Easter Sunday | The Greatest Story Ever Told | (4-5-26)

It is Easter Sunday, and Dr. Woods Lisenby preaches on the subject, "The Greatest Story Ever Told."

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I was at the gym and a member from Dauphin Way United Methodist Church came up to me and he said that he heard a story about me and strawberries. And based on some contextual clues, uh, such as it being Lent and his jovial nature, I knew exactly what story he was talking about. Um, but there are only two reasons why he would have heard that story so recently. On the one hand, I served a Dolphin Way for seven years, but I don't remember every story I told. I don't even remember what stories I told last week during this service, right? And so there's a possibility that maybe I told that story in a sermon and that somebody had brought it up in conversation because it has to do with Lent and he had just heard it. But I thought it was way more likely that my sister, who is now the pastor at Dolphin Way and I'm at this church, used me as a sermon illustration without my permission. And it turns out, sure enough, Jillian got a whole lot of laughs whenever she told the congregation about how when I was a child, I gave up strawberries for Lent. And I was able to keep that Linton discipline because as a child, I didn't like strawberries. And so it was pretty easy. Likewise, um, strawberries grow in the the spring and the summer, but lent is in the winter. And back in the 90s, it wasn't always a guarantee that you're gonna find strawberries at a local produce market anyway. And so I batted a thousand that Lint. And so at my at my expense, I became a punching bag for my sister's sermon. And so I thought to myself, you know, how am I gonna get even? You know, I I was sitting there letting my wheels turn. I started thinking about, oh, well, I got some funny stories I could tell about her. Uh, like, you know, if I wanted to, if I wanted to stoop to that level, I could tell you about the time that she bought bowling shoes, thinking that they were real sneakers with her back-to-school shoes. And she was so embarrassed when she realized that they were bowling shoes and not actual shoes, that I was instructed not to tell anybody. But of course, I told the whole world, and here I am telling you again. Likewise, uh, I could tell you by the time that she made the dog bite me back, because I I mean I bit the dog first, but she wanted to make sure that I understood that I wasn't okay. Or I could tell you by the time that she convinced me that the flat green cacti uh were actually green shells and that I should pick them up. And so I did, and I carried them around and they had to pull all those needles from my hand. But I decided I wasn't gonna do that. I wasn't gonna stoop to her level. I wasn't gonna tell stories about her. I mean, I decided it would have been petty for me to tell you about the time where she made a parody video of Brittany Spears' uh song uh Womanizer, and they called it Sermonizer Sermonizer, and they went dancing around the Duke Chapel and the Duke Library and filmed it and put it on YouTube, and it's still there if you want to go watch it. But you know, I I I I decided I was gonna rise above that, that I wasn't gonna do her dirty like she did me. Uh but it was funny, as I was going through this uh Rolodex of stories and of memories, uh, I also remembered a whole lot of sweet stories, like really nice memories. Like uh I remember there's a time I was at the bottom of a dog pile at the end of a like a backyard football game, and everybody piled on top of the bottom, and I came up crying, and she left her friends to come check on me to make sure I was okay, like in front of everybody else in the school there, and she came to check on me. I I remember uh the night when we worked together to plan parts of our grandfather's funeral service, and how together we officiated one of our grandmother's funeral services. And I think about uh, you know, how I talked to her almost every day about kids and life and ministry, and uh she's been there with Brianna and me doing all of our ups and downs throughout life, and especially last fall, whenever we had to go to the hospital, she was Jillian was the first person I called. And I was reminded that there are certain memories, certain stories in life that just come to mind so easily. There's stories like you can't help but tell other people. There's stories that you could tell a thousand times and it wouldn't be enough because it is so meaningful, because it matters so much to you. There's certain memories you could go back to over and over again. Stories like how how 2,000 years ago Jesus Christ rose from the dead and changed the world. That is a story worth telling and retelling. Uh I think what got me into like memory mode of trying to think about stories about Jillian wasn't just to kind of get back at her, but it's because you uh I've preached Easter Sunday many times. And uh this year I was thinking, what would be something new I could say? What unique fact could I come up with to blow your mind? What was something uh that would be revelatory that you haven't heard before? And and as I was trying to contemplate what that might be, I came to a humbling but also liberating reality. But there isn't one. That I got nothing. I don't have anything new to tell you if you, like me, have heard this story countless times, and I realize that I don't have to. I don't need to come up with some special angle or reveal some hidden truth, because what we're talking about is the greatest story that there ever was. There is no better story than this one. And so this morning we're sitting with the story that changed the world, particularly as the way John told it to us. He told us about it was still dark on Sunday, three days after Jesus had been crucified. And Mary Magdalene, she went to the tomb when it was still dark outside. You know, his body had been wrapped in linen and laid behind a great stone. And when she arrived, she found that the stone was rolled away, and she assumed the worst had happened. Only something bad could have happened. They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and I don't know where they put him. And so they rush off to go find, uh, she goes to find Peter and John, and she tells them what happened, and both men they run to the tomb. And and John makes sure to tell us, you know, he's got like the little narrator point of view. I said, we don't know this is true. John tells us, though, I was faster than Peter. I got there first. They want to make sure we didn't miss that point. Uh, but when John arrived, he tells us he stopped at the entrance. It's kind of nervous, don't want to go. But Peter gets there and he just like characteristic Peter, bulldozes straight through, goes inside, and he sees the what's going on, he sees the burial cloth folded and left off to one side. And then John went in too. And it says that John saw and he believed. And then we get this parenthetical note, which is a very interesting addition that John gives us. It says, They still did not understand from scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead. He saw and believed, but didn't understand. And so the two of them went home. But Mary didn't. Mary didn't go home. She stayed standing outside the tomb, weeping. And she bent over and she looked inside, and there she saw two angels sitting where the body of Jesus would have been. And they asked her, Woman, why are you crying? They take it away, my Lord, she says. And I don't know where they put him. And then she turned and she saw Jesus standing there, but she didn't know it was Jesus. She didn't recognize him. And that is a detail worth holding on to this morning. A very important word for us. She had stood in front of the cross just a few days before. She'd followed Jesus for years. She came to the tomb in the dark hours of morning because she loves Jesus. Before anybody else came, Mary was there. And now the risen Christ is standing just feet from her. And she looks right at him and thinks he's a gardener. Sir, if you've carried him away, just tell me where he is. And I will go look for him. You know, she is uh still operating in a world where Jesus is dead and somebody has moved the body, she can't see what's right in front of her. It might seem odd, right? Mary's lack of recognition. But John has been building on this theme since the beginning of his gospel. Just as many of the other gospel writers hit on this idea. There's this pattern throughout the gospels that those who should know don't. Those who are closest are last to understand. We have this story where Nicodemus comes to Jesus at nighttime, but he can't grasp what Jesus means when he talks about being born again, and how the woman at the well, uh she's asking about literal water, and Jesus is talking about something else. And then Philip at the Last Supper is sitting there, and Jesus says, uh, is by the side, and he says to Jesus, Lord, show us the Father. Throughout the Gospels, we have these stories of people who should be that they're there, they're in the presence of Christ. The truth is available to them, but again and again they do not see it. And Mary, who loved Jesus, she couldn't stay away from the tomb. She's standing feet from the risen Lord and thought he was a gardener. You know, as I think about it this morning, we are not so different from Mary. I I I think that there have probably been plenty of times in your life where you have missed what's right in front of you. I bet you might not have ever put a name to it, but you can remember how she felt not seeing what was right there. Like maybe there's been times uh when you're sitting across from somebody you love, maybe at dinner or in the car or uh on the couch, and they're talking, but you're not fully present, right? Like your mind has gone elsewhere. You're still nodding your head, like uh-huh. Yeah. And you're you're giving the right facial expressions, um, but you're not really there. Your mind has wandered while your body has remained. There's a name for this kind of experience. Researchers have been tracking uh personality data and they have found um that we are losing what psychologists call conscientiousness. And I I've mentioned this before, but I'm kind of obsessed with it because I think it matters so much. This trait that's associated with being present, being reliable, being able to follow through, it is declining across all of us. A journalist named John Bernard Murdoch, he published a piece about this, and he said that the two uh biggest threats to conscientiousness are distractions and displacement. Right? Distraction kind of makes sense. We it's an obvious one. Our attention is being competed for every by everybody, right? Everybody wants a piece of our attention. It used to just be that it would be the advertisements between the television shows or in the middle of the timeouts to the sports games, but now it's in our pockets. You know that the average American spends about five hours on their phone every day. Uh what uh this produces over time is not just bad habits. It diminishes our capacity to be present, to be fully engaged. We lose the ability to sit with things that are meaningful. Whether it's a conversation with another person, or reading a book, being able to answer hard questions, or even sitting in silence, all of that begins to feel unbearable. Uh displacement, though, it's a little bit subtler, but I think it's actually more serious. Um, those hours on the screens, those hours that we're being distracted, they're not added hours to the ones we already had. They're replacing other ones. They are uh the hours we used to spend in conversation, the hours we used to spend reading things that required our attention, the hours we used to spend helping other people in meaningful ways, leaving our houses, going out and engaging. That time didn't disappear, it just got redirected. And the result is that we are surrounded by more information and more stimulation than any generation that came before us. But in a quiet and measurable way, we are less present to all of it. We are less able to engage with the person sitting next to us. And trust me when I say that this isn't like this is this is a sermon for the preacher as much for the congregation, right? This isn't me being like, y'all need to listen to me more and read and read more and don't play on your phones. Y'all like my part of my Lent discipline was around my social media habits. Because I'm the person you you say, I'm gonna go look up one thing about somebody, and then I'm like 15 minutes later, still scrolling, 30 minutes, and you're like, and then afterwards you feel terrible. You're like, where did the time go? I just wasted my life. We have access to so many things, so much information that we can never take in all of it. I mean, with a click of a screen, you can find more beauty and truth and how to fix any broken appliance in your house. But the truth is, we spend most of our time thinking we see a gardener. Most of our time convincing us we know what we should be looking for when the truth is right in front of us, when things that matter are getting missed. The thing about being somewhere else is that you often don't even know you're doing it. That's why it's insidious. That's why displacement and distractions are so infectious, is because uh they are subtle and easy and you don't even recognize when it's happening. And all of a sudden you've missed the time with the people and the places and the things that matter most. I don't think Mary was trying to miss Jesus. Like she was looking for him, but she was right there, but she still couldn't see what was right in front of her. How many times do you stand in front of what really matters and think it's the gardener? How many times are you distracted or replaced time with the things God is trying to bring into your life? The thing I don't want you to miss about Mary, though, the reason why she's an example for all of us, is because Mary stayed. Peter and John, they left. They saw what they needed to see, they processed it the way they thought that they should, and then they left. But Mary couldn't leave. Whatever was driving her, whether it was love or grief or some sort of uh loyalty, some sort of uh stubbornness deep in her chest, I don't know. But she couldn't go. She stood outside the tomb and wept, and then she looked in again, and then she turned around and she kept searching, even when she didn't know what she was searching for. She wasn't in like possession of some superior theological knowledge, she wasn't smarter than Peter and John, she was just present. She put herself in a position to keep looking, and then Jesus showed up. The the resurrected Christ stands in the garden and says one word, Mary. She turned, she said, teacher, and she realizes everything, right? One word, and her whole world changed. She wasn't uh looking to prove everything from some uh convincing evidence or some philosophical ideas. She heard her name spoken by the one who has always known it, and when she did, the fog was lifted immediately. It wasn't because uh she got smarter, it was because Jesus showed up. He called her by her name, and she was there to hear it. I love that uh he doesn't prove, he didn't he didn't ask her to prove her worthiness before he says her name. He doesn't say you gotta work it all out intellectually in your mind before I'll show up. He was there, he said her name, and the whole world changed. The resolution to Mary's not seeing was not her own effort. It was Jesus for sure, but Mary had to be at the tomb. She had to be the one who stayed when everyone else went home. She had to be the one who was still searching. And one of the good things that Easter helps us to realize, one of the best words about this story is that Jesus is alive and still showing up. The good news is that Christ is risen and is still present and is still calling you by name. This is not some metaphor, this is not some sentiment. It is what we actually believe that Jesus is there for you, calling you by your name. The question is not whether Jesus will show up, it's whether you will be at the tomb when he does. Whether are you among the people who are staying? Are you the people who have already gone, who are distracted, who are displaced, who are not able to spend their time doing the things that puts them close to the presence of God? Because the sad truth is the practices that put us at the tomb, the things that orient us towards Jesus, the habits that we should have, the things that we try to do, those are the first things that get displaced. Those are the first things we put aside. They are the quiet and the slow and sometimes unremarkable things, right? It's sitting in a pew on a Sunday, even when you did it last Sunday. It's taking time to read a passage and actually sit with scripture. It's praying even if you don't have anything remarkable to report. It's praying even when something bad hasn't happened in your life. It's being in community with other people who know your name. Because that is often how Jesus speaks your name. Through the people he puts in your life. These things they might not be glamorous, right? They're not going to produce the same dopamine hit that the next scroll or the next notification will give. In fact, they're harder because they ask something of us. They ask us to be present and do things and sit with things that don't always feel comfortable. But they are the practices of people who are making their way to the tomb in the dark. And if Mary teaches us anything, it's that the one who stays, the one who keeps looking, even whenever they don't know what they're looking for, they are the ones who are able to hear when Jesus says their name. Maybe you started thinking about the ways that you have uh been displaced, or that you have created times that are not as healthy. And Easter uh might not be a new story for you. Maybe you've been following Jesus for a while and you've also heard this story many times. But weeks have gone by where the practices that used to make you feel alive and connected to the Lord have been put to the side. Maybe they've become less routine. Maybe your habits have wandered off a little bit. If that's the case, even if you've been on this road for a long time, hear the good news. Mary was following Jesus for years, and he stood right in front of her, and she thought it was the gardener. She looked right at him and didn't see. Until he said her name, she was blinded by the fog. But Jesus did say her name, and Jesus is saying your name, calling you back, calling you by name so that you will know that Christ has never stopped being right there with you, that Christ is always for you, that there's nothing that can separate you from the Christ of the love of Christ. So don't stop going to the tomb. Don't stop doing the things that bring you closer to God. Make going to church a priority. Have dinners with your family that don't have phones and TVs. Uh read your Bible or a book about faith and replace some of that scrolling time with some Jesus time. And to those of you who are new to all this, maybe you're here and you're like, I haven't heard this story a hundred times. Wait, wait, wait, what? Somebody rose from the dead? If that's you, welcome. This is a great place to belong. We've got a good story to tell you. If you're here, maybe somebody brought you, maybe you're just searching for something and you don't even know what it is. I want you to know that when Mary traveled to the tomb, she didn't have everything figured out. I love that. This wasn't like some person who had everything established. And when she got there, she's like, okay, Jesus says, Okay, because you have it figured out, now I will come and meet with you. No. She arrived in the dark, grieving, not knowing what she would find, and Jesus met her exactly there. The tomb is not the place for people who have the perfect theology or who have read the Bible from cover to cover. It's the place for people who are desperate and who are searching for something. If you are desperate, if you are in a place where you don't know what side is up or down, where it seems like the world is dark and there's a fog all around you.

SPEAKER_00 22:28

Jesus is there. You are not alone. And Christ is speaking your name.

SPEAKER_01 22:36

You know, I I mentioned that while I was going through my mental Roledex of Jillian stories, I kept coming back to the sweeter ones against my hopes, right? I wanted all the funny stories to tell you about her, but I kept coming back, like the dog bile story and the grandparents and the the daily phone calls. And I think there's something worth noticing about all that. The stories that I catalog for ammunition, right? They turned out to be a very small part of our relationship. Most of the memories are the ordinary ones, the ones I hadn't even been thinking of. They were the things that just showed up on their own. And I think that's what happens when we carry this Easter story for a long time. We get so focused on finding the new insight or the new angle that we missed the weight of what's already there. The real substance of this story doesn't require an aha moment. It just requires presence. It requires staying with it long enough for it to land again. Because there is no better story. 2,000 years ago, on a Sunday morning, a woman walked to a tomb and it was empty. She was there in the dark, she was weeping as she stood outside, and then the risen Christ, who had defeated sin and death, appeared in the garden and he said one word, and it was her name. And everything changed for her and for the whole world. And it wasn't because she was ready, and it wasn't because she had everything all put together, it's because she stayed. And she was there when she met Christ. Friends, Christ is risen and still knows your name. It's a story worth telling a thousand times. It's a story I'm going to keep telling because I don't know anything more true than this. This morning, whatever brought you here, I hope you will stay here. Not literally, because the service is going to end, and we've already done three, so I'm going to go home. But I want you to stay in this place of community. I want you to know that we can be your people if you'll let us, that you are loved and you are not alone. I hope you stay in the place where the tomb is, where even if it's dark and you don't know what's going on, that you believe and you know the Christ is there with you. I hope you keep looking, that you don't give up, because the stone has rolled away, and the one who knows your name is closer than you think, because Christ is risen. Christ is risen indeed. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

SPEAKER_00 25:21

Amen.