John 14:18-23
18 ‘I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. 19In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. 20On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. 21They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.’ 22Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, ‘Lord, how is it that you will reveal yourself to us, and not to the world?’ 23Jesus answered him, ‘Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.
Matthew 28:1-10, 16-20
After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. 2And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. 3His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. 4For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. 5But the angel said to the women, ‘Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. 6He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. 7Then go quickly and tell his disciples, “He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.” This is my message for you.’ 8So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. 9Suddenly Jesus met them and said, ‘Greetings!’ And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. 10Then Jesus said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.’
16 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. 17When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’
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Hoping For, Hoping In
This morning I want to talk to you about HOPE. Specifically about two different kinds of hope: hope for Something and Hope in Someone.
When you hope for some thing, you are hoping for a particular outcome- for a particular circumstance to turn out the way you want it to. Hope I get that job. Hope I get that guy. Hope I get that house. Hope I get that guy, and he gets that job, and we get that house. Sometimes the things we hope for is trivial, but sometimes it’s life or death. Hope she comes back. Hope we don’t lose him. Hope it’s not cancer. But someday, for some of us it will be cancer. And if it’s not cancer, it’ll be something else.
The thing is, someday every thing we hope for will eventually disappoint us. Every circumstance, every situation we’re hoping for is going to wear out, give out, fall apart, melt down, or go away. When that happens, the question then is about your deeper hope... your fall back hope when all your other hopes are disappointed.
When you’ve lost the some thing you were hoping for, do you know the Someone you can put your hope in?
He’s the reason we’re here this morning! The entire Bible points to this One Man… not because He’s going to give us this thing or that thing we’re hoping for (because that’s always going to give out eventually)… but because He is the One that we can put our hope in.[i]
The Thing They Hoped For
You know, this is a story about hope. The people in this story, Jesus’ followers, they too had hoped for some thing. The thing they’d hoped for was that Jesus would be their king- that he’d storm Jerusalem and take it over; he’d force out the Roman occupation and all their pain and all their struggles would be gone for good.
But then they watched, as the thing they’d hoped for died, right before their very eyes; Jesus, their KING, was crucified. They watched Joseph of Arimathea lift Jesus’ lifeless body from the cross, wrap him in linen burial cloth and place him in a tomb. They watched as that giant stone was rolled across the opening to that tomb, sealing off the thing they had hoped for forever.
Amanda Cryer recently told me about how she shared the story of Jesus with her 3-year-old daughter, Ella. They read together from Ella’s picture Bible. And with every turn of the page, Ella would excitedly point out her favorite character. “There he is! There’s Jesus!” “There he is!” healing the sick. “There he is!” feeding the 5,000. “There he is!” riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, adoring crowds all around. But then the pictures started getting darker. “There he is,” sharing a final meal with his friends. “There he is,” praying in the Garden. “There he is,” surrounded by a very unhappy crowd. And then they turned the page and, all of a sudden, Jesus wasn’t there anymore. Distressed, Ella turned to her mom and asked, “Where’s my Jesus?”
Where’s my Jesus? That’s exactly what Jesus’ followers were asking. Where’s my Jesus? He said he’d never leave us orphaned; he said he’d be with us always! Filled with inexpressible grief, a few of them went out to Jesus’ tomb that first Easter morning, not because they expected to see him, but to prepare his body for final burial. They went to say goodbye. To their friend. To their teacher. To their hope.
But that’s not where the story ends! Because when the something you hope for dies, that’s when you really learn the Someone you can put your hope in. As the women approached Jesus’ tomb, a mighty earthquake shook the ground and a dazzling angel rolled away the stone. “Do not be afraid,” the angel said. “I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified.”
Risen Indeed!
I know. I know that the thing you had hoped for has died. The circumstances you were hoping would play out a certain way have fallen apart. But don’t be afraid, “for he has been raised.”
Now there are a lot of things I could say right now to tell you why I believe that angel was telling the truth, why I believe in the resurrection. There are at least three things that have happened that tell me that Jesus did, in fact, rise from the dead.
First, there’s the empty tomb. If anyone ever wanted to prove the resurrection to be false, all they would have had to do would be to produce Jesus’ dead body. Yet for the last 2,000 years, no one has.
Second, the resurrected Christ was SEEN- by over 500 people. 500 people who, even as they were persecuted, imprisoned and even killed for doing so, testified to what they saw.
But the greatest proof we have of the resurrection is in the disciples themselves. They saw the risen Christ and they were definitively CHANGED. These guys who were once so unsure, so afraid, and frankly kind of dim, within 2 months time of their seeing the risen Christ, they are out in the city streets, full of joy and courage, preaching confidently and ARTICULATELY that Jesus is alive! This Jesus, their teacher, their friend, whom they saw die on a cross, whose body they saw laid in a tomb- he was ALIVE. He did what He said He would do. He is who He claimed to be. The Lord is risen! It really happened![ii]
What Resurrection Means
The resurrection happened. What does that mean for you and me? I think it means at least three things. First, the resurrection of Jesus Christ means that your future is secure. You know, there are a lot of things we humans fear in life- heights, dark, spiders… but nothing scares us quite so much as the unknown. When we don’t know or can’t see what’s to come, we imagine the worst. So it makes sense that the thing that scares us the most in life is the one thing about which we know the least- and that’s death.
There’s this house out in California called the “Winchester Mystery House” that was built many years ago by Mrs. Winchester. And Mrs. Winchester was deathly afraid of well, death. And she convinced herself that as long as she kept building onto that house, death would be confused and would never come for her. She’d be safe. So BUILD, she did. Sixteen carpenters worked on that house every day for 38 years, adding room after room after room! The house has 2,000 doors and 160,000 windows. The front door alone was valued at $3,000 (which was more than the cost of a brand new house in that day)! There are stairs that lead only to a ceiling, doors that lead to brick walls. It’s a mess! But Mrs. Winchester was convinced that, by doing this, death would be confused and therefore it would never find her.[iii]
But, of course, it did; death came for Mrs. Winchester just as it will eventually come for us all. And that scares us. But I’ll tell you what, it doesn’t scare Jesus ONE BIT. Because on the cross, Jesus took on Himself the worst that death could do, and in his resurrection, he defeated it! Jesus took on our GREATEST fear and he won! Everything else is cake! If you are here this morning and you are AFRAID, because you don’t know what the future holds... in your job, in your family, in your health… please know this: though we may not know the future holds, we KNOW who holds the future. Because Jesus rose from the dead, your future is secure.
Another thing the resurrection means is that your past can be forgiven. No matter what you’ve done, Jesus wants to wipe the slate clean.
I love what Jesus says when he encounters the women on the road on that first Easter morning. “Do not be afraid,” he says, “Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”
“Go and tell my brothers.” Remember, these were the guys who’d fallen asleep when all Jesus asked of them was to stay awake and pray. These were the guys who’d turned their backs on Jesus in his greatest moment of need- they’d denied him, betrayed him, abandoned him; left him to die utterly alone.
Jesus could have said, “Go tell that lousy bunch of backstabbers: We’re done.” He could have said, “Tell those loser, so-called ‘disciples’ that they better watch their backs.” No, he says, “Go tell my brothers…”
This morning, YOU might be feeling a bit like those disciples did… you’ve messed up, made some mistakes, maybe even some major ones, and you’re not sure the wrong you’ve done can ever be made right.
Ernest Hemingway tells a story of father in Madrid who was estranged from his runaway son. After many years of searching, the father took out an ad in the city’s paper that read, “Paco: All is forgiven. Meet me in front of the Hotel Montana at noon on Wednesday. Love, Papa.” And at noon on Wednesday, there were 800 boys named Paco on the street in front of the hotel.[iv]
How desperately do we ALL need to hear those words. All is forgiven. The Bible says, “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners Christ died for us.” He bore in his body the punishment that ought to have been ours and he bore it away. Gone. Done. Brothers. Sisters. There is nothing you could have ever done that is beyond God’s ability to forgive. NOTHING. Jesus’ death and resurrection means that your past can be forgiven.
And one last thing… The resurrection means that your future is secure and that your past can be forgiven… and it means that you can experience Christ’s power in the present.
The last thing Jesus says to his disciples is, “Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
That promise he made to his disciples on the night of his arrest, that he would not leave them orphaned… he meant it. For them and for us as well. The resurrection means that Jesus is with us, ALL of us, always.
For the last 6 weeks, we have been preaching through this little book My Heart Christ’s Home. It’s a story of a man who opens the door of his heart’s home to Jesus. The two walk through the house, room by room: the library, the living room, the dining room, the hall closet- and Jesus makes some serious renovations in each.
And as the book draws to a close, this man comes to the conclusion that it just doesn’t work to have Jesus come in as a guest. In order to fully experience the joy Jesus came to bring, he realizes that he needs to hand over the deed, to transfer the title, giving Jesus full access to his heart, complete control.
So that’s exactly what he did! The author writes, “He took my life that day and I can give you my word, there is no better way to live. Jesus knows how to keep my heart and use it. A deep peace settled down on my soul that has remained. I am his and he is mine forever!”[v]
I couldn’t say it better myself. Friends, this is the good news of Easter! When we’ve lost the some thing we were hoping for, we KNOW the Someone we can put our hope in. And when we do, when we put our hope in the resurrected Lord, Jesus Christ, we can experience his power in the present!
When we encounter the risen Christ, when we invite Him into our hearts and give Him command over our lives, we experience POWER. Something CHANGES. This same Jesus, who captivated the people of his day and transformed those who trusted in him- this same Jesus is alive and on the move. The same mighty power that defeated death is available TODAY. Power to pardon our sin and remove our guilt. Power to break the chains of addiction and abuse. Power to heal our broken hearts and restore broken relationships. Power to fill our lives with meaning and purpose.[vi]
When we put our hope in Jesus Christ, we know that our future is secure. Our past is forgiven. And we have power in the present. And that present can start today. This very moment, if you’ll put your faith, your trust, your HOPE in Him.
[i] John Ortberg, “Life with God,” Menlo Park Presbyterian Church, April 8, 2007
[ii] John Ortberg, “Resurrection: Myth or Miracle,” Menlo Park Presbyterian Church, April 12, 2009
[iii] John Ortberg, “Transferring the Title,” Menlo Park Presbyterian Church, June 19, 2005
[iv] Ernest Hemingway, The Capital of the World
[v] Bob Munger, My Heart Christ’s Home
[vi] Bob Sanders, “Idle Tale or Saving Encounter?” Lake Grove Presbyterian Church, April 11, 2004
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