Richard Davenport
May 12, 2024 – Sevent Sunday of Easter
1 John 5:9-15
We have arrived at the end of another Easter season. The Easter season is all about the good news. Jesus is alive! We thought he was dead. Once you’re dead, you’re dead, and Jesus was dead. There wasn’t really anything more to say about him at that point. He did some great stuff, but now he’s gone and we have to move on.
Except now he’s not. Don’t get me wrong, that’s good news, great news in fact, but now we have to make sense of what exactly that means. Jesus had been talking like this for a while and we thought it was really just nonsense but I guess it was actually the plan all along. When he said he has the authority to lay down his life and pick it back up again, I guess he meant that too. I mean, we saw Jesus raising the dead a few times, and that was cool. But, who raises the raiser? When the guy who gives life is killed, it seems like that’s just the end of it, but no! Here he is, whole and hearty, better than he was before, in fact.
Jesus spends the forty days after the resurrection making sure there can be no doubt. He truly is alive. Those who have been his disciples all along continue to be his disciples. Nothing has changed. Yeah, he died. But they’re still following him, because his death was all part of the plan.
So what does it all mean? Eternal life! Eternal life isn’t just something God throws out there as a carnival game gag, one of those prizes that’s on the board but that you’ll never actually achieve because the game is rigged to prevent it. No, it really exists. Not only does it exist, but it’s right here. Jesus is living it and all he says is that if you keep following him, you’ll have it too. That’s it!
Jesus gives them that time to put all of the pieces together, to get a sense of what his ministry has really been about. Jesus is the savior. He’s always been the savior. The disciples didn’t quite understand how Jesus was going to accomplish this salvation before. Now they do. Now they see the end result of God’s plan. They see what’s in store for them and for everyone else who is his disciple. Eternal life. They see it with their own eyes. Jesus really did what he set out to do and he wants everyone else to be a part of it.
Jesus had been telling them about this for a while now. He had been trying to teach them, to prepare them for what was to happen. In part, this was to assure them that this was the plan, so that when it did happen, they would know there was nothing to worry about.
There’s another side of it though too. Christ’s death and resurrection were going to be huge events, really, they were going to be the biggest events the world had seen since creation itself. It’s something like the trip, Laurie, Paul, and I took out to Russellville a few weeks ago to see the eclipse. We’d been talking about it for a while. We had our glasses. We had a filter for our camera that was supposed to make it possible to point it at the sun without burning it out. In addition to warning Paul about the dangers of looking at the sun without glasses, we were also telling him about things to watch for. As the moon gradually blots out the sun, the sky progressively gets darker. Birds and bugs might start behaving oddly. When the sun is just a tiny sliver, that’s when you really need to pay attention. Something amazing is going to happen, something you can only see if you happen to be in the right place at the right time, and even then, only if the conditions are right. The moon finally closes off the sun, but right at the very last moment, you get a flash of light, one bright, lingering corner as the corona wraps around the rest of the moon. It looks like a diamond set in a ring of white gold and hence is called the diamond ring. But it only lasts for a brief moment before the moon completes its motion and the sun’s corona forms its breathtaking halo. Even then, as it turned out, there were things to watch for. While the corona was a ghostly white, there were a couple of solar prominences that could be seen peaking around the moon. They showed as shimmering orange tendrils where the sun had blasted some of its plasma in a great arc. Others, not in our group, caught sight of a comet that was only visible because the sky was dark. Then it all came around again on the other side and finally was done.
The disciples would soon be in a similar situation. That brief time between Thursday evening and Sunday morning in Jerusalem was coming. This momentous occasion would be over before they even realized it. Compared with the years they’ve lived, three days would be miniscule, even more so when compared with the whole length of creation’s history. Still, despite their brevity, their importance couldn’t be overstated. They weren’t something to be feared any more than the eclipse. And, like the eclipse, if you aren’t there, you aren’t paying attention, if you aren’t fully engaged in what’s going on, then the event will come and go and you’ll be standing around wondering why everyone else is acting so strangely. What did you miss that was so important?
Like seeing the diamond ring, seeing the solar prominences, like watching the corona dance around the edges of the moon, there are numerous details there to be taken in, reflected on, enjoyed, and recounted to others. Everything Christ did from the moment he entered Jerusalem on that fateful Sunday to the day he ascended was packed with meaning. Don’t close your eyes. Don’t go hide. Take it all in. Absorb every little detail. This is what you’ve been waiting for. This is what everyone’s been waiting for.
Unfortunately it all ends up being rather ineffectual from that standpoint. The disciples still run off in fear. Aside from Peter’s unfortunate incident, the disciples are almost non-existent throughout this part of the story. Still, there’s a third goal that Jesus has as he prepares them for all of this. He wants them to see, not just that this was a part of the plan and that they will be safe, but that what Jesus does proves everything. This isn’t a contingency plan, only to be pulled out in case of emergency. It is THE plan. When the disciples meet him after the resurrection, after all is said and done, they finally realize that nothing ever caught Jesus off guard. Jesus wasn’t surprised when Judas showed up in the garden. He had just told them the betrayer was already at work. He wasn’t surprised by the hatred of the priests and Pharisees. He wasn’t surprised by the crowd picking Barabbas. He wasn’t surprised to be crucified. He had told them he would be lifted up in the same manner Moses lifted up the bronze serpent in the wilderness.
Now the disciples stand there, basking in the radiance of the resurrected Son of God. It was the most glorious sight their eyes would ever behold this side of eternity. Much of what Jesus told them earlier would soon come together in their minds. They’d roll back through the last couple of years and see how it all fit together very neatly. Just like astronomers can predict the time and location of future eclipses down to the second, God had planned these events down the most minute details.
But now what? The disciples would soon be doing what is probably the most natural thing to do after witnessing something as amazing as this. They want to share the experience with others. “We were with him for years and he preached God’s word, he did lots of miracles, he healed people, even dead people! No, he really did! I saw it! The Pharisees and the priests though, they didn’t like him. They even got everyone else to demand that he be crucified. I don’t know why everyone went along with it, but they did. He died. It was miserable. He was really dead, the one soldier even stabbed him with a spear to make sure. Yep, dead. A couple of folks wrapped him up and put him in the tomb. They even put soldiers outside so no one would mess with his body. But that’s not even the craziest part! He came back to life! First he’s dead, then he’s not! Now he’s different, not, you know, different in the head or something, he’s really different, he’s better. He’s more alive than he was before. I don’t think he’ll ever die again. I don’t think he can. He wants us to know this is how it all works! You and I can be a part of that too! His life given to you! I know, it’s wild!”
It’s exciting, the most exciting thing ever. I guess? For the most part we aren’t too keen to talk about it. It’s just a thing that happened and, yeah, it’s pretty cool and I get some nice benefits from it, but that’s about it. Not that you have to be jazzed up about it all the time, that emotional high may come and go, but it will always be there for you to reflect on and consider. But that’s all it ends up being for many Christians. It’s just a thing that happened. Nothing really worth talking about it.
There are a lot of events in life that you can only appreciate fully by experiencing them firsthand. Some of them are good, the wonder and majesty of an eclipse, the beginning of a new life together that happens in marriage, and so on. Some of them are not so good, burying a child, struggling through some terrible disease. Nothing more surely divides people into two groups than this right here. The cross of Christ divides everyone into those who those who look to it and those who do not. This is what ultimately separates the sheep and the goats in Jesus’ prophecy of the last day. No one who hasn’t seen, who doesn’t look for it, can ever understand it. To truly be a part of what Jesus does and what his work means, you have to come face to face with him hanging on the cross. You have to see him, resurrected and whole. You have to know and trust that this has all be part of the plan, the plan to save you from sin and death, all of it planned and carried out for you.
You’ve heard the condemnation as you look at your own sins. You have heard and know that he died to pay the cost for your sins. You’ve seen him, alive and whole again as he presides over his table, offering his life to you. Whoever has the Son has life, whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. It is a clean division between the two sides. There is no middle ground, no inbetween space. It is a clean division, but it is not a fixed division. There is allowance for those on either side to go across. The only way for those on the other side to join us here is through the Gospel, the good news of sin paid for and death conquered. Christ died and Christ is alive again and lives forevermore. His death and resurrection testify to all of his words, to all of Scripture.
You have seen it and heard it here in his presence. You have something the rest of the world doesn’t have, something that no one can live without. You have the assurance and confidence that God’s plan is unfolding just as he said and that you are a part of it. You have the joy and wonder at seeing something that only God could make happen, his triumph over the evils of the world and his grace that restores you. You have all of that and more. He asks that you tell others what you have seen and heard. It is not too late for them to see and hear it for themselves, to be brought across the dividing line, to see Christ for themselves and to receive life from his hand. Let the world see what you have received from Christ, that they may follow you back to where eternal life may be found.