Creekside Church Sermon of March 23, 2008 "The Night of the First Day of the Week" John 20:1-18	Rev. David Bibbee
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No elaboration was necessary. I knew what she meant. Monday is code for "the weekend is over." Set the alarm and start the workweek. Get on the school bus again. Monday is picking up where we left off on Friday. Monday is business as usual. It's back to doing what you do for a living. It is the resumption of routine in our "Monday, make it to hump day, count the hours until "Thank God It's Friday" world.

The Friday called "good" was anything but good for the people who had hedged their bets on Jesus. It was gruesome and grotesquely silent watching their Lord suffer on a cross. The inconceivable happened. The bloodied, limp, lifeless body of the Messiah was taken from the cross and laid in a cold, dark tomb. How they wished it wasn't so. How they wished to wake and realize they had just been dreaming.

The disciples didn't go out for the Sunday paper. They didn't want to read all about it. They wanted to forget all about it. They were hiding and grieving. They were afraid. Hope had been vaporized. Had you asked them, "How are you doing?" they may have answered, "What can we say? It's Sunday." Things were getting back to normal in Jerusalem. The cross was taken down. Pilate had taken up other matters. The street sweepers had cleaned up the mess. The tomb was sealed.

They were trying to get used to the idea of being without Jesus. Things would at least be predictable again, once they got back to doing whatever they were doing before Jesus said, "Follow me." This is what was going on with the eleven on the morning of the first day of the week.

How are you doing today? We're doing great, thank you! What else can we say? It's Easter. This is my 26th Easter as a pastor -- the 26th attempt to say something credible and halfway significant about Jesus' resurrection. Expectations are high. The pressure is on. You are decked out in bright, new (winter!) clothes. The casual dressers are wearing ties. Your mom and dad are here from out of state and you've brought them along for an uplifting worship. You've gone to a lot of trouble to get all your family here, and you're thinking, "If the preacher has anything to say, at least let it make all my effort worthwhile." The choir has cooked up something special. The pianist is dynamite. The sanctuary is turned into a botanical garden. We'll sing the, "Hallelujah Chorus" and through the service you'll keep checking your watch because you've got a ham in the oven. It Easter! Sunday on steroids.

Alan Watts is a Zen Buddhist who has written extensively on the practice of the Buddhist religion. He said that Christians are too reticent in their proclamation, far too restrained. He said, "If I were a Christian and believed my savior had been raised from the dead, I would shout it from the rooftop and I would not be silent on the subject." He's right. We are too introverted and restrained.

Maybe it has something to do with limits we've put on Easter. Jesus Christ was crucified, dead, and buried, AND HE HAS RISEN! We will be raised too, and great will be the reunion with our loved ones who have preceded us in death. It's good news we will cash in on -- once our time to leave the world has come. But the implications of Easter extend to here as well as here after.

Easter is not introverted or restrained. Peter Gomes says, "The resurrection is God's way of getting our attention… Easter isn't a morning for artful arguments. It does not creep up on us on little cat feet like the fog. Easter is confrontational; you art hit in the face by it." We aren't dispensing pastel comforts today. It's time to be punched in the kisser by an event that contradicted all the rules and changed everything.

Early, on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene walked with slow, painful steps to Jesus' tomb. It wasn't a safe time for a woman to be out and about, but safety wasn't her concern. Mary wanted to be near Jesus. When she arrived and saw the tomb had been opened, she was beside herself. She concluded that body snatchers had taken him. She ran like the wind to tell the disciples.

Peter and another "unnamed" disciple ran to the tomb to check out her story. Mary hadn't looked inside, but the other disciple did. On the floor he saw white linens in a pile. Peter arrived and went all the way inside. He saw the linen, and also the cloth that had been on Jesus' head. Someone went to the trouble of neatly rolling it up. If his body had been stolen, why leave the wrappings and roll up a cloth? Did Jesus make his bed before he left? We don't know.

Here's what we do know. Many people saw Jesus' body taken from the cross and sealed in the tomb. But no one saw the resurrection. It was, as someone said, "a private transaction between God and Jesus." It happened in the dark when no one would peek. Two people saw a pile of linens. One saw a rolled up cloth. Everyone else was still in bed.

It's a pretty flimsy story upon which to base a religion. John says the other disciple took it all in and believed. Believed what? John doesn't say. Confronted with the mystery of an empty tomb, John says the disciples "went home." The possibility of a resurrection didn't occur to them. What could they say? It was Sunday. It was good while it lasted, but death had done him in. They went back to carry on with their lives and live "normally" for a change.

Mary returned to the tomb and wept. She wanted to see for herself, and looking inside there were two angels. Unlike the other gospels, these angels didn't ask, "Why do you seek the living among the dead?" or, "He is risen!" They didn't report anything. They asked a question, "Why the tears?" Then she turned and saw the gardener. "Who are you looking for?" he asked. "Tell me where you put him and I'll take him away," she said, as if it was something she could pull off alone!

"Mary," he said. She did a double take and knew who the gardener was. He didn't look the same. He had new clothes. He told her, "Don't hold me." The text doesn't say she tried to hold him. John is telling his readers, "Don't hold Jesus in your mind the way you used to. Things have changed. Neither Sunday nor any day will be the same." Having broken the bond of death, Jesus is free to roam. There will be no tying him down. There will be no turning him into whatever we want him to be. He is not ours to command and control, and he will come to us whenever and however he chooses.

John 20:19 says that on the night of the first day of the week, the disciples were hiding in a house. The door was locked, bolted, and chained, for fear of what could happen to them. They were barricaded behind fear and grief.

I knew a woman who spent most of her life waiting to die. She was an anxious person who was obsessed with her health. She seldom ventured out. She was reluctant to try new things because something terrible could happen. She brought her anxieties with her to church. She kept telling us the world was a frightful place and getting worse by the day. She knew she wouldn't live long because of her health and the awful ways people treated her. I asked someone who knew her, "How long has she been like this?" "At least forty years," she replied. Forty years of hiding behind a thick door. An existence with no options -- waiting to die instead of being raised to life.

When Jesus was raised, he had a new skill. He could pass through bolted doors. He didn't need to knock. He appeared to the hiding disciples, saying, "Peace be with you." The power of his presence resuscitated them. He gave them his Spirit that turned them into courageous witnesses who did what they previously could not do.

I can't tell by looking at you, but there are doors you are hiding behind. Your spouse has died. Your marriage ended in divorce. You can't stop drinking. The biopsy says malignant. You did something unpardonable. You are convinced you can't be a faithful follower of Jesus. God abandoned you in your hour of need. Someone in the church hurt you deeply. There are lots of doors. But if the tomb couldn't contain Jesus, neither can your doors. No door or security system can be constructed to keep Jesus out when he decides to make an incursion into your life.

When Jimmy Carter became President, he made a pledge to God to use every day of his presidency as an opportunity to witness to Jesus. He was up until the wee hours one morning talking with President Anwar Sadat of Egypt. Sadat asked Carter to tell him about Jesus. He shared his story, and two weeks later President Carter got a call from Sadat. "I'm going to Israel to talk with Bagin," Sadat announced. "You can't do that. Not now. You'll be killed!" Carter exclaimed. "But isn't it something Jesus would do?" Sadat asked. Jesus opened a door and the impossible happened.

A while back Jane Fonda got a divorce from the billionaire, Ted Turner. In an interview on 60 Minutes she talked about her early radical political views, feminism, being a film star and the daughter of a famous father. She talked about an eating disorder that ruined her life. Then she told the interviewer, "My life has turned around since I've become a Christian." She goes to church, prays, and is in a Bible study group. The interviewer wanted more details about her sensational past, but she kept coming back to what Jesus was doing in her life. Someone said of her conversion, "If Jesus can get to Jane Fonda, he can get to anyone."

Jesus got to Anne Rice. She is an author who, for many years, has had a cult following. She wrote a hugely popular series of novels called, "The Vampire Chronicles." She authored other books under pseudonyms that had erotic subject matter not suitable for Sunday school conversation. "For thirty-six years I was a card-carrying atheist," she said. But something compelled her to return to the Catholic Church of her youth. She said:

I returned to become a member and supporter of it with my whole soul. I do not want to revisit the realms of my earlier books.

One day while she was alone in church praying, an overwhelming desire overcame Anne Rice. She writes: "The best way to show my complete love for him was to consecrate my work to him -- to use all the talent I had acquired as a writer, story-teller, and novelist for him and him alone."

Jesus got through Anne Rice's door and the result has been two critically acclaimed books that chronicle the life of Jesus -- Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt and Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana.

The news that had been confusing on Easter morning became clear by Easter night. In you asked the disciples how they were doing, they would reply, "What can we say? It's Sunday. Resurrection day. It's no need for doors day. It's no fear of evil day. It's no fear of death day. It's Alleluia day, because Christ the Lord has risen today!"

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