Broadway Christian Church ·Columbia, Missouri

Morning Worship ·April 3, 2005

Second Sunday of Easter

Prayer of the Day

Lord Jesus, we have been surprised by your resurrection and caught off guard by your lively return to us.  Come to us in this hour or worship, we pray, and heal our reservations, timidity, and fears of believing.  Indeed, help us to live each day in the light of our greatest gift!  Amen.

Scripture
John 20:24-31

Although Thomas the Twin was one of the twelve disciples, Thomas wasn’t with the others when Jesus appeared to them.  So they told him, “We have seen the Lord!”

But Thomas said, “First, I must see the nail scars in his hands and touch them with my finger.  I must put my hand where the spear went into his side.  I will not believe unless I do this.”

A week later the disciples were together again.  This time Thomas was with them.  Jesus came in while the doors were still locked and stood in the middle of the group.  He greeted his disciples and said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and look at my hands!  Put your hand into my side.  Stop doubting and have faith.”

Thomas replied, “You are my Lord and my God!”

Jesus said, “Tomas, do you have faith because you have seen me?  The people who have faith in me without seeing me are the ones who are really blessed.”

Message
Did You Get That Gift I Sent You?
Rick Frost

My guess is most all of the people in this room have seen that billboard while driving down the highway – the one that has the solid black background.  It has been up for several years in certain places.  It has just one sentence printed on it.  Do you remember what it is?  “Don’t make me come down there.  Signed, God.”

For worlds involved in serious misbehavior, that message sends chills through more than one reader, I’m sure.  But the billboard that I’d like to see put up – certainly for the next five weeks, starting today – would be again just one sentence, printed on a huge background of beautiful colors and bright light.  That message would say: “Did you get the gift I sent you?  Signed, God.”

What a great message for the whole world at Easter.  The question today:  Well, did you?  Did you get it?  Did you get the gift God sent you on Easter, because, according to Scripture, believing in God’s power to give resurrection life to the dead is a gift?  Did you know that?  It’s a gift.  And like any gift, it’s up to you to receive it.  It’s there for the receiving.  Believing is a gift from God to you personally.  Did you get it?  Did you get it this Easter?

On this, the Second Sunday of Easter, after all the guests have obviously gone home, in our culture, and literally around the world, it is our custom to read this story I read to you just moments ago.  It is the story about the encounter Jesus has with one of his disciples.  His name is Thomas.  According to John, Thomas was not around when the resurrected Christ first appeared to many of the followers.  So after they encountered the Christ, they told their friend Thomas, “We’ve seen the Lord!”

“Yeah, yeah, right,” said Thomas.  “Look, unless I see the nail marks in his hands, unless I put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”

As you know, ever since that day, Thomas has been the patron saint of all of those in the Church and outside the Church who have difficulty imagining, conceiving, believing in God’s power to give resurrection life to the dead.

Now, what I would like to ask you to do today is to hear two core truths, two core spiritual principles. 

Number 1 is this:  Doubt is good.  Did you know that?  Now, not every church is going to tell you that.  I’ll tell you that right now.  Doubt is good.  Doubt happens.  Doubt is real.  Everybody in the world struggles with things that they believe.  Doubt is OK.  All right?  Because what we’ve learned over our time together is that when we own, when we can name, when we can share our doubts, it’s not only good that we can do that, but it’s also absolutely critical, in order for us to move forward to take the next step and to grow.  I believe lots of things today, folks, which I thought were absolutely ridiculous years ago.  I have a feeling I’m not the only one in the room like that. 

Doubting, questioning, wondering, struggling, which leads to the second core truth in our text today.  The Number 2 truth:  The Spirit of the Living Christ reassures us right smack dab in the middle of our doubts by his loving presence.  It wasn’t the disciples, folks, who gave Thomas the gift of faith.  The gift of faith was given by the Spirit of the Living Christ who came to where Thomas was and said to Thomas (just like the choir did today), “Peace, peace be with you.  Go ahead, put your finger in my hand.  Lay your hand into my side.”

Then, as you remember the Scripture saying, “Thomas said to Jesus, ‘Oh, my Lord and my God!”

The question today:  Did you get it?  Did you get the gift God sent you on Easter?  Believing in the resurrection of the dead, folks, is a gift.

As you know, the Christian, by definition, is a person who has, in fact, received this gift.  A Christian is a person who believes the Creator of all that is raised Jesus from the dead to life.  It is a belief that you and I know has been laughed at.  It has been derided.  It has been patently rejected by millions of people from day one.

When the Apostle Paul went to Mars Hill near Athens, Greece, and preached to that very heady, culturally-sophisticated community of very smart, intellectual people, do you know what he preached about?  He stood in front of them, and he preached Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.

Take a look at it in Acts 17.  It’s right there.  And what happened when he did that?  He was greeted with hoots of derision.  He was laughed at.  He was mocked.  And many in the world still do.  They still do!

Robert Funk tells about how once he put the notion of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead on the table for discussion in what is commonly called, in our country today, the Jesus Seminar.  Some of you have followed the Jesus Seminar.  It has received an incredible amount of media attention for the last several years.  And here, Robert, meeting with other academics, they do what academics do.  They discuss things.  And everything is open for discussion, and that’s good.  That’s wonderful.  His proposition that Jesus was, indeed, raised by God from the dead was received, he said, “with hilarity from several there at the table.”

One suggested it was an oxymoron.  Others said it was meaningless in today’s world, because rational people assume that Jesus’ life ended when he was crucified, dead, and buried.

“I was surprised by their response,” he said.  “ I mean, a group of people who teach religious studies.  I don’t know why, however, that I was surprised.  I shouldn’t have been.  After all, one of the key players in this seminar confessed, and I quote, ‘I do not think that anyone, anywhere, at any time brings dead people back to life.  The truth that we need to be telling our people is that Jesus, regardless of where his corpse ended up, is dead, and he remains dead to this day.’”

Now, what’s so disturbing to me about this public discussion is not that the discussion takes place.  People ought to be able to talk about their fears, their doubts, their concerns, and their questions.  That’s a good thing.  What concerns me is that when people talk publicly about Jesus’ resurrection, that so many people thought these religious-studies scholars were really on to something, that they were breaking new ground, that they were really helping post-modern people come to grips with real-life faith today.  The truth of the matter is, folks, their thinking is as old as the story I read to you just moments ago from the Scriptures.  Their thinking is as old as Paul’s preaching to the Athenians in Greece 2,000 years ago.  People have been challenging the belief in God’s power to give resurrection life to the dead since the very beginning.  So, what’s new here? 

What I want to ask you today, since you are here, is: Did you get it?  Did you get the gift God sent you on Easter?  Did you get it?

Listen, folks, the scholars all agree on this.  There is no historian, that any of us know, that doubts this fact.  They say that without the belief in the resurrection of the dead by the power of God, there would be no Gospels.  There would be no Christians.  There would be no Christian religion in this world. 

And in some circles, they are saying, “Amen.  Fantastic.  Good riddance.  It’s an enterprise that is patently absurd.  Everybody in the world knows that dead people do not come back to life.  The sooner the world hears that message and rejects Christianity, the better off this world is going to be.”

Well, I agree with one point in that statement.  I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that the entire structure of the Christian faith stands or falls on the fact that the Creator of all that is raised Jesus from the dead.  If God did not raise Jesus from the dead, Scripture says, “We, of all people, are to be pitied.”  We are wasting our time together.  Why are we spending, or why should we spend, time propping up some toothless, powerless, non-existent deity?  If God did not raise Jesus from the dead to life, then we need to join Terry Shaivo’s parents, and evidently 30,000 other families who have loved ones in vegetative states and on feeding tubes in this country alone, because they are hanging on to every morsel of life as long as they medically possibly can.  And why?  Because, folks, there is for them nothing else.

If God did not raise Jesus from the dead, we need to start giving you your money back.  We need to sell this building to some school or some movie theatre and see if Wal-Mart still wants the property out back, and I think we ought to sell it and divide it up, and then we all ought to go to Florida and fish all day and eat and drink all night.  All in favor, say, “Aye.”  Maybe we all ought to do that until we drop, because you know what?  There’s nothing else.  That’s all there is.  However, the Bible says that the Creator, Sustainer, Judge, and Redeemer of all that is was the one who raised Christ from the dead (Romans 8). 

The Bible says that the same God gives life to the dead and calls into existence things that were not in existence before (Romans 4).  Folks, we don’t have any other God than the one who creates new life from the dead (Romans 11).

The question today is:  Did you get the gift God sent you on Easter?

Number 1:  The resurrection of Jesus, in the Scriptures, tells us and the whole world a whole lot about our God.

Number 2:  The resurrection of Jesus tells us a whole lot about ourselves.  As good as this life can be, as rotten as this world can be, as unpredictable as this world can be, this world – this life that you and I are living this day – is not the end.  It is not our ultimate destination.  We are just here for a little while.  Indeed, by God’s great mercy, God has given us a new birth and a living hope in the resurrection of Jesus Christ (I Peter 1).

What is that hope?  Do you remember it?  Jesus is remembered by John as saying, “Here’s the hope.  The hope is that, ‘in my Father’s house there are many mansions.  If it were not so, I would have told you.  I go to prepare a place for you, that where I am, you someday will be’” (John 14).

Paul put it another way.  “Now we all know that when this earthly tent that we have is destroyed, we have a home, a building, not made with human hands, a building made by God, eternal in the heavens, a home eternal.”

The only question is:  Did you get it?  Did you get the gift?  Did you get the present God sent you?  Do you believe in God’s power to raise the dead to life?

This is a good Sunday, folks.  It is a good Sunday to reflect on our thoughts, our concerns, our doubts.  We all struggle.  We all struggle!  None of us have it down for sure.  But it’s also a time for us to think very positively, and very affirmingly, and strongly about the resurrection, because it tells us a lot about our God.  It tells us a lot about ourselves.  It tells us about why we’re here and where we’re going, and it also tells us what we’re supposed to do while we’re here.  Did you know that?

The resurrection tells us what we’re here to do.  We’re not here just to hang out.  We’re not here just to take up space.  We’re not here just to accumulate, and consume, and pay taxes, although we’re getting ready to do that soon.  Right?

Resurrection is a call to mission.  The risen Christ called his followers to go and tell everyone from our doorsteps of the big announcement.  Do you know what the big announcement is?  The big announcement is that God’s mysterious, awesome, powerful, great love in Christ Jesus is for literally the whole world.  It’s not just for Christians, not just for people here, not just for people in western culture.  It’s for the entire world – sacred, secular, civil, religious, whoever, wherever, whenever.  And, if that’s true, then that is great news, indeed.  If that’s true, we’re the only people I know of who have that message.

Now, one of the things we have to remember is that is not our message.  It is not ours to share or to withhold.  If you belong, if you’re a part of the Lord’s Church anywhere in this world, it’s not up to you to decide if you’re going, or whether you’re not going to participate in ministry and mission.  God in Christ has already given that announcement of God’s embrace of the whole world.  It’s his world!  The death, the resurrection of Jesus is God’s self-appointed way – and it is self-appointed.  It is his way of reconciling the whole world unto himself.  Now please, no patriotism here.  No empire-building here.  That’s the wrong message.

When we get together in a couple of Saturdays from now for that In-Focus Workshop that we’ve been talking about, it’s not to talk about whether we’re going to do ministry and mission or not.  That is already assumed.  That is what we do.  The question is:  What kind of ministry?  What kind of mission?  How much?  What’s going to be the next step?  Which ones are we going to take on?  We need your voice to be present and to help us with that. 

We have a message for the entire world to hear.  Everybody in the world deserves to hear that message.  Without it, folks, we have nothing to say to a hurting and unstable world.  But with it, we have some really good news – news of love, grace, honor, a kingdom that God wishes to give, because… “Thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever.”

And we all say together… “Amen.”

Benediction

Dear God, thank you for the gift you sent.  He was just who we needed.  He’s our perfect fit.  We will keep him forever and lift him up for generations to come.  You always send just the right presence.  Amen.