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seaster04
The Facts of Life--Undeniable
or Unbelievable?
Text:
Luke 24:1-11
Date: The Resurrection of Our Lord
4/11/04 s60 free theme
There
was a time—as unbelievable as it seems—when people really believed
the world was flat and that the sun and the stars all revolved around
the earth. Of course science has proven beyond a doubt that the
world is an orb and that the changing alignment of sun and stars
in the sky is a much more complicated issue as the earth revolves
around the sun. On the one hand are the facts and on the other is
our ability to perceive, to know and to agree with or believe the
facts.
The
Christian faith is something like that. For the word “faith” has
two aspects. One is the facts, the substance or content of what
it is that is believed, in Latin the fides quae creditur .
The other aspect is what faith is in itself, or the fides qua
creditur . In other words, when you talk about faith you can
either be talking about what it is that is believed or just the
act of believing it. It is especially on Easter Sunday that this
difference between what we are called to believe (the fides
quae, the fact of the resurrection) and what it means to believe
it (the fides qua) becomes crucial. The fact is the tomb
of Jesus is empty. But the fact of the empty tomb by itself does
not necessarily lead a person to Christian faith! All the Gospel
accounts address the slowness of the disciples to believe the truth
of the resurrection. But it is especially in this year of St. Luke's
Easter account that this issue is most clearly described.
Actually,
I'd like to back up and contrast the last verse of Luke chapter
23 with the first verse of our Easter Gospel. For Chapter 23 ends
telling how, after Jesus' burial, the women “returned and prepared
spices and ointments. On the Sabbath they rested according to the
commandment” [Luke 23:56 (ESV)]. Chapter 24 begins with the words,
“on the first day of the week.” Here, with the observance of the
Old Covenant Sabbath day law on the one hand, and the dawning of
Easter on Sunday, the first day of the week, we have the beginning
of the New Covenant, the new creation.
Recall
in the account of the creation in the book of Genesis how each day
of creation ended with the words, “and there was evening and there
was morning,” the first, second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth
days. But did you notice this is not so of the seventh day, the
Sabbath day. On it there was no creating, no work, only rest and
blessing. And it was left open ended implying that there is more.
That “more” begins now as the “eighth day” of creation, the day
of resurrection announces the new creation. That all the Evangelists
have this connection in mind is shown by the way each of them begins
their Easter Sunday account. Matthew says is was “toward the dawn
of the first day of the week” [Mt. 28:1]; Mark, “very early” [Mk.
16:2]; John has “early, while it was still dark” [Jn. 20:1]. Luke
has an unusual phrase translated “at deep dawn.” Someone has described
it as “the dim twilight that precedes the dawn…the thick dullness
of night that has not yet yielded to the clear transparency of day.”
It sort of recalls that mystery of the creation of light and its
separation from the darkness of that first day of creation. Indeed,
at the open tomb, something as new, cosmic and radical has happened!
It
was the women. Luke lists them, “Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary
the mother of James and the other women with them,” very probably
a good number of women who were returning to the tomb before sunrise,
taking the spices they had prepared. But whereas they fully expected
to find Jesus' dead body, the found, rather, that the stone had
been rolled away from the entrance to the tomb. They went in the
tomb. But they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.
Do
you remember the story of Mary and Martha at the death of their
brother Lazarus? When Jesus spoke to Martha, saying, “Your brother
will rise again,” Martha responded, saying, “I know that he will
rise again in the resurrection on the last day” [John 11:23-24 (ESV)].
It's the same with these women at the empty tomb. Like Martha, they
had confidence in the resurrection at the last day. They just weren't
expecting resurrection now! And so they were perplexed
about the situation. The facts of the resurrection do not necessarily
lead a person to the resurrection faith. The facts need to be interpreted
by the Word of God. And so the angels appear and interpret what
the women observed with their own eyes (the fact that the tomb is
empty) with the meaning, “he has risen!” “Remember,” they said,
“remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the
Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be
crucified and on the third day rise.” It was only as the Word of
God got them to remember that faith happened. They “got it”! Only
when the historical facts are interpreted by the inspired, inerrant
Word of God do enlightenment and faith follow.
Now
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