Hlengiwe: Resurrection Sunday 2026

Preacher: Thobezweni Sithole

Text: John 20:1-8

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Something I've noticed in Rosebank specifically is that it's a city or an area, a suburb. Rosebank cares. Numpilo usually says that how are you, how are you really, really doing? Rosebank cares about how you're doing. I mean Rosebank is not just about productivity, not just about image. They just really care about how you're doing. I don't know if it's a business model or they really, really care. If you walk around Rosebank, you won't miss the fact that people really care about a couple of things in light of how people are doing. One of them is this you walk down Oxford Road, Yasmart, on a Tuesday, uh like around half past four, you're gonna see a lot of people running. They care about how they they look, right? You you'll see shoes hidden pavements, others are running shirtless, others are, you know, there's just running all over, some are cycling, some are even, maybe some of you in this room are doing it, uh already preparing for high rocks. In other words, friends, there's a sense of a culture that is that is strong on on health, that is big on on health and running and physique. Uh, I'm married into a running club, I'd put it like that. The family I'm married into is a running club. Every now and then on Christmas, they buy me running shoes. Uh, I'm not gonna fall for it. But the point is there's a culture that really invests a lot in physique. But not only that, Rosebank then invests as well in a sense of like uh inner life. If if you're gonna walk around Rosebank, you won't miss the the fact that there are a lot of um um mental wellness institutions. In other words, friends, therapy is not a dirty word in Rosebank, and we love that. That's beautiful. Mental wellness does matter. From gyms to recovery spaces to early mornings to high rocks, people are really trying to care for themselves. And and honestly, friends, as I said, it is a what? A beautiful thing. But my question here this morning is this I want us to sit with this, and it's a gentle question to you that can a Iran fix a broken heart? Can can anything we we build, structure or or control actually touch the deepest place parts of our hearts? Because, friends, you can you can outrun even the streets of Rosebank, but you cannot outrun your soul. And and and some of us, friends, I want to be compassionate here and say, man, we came here this morning carrying something that no amount of discipline can solve. Some of us know what it is to lose someone, and there's the there's a sense in which you you lose someone and there's a sense of no closure. Some of us are carrying quiet anxiety that never really leaves us. We we are functioning, we are showing up, but underneath something is actually not settled. Some of us believed in something that disappointed us: a relationship, a dream, even a version of God. And and it didn't come through and and and and as we thought it would. And now, friends, if we are all being honest, there is a quiet question underneath all our lives, underneath your life. Is anything actually going to make this thing that I'm feeling right? I mean, I I've tried to manage it, I I've tried the discipline, I've tried to talk it out, talk therapy, I've tried some healing, but there is there is a set of a sense of an ache that does not respond to my efforts. No matter how much I try. And friends, the woman we are about to meet in John 20 knows exactly what that feeling is like. What happens to her in this moment is not just going to comfort her, it's going to completely redefine what is possible for every one of us in this room this morning. And friends, I beg you that we jump into the text quickly. Uh, I have four points. Number one is that an empty tomb and an empty heart, which is verse 1 to 10. Let's look at it quickly, verse 1. So, how we preach here is that we go through books of the Bible or we go through sections and we we we want God to inform uh what we what we share or what we preach. So it's not ideas that are uh are taken out of anywhere else, it's just like we're drawing out of the truth of the Bible to say see what God says, what's the timeless truth from God's word? So uh now and again I would like to point you to scripture and say, Man, let us look at this verse. Let us look at this, let's keep our eyes there so that you don't think, oh, this guy is quite intelligent or whatever. No, everything is just drawn out of God's word, right? Quickly, then let's look at verse 1 of um chapter 20 of John. It says, Now on the first day of the week, Mary Mahdeleen, we hear her name. Her name is what? Mary Mahdalin came to the tomb early while it was still dark. Now, John Friends doesn't waste his words while it was still dark. John is not a waster of words, as it were. If they say 1,500 words that you need to type and hand in an assignment, he'll probably give you a thousand words. You know what I mean? John, throughout his gospel, then he's specifically intentional about using a comparison of light and what? And darkness. You see, friends, darkness is never just a time of day when you read the book of John. It's actually it always gives a sense of a condition of the human soul. Uh Nicodemus, for example, in John 3 comes to Jesus at night because his understanding is in the dark. Judas leaves the upper room, and John simply writes, and it was night. The darkness is always, friends, the marks of those who do not actually see. So when John tells us, as Mary is walking to the tomb while it was dark, he's not just giving us a timestamp, he's telling us something about her interior world. She is in grief. She has no framework for what is about to happen. She's not walking toward a hope. She is walking toward a dead man, a man she dearly loved. And look at it quickly. Um, if you if you if if you know who she is, as I've mentioned, Mary Magdalene in Luke 8, verse 2, it tells us that Mary Magdalene was a woman from whom seven demons had been cast out. She she has a past. She carries scars that most people in her world would have used to disqualify her. And yet, friends, she is the one God chooses. Not theologians, not Luke, not the religious elite. This woman walking in the dark toward a tomb is whom God chooses. Now, here's something I want us to catch, friends, and and I've mentioned it because this is not just a moving story, it's it's one of those most powerful arguments we need to hold. So as people argue the historicity of the resurrection, point them to this woman. In first century Jewish culture, a woman's testimony was not, as I said, admissible. This is the last person that anyone would choose to use as a witness to fabricate a story. And yet God chooses her. Oh, what grace, friends. The fact that all gospels for independent accounts agree that Mary was the first witness, not a liability. It's evidence, friends, it's the kind of evidence that could be embarrassing even to the disciples. Because it's a countercultural detail to put a woman of her stature, as it were, to be the one who's the first eyewitness. God chose Mary, and friends, God does choose the unlikely. Perhaps you are here this morning, you've disqualified yourself. Like, yeah, let me just try this church thing out just one more time. I've come and gone every year, once a year, I come to Easter, I come to December, and yeah, my life is not put together. Am I really worth choosing God? If God chose Mary, definitely you are worth it. God chose Mary. God entrust the extraordinary word of of the gospel to the disqualified. And and friends, if that's true, this this this this says to you that your past is not too complicated for God. Amen. As it were, friends, even your visible scar is not too complicated for God. Nothing disqualifies you from being found by his son Jesus Christ. Now let's look at verse 2. Wow, talk about running clubs. So she ran and went to Simon Peter. Uh, remember in verse 1, she she finds that she she she goes in verse 1 and says, She saw the stone had been taken away from the tomb. And then what does she do? She runs and went to Peter, uh, Simon Peter and to the other disciple. The other disciple is John. John is very shy, friends. Uh, he always refers to himself as the other disciple or the disciple whom the Lord loves. To the one whom Jesus loved and said to them, They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have led him. Friends, she she's like, talk about in co woundzi at night, grave robbers. That that is a first thought, friends, that there's a grave that has been robbed. Because when you when you only know a dead Jesus and an empty tomb is is is not a good news for you. Only when you know a dead Jesus, only when you have no framework of what is actually happening, an empty tomb is not what, friends, good news. And and friends, that's how our grief works. We live with a framework that there's no empty tomb. Every new development feels like another subtraction, as it were. Our first instinct is not to run to resurrection and the story of resurrection. Paul says if if Jesus Christ did not rise from the dead, uh, we are the most to be pitied. People should be looking at us with pity and saying, Ah Hashem. Our first instinct, friends, is to have a framework of what this is a robbery. Someone has has taken this from me, too. And Peter and John uh race to the tomb. Like I said, talk about running clubs. Look at it. So Peter went out with the other disciple and they were going toward the what? The tomb. Both of them were what? We're running together. But the other disciple outran Peter. Look at John, he's so humble. The other disciple ran faster than who? Than Peter and reached the tomb first. Peter is not much of a runner, friends. But but John uh outruns him, he arrives first, he stoops down, he looks in, he sees linen cloth, but but he doesn't go in. He's he's not as um presumptuous as Peter. Now look at verse 6 and 7 quickly. It says, then then uh Simon Peter came following him and went into the tomb. He he saw the linen cloths lying there, and the face cloth which had been on Jesus, Jesus' head, not lying with the linen cloths, but folded up in a place by itself. Soon theory would argue that, oh wow, these grave robbers, these robbers were were so um neat. Grave robbers wouldn't uh fold the linen cloths. And and lay John doesn't waste friends what his words neatly arranged linen cloths, the face cloth folded separately in a place by itself. Friends, grave robbers, as I said, do not what fold linen. Whatever happened in the tomb was not a robbery, it was not panic, it was not even chaos, it was calm, it was unhurried, it was authority. Jesus simply no longer needed those clothes. He left them behind like a man who has finished with something and set it aside. John 10, verse 18 says, No one takes my life from me, I lay down of my own accord and I take it up again. John friends then uh enters this room uh after Peter and he sees and he and what does he do? He believes. He he believes the first resurrection faith is John believing, not because he saw Jesus, but because he understood what was left behind. He he believed. Oh wow, wow, what a faithful disciple! He saw an empty tomb, he saw uh folded uh cloth, and he's like, definitely Jesus rose again. He believed. Now, my question to you is what would you do if that was the case? What would you do if you believed? Look at verse 10. Just notice the I don't know what to call this, I don't know how to define it, but then the disciples went back to their homes. They go home, they believe something extra extraordinary had happened, but what do they do? They just go home. I want to be gentle here, friends. I want to be honest, but uh I really am persuaded that friends, you can be persuaded by the arguments of the resurrection, right? The evidence of the resurrection. You you can believe the tomb, as it were, is empty. You can be sitting here and believing that. You you can have all the right theology, you you you can but you can still go home unchanged. You you can still go home and what friends unchanged because what Peter and John have is information. What they don't yet have is an encounter. Information without encounter will send you home every time. And I call it in big English dead orthodoxy. Dead orthodoxy is what, friends, it's the right beliefs, the right church, the right answers said in the right way, but no living encounter with the risen Jesus. And friends, dead orthodoxy is one of the most dangerous places a person can live in. Because it is close enough to the real thing to feel safe, but far enough away to miss everything that actually matters. Dead orthodoxy, friends, looks spiritual from the outside, but it is grief without an encounter, and and that's what what what is dead orthodoxy? It is religion without relationship, it is having the right map, but not taking the journey. But Mary. Mary doesn't go home, Mary stays. Sometimes we need to just stay. You want to see them just now. But Mary stays. I refuse to move here until I understand. I want to understand what's going on here. Point two friends, the one who won't leave. That's Mary. She won't leave. Look at verse 11. But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept, she stooped to look into the tomb. The disciples go home, but Mary stays. She has no theological explanation for those folded grave clothes. She has nothing. Except that she cannot bring herself to leave. This is what love does, friends. It stays when logic says, Go. It lingers at the tomb when everyone else has moved on. Have you been to a funeral and the family, people are crying, people are singing, uh, there's multitudes of people there, and and as the as the people go and just some of them linger. They stay. She stoops down and looks into the tomb and she sees two angels in white seated where the body of Jesus had been. One at the head, one at the feet. Scholars note something very beautiful here. That the positioning mirrors that of the cherubim and the seraphim, the mercy seat, as it were, the Ark of the Covenant. The very place where God's presence dwelt, the very place where God was seated, friends, the space between those angels is not absent. It is the most theologically loaded space, friends, in the universe. And the angels ask her, Woman, why are you weeping? I wish the angels asked me, Toby, why are you weeping? Woman, why are you weeping? It is a gentle rebuke. But but Mary's grief is so total that she barely registered who she's talking to. She just gives the same answer she gave Peter. They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him. This, friends, is what unprocessed grief looks like. This is what grief does when it's not processed, it narrows the world to the one thing you have lost. And then she turns and she sees someone standing there. She does not recognize him. Look at verse 15. Jesus said to her, Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking? Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, Sir, if if if you care if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away. Friends, she's asking Jesus where Jesus is. She's looking directly at the answer to her grief. And she does not recognize him. Friends, before we are too hard on this woman, that's what we do. How many of us do this exact same thing? We are surrounded by a risen Lord Jesus Christ. In his word, in his people, in the quiet gifts of the ordinary days of our lives, and we walk right past Him looking for life in things that cannot give it. The wellness routine, friends, cannot give you this. The running culture, as beautiful as it is, the wellness and the running culture, all are beautiful, cannot give you this. The therapy sessions, the journaling, the high rocks medal on the wall cannot give you this. As Lonella walks into the room. My goodness. She's a therapist. None of it, friends, can reach the place where Mary is standing. Outside a tomb. Asking a gardener for help. Because she's looking for what Jesus can give. Without looking for Jesus. This is us, friends. That is the human condition dressed in roseband clothing. Look at verse 15 again. Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for? Jesus does not ask, What are you looking for? He kind of drives the conversation. One theologian by the name of William Hendrickson makes this point of this observation precisely here that this woman, friends, has a problem that she is searching at the level of an object. A solution she can manage. Jesus redirects her from a thing to a person, from a what to a whom. Because, friends, Christianity is not finally about finding a technique or an explanation. That's why it differs from therapeutic self help. It's about meeting the risen Christ. Himself. He is already there, friends. And he has begun to to to kind of uh draw her in. She's he's been drawing her in uh this whole time. She she just needed someone to change the question. Whom am I seeking? Wow, here's one word. Point three, the point of point three is one word. Jesus calls her her name. Mary. This is the center of the whole passage. I couldn't believe it as I was working through it. That verse 16 is the center of the whole passage, that we can't rush through it. Jesus said to her, Mary. And she said to him in Aramaic, Raponi, which means teacher. And actually, it actually means my teacher. One word, her name. That's all it took, friends. Dauling. Malebuchen. Manla. Mavis. One word, a name. That is all it took, friends. Not an argument, not a theological proof, not a vision or a flash of light. Friends, just a name. Spoken by a voice, she knows. And the only way she could understand it, friends. And everything broke open. Friends, this is the fulfillment, as it were, of John 10. The good shepherd calls his own sheep by name. And they follow him because they know his voice. Do you know his voice, Musiso? When he calls uh man, do you do you respond? This is that promise, friends, fulfilled in the garden on the morning of the first day of the new creation. The reason Jesus does not send a prayer statement. He does not send a tweet. He does not appear first to the powerful or the qualified. He finds one woman, insignificant as she was in the time. Alone, weeping outside a tomb, and she calls her name. Friends, this that's the gospel. That's the gospel. It's not a system to be managed, it's not a set of beliefs to maintain. It's not a the gospel is a person. A person who was dead and is alive, who knows your name. Who has already known your name. Now, friends, again, we dumped down the significance of Jesus Christ. But all the history is centered on him, and yet he knows your name. I mean, you get excited when a CEO calls your name.

unknown 25:14

Amen.

SPEAKER_00 25:15

The boss wants to have lunch with you. Oh, Stemisau, you've been doing a great job. Oh, you know my name. But the creator of the universe, the maker of the heavens and the earth, the one through whom all things hang on. He knows your name. And my question is actually, does in fact, does he know your name? And my other question is: who knows your name? Who has always known your name before the foundations of the world? Mary says, Raboni. Not this false preacher from Pretoria. I'm sorry to say that. But Jesus here, the the Raboni, the true one, the possessive point here matters that in one word, all the distance falls away, friends. He calls her by name and she responds, My teacher. The grief, the confusion, the gardener mistake all dissolves away because he called her name and she knew his voice. Now look at verse 17. Jesus says something that has puzzled readers for centuries, as it were. Jesus said to her, Do not cling to me. Oh, Mary is clinging. She wanted to hold on and latch on to Jesus Christ. Jesus said to her, Do not cling to me. That sounds a bit cold, but it's not. Listen to this. Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father, but go to my brothers and say to them, I am ascending to my father and your father, to my God and your God. Don't cling, Mary. Why? Because Mary wants to hold on to what was the old proximity, the good old days, the physical Jesus she could follow and touch. Then that this is this is a different time now. Not because I'm leaving you, Mary, but because what is coming is deeper. My father and your father. Oh something has changed, friends. Jesus Christ has accomplished something phenomenal, friends. Something that changes the face of history, friends. We have access to the Father as our father, as he calls to him as Father. Our status has changed, friends. You are no longer enemies of God. You are no longer forgotten and lost. Jesus said, My father and your father, my God and your God. Do you hear what he's saying, friends? Through my death, through my resurrection, the relationship I have with the Father is now being opened to you. This is not distance, this is an invitation, this is adoption. He calls his disciples brothers. Do you see it again? Says, go and tell my brothers. You no longer come to God as a stranger. You come as a child. Welcomed, known, held. And I want to say something to some of you here. Maybe you feel like, man, the church has failed me. Friends, I want to say this. This Jesus, the one who stands in the gardens and says names, has not. He is not finished with us. For the seeker who is not sure any of this, and if it's real or not, as it were. Mary was not sure either. She came expecting a corpse. And she encountered a resurrection. And as I close, friends, look at verse 18. Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, I have seen the king. I have seen the Lord. She arrived weeping. She leaves proclaiming. She came looking for a corpse. She found the Lord of life. The resurrection is never meant to be a private experience. Mary does not become an expectator of Easter. She becomes, friends, its first witness, its first preacher. She's sent out by the risen Jesus Himself to go to my brothers to carry the most important news in human history. And those news are not just for an unqualified Mary. There's an unqualified Spusissa here. An unqualified Lunga, an unqualified Betty, and unqualified uh uh ntabileng. Friends, all our calling is by God's sheer grace. None of us qualify. Now we we can proclaim, friends, with with confidence that the gospel, which is the answer to everything that we can respond to death in this manner. Oh, death, where is your sting? What does this mean to us today, friends? Some of you are facing uh perhaps job loss, some of you are facing a terrifying diagnosis, some of you are watching your body age and feeling that quiet panic that what you've built is slowly being taken away. The running clubs are not helping. These are the tombs of the ordinary life. And friends, those things are beautiful and real. But I want to to name something before you that that that gives a response to that. That there is an idol underneath all the wellness and the the the need. Uh it needs to be said, friends, that there's a there's a huge need to to to live forever. We want to be healthy because we assume we're gonna live for forever. But the answer to eternal life is not a running club, it's not hierarchs, it's belief in Jesus Christ who conquered the grave. We live in a city that has made a religion out of vitality points. The running, the gyms, the therapy, the vitality points. Underneath all of this, friends, is this desire. I want to be okay forever. I want to outrun the thing that is coming for me. And I want to outrun it and get it. I want to thrive, but vitality friends won't save you. You may redeem those points, but you need the redeemer of life. You need um saying Jesus Christ, the true redeemer, the last enemy, the foundation of all our fear has been conquered by the true Redeemer, Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ, friends, is the only one who's conquered death. He says in verse 17, I am ascending to my father and your father, your father, a good father that doesn't wait for you to get it all together because he comes close. He comes close precisely because you can't come close. You have no ability to. It says, God so loved the world as our beautiful kids proclaimed this morning. He gave his only son, and and we said, let him be crucified, let him be, let, let him be buried, but but but the tomb could not hold him. Mary Magdalene with her pascals and her persons could stand in the garden and hear, my father, Mary is your father. And my resurrection confirms that. Mary has a father now. Who is your father? And friends, this is not a metaphor. This is this is the reality of resurrection. You are no longer an orphan trying to outrun your fear. You are a child coming home to a father who has been looking for you this whole time. Now, hear this, friends. Death is not just what happens at the end of your life. Death is the fear that wakes you up at 3 a.m. in the morning with worry. It's the silence after the relationship ends. It's the moment the doctor faces you and tells you those terrible news that change the trajectory of your life forever, as it were. Or at least in time. It's that voice that says nothing is going to make anything right in your life. Death, friends, is that tomb. It's not just at the end, friends, of your life, as it were, when you breathe your last death. It's it's at the middle of the ordinary um ebbs and flow on a Tuesday morning when you are stuck in traffic. Death happens there. And to all of that, Jesus says, I'm the resurrection and the life. I have the final word. John Owen wrote it in his book, the death of death and the death of Jesus Christ, that Jesus did not come merely to make salvation possible, he came to defeat death itself. It's not a theory, it's reality. In a garden on a Sunday morning, which is the first day in a tomb that could not hold him. Death died when Jesus died. But but Jesus did not stay dead. Because, friends, the cross without the resurrection, it's a tragedy. But the resurrection is not a better ending to the same story, it is entirely a new beginning. Friends, as we were thinking through this reality of life being hard and difficult, and uh what what we preach in terms of the hope we have in Jesus Christ, and saying, Man, we need um clearing. We say that, man, your life costs more than you can imagine or think. It costs the life of Jesus Christ to buy you back from things that enslave you. Things that say, man, you'll find vitality and life in this, in the running club, in the boyfriend, and this in these hopes in your job, and you work yourself to a I don't have the descriptive word to say it here. But Jesus says, I have come to give you life, and life in abundance. I I am the resurrection and the life. With me, there is there is true life, there's true fullness, even when life is aching, even when I'm faced with deep grief at the tomb, even when I'm faced with deep loss. I know that it's not the end of the story. There's a song that says Jesus is the is the is the first fruit of all our resurrection, he's the evidence of all our resurrection. In other words, if you're a farmer, you'd understand the language of saying that the resurrection of Christ is saying that, oh, the harvest is gonna look like this. The first fruit is evidence of what the rest of the harvest will look like. Jesus Christ is the first fruit of all our resurrection. And I mean when I say all, I mean all our resurrection of those who believe in him as Lord and Savior. If you are here this morning and you don't know Jesus, if you are here this morning and struggling with doubt, would you would you turn to him by faith? Perhaps he's calling you Mandwa. Perhaps he's calling you Nombule to believe in him. Let me pray for us. Thank you for your kindness. Thank you, Lord, that you have given us life. Thank you, Lord, that you have conquered the grave, that there's new creation you, that there's life that death cannot touch, that the grave has been broken, as it were, that we have life in you, and we have full life. Baba, in your word you say that though we waste our way outwardly, you are forming a new person inwardly, a person who transcends time. Although, Lord, we feel the aches of this life, the brokenness, the sourness of it. Baba, we face life with hope, the true hope of salvation, the hope of resurrection. And it is because of a day such as this. That Lord, you have counted us, you have called us by name. People who are unworthy like Mary to believe in you, to follow you in the valleys, in the in the hills, and every circumstance, in the in the Monday, mundane stuff of life, Lord, you have called us to live under your lordship. Because, Lord, you are not a liar, you are not a lunatic, you are Lord, and your resurrection affirms that. And we believe that, Lord. I pray for those who don't know you, those who have felt far from you, Lord. I pray may they hear you again. May they hear you speak through your word. May they hear you, Lord, through community. May they hear their names called by you. In the mighty name of Jesus Christ, I pray. Amen.