LAUGH 'N LEARN

An Encouragement Ministry of Verde Valley Christian Church
Of Cottonwood Arizona
http://www.vvchristianchurch.net/

Issue # 279,    March 24,  2008

LAUGH

The Magic Wand

After watching the movie Cinderella, five-year-old Sarah started using her pinwheel as a magic wand, pretending she was a fairy godmother. "Make three wishes," she told her mother, "and I'll grant them."

Her mom first asked for world peace. Sarah swung her wand and proclaimed the request fulfilled.

Next, her mother requested for a cure for all ill children. Again, with a sweep of the pinwheel, Sarah obliged.

The mother, with a glance down at her rather ample curves, made her third wish, "I wish to have a trim figure again."

The miniature fairy godmother started waving her wand madly.

"I'll need more power for this!" she exclaimed.
 

Jim’s Manuscript

March 23, 2008

Easter Sunrise Service

“A Change of Clothes”

The Gospel of John Series

Text:  John 20:1-18

The Stained Cloth

I pulled down this cloth that was draped over the cross for the past few weeks.  We signed our names on it to represent the stains of our lives that Jesus absorbed on the cross. 

This morning we will look at John 20 when the Stained Cloth—the cloth of death—changed to a sign of life.

On Easter Jesus changed his clothes!  When Jesus came to this earth, he changed clothes… from Glory, to humility.  Let’s consider that humility.  He was birthed in nakedness, he died in nakedness.  At birth his nakedness was wrapped in swaddling cloths, a poor substitute for the glory he removed.  At death his nakedness was wrapped in grave cloths…  What glory is that?  These cloths are our filthy death stained rags!  And yet, John calls the cross the hour of his glory!  What’s the glory here?

On Easter Jesus changed his clothes!  He changed his clothes so that we could change ours.

Galatians 3:27 (NIV) for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.

That’s an amazing exchange, our filthy rags, our stains, the death cloth…for robes of righteousness.

The gospel of John 20 records the first words Jesus spoke after his resurrection.

His first words after the resurrection are not what one would expect. 

The Teacher’s Question

To the third grade Sunday School class the teacher asked,  "And what do you think were Jesus’ first words when He came out of that tomb alive?" A hand shot up into the air from the rear of the classroom. Attached to it was the arm of a little girl. Leaping out of her chair she shouted out excitedly "I know, I know!" "Good" said the teacher, "Tell us, what were Jesus first words?" And extending her arms high into the air she said: "TA-DA!"

Those aren’t exactly the words he spoke, even if those are the cumulative effects of his words and actions. 

Turn with me to John 20 if you brought your Bibles this morning.

¹ 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.

While It Was Still Dark

Many of us also left our houses before dark this morning.  John may be telling us more than just the description of dawn however.  If it were Mark’s words I don’t think I would come to that conclusion, but John has been presenting the theological themes of Jesus the Light coming into our world.  Mary finds herself in the despair of darkness.  It is indeed very dark.  In her despairing darkness, things got darker still when she arrived at the tomb even though there was now light enough to see that something was amiss. 

The Stone was “Removed.”

Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance.

The word is not the word we expect to see here.  The word is not the word for “rolled back.”  The word John chooses to use is “ermenon” from “airo”; it implies that the stone is “taken up” and “out of” the tomb when combined with the word “ek”.  This gives the meaning that the stone was removed completely out of the groove.  It suggests that something more violent happened here than merely rolling the stone back in its groove.  It was “removed”, “taken up out of”.  Not only was the seal broken, the mechanism for opening and closing it by rolling it in its groove was dismantled. 

John 20:1 (ESV) . . . and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb.

John 20:1 (AMP) . . . and saw that the stone had been removed from (lifted out of the groove across the entrance of) the tomb.

Matthew tells us that there was a big earthquake and an angel removed it and sat on it.

Matthew 28:2 (NIV) ² There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it.

This is part of the reason that when Mary with the other ladies (though not mentioned by John) saw the tomb open, the stone “removed” the way it was, they jump to the wrong conclusions.  Something awful has happened here.  It looked to her like the tomb was violently rifled by Jesus’ enemies.  I mean, look at that stone!  She takes off running.

The Disturbing News

² 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!"

Notice the “we”.  Mary was with others.  Notice the “They” means Jesus’ enemies.  She assumes they [Jesus’ enemies] were angry that he was given an “honorable” burial and they were determined to dishonor even his corpse.  It was not a bad assumption.  It was just the wrong conclusion.

They Check It Out

³ So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb.  ⁴ Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first.  ⁵ He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. ⁶ Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there,

John Saw The Folded Cloth and Believed

⁷ as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus' head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen. ⁸ Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. ⁹ (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.)  ¹⁰ Then the disciples went back to their homes,

The folded grave cloths indicate 1 of 2 possibilities.  1) Someone carefully folded them and left the tomb not quite empty for a message.  Or 2) Jesus came right through the clothes and there they lay, folded around themselves collapsed in place with the body gone.  I favor the latter view.

Either way, it is clear that Mary was mistaken.  They [Jesus’ enemies, or anyone else] did not steal the body! 

We always think of the empty tomb as evidence, but the not-so-empty tomb was even greater evidence! 

There’s a message here in the folded cloth. 

The cloth isn’t lying in disarray, but folded.  Death is chaos and disarray. A living organism hums in all the complexities of order and design so complexly ordered that it is hard to define life.  Why is an organism alive one moment and then at the end of life it crosses the line from life to death?  Why?  Death is disorder, the curse of the fall, the wages of sin.  This is the tomb.  There was death here.  But the cloths of death are now folded in perfect order and death is gone.  Looking into the tomb we don’t see what we expect to see, the purposeless chaos of death.  Neither do we see the chaos of robbery, and let me remind you that death itself is the robber of life. 

What we see is the very purposeful reversal of death.  It isn’t that a dead body or dead hopes are here decaying.  Nor are we to believe the body was stolen, and left to decay in dishonor somewhere else.  No grave robber takes time to remove grave clothes and carefully fold them at the scene of the crime.  They get what they want and get out of there.

Jesus purposefully left behind the grave clothes, the signs of death, but in a way to demonstrate that death has been conquered.  He absorbed death into himself and conquered it just as he said he would.  TA-DA! 

We put our names on the cloth to represent the stains, our stains that he absorbed.  But he no longer wears the stain.  The stains are conquered. 

Isaiah 1:18 (ESV) ¹⁸ "Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.

Revelation 7:9-14 (ESV) ⁹ After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands,  ¹⁰ and crying out with a loud voice, "Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!"  ¹¹ And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, ¹² saying, "Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen."  ¹³ Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, "Who are these, clothed in white robes, and from where have they come?"  ¹⁴ I said to him, "Sir, you know." And he said to me, "These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

But It is Still Dark For Mary

¹¹ but Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb  ¹² and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus' body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. ¹³ They asked her, "Woman, why are you crying?". . .

It is so dark for her she isn’t putting two and two together.  She’s distraught.

¹³. . . "They have taken my Lord away," she said, "and I don't know where they have put him."  ¹⁴ At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

Why Didn’t Mary Recognize Jesus?

1)     She’s not expecting to see Jesus (nobody who believed he was the Messiah would have expected to see him because the Messiah wasn’t supposed to die…but he did).  His enemies, on the other hand, heard and remembered Jesus saying he’d be killed and rise from the dead. 

2)     She’s crying.

¹⁵ "Woman," he said, "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."  ¹⁶ Jesus said to her, "Mary." She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, "Rabboni!" (which means Teacher).

Mary was the First…

The first to see the Risen Lord.

The first to talk to the Risen Lord.

The first to touch the Risen Lord.

God’s priorities are not our priorities.  They certainly weren’t the priorities of first century Judaism.  The fact that Christ chose to reveal himself first to a woman rather than someone more prominent would be surprising to a Jew..  You’d think he’d pick one of the 11 remaining disciples.  Or if he was picking a woman, then perhaps you’d expect that he would have  picked Mary his mother.  The first shall be last, and the last first.  God values the devotion of humble people.

Clinging, She Won’t Let Go

¹⁷ Jesus said, "Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father. …

A change is coming where everything will be different, but it is not quite here yet.  But you can let go now. 

Commissioned:  Tell My Brothers

Go instead to my brothers and tell them, 'I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'"

She’s The First Evangelist

¹⁸ 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.

The first to proclaim the Risen Lord.

He Calls Us Personally Also

Just as it was still darkness of soul for Mary until she heard him call her name, the light doesn’t go on for us until there is that personal connection with Christ for us, when we recognize that he calls us personally also. 

“Mary”,  “Jim”,  “Bob”,   “Gina”….

He Knows Our Name--He Knows Our Stains

He Knows Everything About Me

Not only does he know my name, he knows everything about me.  The bible says he knows how many hairs I have on my head.  And that’s tough to know, not because I have so much hair, but because it’s a countdown!  Yet he knows.

He knows what he absorbed from us.  He knows our every stain.

We left our stains on him, but He left our stains…there in the tomb.  Buried forever.

As our names are absorbed into him, and the stains of our names are left in the tomb.  Our names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.  (Revelation 20:15; 21:27)

Revelation 20:15 (NIV) ¹⁵ If anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

Revelation 21:27 (NIV) ²⁷ Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life.

He is the author of life.  The author of our lives.  We re-wrote his story with chapters of death.  We stained his book with the book of our lives.  We put the author of life to death.  But death could not hold him or keep him.  He conquered death, absorbed the stains, and now He speaks our name…

He’s right here.  Right behind you in the garden.  He speaks your name.  What kind of God did you come to celebrate this morning?  One who is far away?  Who worked only long ago?  No.  He is one who is here.  He is one who knows…. 

He is here. 

He forgives…

He liberates you…

He is here for you…

And yet it is a changed relationship…

…By his spirit.

You cannot cling to his body, but you can still cling to him through worship.

Worship.

This morning we will be singing… “He Knows My Name.”

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