Creekside Church Sermon of April 4, 1999 "The First Believer " John 20:1-18	Rev. David Bibbee
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Coming to church on Mother's Day is mandatory. Coming to church on Christmas is a piece of cake because it's not much of a stretch to believe that Jesus was born. But Easter is different. It pushes the limits of reason to believe that Jesus was raised from the dead. Some of you have come because you believe. You are dressed so fine and singing robustly to affirm what you have accepted as true. But some of you are at another place. You are skeptical. You are not nearly as convinced of it as some of the rest of us. And that's okay. We are glad you are here. We are not asking you to check your brain at the door. All the emphasis we are placing on the Easter story today is really more for you than for those of us who have no quarrel with Easter's claim.

I suspect that though some of you don't believe in the resurrection, there is a part of you that would like to. And though you may not leave this service having stepped over to the other side, maybe you will at least begin to disbelieve your disbelief. You may not know it, but you have some next of kin in the Easter story. The gospels all tell us there were more who disbelieved that Jesus had risen than those who did. But before we get into John's version of Easter, I want to point out an irony about belief. There are people who see and don't believe, and there are people who don't see and believe.

There was an old farmer who had never been to a zoo, so he traveled from the country for his first visit. There he had his first encounter with a giraffe. For almost an hour he stared and studied the odd creature. Then finally he said, "No, I just don't believe it." Some people witness the very thing they say they don't believe in, and remain unconvinced. But there are those who don't see, or see only very little, and somehow embrace belief.

At a retreat several years ago I heard Frederick Buechner describe an encounter with God. He was a young pastor at the time. Dressed in black with his white clergy collar, he was lying in a meadow under an apple tree. He was restless and searching, and with his eyes fixed on the blue sky he raised his arms palms up and said, "Please, God, show yourself." He closed his fists and eyes and waited. Nothing. He gazed through the branches, "God, show yourself!" He waited longer. Still, nothing. A third time and in a pleading voice he cried, "Please, God, show yourself!" Just then a breeze sailed over the meadow and through the boughs of the apple tree and caused a gentle contact of two branches. "Clack! Clack!" That was it. He said that maybe all his searching had been only to bring him to hear two branches hit each other. That was it. But it was God's answer, and it was all he needed to believe.

It doesn't take much to move some people to belief, and I want you to bear in mind as we listen to John's account of the first Easter. Dark and early on Sunday morning, Mary Magdalene was on her way to the tomb. Except for the sound of barking dogs, Jerusalem was quiet, especially compared to the uproar on Friday. The city was spent. Pilate and Mrs. Pilate went to their lake cottage to rest and recover. The Pharisees were finally getting a good night's sleep since their "problem" had been taken care of by the Romans. The disciples were hiding and sleeping, though not restfully. Peter lay awake weighing his options, wondering if he could buy back his fishing fleet. But Mary was on her way to the tomb...for what, John doesn't say. If she was going to anoint Jesus' body, how was she going to roll away the stone? Maybe she went to begin work on the grieving process. We don't know. All we know is that she saw the tomb had been opened, and she ran as fast as she could to tell the disciples.

It was to Peter and "the other disciple," the one Jesus loved, that she ran with her report. Who was the disciple Jesus loved? We don't know for sure. At the Last Supper he sat so close to Jesus he was practically leaning on him. He stood with Jesus' mother at the cross and Jesus told Mary this disciple was now her son. When this unnamed disciple and Peter heard the news, they both ran to the tomb. They didn't know what they were running to. It wasn't the certainty of the resurrection, and they were certainly not running together. The other disciple ran track in high school and arrived at the tomb first. I wonder why John included this little detail? He peered in, but didn't go in. He waited until Peter came huffing and puffing along. Peter went in and found nothing but burial cloths.

In case you forgot the other disciple got there first, John mentions it again in verse 5. "Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in...and he believed." He believed? What did he believe? Based upon what did he believe it? It doesn't say it was the resurrection he believed in. It says they didn't know the scripture that he must be raised from the dead.

Earlier I said that you have relatives in this story. Meet your Cousins Peter and Mary. Peter didn't believe. In Luke's Gospel the women tell him they had seen the Lord. Do you know what he told them? "It's an idle tale"...a product of a grieving psyche. Mary returned to the tomb and all she could do was cry. She looked in and saw two angels sitting where Jesus' body had been, and she talked with them as though conversations with angels were a daily occurrence. She even talked with Jesus, but didn't know it was him. Resurrection hadn't crossed her mind.

Peter and Mary didn't believe...not at first. But this "other disciple"...the one Jesus loved...the one who reached the tomb first...he's the one who interests me. He was the first believer. He didn't claim Easter faith because of eyewitness reports from the Roman guards who gave sworn testimony and passed a polygraph test. There were no forensics reports. He didn't have one shred of physical evidence upon which to base his belief. He believed Jesus was risen on the basis of what he did not see. Mary didn't believe until she heard Jesus call her name. Peter didn't believe until Jesus walked through a triple bolted door and said, "Peace be with you." Thomas, AKA Mr. Doubtfire, was the last to come around saying he wouldn't believe unless he could put his finger in the hole in Jesus' hand. But the first one to arrive and the first one to believe didn't need to hear Jesus, see Jesus, or touch Jesus to believe he was alive.

I think my work as a preacher would be much easier if I had a church full of folks like him. I wouldn't have to work so hard to sway people's thinking through logic, persuasion, conviction, or threats. I could just lay out the truth and they would believe it or I could just state a need, and they would respond to it. Oh, well...enough daydreaming. As I think about it, maybe life is a lot easier for those who don't believe Jesus was raised or that we will be either.

When Jesus was alive, the disciples never knew what was coming next. They were constantly rearranging their thinking. With Jesus dead, they would at least know what to expect out of life. No surprises. Do what you can while you can and make the most of it because in the end everyone dies, and only then will there be peace. Que sera, sera. But if Jesus was raised, there was no telling what might happen.

Somebody said, "Miracles mean more work for the beneficiaries." Is this why some would rather not believe? It's easier for some people to stay sick than get up and walk. It's easier to remain a product of poor parenting than accept responsibility for your own actions. It's easier to say, "It can't be done," than to believe that faith can move mountains. Pay attention to Mr First Believer because we all have something in common with him. Most of us have nothing more to base belief upon than he did. John wants to guide us to the first one at the tomb...there was no trace of Jesus, no visible, tangible proof...he had the same things we don't have, but he believed.

Do you know how he could believe? He had something far better than evidence. His description tells us what he had. He was the one Jesus loved. Jesus was the one he loved. Their love was all he needed, because where there is love, there is trust. They have done studies on babies and have concluded that the expressions we saw on our parents' faces when we were just weeks old, influenced how secure and how willing we are to trust as adults. When the mothers were told to stare expressionless at their babies, the babies would smile and offer other cues to get their mothers to respond. If the mother's face stayed blank, the baby grew visibly anxious and began to cry.

The biblical writers were not psychologists. But often they speak of beholding God's face. "Turn not your face from us, O Lord." The New Testament writers speak of the glory of God shining in the face of Jesus. The first believer continued, I think, to see Jesus' face. The love he felt for him and from him remained. We don't have irrefutable evidence of the resurrection, but we have trust because we have Christ's love and where there is love, you don't need to see in order to believe.

For years, Lou Little was the football coach at Columbia University. He had a senior third string quarterback who was small, not blessed with talent, and had not played a single play during his four years, yet week in and week out he gave his all in practice. The season was nearly over when the young man missed practice on Thursday and Friday before an important game on Saturday. But he showed up for the game and with a pleading voice said, "Coach, I've never asked anything like this before, but please let me start the game today."

Coach Little thought, "No way," but there was something compelling about the young man's urgency. It hadn't been a good season, and another loss wouldn't make a difference, and besides, they were huge underdogs. "Why not?" the coach said. Well...from the first snap the boy was awesome. The coach had planned to play him a few minutes and pull him, but he left him in the whole game. His inspired play ignited the rest of the team to play far beyond themselves. They didn't lose by a wide margin. They won by a wide margin in the upset of the year.

After the game in a crazy locker room, Coach Little asked his quarterback sensation, "What happened?" With teary eyes and a radiant face he said, "Coach, my dad was blinded when I was little. He never saw me play football. He died on Monday. That's why I missed practice. But today I knew for the first time he could see me play, and that's why I had to get into the game." The love between them and the trust that somehow his dad was present made all the difference.

George Buttrick said, "God gives beckonings, not bludgeonings...not batteries of irrefutable evidence or unanswerable logic. Our proofs should never over prove, for God's beckonings are always by hint and gleam." This was the experience of the one Jesus loved. It can be ours too. You are here because you either believe in the resurrection or don't. If you do, praise God for Easter and be thankful for the gift of believing though you have not seen, and trust that Jesus will sustain you through life and beyond life.

Those of you who don't believe are here, I think, because you want to believe. You have met your relatives in the Easter story, but you also have been introduced to a mentor...the one Jesus loved who believed though he didn't see, and who trusted that not even death could prevent Jesus from living and loving him still.

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