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There is great power in a face. When we have not seen a loved one for a long time, and suddenly we see them once again, perhaps at our front door, or in the middle of a crowded airport, just the sight of their face can move us to tears.
The disciples had not been parted from Jesus for very long, but the parting was devastating nonetheless, because the disciples were certain it was the end, that they would never see Jesus’ face again. Then suddenly, they did see his face, and the sight of that one face changed everything, for all eternity.
Listen for God’s word to you from John 20:1-18…
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”
So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) Then the disciples went back to where they were staying.
Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.
They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”
“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.
He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”
Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”
Jesus said to her, “Mary.”
She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”).
Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”
Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had said these things to her.
I invite you to focus with me on three faces in this story. The first I want to call your attention to is that of the disciple whom Jesus loved. We discover at the end of this Gospel that this is none other than John, the author of this book. His is a willing face. He came willing, quickly, simply, to faith in Jesus’ resurrection. When he ran to the empty tomb and saw the grave-clothes he believed.
Why did John believe when he saw the grave-clothes of Jesus in the empty tomb? He believed because he saw the grave-clothes lying there undisturbed. The grave-clothes were lying there as if Jesus had passed right through them. The headpiece was lying in the shape of a head, and it was at about the right distance from the linens that had enveloped Jesus’ body. A grave robber would not have stolen Jesus’ body and left the grave-clothes behind. Furthermore, if someone had simply taken the grave-clothes off Jesus’ body, they would have scattered the seventy-five pounds of embalming spices all over the tomb. However, there is no mention in any of the Gospel records of spices being scattered throughout the tomb. No, the grave-clothes were lying there like a discarded chrysalis from which a butterfly had emerged. The sight of those grave-clothes, after a second look, suddenly penetrated John’s mind. He realized what must have happened, and he believed that Jesus had risen bodily from the grave. It was John, the disciple whom Jesus especially loved, who was the first to believe in the resurrection. Love gave him eyes to read the signs and a mind to understand.
In the year that American voters elected Jimmy Carter as president, Carter was one of three men invited to speak to the 17,000 delegates at the Southern Baptist Convention. Each had a five-minute time limit.
The first of the three presenters was Billy Graham. The speaker following Graham was a truck driver. The man was not well educated, and seated beside the next U.S. president, the truck driver shared that he had never given a speech in his life. Nervously he confessed, “I don’t think I can live through it. I just can’t do it.”
After Billy Graham gave a powerful talk, the truck driver rose to speak and stood silently before the audience. Taking a glass of water handed to him, he mumbled into the microphone.
“I was always drunk, and didn’t have any friends. The only people I knew were men like me who hung around the bars in the town where I lived.”
The truck driver went on to describe how someone told him about Christ. Once he became a Christian, he wanted to tell others about the Lord. Spending time in Bible study and with other Christian men prepared him to become an effective witness. Since he felt comfortable in barrooms, he decided to talk to people there. The bartender was not sympathetic, telling the new convert he was bad for business and a nuisance.
Undaunted, the truck driver kept on with his mission and in time the people at the bar began asking questions. He said, “At first they treated me like a joke, but I kept up with the questions and when I couldn’t answer one, I went and got the answer and came back with it. Fourteen of my friends became Christians.”
Jimmy Carter later wrote about that event: “The truck driver’s speech, of course, was the highlight of the convention. I don’t believe anyone who was there will ever forget that five-minute fumbling statement—or remember what I or even Billy Graham had to say.”[1]
Sometimes the faces of people with simple faith (those who are willing to serve the Lord like the beloved disciple John or that truck driver) beam a message that brings more light to the world than anyone or anything else.
However, others often come to faith in Christ in a more wondering way. Peter was one with a wondering face. He saw the grave-clothes, just like John, but he went away from the tomb not yet believing. Still, Peter did more than simply see the grave-clothes. The Greek language of this passage indicates that Peter scrutinized the grave-clothes, whereas John merely saw them. Luke 24:12 says that Peter “went away, wondering to himself what had happened.”
Some of you are like Peter; resurrection faith does not come easy to you. You have many questions that need answers.
When someone asked Albert Einstein if he believed in God, here was his response:
I’m not an atheist. I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books, but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws, but only dimly understand these laws.
Einstein tried to express these feelings clearly, both for himself and all of those who wanted a simple answer from him about his faith. Thus, in the summer of 1930, he composed a statement entitled What I Believe; he later recorded the statement for a human-rights group and then had it published. Einstein’s credo concluded with an explanation of what he meant when he called himself religious:
The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I am a devoutly religious man.[2]
However, Einstein did not stop there. When I attended Princeton Theological Seminary in the 1980s, I learned that Einstein, who had lived in Princeton many years before, used to drop in on the chapel services at the seminary. I think Einstein had many questions about God, and perhaps about Jesus Christ, and he was seeking answers.
For those of us with a wondering face, for those whom faith does not come simply, easily, that is what we need to do. We need to keep seeking answers. Jesus himself said: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”
Finally, we see in this passage the weeping face of Easter. Mary Magdalene came to faith in the resurrected Christ through tears. Mary visited the tomb in the darkness of early morning, between 3 and 6 am. All she wanted to do was weep over the body of the man who had cast seven demons out of her. Faith had died; hope had died; but her love for her Lord had not died.
As Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as Jesus spoke to her, she could not recognize him at first because of her tears. Secondly, she could not recognize him because she was facing away from him toward the tomb. However, when Jesus called Mary’s name, her tears turned to joy. When Jesus called her name, Mary experienced her own resurrection, a resurrection of hope and faith.
In 1872, the poet Christina Rossetti wrote a poem that only appeared after her death. About thirty years later, Gustav Holst set the poem to music and it was originally entitled simply: A Christmas Carol. Today, we know it as In the Bleak Midwinter.
However, there is a fascinating back-story to this beloved Christmas carol. Rossetti was a devoted follower of Christ who for many years volunteered at the St. Mary Magdalene house of charity, a refuge for women coming out of a life of prostitution. In the Victorian Era of Rossetti’s day, economic forces often caused women to eke out a living by selling their bodies. Some of these women were as young as twelve years old. Rossetti’s poetry often reflected her concern to offer Christ and help the poor, like these marginalized women she served.
For example, Rossetti’s Christmas carol pictures a Savior who entered our world of suffering and brokenness—a world much like “the bleak mid-winter” of Rossetti’s native England. “Heaven cannot hold … nor earth sustain” Jesus, and yet “a stable-place” and “a manger full of hay” sufficed for him.
In light of Christ’s great power and love, Rossetti’s poem asks: “What can I give him, poor as I am?”
This question would have weighed heavily on women struggling to come out of a life of prostitution. With their broken lives, what could they possibly give to Jesus, especially since “Heaven cannot hold him”?
According to Rossetti’s poem, there is one thing that all of us can give Christ—no matter who we are. I shared this in my sermon on Malachi two weeks ago. Rosetti wrote:
If I were a shepherd,
I would bring a lamb.
If I were a wise man,
I would do my part.
Yet, what I can I give him?
Give my heart.
Despite our tainted past or our present struggles, there is one gift that Christ wants more than anything else—he wants our hearts. Regardless of who we are or where we have been we can give him that much.[3]
Some of us may be like Mary in any number of ways. We may feel like we have nothing to give to Jesus in response to what he has done for us. There are so many demons in our past we wonder whether we will ever be truly free of them. We may feel unworthy of the love of the Savior.
Others of us may be grieving the loss of a loved one through death, or the loss of a spouse through divorce, or the loss of a job through lay-offs. We may find it hard to share in the joy of the resurrection at present. Our tears blind us to a vision of the risen Christ.
However, when we hear Jesus call out our name: that changes everything. Once Mary heard Jesus call her name, she also heard that Jesus had a job for her to do: “Go to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” Then we read that Mary did go to the disciples and she gave them the good news: “I have seen the Lord!” Mary Magdalene became the first missionary.
Once we have seen the face of Easter, that of the resurrected Christ, then we have good news to share. In fact, if we really believe that he is alive, we cannot help but share it with others.
What is the best news you have ever heard? One of the best pieces of news I ever received was at 3:30 on Easter morning in 1993. I was lying in bed, fast asleep, next to my wife Becky who was nine months pregnant at the time with our first child. She shook me awake and said, “It’s starting!”
By dawn, we knew she was really in labor. The contractions were coming at regular intervals. We were so excited. Our first child was going to be born on Easter. We just had to share the news with someone.
The first person I called was my father. When I told him the news, he choked up and had to hand the phone to my mother. Then we had to call our senior pastor and tell him we would not be there to participate in the Easter Service.
We went to the hospital at 10:30 that morning and James was born at 5:30 on Easter night. When I saw the face of my first-born child, I thought it was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen.
By Easter evening, our entire church knew about James’ birth. One family after another visited us in the hospital. They all thought it was rather amazing that a preacher’s kid would be born on Easter. One of my nieces put it best when she said, “So two people rose up on Easter!”
The point is: when you receive truly great news then you cannot help but share it. When through faith you see Jesus’ risen face, you will not be able to keep the news to yourself.
[1] Jimmy Carter, Sources of Strength, Meditations on Scripture for a Living Faith (Times Books, 1997), pp. 71–72; submitted by Ted De Hass, Bedford, Iowa
[2] Walter Isaacson, “Einstein and Faith”, TIME (4-5-07); submitted by Gino Grunberg, Gig Harbor, Washington
[3] Matt Woodley, managing editor, PreachingToday.com; source: Karen Swallow Prior, “The Best Christmas Gift Ever”, Her.meneutics blog (12-22-10)
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