Easter Reflection: Whose Story Will You Believe?

Our Easter text comes from John 20:1-10. Although there is much in this passage to discuss, I want to spend my space here talking about the reactions of Mary and the two disciples as they encountered the empty tomb.

As Mary comes early in the morning, she finds the stone has been rolled away and the tomb no longer holds the body of Jesus. Her first reaction is to run back to the disciples and tell them what she has found. Her tale is telling. Keep in mind that she, along with so many others have spend the better part of three years with Christ while he has taught them and the masses about who He is and the kind of Kingdom he is bringing. Among those teachings, we find at least three distinct times when Christ told them all that He would be betrayed, killed, and would rise from the dead. At this point, he was betrayed just like He said, and killed just like He said, and He has risen from the dead. But what is Mary’s story?

She tells the disciples Jesus’ body has been stolen. Before you worry too much about Mary’s faith, when John and Peter race to the tomb, we get this description, from John himself, about how he reacted, “and he believed…” (vs 8). Believed what? The next verse helps us answer the question. They did not yet understand that Christ would rise from the dead. When Scripture tells us John believed, it is not telling us that John had an amazing moment of faith, it is telling us he and Peter believed Mary’s story. We may be able to excuse Mary’s take on the resurrection because she may not have been in on all Christ’s discussions about His resurrection, but we cannot say the same for Peter and John-two of the closest disciples to Christ.

As the chapter proceeds, Christ reveals Himself to Mary and then to the disciples, and at the end of the chapter, Thomas enters the scene. This poor disciple has been given the unfortunate moniker “Doubting Thomas” because he refused to believe in the resurrection until he saw and felt Christ. But the same should be said for every other disciple!

I am struck by this question: why did Jesus allow Mary and the disciples to encounter and empty tomb before they encountered Him? Keep in mind Jesus has been up for a while now and if He has been just a little faster, or had not been stuck in traffic, He would have gotten to Mary and the disciples before they reached the tomb. He didn’t, though.

I believe Jesus was giving them a chance to believe the story He had been telling them for three years. Mary and the disciples, when they were confronted with the empty tomb, fell back to an easy and comfortable belief-that Jesus’ body had been stolen.

During Easter we are confronted with the same opportunity-will we believe the easy, human, politically correct version of Jesus’ story, or will we choose to believe what He has been trying to tell us for centuries? Our lives hang in the decision.

You will be able to find the audio of the sermon here.

Jude: Intro vs1-2

1Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, To those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ: 2May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you.

This past week we began a study on an oft-neglected book, the Epistle of Jude. This book is overlooked for many reasons, including its short length and the cryptic issues raised within the central portion of the letter. If we are careful, though, there is a lot to learn from this little epistle, and I think we will find it almost startlingly applicable.

First, a point that will make the study of Jude a little easier is that it is a close cousin to the longer 2 Peter. We will find that many of the issues raised in Jude in an almost shorthand fashion will be expounded upon in 2 Peter. The two letters are so close, that many scholars believe one letter borrowed from the other. There is much discussion about which came first, but generally it is believed that Jude was the original of the two.

Another point that will aid in our understanding of Jude is its relatively late date of authorship. Many evangelical scholars place the writing of Jude between the mid 60s A.D. to the mid 70s A.D. This little fact is helpful given the occasion and burden of Jude’s letter. He clearly states from the beginning that he is writing to encourage the believers to “earnestly contend for the faith” and be on guard against false teachers. Just a decade or two before, we know that there were false teachers following Paul and the other apostles corrupting the church. By the time we get to Jude and 2 Peter, it may be the case that the false teachers have become more organized and the need to consciously oppose them has become more pressing for the church.

Who were these false teachers? In our study we will discover plenty about these people, but we should make one point here. Part of what Jude may be dealing with is the very inception of the earliest and most predominant contender to Christianity-Gnosticism. As a systematized way of looking at the world, Gnosticism really won’t come into its own for a few decades, but it appears to be on the rise in the early church. Part of what make Jude so surprisingly applicable is that Gnosticism is still one of the most predominant religious contenders to Christianity. Its latest standard bearer is the philosophy behind The Da Vinci Code. The claims Dan Brown makes in that book are among the oldest contentions against Christianity on record. As our study progresses, we will get a chance to look more closely into the early Gnostic claims.

Before we finish, I want to make two points about the opening two verses. First, the author is most likely the half-brother of Jesus, and yet he does not identify himself as such. Among those who openly mocked Jesus during his earthly ministry, one of the identifiable groups is his brothers. More than likely, Jude (as well as James) were powerfully transformed by the death and resurrection of Christ and subsequently did not see fit to call themselves his brother. Instead, he calls himself a “bondservant” of Christ. What a powerful transformation must have taken place for one brother to see things this way!

Secondly, Jude makes use of the concept of “mercy” instead of the more familiar Pauline “grace” in his opening. Mercy, as the concept of “a loving act of forgiveness” will become an important concept for Jude before the book is through. This is important not to miss-though Jude is fascinating for its cryptic OT references and citations, that is not what Jude is after. He is after a sense of mercy and love pervading the church.

Jude has something profound and powerful to tell the Church even today.