This week,
we are looking at what happened on the first Easter weekend. Yesterday, we saw
that after Jesus had celebrated the Passover and prayed for His disciples, He
and His disciples went to a garden outside the city of Jerusalem where they
were arrested. And after a series of six trials we saw Pilate, who was
concerned with maintaining political points and power; and being a people
pleaser that feared and focused on the approval of men, made the politically
expedient decision to condemn to death a man that had not been found guilty.
Pilate condemned Jesus and handed an innocent man over to be crucified.
Today, I would like us to jump back
into this story by talking about crucifixion. Now crucifixion was the most
humiliating form of punishment ever devised. Crucifixion was designed for
maximum humiliation and maximum suffering. I
want us to picture yourself in the crowd watching as Jesus, after He had been
beaten beyond recognition, has the heavy beam of the cross is tied across His
shoulders.
As Jesus walks toward the place where He would be crucified,
the weight of the heavy wooden beam, together with the shock produced by the
loss of blood, causes Him to stumble and fall. Jesus has no way to protect
Himself, so the full weight of His body and the wooden beam crash down on His
chest and face. The rough wood of the beam gouges into the lacerated skin and muscles
of the shoulders. Jesus tries to rise, but cannot.
At the place where He would be crucified, the beam is placed
on the ground and Jesus is quickly thrown backward with His shoulders against
the wood. The Roman soldier drives a heavy, square, wrought-iron nail through
the most sensitive areas of the wrist and deep into the wood. The beam is then
lifted in place at the top of the post. Jesus left foot is then pressed
backward against the right foot, and with both feet extended, toes down, a nail
is driven through the arch of each.
As Jesus pushes Himself upward to avoid the stretching
torment, He places His full weight on the nail through His feet. Again there is
the searing agony of the nail through His feet. As Jesus arms fatigue, great
waves of cramps sweep over the muscles, knotting them in deep, relentless,
throbbing pain. With these cramps comes the inability to push Himself upward.
Hanging by His arms, Jesus fights to raise Himself in order
to get even one short breath. Jesus body spasms as He is able to push Himself
upward to exhale and bring in the life-giving oxygen. For hours Jesus
experiences the limitless pain, joint-rending cramps, intermittent partial
asphyxiation, and searing pain as tissue is torn from His lacerated back as He
moves up and down against the rough timber.
Then another agony begins as Jesus experiences a deep
crushing pain deep in the chest as the area around the heart slowly fills with
serum and begins to compress the heart. The compressed heart begins to struggle
to pump heavy, thick, sluggish blood into the tissues. Jesus tortured lungs are
making a frantic effort to gasp in small gulps of air. The markedly dehydrated
tissues send their flood of stimuli to the brain. Jesus gasps, “I thirst.”
You watch as, with one last surge of strength, He once again
presses His torn feet against the nail, straightens His legs, takes a deeper
breath, and utters “It is finished.” And then Jesus dies. And to make doubly
sure of death, you watch as a Roman soldier drove his spear in the space
between the ribs and into Jesus heart. Immediately there came out blood and
water.
This served as proof to the soldiers that Jesus died, not
the usual crucifixion death by suffocation, but of heart failure due to shock
and constriction of the heart by a buildup of fluid. That is why Jesus died
before the two thieves died. That is why Jesus did not have to have His legs
broken. You watch as Jesus dies of a broken heart.
Now you are a disciple. What would you be thinking? What
would you be feeling? How would you respond to bailing on Jesus when He needed
you the most? What would you be feeling and thinking on the following day, the
Sabbath Saturday that left you without anything to distract you from you had
experienced the previous day? Because it is into this context that we enter
into the story in John 20:1:
Now on the first day of the
week Mary Magdalene came early to the tomb, while it was still dark, and saw
the stone already taken away
from the tomb. So she ran and came to Simon Peter and to the other disciple
whom Jesus loved, and said to them, "They have taken away the Lord out of
the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid Him."
John brings us into the story by explaining that on
Sunday morning that he and Peter, who was the leader of Jesus closest followers
and who had denied Jesus earlier that weekend, were confronted by Mary
Magdalene, who had went before dawn to the tomb to care for the body of Jesus.
However, Mary explains that there was no body. There were
no soldiers. There was just an empty tomb. The body had been there; she had
watched the body get put in there; and now the body was gone. Now you are a
disciple; how would you respond? We see Peter and John’s response in verse 3:
So Peter and the other disciple went forth, and they were going to the
tomb. The two were running together; and the other disciple ran ahead faster
than Peter and came to the tomb first; and stooping and looking in, he saw the
linen wrappings lying there;
but he did not go in. And so Simon Peter also came, following him, and entered
the tomb; and he saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the face-cloth which had been on His head, not lying
with the linen wrappings, but rolled up in a place by itself. So the other
disciple who had first come to the tomb then also entered, and he saw and
believed. For as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that He must rise
again from the dead.
Peter and John respond to Mary’s report by heading to the
tomb to discover what had happened. Imagine what would be running through your
mind as you are running to the tomb? Where were the Roman soldiers that were
supposed to be guarding the tomb? And how could somebody be so callous to rob
the tomb?
John tells us that while he was first to arrive at the
tomb, he was hesitant to enter into the tomb. Peter, upon his arrival, had no
such hesitations. Peter immediately entered the tomb. And as John followed
Peter into the empty tomb what they both saw surprised them. You see, the tomb
did not look like it had been ransacked by tomb robbers. First off, the linen
wrappings that were used to wrap Jesus for burial were still in the tomb. Tomb
robbers would never take the time to unwrap a body; they would take the body,
wrappings and all. And the tomb had not been ransacked; instead the tomb was
neat and orderly in appearance.
And as John took in the scene of the empty tomb all that
Jesus had been saying in His final conversation with them suddenly clicked.
John tells us that he connected the dots and believed. In other words, John
placed his confident trust in the fact that Jesus had been raised from the dead
as their Lord and Leader. The empty tomb was the evidence that Jesus was God in
a bod that came to fulfill God’s promise of rescue from selfishness and
rebellion. John then tells us what happens next in verse 10:
So the disciples went away again to their own homes. But Mary was standing
outside the tomb weeping; and so, as she wept, she stooped and looked into the
tomb; and she saw two angels in white sitting, one at the head and one at the
feet, where the body of Jesus had been lying. And they said to her,
"Woman, why are you weeping?" She said to them, "Because they
have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid Him." When
she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, and did not know that it was
Jesus. Jesus said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you
seeking?" Supposing Him to be the gardener, she said to Him, "Sir, if
you have carried Him away, tell me where you have laid Him, and I will take Him
away." Jesus said to her, "Mary!" She turned and said to Him in
Hebrew, "Rabboni!" (which means, Teacher). Jesus said to her,
"Stop clinging to Me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to
My brethren and say to them, 'I ascend to My Father and your Father, and My God
and your God.'"
While John and Peter went back to where they were
staying, Mary who followed them back to the empty tomb lingered behind,
attempting to process the grief and loss that she was feeling. And in the midst
of her grief, Mary has an encounter with two angels, who ask a simple question:
“Why are you weeping?”
The angels ask Mary that question because the angels see
Jesus, who is standing right behind her. Mary, however, with her eyes filled
with tears turns around and mistakes Jesus for a gardener. It is only after
Jesus speaks to her that she recognizes who she is speaking with.
There is something different about Jesus in His appearance, but that voice;
that voice that first called to her when she was lost in a lifestyle of sin;
that voice that called to His followers to Him; she could not miss that voice.
And while Mary wanted to cling to Jesus, Jesus would have nothing of the sort.
You see Jesus rose from the dead not to go back to the good old days. Jesus rose
from the dead to launch something new. So Jesus tells Mary to go and let the
others know what she had seen.
Friday, we will
see how the rest of the disciples responded to Jesus resurrection…
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