4-01-2018 Easter - "The Emptiness That is Full of Promise" John 20:1-18

I heard about a little boy who sat down next to his friend in church one Easter Sunday morning and the friend did a double take when he noticed the boy had a really ugly looking black eye. His friend asked, “How’d you get the shiner?” The boy replied, “I ate some Easter candy.” His friend said, “Eating Easter candy doesn’t give you a black eye.” The boy responded, “It does if the candy belongs to your sister!”

I heard another Easter story about two brothers who were getting ready to boil some eggs to color for Easter. “I’ll give you ten dollars if you let me break three of these on your head,” said the older one. “Promise?” asked the younger. “Promise!” Gleefully, the older boy broke a raw egg over his brother’s head, then another one. The younger brother braced himself for the last egg, but then nothing happened. Finally, the younger brother growing anxious asked: “Don’t you want to break that third egg?” His brother replied, “I’d love to, but I can’t afford it!”
 
To be sure, life is full of empty promises, but hopefully we won’t have many like that. What is it they say? If something sounds too good to be true… it probably is. Marketing experts create commercials and advertisements that tell us that we can be happy, attractive, rich, or successful, if only we will purchase whatever product they happen to be promoting. The government promises that if only we’ll support such and such or vote for so and so, then we’ll all live happily ever after: No wonder most of us don’t have to walk this earth for very long, before we come to the realization that the world’s promises are full of emptiness.

Some people may wonder if the same is true of God, because our God is indeed the God of promises. In fact, the Bible records over seven thousand promises from God to his people. We live in a world of broken promises and unfulfilled expectations. We make commitments and don’t follow through. We make plans and promises that we never even intend to keep, but oh how different is our God. Indeed, on the first Easter Sunday, instead of promises full of emptiness, God gave us emptiness that is full of promise.

This morning, I’d like to focus our attention on the promises of Easter, and I’d like to consider three of them specifically in that each of these promises is reflected in emptiness—an empty cross, an empty tomb, and a Savior who emptied Himself.  Indeed, it is the very certitude of that emptiness that assures us that God’s promises are not empty. 

I. First, I want us to consider the emptiness of the cross. If you had returned to the scene of Christ’s execution early on that Sunday morning you might well have discovered relics or reminders of His death; perhaps a braided crown of thorns with scarlet tips; possibly three iron nails covered in dirt and blood; and most probably somewhere near the scene an empty cross indelibly stained with the blood of God’s only Son. 

Seems a bit ironic, does it not? Ironic that the blood actually shed for our sin was innocent blood.  And how incredible to think that it was those very nails that held our sin to the cross, but that is absolutely what they did.
Listen to what Paul writes from Colossians 2:13-14: “When you were dead in your transgressions, . . . He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having cancelled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which were hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.”

So then, the promise of the empty cross is forgiveness. And the assurance of that promise began with the words of Jesus spoken from the cross: “Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.” But that promise of forgiveness was not only to those present on that occasion; it extended into both the past and the future; it covered our need for forgiveness as well: Not only that, but it covers our sin in its entirety.  

But how could that be? How could our debt of sin be so spontaneously and utterly forgiven? I love the way C.S. Lewis explains it in the book Mere Christianity:

We can all understand how a man forgives offenses against himself. You tread on my toe and I forgive you. But what should we make of a man, himself unrobbed and untrodden on, who announced that he forgave you for treading on other men’s toes and stealing other men’s money? Asinine fatuity is the kindest description we should give of his conduct. Yet this is what Jesus did. He told people that their sins were forgiven, and never waited to consult all the other people whom their sins had undoubtedly injured. 

He unhesitatingly behaved as if He was the party chiefly concerned, the person chiefly offended in all offenses. This makes sense only if He really was the God whose laws are broken and whose love is wounded in every sin. In the mouth of any speaker who is not God, these words would imply what I can only regard as a silliness and conceit unrivalled by any other character in history….

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with a man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. 

You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.  (unquote)

After six hours of agony upon the cross, Jesus cried out “It is finished!” (John 19:30). What makes these words so meaningful is that the Greek word translated “it is finished” is tetelestai (te TEL es tie) an accounting term that means “paid in full.” With those three words Jesus erased forever and in its entirety our debt of sin; He paid the debt that we could never pay. That’s why the empty cross promises forgiveness for all our sins. 

II. Secondly, we need to consider the empty tomb. The tomb in which Jesus was laid to rest belonged to Joseph of Arimathea. It was a newly carved crypt cut into the side of a rock wall—essentially a man-made cave with rock slab benches inside. At the entrance to such tombs they would dig a trench that extended past the opening on either side. The tomb would then be sealed with a large stone wheel placed into the trench and rolled into position to cover the opening. With the burial of Jesus, and at the insistence of the Jewish officials, mortar was then applied to the edge of the stone to further secure the seal. 

If we may for a moment examine the verses just prior to the beginning of our Epistle reading for this morning, we will discover Paul addressing the church at Corinth with the following, I Cor. 15:3-4:

“For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received.  That Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.”

That is the good news of the gospel of Jesus in the words of the Apostle Paul.  Remarkably, however, the very first news of Easter was not good news at all.  It was terrible news that Mary Magdalene brought to the apostles Peter and John.  Every one of Jesus’ followers had a different encounter with the resurrection.  To understand Mary Magdalene’s reaction, we have to get one thing straight—Jesus was dead.  D-E-A-D; dead.  Not asleep, not in a coma—dead!

We all know that Jesus arose.  We sing, “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today.”  But too often perhaps, we gloss over from where he arose; we just “skip over” His death. 

But Mary Magdalene knew that Jesus had died!  His death was all the more real to her because His life had made such an impact on hers.  He had cast demons out of her and changed her life.  He had taught her about a loving Father in Heaven.  But she knew—oh how she knew—Jesus was dead. 

Most of the others had watched Jesus’ death from a distance.  They could deny the reality of the entire episode; at least for the present.  Maybe it was—just a bad dream.  But it was different for Mary; she couldn’t play those games.  She had been close enough to see the blood dripping from His wounds.  And when they took him down from the cross, she held His cold, dead body in her arms and wept with His mother.  Jesus had died, and Mary Magdalene knew it—so she was absolutely certain someone had stolen the body.  Peter and John ran to the scene of the alleged crime, and when they arrived, both looked at the evidence before them. 

The stone had been rolled away.  The burial cloth was lying on the slab where Jesus’ body had so recently been.  And the cloth that had covered His face was now rolled up and lying to the side.  The tomb was empty and the scripture says of John, “he saw and believed.”  But what he believed was not that Jesus was alive; not the promise of resurrection, but that a crime had been committed.

 

Jesus’ followers had heard him say that he would rise on the third day.  Yet when Peter and John saw the evidence of the resurrection, they failed to believe; and how do we know that? They did not run from the tomb yelling, “He is alive!”  What did they do?  The scripture says simply, “They returned to their homes.” Wondering, no doubt, who had stolen the body. 

Perhaps we need to exercise a bit of understanding here; because as sad and traumatic as the death of a loved one may be, it is in many ways less traumatic that the idea of resurrection.  This was a loss, but a loss that could be managed, because everyone knew how death worked.  In short, never mind the promise, never mind the empty tomb; it was just plain easier to believe Jesus was dead.

But the death of this Jesus was no ordinary death.  This death had a real twist.  “I have seen the Lord,” Mary Magdalene announced.  That was no easy proposition for any of the followers of Jesus.  Only hours before, Mary Magdalene, John, Peter and all the rest were sure they would face the future with only fading memories of a dead Jesus. Good friend? Yes.  Great teacher? Indeed.  Now dead? Absolutely!

So all their uncertainties would have remained; all of their problems, cares, and concerns would still have needed attention.  Great sorrow—but life would have continued.  Yet she now says to them, “I have seen the Lord.”

And so, here, at the very heart of the message of Easter is the reality that in the emptiness of the tomb, God has fulfilled the promise; the promise of forever. Jesus is risen and we are redeemed, forever; no longer can the curse of sin and death hold us captive. The tomb of Jesus remained empty as a symbol of life that outlasts the grave, forever.

Forever; our minds can hardly grasp the concept, yet Jesus promised it over and over. He told Nicodemus, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16 ). He assured the Samaritan woman at the well, “whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.” (John 4:14) He announced to the crowds, “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life.” (John 6:47)

Many people, both then and now, seem perfectly content to live their life as if death is the end, and if it is otherwise, well, they’ll take their chances; and yet, the promises of God offer great blessings even in this life with an additional promise of joy beyond joy in all that is to come.  In John 15: 11, Jesus says to the disciples, “These things have I spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.” Because the tomb is indeed empty, we are heading for forever!

The apostle Paul put it this way in Romans 6:8-10: “Now if we have died with Christ, we believe we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.”

The emptiness of the tomb serves as a powerful reminder that Christ rose from the grave, never to die again. He promises that if we believe in him, then we will live with him… forever! As Edwin Excell put it in the unforgettable final verse of Amazing Grace: When we’ve been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun; we’ve no less days to sing his praise than when we first begun. That’s why the empty tomb promises forever to those who believe. 

III. But before there was an empty tomb, before also the empty cross, there was Jesus, God incarnate, emptying even Himself; Paul describes it so well in Phil 2, beginning with v. 5, “Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” emptied Himself . . . being made in the likeness of men.


If the empty cross is about God’s love; and the empty tomb is about God’s power; what is Jesus’ emptying of Himself about? It’s about faith in all the promises of God; it’s about faith expressed in a life of servanthood that compelled Jesus to the floor with a basin of water and a towel to wash the feet of each and every disciple right in the middle of the Passover meal and on the very eve of His crucifixion. 

Although they did not realize it early on that Easter morn, the example of Jesus taking on the role of servant would be for the disciples a pivotal moment; a moment that would inspire a faith so deep and enduring that it would make them more than adequate for whatever lay ahead.

 That same deep and enduring faith is available to us as well; God made it available to all; that’s also the promise of God; no prerequisites; no strings attached, but there is a “caveat” in that it can never be a casual faith or an “if it’s convenient” faith; because before you can ever hope to communicate your faith to the minds and hearts of others, it will have to be real, truly and personally real, in your own life; and that is also the promise of God.
  

IV. The imagery of the empty cross promises forgiveness; a forgiveness that knows no bounds, save those of God’s unmerited grace:  The imagery of the empty tomb promises forever; a forever with God for those whose trust is in the gospel of Christ Jesus: The imagery of the emptied Christ promises faith, faith that will make us adequate for all that God may require. Jesus understood that faith and Jesus lived and died and was resurrected in that faith; the Apostles understood that faith and lived that faith in perfect reliance on the promises of God.

As we said in the beginning, our God is a God of promises; but unlike the world, He always keeps His.  The very fact that the cross, the tomb and even God’s own Son were in grace found emptied assures us that God’s promises, all of God’s promises will never be, can never be empty.

This is the Word of the Lord for Today; Amen and Amen.