THE CALL TO BELIEVE

John 20:1-9

Dr. Wm. J. Maxwell

First Presbyterian Church, Newport, RI

Easter, March 23, 2008

Sheer veracity … total candor ... total honesty. That’s what the Bible brings regarding the people described within its pages. There is little, if any, “sugarcoating” when it comes to the descriptions of people portrayed in the Bible, from the first book of Genesis to the last book of Revelation. There is little, if any, holding back on the description of character traits regarding such people as Adam and Eve, Moses and Miriam, Peter or Paul; and this is certainly true of Mary Magdalene, as well.

Mary appears in all four Gospels at the time of Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection. Quite obviously, we may easily come to the conclusion that Mary was a devoted follower of the Lord. In fact, she was one of the last remaining at the Cross, and one of the first to go to the Tomb. The story of Mary told to us in this particular Gospel is the story of one going up to the tomb empty of heart but then, in time, having a heart ever so full, having met Jesus the Risen Lord.

John’s Gospel also gives us the opportunity of looking into the lives of Peter and John, in their journey to the tomb and in their experiencing a call to believe in Christ and His resurrection.

I

THE REALITY OF THE CROSS

We are told that, for Mary Magdalene, Peter, John and all the others, all their hopes and dreams had been so attached to Jesus. Now, all those hopes and dreams were but a faint memory. The crucifixion had changed all that. Hope had turned to hopelessness, and a despair experienced by all the disciples. The honesty of John’s pen leads us to realize that no one expected Jesus to be resurrected from the dead.

The Gospels tell us that a number of women left for the tomb before dawn, arriving just as the sun began to rise. Suddenly, perhaps as they made a turn in the path leading up to the tomb, they discovered that the heavy stone slab at the entrance had been rolled out of its groove and was lying flat on the ground.

When Mary discovered that the stone had been rolled away, what was Mary’s very first thought? Grave Robbers! Some people had heartlessly and maliciously taken the body of Jesus away! So, Mary did the first thing she could think of – she started to run away to get some help from those who had known and loved Jesus best – His disciples. Mary - perplexed, confused and frightened - ran and reported the news to all of the apostles, though still a woman of some faith as she referred to Jesus as “the Lord.”

Hearing the news, Peter and John responded to Mary’s report by going to the tomb. It appears from the text that they started out by walking side by side, then running - both side by side at first, until the younger John outran Peter to the tomb. That’s when the careful investigation occurred.

As in the case of many Eastern Oriental tombs today, the entrance was in a low position. So John had to stoop first before looking inside the tomb of Jesus. Only, John didn’t see Jesus – discovering Jesus’ linen cloths for burial, but no Jesus!

Peter, then arrived and did what we would expect from such an impulsive man – he went inside the tomb. Upon his own examination, he discovered the grave clothes laid out ever so neatly. “He saw the linen cloths lying there, and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen cloths but folded up in a place by itself.” [i] Clearly, this was not as thieves would have done, having had to leave a ransacked tomb in such a hurry!

At that moment, John himself entered the tomb and joined Peter, and John “saw and believed.” Now, it wasn’t because of Jesus’ many predictions of His death and resurrection that John had remembered so well, and thus chose to believe; nor was it a matter of considering the numerous prophecies predicting Christ’s resurrection – such as that of Psalm 16, which we used as our call to worship this morning. Rather, it was because of what John and Peter saw and personally experienced.

THE CALL TO BELIEVE

Here, we need to remind ourselves again that the hearts of the disciples had been empty because they believed the tomb was not! They thought the tomb still contained the dead body of Jesus. But then, only upon close and personal examination, did Peter and John find that the tomb was indeed empty! Clearly, here was a call to believe in Jesus as the Christ and Risen Lord, whom the Cross could not defeat nor the tomb imprison. But it had been a real struggle for them to come to this conclusion, to answer the call to believe with a firm and unrelenting faith.

One of the common claims made at this time of year is that the resurrection of Jesus was only a fraud or a hoax. Such attempts are nothing new as efforts to explain away the resurrection occurred on that very first day! From Matthew’s Gospel we are told,

While the women were on their way (from seeing the Risen Lord), some of the guards went into the city and reported to the chief priests everything that had happened. When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, telling them, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.’ If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed. And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day.[ii]

Such attempts toward a theory of deception have continued through generations. During the last century, for example, Ernest Renan, an influential critic of the New Testament, brought forth the argument that belief in the resurrection of Jesus by Christians all goes back to Mary Magdalene. Rumors of Jesus’ resurrection were spread around because of Mary having had a hallucination, he said. She only thought that she had seen Jesus. But the last thing Mary ever expected was the resurrection of Jesus, believing first in fact, that it was grave robbers who had stolen His body away.

And if you look closely at the lives of all the disciples, you clearly find that deception was never in their minds. It didn’t have to be. The resurrection proved to be real, as the Risen Lord appeared to all of them!

A few years ago, in his “Breakpoint” radio broadcast, Chuck Colson gave his own answer to the question: “How do you know the disciples were telling the truth?” Colson, as you may know, became a Christian after his involvement in the Watergate scandal under the administration of President Richard Nixon. From his own personal experience in the White House, Colson knows all about schemes and cover-up. So, listen to what he said in reply:

My answer to that (question) comes from an unlikely source: Watergate. Watergate involved a conspiracy to cover up, perpetuated by the closest aids to the President of the United States – the most powerful men in America, who were intensely loyal to their president. But one of them, John Dean, turned states evidence, that is, testified against Nixon, as he put it, ‘to save his own skin’ and he did so only two weeks after informing the president about what was really going on – two weeks! The real cover up, the lie, could only be held together for two weeks, and then everybody else jumped ship in order to save themselves.

Now, the fact is that all that those around the President were facing was embarrassment, maybe prison. Nobody’s life was at stake. But what about the disciples? Twelve powerless men, peasants really, were facing not just embarrassment or political disgrace, but beatings, stonings, execution. Every single one of the disciples insisted, to their dying breaths, that they had physically seen Jesus bodily raised from the dead. Don’t you think that one of those apostles would have cracked before being beheaded or stoned? That one of them would have made a deal with the authorities? None did. You see, men will give their lives for something they know to be true – they will never give their lives for something they know to be false. [iii]

Over the last several weeks, we have been looking at the portrait of the apostle Peter in the Gospels. Do you know how Peter’s life finally ended? His life ended with imprisonment and a cruel death in Rome. We are told,

With a refinement of cruelty Peter’s wife was crucified before him, while he was compelled to look on. Peter encouraged her, and said: ‘Remember the Lord’ (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, 3, 30). With such courage did Peter conduct himself that even his jailer was moved to accept the Christian faith. When the moment of crucifixion came Peter requested that he might be crucified head downwards, for he was not worthy to die as his Lord had died (Ecclesiastical History, 3, 1). In the end Peter died a martyr and a hero for his Lord.” [iv]

No fraud, deception or “hoax” could ever encourage such devotion and bravery as this!

III

OUR OWN CALL TO BELIEVE

So, what of us here this morning? Do we also hear our own “call to believe” today? On this Easter Sunday? And in fact on every Sunday, every Lord’s Day, and with each and every new morning as the dawn breaks? Is there not a call to believe: “Christ is risen, He is risen indeed”?

John Calvin once said so notably that “… the resurrection of Christ is the most important article of our faith, and without it the hope of eternal life is extinguished …” [v] How different this day would be had Christ not risen from the dead; and how different would be our eternal tomorrow!

Recently, I read a book by John Piper on the lives of three outstanding church leaders who sought to courageously defend the truth and to treasure Christ at the same time. John Owen, a minister in the 1600’s, was one of them, who had a passion for the truth and a passion for Christ. He wrote many books which are still being read with gratitude today. For example, I have four or five of them in my own personal library.

The last book John Owen wrote, just as he died, has the title and theme: Meditations on the Glory of Christ. Communion with God in Christ was his passion, and communing with the Christ of unleashed and unencumbered glory in heaven his greatest goal.

On the very day that John Owen died, his friend William Payne came to visit him at his bedside. Payne was also a minister and he promised Owen that he would take the manuscript on the Glory of Christ to publication. John Owen’s last recorded words to his friend were these: “I am glad to hear it; but, O brother Payne! The long wished for day is come at last, in which I shall see that glory in another manner than I have ever done, or was capable of doing in this world.” [vi]

Clearly, John Owen heard the call to believe and he answered!

Dear friends, have you heard the call to believe? And if so, have you answered? For Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!