Tag: Easter

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Questions at the Tomb – John 20:1-29

Things have been changing in ways that are hard. For many of us it is harder and harder to be optimistic about the future.

This is what Mary Magdalene was facing at the beginning of this chapter. Jesus has died, life as she knew it is over. She comes to anoint the body, having been delayed by the Sabbath already. Then she finds the empty tomb but does not immediately realize why. She tells the disciples who (after footrace) confirm that the body is gone, but they don’t understand either. And so Mary is standing outside the empty tomb, confused and sad.

Mary Magdalene was one of Jesus’ disciples. Luke 8 puts her on an equivalent footing with the Twelve male disciples, with the caveat that she and other women supported the ministry of Jesus materially. Jesus cast seven demons out of her, healing her in a way that gained her undying loyalty, bringing her to this moment of grief and confusion.

Lingering at the tomb, Mary is asked three questions. The other disciples have gone away but she stays there with her own questions, sitting in her grief and weeping. First, the angel asks “Why are you crying?” Then Jesus asks again “Really, why are you crying?”

As ever, Jesus pushes deeper – what is the state of your heart? Mary is desperate – she asks him, thinking he is the gardener, where they took the body? She is about to go sling it over her back and carry him back to his rightful resting place.

Jesus also asks her “Who is it you’re looking for?” Where are you seeking your solace, where are you seeking your meaning? In the Old Testament, the people were looking for a king, seeking the strength and power they saw leading the peoples around them – something that feels all to familiar in this current era. But Jesus comes to tell us that this material, temporal power is unimportant. What we should be looking for is exactly what – and who – May is seeking. And like her, He stands right in front of us.

He cuts through the grief and confusion with a single word, the name he called out of oppression, the name he loves. In that instant she sees Him for Who He is and cries out in Aramaic, her heart language, “Rabboni!”

Jesus, especially in these last chapters, is deeply compassionate and vulnerable. As we look around the church today, that compassion is seen as weakness, that vulnerability is seen as a flaw.

But Jesus came to turn our understanding of these things upside down. Wealth impoverishes, the last are first, the poor in spirit will inherit the kingdom of heaven, we must die in order to live.

This is the world Mary thought was lost, but that Jesus resurrected with a word, with the love and compassion bound up in just the simple statement of her name.

Many of us may feel similar grief and confusion. We may have lost hope, lingering outside an empty tomb that seems like it still stinks of death. But standing before us is Jesus, asking “Why are you crying? Who are you looking for?”

–Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, April 20, 2025

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He Is Risen – John 20:11-18

Why is the symbol of Christianity the cross? In reality, it should be the empty tomb. Our hope is not founded on the death of Christ, but on His resurrection.

John’s account of the resurrection focuses on Mary Magdalene, one of the few who was at both the foot of the cross and at the empty tomb. She gets up early to take care of Christ’s body, but finds the tomb empty. She rushes back to the disciples and Peter and John have a footrace, which John makes sure you know he won.

When they arrive, they see the empty tomb and believe – but they do not fully understand. They take what they see at face value and go back to where they are staying.

But Mary does not. She already saw the empty tomb, but her questions remain. Her grief remains. Even when she sees angels and speaks to them her only thought is to finding Jesus body and taking care of it. She asks who she thinks is perhaps the gardener who took the body away what has happened.

Both the figures in white and the “gardener” ask the same question – “why are you crying?” Jesus cares for our tears and seeks to wipe them away.

The way he does this is relationally, engaging directly with her personally by the simple act of saying her name. This is the most important moment in human history as Christ begins raising everything from the dead. “I am making all things new.”

And our response to this is to be simple – “go and tell.” It’s the same pattern we see when Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at the well – Christ engages with her relationally, and then she goes and tells others about the good news of this Man.

Faith is about being open-hearted. Are you able to be vulnerable before Christ? Are you able to hear Him speak your name?

Whatever your circumstance, Jesus is calling your name and asking why you are crying. He seeks to be known by you, for you to know His love and be transformed by it, to be resurrected in spirit as He was in body.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, April 9, 2023

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Blessed are Those Who Have Not Seen & Yet Have Believed – John 20:26-31

Whatever the state of your life, whatever difficulties and hardships, whatever sins beset you, whatever challenges you face – if you believe in Jesus Christ, Jesus in this passage calls you blessed. Blessed even beyond those disciples who stood with him bodily.

This is the entire purpose of John’s gospel – “that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” This is where we place our hope, not in earthly trends or capabilities or politicians.

We see here in this passage also one of the clearest statements of Christ’s divinity in the whole New Testament, as Thomas throws himself at the feet of Jesus. It seems clear that Thomas was kept from that first meeting with the risen Christ so that he could serve as a stand-in for all of us who doubt, for all of us who protect ourselves with cynicism, fear and hardness of heart.

In John 11, as Jesus stands at the tomb of Lazarus, he promises Martha that he is “the resurrection and the life.” Martha responds with the same words John writes here.

The first thing Jesus says when he appears to his disciples is “peace be with you.” The second thing he does is provide identification, by way of his hands and feet. Just as when he was walking on the water, his disciples initially thought he was a ghost, but he responded in both that case and his first appearance after his resurrection with “it is I.”

The wounds that serve as his identification also serve as a sign of his peace, and the peace with God that he made possible through his death on the cross, the propitiation provided as foretold through the Passover Lamb.

The third thing Jesus provided to his disciples and to us is liberation from fear. We see how this plays out in Acts 5, where the disciples have gone from locked away in their houses from fear to rejoicing in the opportunity to suffer for the name of the risen Christ. We are offered that same liberation.

As we go out from this Easter Sunday, back into our routines, let us keep in mind that we are blessed, for we believe without having seen, and we have a glorious future.

– Sermon Notes, Rick Mitchell, Island Baptist, Camano Island, WA, April 17, 2022

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The Morning Everything Changed – Luke 24:1-12

Each gospel brings out a different view and perspective of the resurrection. Luke’s emphasis is on more everything is different now that Christ is risen, about how the world changed overnight, and how the news of that change went out from the disciples.

The moment was like the first time a deaf person is able to hear after a cochlear implant, or a colorblind person sees color for the first time. Or even something traumatic, like a car accident, or sprinting down a hall in the dark and hitting a new checkin desk at a full sprint. Everything changes in an instant, and it takes a moment to understand that the world will never be the same.

The group of women who made the first discovery were heading out after Sabbath in order to prepare the body in ways that there was not time for after the crucifixion. What they found confused them.

Sometimes the search for Jesus is confusing and elusive. But that’s because he is a person, not a doctrine. Meeting Jesus is more like a conversation, a relationship, then it is a set of rules, beliefs and rituals. We are seeking a living, breathing, resurrected Savior.

These women knew the living, breathing Jesus, but even after all that time they did not know the fullness of Who he really was and what He came to offer. Jesus can be confusing, and in response we all tend to create imagined Jesuses in our own image. To the extent that confusion can lead us away from those mistaken perspectives, that confusion can be a good thing. Here, it certainly was – they thought Jesus was dead, but confusion eventually led them to the truth of His resurrection.

And then, suddenly they were met with two men in dazzling robes. They ask a question we can ask ourselves still – “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” We can do this easily – looking for the living Christ among the dead things of the world, in dead religion, in dead ritual, in dead culture.

But they also provide the way to address the women’s confusion – pointing back to the words of Christ Himself. That is always the answer.

The disciples respond with doubt and disbelief – Thomas gets the bad wrap, but he was certainly not alone. Peter, though, responds differently – leaping up and running to the tomb. This Peter, who had just denied that he even knew Jesus, must have seen some small opportunity to make right what he had broken. Like says that Peter “marveled” or “was amazed.” We can see an echo of this in both the hymn “Amazing Grace” and the life of its writer, John Newton.

The reality of this story continues to confuse and amaze, and we continue to have the opportunity to meet the risen Christ and watch the whole world change.

– Sermon Notes, Bart Hodgson, Seed Church, Lynnwood WA, April 4, 2021

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The Baptism of Naaman – 2 Kings 5:1-19

Naaman was the commander of the Syrian army that had just conquered Israel. Following this, he came down with leprosy, a disease generally reserved for those under the curse of God. Israelites reading this story would have generally approved of this situation, but the slave girl, whose family was likely killed by Naaman and his army, felt differently and pointed him towards the prophet Elisha.

At this point, Naaman has some choices to make. Does he trust this girl? Does he trust Israel? Does he trust the God of Israel? What is he willing to do in order to live. He decides to try, and off he goes to the monk wizard hermit. He stops off at the king of Israel to request healing, and the king freaks out. Here is the man who just conquered the nation asking for something impossible. “Am I God, that I can kill and bring back to life?” he demands. This notion of resurrection is a key to the implications of the story.

Ultimately, though, Elisha invites Naaman to come be healed. When he shows up, though, things do not go as planned. Elisha sends a servant out to tell Naaman to dunk himself in the (filthy, muddy) Jordan River seven times. Not six, not eight. Five is right out. Naaman badly. He wanted a “sexy salvation” but this seemed shameful and offended his pride.

Once again, though the servants step in and persuade him to put aside his pride. So, Naaman goes under – in the Greek, the baptism of Naaman is the first reference to baptism in scripture. On the seventh dip, he is reborn – both physically and spiritually. He does still hang on to his pride enough to attempt to pay for the healing and earn it retroactively. But he is denied.

Instead, Naaman takes a load of dirt in order to take some of the land of Jehovah in order to retain that connection. His faith in healing had turned into a faith in God Himself.

The point of this story is not that some guy got healed. It’s not that the Jordan River is magic. It’s that God gives grace to the most unlikely people in the most unlikely ways. God’s ultimate goal for us is not just to be healed or forgiven, but to have a connection of love with us, a worshipful relationship of creation and creator.

This story calls forward to the resurrection, the death, burial and coming to life of Christ. Unlike Naaman, Christ died not for his sins, but ours. We, like Naaman, are enemies of God, and yet Christ died and rose again for us. What did Naaman have to do in order to receive healing and forgiveness? Essentially, he had to believe and trust the prescription of God.

This is what we demonstrate and act out in baptism. It represents the death and resurrection of Christ, and our own death and resurrection in Him. It also represents the cleansing of our sin by the forgiveness of God.

Some of us may have barriers to this. We may not see a need for baptism or even for Jesus himself. We may be skeptical about the whole God, Christ and salvation story.

Regardless of where you are, though, God is calling you to connect to that story through faith in Him and baptism. He wants to forgive your sins, change your heart and enter into an eternal relationship with you.

– Sermon Notes, Brent Rood, Seed Church, Lynnwood, WA, Easter Sunday 2017

2 Kings 5:1-19
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