will turn out to be the greatest day of her life. She feels completely alone in the world. Little does she know that verse 12, she has angels ahead of her, and verse 14, Jesus behind her. She feels like everyone is against her. You know, who took the body? Did you take the body? She feels like everybody is against her. And Jesus is right there. She feels like Jesus has been lost. But Jesus isn't lost. She's lost. And she's about to be found. Do you sympathize with Mary? There she is. She is in a flap on the greatest day of her life. She is in a flap when everything around her is screaming hope. Is that you? Is that you at the moment? Are you in a flap? I'm getting in a flap. Coronavirus, lockdown, quarantine. The economy's tanking. Are you in a flap? Mary is in a flap, even as she's surrounded by the hope of heaven. What does she need? Jesus knows what she needs. Verse 15, he says, Who is it you are looking for? That's a really good question. Are you able to ask yourself that question? This Easter. What are you looking for? What are you looking for right now? An end to lockdown. A vaccine. More ventilators. Flatten the curve. What are you looking for? Safety for yourself, safety for your family, safety for the world. What are you looking for? That you will survive 2020, that your business will survive 2020? What are you looking for? Mary at least has the sense to look for Jesus, but then she doesn't even get Jesus right. Which Jesus are you looking for? Just the dead teacher? What about the what about the living Lord? Who are you looking for? Which which Jesus are you looking for? The answer of John's gospel. Who is this Jesus? The answer of John's Gospel is. He is the Son of the Father, full of the Holy Spirit. He has come from that eternal family of love to set the world straight, to upend all that's gone wrong with this world, death included. Who is Jesus? He is this little pool of paradise. Come to planet Earth to set the world straight. Who is Jesus? He's the conqueror of death. Is that who Jesus is to you? If you get this Jesus, it will turn you from weeping to rejoicing. It will turn you from being lost to being found. It will turn you from being in a flap to knowing the peace of Christ. Do you want to know this Jesus? And you say, Yeah, I do. How do I get to know him? Well, this passage will tell us how you get to know Jesus. It'll tell us four things. At the end of yourself, you face the facts, you hear your name, and you join his family. First of all, at the end of yourself. This is where Mary is. She's at the end of herself. She's lost the man who saved her life. She's lost her great teacher, her friend. She's lost him and she's not even able to grieve him the way she wants to grieve him. And hasn't that been a tragedy at the moment with this pandemic? People are dying in hospitals alone because they're under quarantine, their loved ones are under quarantine. People are being buried alone and their loved ones aren't even allowed at the funeral because of quarantine. Isn't that a heinous evil? It is to compound the evil of grief with not being able to be present with the body. And Mary, she just wants to anoint the body with spices. She wants to pay her last respect to the body of Jesus. And even that's stripped away from her. She is totally at the end of herself. Are you at the end of yourself? Do you realize you have no resources? No resources in the face of this pandemic called death that infects a hundred percent of the world. It infects a hundred percent of the world, and the survival rate is scary bad. Scary bad. It's it's zero percent. Have you been brought to the end of yourself? But then once you come to the end of yourself, secondly, what do you need to do? You need to face the facts. Did you notice all the factual details that were listed in this passage? It's it's really quite interesting. Verse 3. Go back to verse 3 from John 20. So Peter and the other disciples started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple, who is John, who is writing this down, the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb. Okay, it's it's it's important to know who won the running race, John? Like, why that detail? Verse verse uh five, he bent over and looked at the strips of linen lying there, but did not go in. Then verse 6, Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there. Why this repetition? Why are you going on about the strips of linen? As well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus' heads. Like, why are we being told all this detail? The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen. Why do we need to know this? Do we need to know that Jesus makes his bed in the morning? Is that what what what purpose does this serve? Why these details? Verse 8, finally, the other disciple who had reached the tomb first, John really wants to rub this in. This is the third time he's mentioned. He is faster than Peter. Finally, the other disciple who had reached the tomb first also went inside, saw and believed. It's so laborious. All these details, why are they written down? They're written down because they happened. Okay, and that's that's the only reason why you would include this kind of detail. It is eyewitness detail. John writes it down because he was there. He'll never forget the way those strips of linen lay. He's giving first-person reportage of what happened in the first century. And you know, actually, historians studying the first century, whether they're Christian, whether they're Jewish, agnostic, atheist, they all come to pretty much the same conclusion about the facts of Easter. You know the facts of Easter? There was a man called Jesus. He was wildly popular at times, wildly unpopular at times. He was a doer of marvelous deeds, or at least he was known to be such, and having drawn this crowd, he caused a stir in the Temple area in Jerusalem in about 33 AD. If it wasn't that exact date, it was very close to it. He was tried by both Jewish courts and Roman courts. He was found guilty, and under Pontius Pilate, he was crucified, he died, his body was taken down, he was put into this tomb, into a tomb, the whereabouts of which was known to people like Mary and John and Peter. He was put into that tomb. Three days later, that tomb was empty. People agree about that. Every first century historian worth their salt agrees that, yep, the tomb was empty, right? And these followers of Jesus had experiences of the risen Christ that went on for another 40 days as they walked and talked with him. As at one point, 500 people saw him and ate with him. These are not hallucinations. You don't have group hallucinations. These are the facts. The body was never discovered. And these appearances of Jesus apparently finished after 40 days when Christians say Jesus returned to heaven. Those are the facts that are not in dispute. Have you faced those facts? You see, to face those facts, you start to think to yourself, oh my goodness, maybe Jesus is who he says he is. And in fact, if he is who he says he is, if he is the author of life, it would be extraordinary if he did not rise from the dead. If he is God the Son, the Prince of Heaven, the great Messiah, it would be extraordinary if he did rot in some first century tomb. Is Jesus who he says he is? Face the facts. Look into the facts. Have you looked into the facts this Easter? I'd urge you to do that. But of course, the facts themselves won't convince you. The facts are true, the facts are important, but they won't themselves convince you. You need this third point. You need to hear your name. You see, Mary knew the facts. Peter and John knew the facts, but they needed something more. They needed to hear their name. Don't you love in verse 11? Mary, she's crying, she's weeping, she's bewildered, she's lost, she's lashing out at everybody. Did you take the body? Did you take the body? What is it that's going to turn her from a person with a tragic mindset to a person with a belief in the happily ever after? What is it? You know, Jesus upends her world with one word. One word. Now, if you had risen from the dead and if you were going to spoil your own funeral, what one word would you use to spoil your own funeral? It's a funny hypothetical, I understand that. But if it was me and I wanted to spoil my own funeral, what would I what would be my one word? I I would kind of say, boo! You know, the look on your face, or you know, ta-da, or what is Jesus' one word? Verse 16. Beautiful. Jesus said to her, Mary. I love that. He says, Mary. She turned towards him and cried out in Aramaic, Rabbani, which means teacher. You know, Mary doesn't recognize him. He recognizes her. Mary doesn't name him. He names her, and in a world, in a word, her world is turned right side up. She goes from believing in life to death. And then she hears her name. She sees who Jesus is, and suddenly it's there's death, then life. It's a beautiful, it's it is a beautiful turnaround. And it's because Mary sees that Jesus has done all things for her. It gets personal for her. She hears her name. She realizes that when Jesus died on that cross, he died for her. He took that cataclysmic judgment on himself. He died the death that Mary was facing. He had plunged down into the quicksand of death and died the worst death it was possible to die in her place. For her. And yet he rises up again and he tracks her down from beyond the grave to say, Mary. To say, Mary, I died for you. And I died and I rose for you. Right? That that's Chris Christians are quite used to saying Jesus died for you, and that's really true, and that's a beautiful truth. It's also true to say that Jesus rose for you. Jesus rose for you. I mean, Jesus, He is He is like the needle that pierces through the black shroud that engulfs the whole world. He's the needle that pierces through the shroud and comes out the other side, but he does it for you. Because if you're connected to him by faith, then you are like the thread. And Jesus rises again for you. He goes through death, comes out the other side for you to carry you with him and in him into his happily ever after. Think of Psalm 23 as well. Think of we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, but we have a shepherd, a good shepherd, who leads us throughout into feasting joy, and that's where Psalm 23 ends. Not with the valley of the shadow, but with feasting joy. And Jesus went to hell and back. He sailed through the storm, he got through the valley of the shadow, and he got into feasting joy for you. It's personal. Have you heard his name calling you? Because with Jesus, it does not end with death. The curtain does not fall at Good Friday. If you know Jesus as the risen Lord, there is a happily ever after. Let's watch the true ending to Beauty and the Beast. And as we watch, let's realize, having faced the fact that the fairy tale is in fact true. And then finally, this is beautiful, we we join his family. Verse 17, Jesus said to Mary, do not hold on to me. Or you could translate that, don't keep on clinging to me, Mary. Do not keep on clinging clinging to me. I mean, you can you can imagine why Mary would cling on to him. You know, she's lost Jesus once, she's not going to lose him again. So she's clinging to him, and Jesus' like, Alright, alright, you don't need to keep on clinging to me. Verse 17, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, I'm ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God. Do you remember that old book? Oh, well, old, about 15 years old, 20 years old, uh, the Da Vinci Code. You remember that was a massive bestseller about 15 years ago, the Da Vinci Code. In it, Dan Brown um imagines that Mary and Jesus actually do cling on to one another, they get married and they start a family. And in his fantasy, um, he imagines that there are people today who are descended from Jesus. And so in the book, it's it's kind of like this imagine if you were actually in the family of Jesus. I mean, obviously diluted to the nth degree. But imagine if you were actually in the family of Jesus, wouldn't that be cool? Wouldn't that be something that you are physically related to Jesus and in his family? Um that was his fantasy in the Da Vinci Code, but in the Bible, it's so much better than that. Because Mary and Jesus do not cling to one another, and because Jesus ascends to the heart of heaven, now we can all be part of his family. I'm in the family and not diluted to the nth degree. I am in the family, spiritually and eternally, right? Jesus says, I'm going to my father and I'll make him your father. Isn't that beautiful? So in Jesus, God the Son, we are brought to his Father so that he becomes our Father. We are given his spirit so that he becomes our spirit. We're given his future so it becomes our future. We're given his happily ever after, so it becomes our happily ever after. We're given his brothers and sisters in the church so that they become our brothers and sisters in the church, and the family just keeps on getting bigger. Is this the best news you've ever heard? This is the news that will turn you from lost to found, that will turn you from an anxious flap to the peace of Christ. Do you know it? Have you come to the end of yourself? Have you faced the facts? Have you heard your name? And have you joined his family? Perhaps this Easter it is the time to do that. If you've never done it before, why not call out to Jesus right now and ask to come in on this family and to come in on this future? And for all of us, like Mary, we can get it so wrong. We can think that all of life is this reality of life, then death. No, look again to Jesus, your Lord, who died for you, he rose for you, and he turns all things from death to life. You can believe in the rainbow. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for Easter. We love your Son Jesus. We thank you that he joined us in the storm, he joined us in our suffering, he died our death, and we praise you even more that he rose again to new life for us. Father God, help us to know Jesus. May He be the one we are seeking this Easter. And may we know His Father as our Father, may we know His Spirit as our Spirit, may we know his family as our family, may we know his future as our future. That we might walk with him through the valley of the shadow and out into your happily ever after. In Jesus' name. Amen.