John 20:1-18

Perhaps one of the most moving stories in scripture is the passage we read this morning from John’s Gospel. As we enter the story, we read that it was early in the morning on the first day of the week. While it was still dark, Mary went to the tomb. It was a natural place for her to be... to be as close to her Lord as possible, even thought it was only his dead body covered over by a large stone.

When she got there, she saw something that startled her, throwing her into deep confusion and turmoil. The stone had been removed form the entrance. Wasn’t it enough that they had put Jesus to death? Did they now have to come and raid his tomb and remove his body? It was a devastating discovery for Mary, for whom Jesus had been her life and her joy.

Running back, we read, she found Peter and the Beloved Disciple (believed by most to be John). Upon hearing the news it seems that a race ensued between Peter and John to see who could get there first. John outran Peter, but then waited at the entrance of the tomb for Peter to arrive. After Peter had gone inside, John joined him where they saw the burial clothes neatly folded where the body of Jesus should have been.

Some find it easy to believe. John it appears was one of them. We read that when he saw, he believed.

Others find it more difficult to believe. At this stage, Mary was still in deep confusion and turmoil. Peter and John went back to their homes, but we read that Mary stated behind, crying. It was all too much for her.

We read however that as she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels dressed in white, seated where the body of Jesus should have been.

“Women, why are you crying?” they asked her.

As she replied to the angles, it seems that she turned away from them, perhaps trying to hide her tears. Turning around, she saw Jesus standing in front of her, but she did not realize it was him. As she turned around, Jesus repeated the question that the angels had asked:

“Woman, why are you crying?”

1) In this passage we see that the Easter Story invited us to get in touch with our own pain.

Woman, Why are you crying?

For Mary her tears were tears of utter grief and loss. The man who had given her life back to her had been cruelly tortured and brutally murdered. The one who had shown a love to her like she had never experienced before was dead.

It must have been an utterly devastating moment for her; like the bottom had fallen out of her life. The centre of her life had been taken away from her. The one person who had brought meaning and purpose to her life had been taken away from her.

This was the source of her pain; an indescribable pain, an emptiness within that throbbed with a pain that must have felt like it would never go away.

Why are you crying?

The Easter story invites us to get in touch with the things in our lives that bring us pain, that cause us to weep when no-one else is watching, that leave us feeling empty with a throbbing sense of meaninglessness.

Why are you crying? What is the pain you carry with you today?

For Mary the pain was so great that sage couldn't see Jesus stadning in front of her. It seems that her own tears obscured her vision. Sometimes our tears and pain obscure our sense of the Presence of God... we are unable to recognize the one who can wipe away our tears.

Why are you crying? What is the pain you carry with you today?

2) The second thing we see in this passage: As Jesus asks her why she is crying, he asks her a second question: “Who are you looking for?”

Who or what are you looking for? If truth be told, we are all looking for something, something that will fill the void, that last puzzle piece of life that will make the picture complete. We are looking for something; that one thing or that one person who can make our lives complete.

We look in various places
Fame
Success, achievement
Money,

that one special relationship... if I can just find that 1 special person the emptiness will be filled.
Revenge – A number of years ago, Dr Phil interviewed a woman who was looking for revenge. She had been treated appallingly by her husband. When she divorced him she had an overwhelming desire for revenge. But she came to Dr Phil because she discovered that revenge was not helping her. It was not filling the hole like she had thought it would.
What are you looking for?

What is it that you are searching for in life?
The Christian story teaches us that beneath all of our striving; underlying all of our searching is ultimately a search for God, the Infinite, the Eternal. If all things come from God, then ultimately our real deep search in life is for God. The superficial desires and searching that we have is only a front or façade. Ultimately it is only the Infinite, the Eternal that can satisfy the hunger within. Mary was looking in the wrong place. Mary was looking for a dead body, and through her tears she couldn’t see the Risen Christ standing in front of her.

3) The third thing we see is that the One who we are searching for already knows us by name.
The crucified and risen Lord, the one who holds the key to deep happiness and fulfillment, who holds the keys to a life of true meaning and purpose already knows our name.

Woman, why are you crying? Who are you looking for?

Mary answers out of her pain: “Sir, if you have taken him away, tell me where you have put him and I will go and get him”.

And Jesus replied: “Mary”

The one we are ultimately looking for already knows our name. There is a God who sees and knows us.

Sometimes it seems as if our lives go unnoticed. Would it really make any difference if I was not around? About 10 years ago, I was helping with the music at the Methodist Churches conference with a few hundred delegates from all around the country. During lunch the presiding bishop walked past me and said: “Brian, I dint know you played bass guitar so well.” It was startling. I didn’t even know that he knew who I was. And he called me by name.

In the story of the servant woman Hagar, in Genesis 16:1-13, we read of how badly she was treated by Abraham and Sarah and so she runs away. The angel of the Lord finds her near a spring in the desert where she has laid down to die. After the angel has spoken to her and brought encouragement to her, Hagar speaks and gives a name to God: “You are the God who sees me. I have now seen the One who sees me.”

The one who we are ultimately looking for already knows our name. There is a God who sees and knows us.

4) Lastly, we see in this passage that as Mary hears her name being spoken, she turns around, and only in turning does she finally realise and recognize that it is in fact Jesus standing in front of her.

If we are to recognize the risen Christ it will often require us to turn and to face him. It is as Mary turns that she recognizes Jesus. TO see Jesus requires a turn... a turning point i our lives, a change of direction.

If you are to recognize the risen Christ, in what way do you need to turn today?

The Easter story invites us to a response... to bring our tears, to bring our restless searching, to be embraced by the Christ who already knows our name; to recognize that we may be at a turning point in our lives.

When we read Luke’s version of the Triumphal Entry and compare it to the other three Gospels, we see that there are some unique things about Luke’s version.

Firstly, even though we call it Palm Sunday, unlike all of the other 3 Gospels, Luke makes no mention of the people waving branches or leaves.

Secondly, in Luke’s version, no-one in the crowd shouts Hosannas. Instead, Luke tells us the crowd praised God saying: “Peace in heaven and glory in the highest.” These are almost the same words that the angels sing when they tell the shepherds where to find Jesus, a passage that only appears in Luke’s Gospel.

Thirdly, only Luke tells us that the Pharisees tell Jesus to make the crowds stop. Even though Jesus comes as a King of peace, the Pharisees in the crowd do not want the peace that Jesus brings. And so in Luke’s version the crowds are divided between those who welcome Jesus and the Pharisees who oppose him. We do not see this in Matthew and Mark’s version and only get a hint of it in John’s Gospel. And so interestingly, in Luke’s version, the crowds hail Jesus with the word peace, but in this passage, Jesus presence causes division.

Lastly, only Luke’s Gospel tells us that Jesus starts weeping as he approaches Jerusalem. “If you had only known on this day what would bring you peace – but now it is hidden from you”. Jesus weeps because Jerusalem does not know the way of peace. They do not know the path that will bring peace to the city and so Jesus weeps because he sees them heading for disaster.

The theme of peace is an interesting one in Luke’s Gospel. From the beginning of the Gospel, the coming of Jesus offers us the good news of peace. At the beginning of the Gospel we hear it in the song of Zachariah who praises God who with the coming of the Messiah will “...guide our feet into the path of peace” (Luke 1:79), and again in the message of the angels: “Glory to God in the Highest and Peace to people of good will” (Luke 2:14). The word peace appears 14 times in Luke’s Gospel, but only 1 in Mark, 4 times in Matthew and 6 times in John. Luke’s Gospel could be called the Gospel of peace. Jesus actions throughout the Gospel show him to be a peacemaker. For Luke, salvation means living at peace with God and with ones neighbour, whether Jew, Samaritan or Gentile, male or female, rich or poor.

And yet, in Luke’s Gospel it also becomes clear that this message of peace through justice and fairness brings opposition and division.

In a strange saying, in Luke 12:51 we read: "Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!" (12:51). In other words, Jesus knows that the peace that he does bring, a peace based on justice and fairness is not everyone’s cup of tea, and so will cause division.

And we see that division in Luke’s version of the triumphal entry. While the crowds welcome him as king saying peace on earth and glory in the highest, the Pharisees are opposed to him and want him to tell them to be quiet.

In another detail that only appears in Luke’s Gospel, echoing the words of John the Baptist earlier in Luke’s Gospel (Luke 3:9), Jesus says that if the crowds keep quiet, the stones will cry out. In other words, the whole of creation is crying out for a king who will rule with justice and fairness and will bring true and deep peace to the world. As Paul puts it in Romans, the whole creation is groaning, waiting in expectation for the children of God (the children of peace) to be revealed (Romans 8:22-24).

When Jesus enters Jerusalem, he comes as a king of peace, but his visitation causes a division.

Tom Mullen, from the Society of Friends or Quakers, makes the following statement about his denomination: "They work for peace -- and if you really want to cause conflict, [then] work for peace".

So it was for Jesus riding into Jerusalem.

I close with a question: Why is it that working for peace often causes conflict and division?

(With acknowledgements to Brian Stoffregan for the Tom Mullen quote and his observations on the text).

Luke 8:1-11 The Woman Caught in Adultery

This week the BBC aired a story about Brunei a former British protectorate in South East Asia who have legalised the stoning of sexual offenders for both adultery and same-sex relations.

Westerners, both secularists and Christians find it abhorrent. And indeed it is. The thought of someone being pummeled and crushed to death with stones and rocks, a mob killing, is just too horrific to contemplate.

In our passage today from John 8:1-11 we read about a woman caught in adultery. A group of Pharisees bring the woman to Jesus wanting to stone her as a trap to put Jesus on the wrong foot. And so the news story from Brunei connects us with some of the violence in our own scriptures that sometimes we overlook.

I was fascinated this week to learn that stoning as a punishment is not found in the Muslim Qu’ran (although it contains other methods for capital punishment). But in contrast our own Bible contains numerous references to stoning in the Laws of Moses for various crimes and offenses:

• adulterers, Deuteronomy 22:23–27,
• Sabbath breakers, Numbers 15:32,
• cursing God, Leviticus 24:10–16
• engaging in idolatry, Deuteronomy 17:2–7,
• children who "rebel" against parents, Deuteronomy 21:18-23, and,
• a woman pretending to be a virgin when getting married without this being the case, Deuteronomy 22:13–21
• (among other offenses...)
  
  

It does raise some important questions for us...

Are these verses in the Bible the God inspired, inerrant Word of God? If so why don’t we enact them today? If according to the Bible those acts of barbarism were supposedly commanded by God in the past, why consider them to be unacceptable and abhorrent today? Did God really command these barbaric acts? Was God, the God we have come to know in Jesus, really complicit in such acts of violence and terrorism?

If one is going to answer those questions with integrity then it is going to require that we come to a deeper and more complex understanding of the Bible. The Bible is not always a simplistic book with neat and easy moral answers. At times the Bible contains some very dubious moral injunctions and examples, apart from stoning adulterers, rebellious children and Sabbath breakers:

• In Exodus 21:20 provision is made for a slave owner to beat a slave within an inch of their life, without consequence, as long as the slave recovers within a few days. If the slave dies then there are consequences although these are not specified. Today we would call this a gross human rights violation.
  
• In Psalm 137 the Psalmist says of his Babylonian enemies and captors “Happy are those who seize your infants and dash them against the rocks”.
  
• In 2 Kings 1:23-24, a group of boys taunt the prophet Elisha saying “Get away baldy! Get away baldy!” The prophet Elisha curses them in the name of the Lord and a bear comes out of the woods and mauls them to death.
• In 1 Samuel 15 God apparently commands Saul to attack the Amalekites and utterly destroy them, killing man, woman, infant, nursing child, ox, sheep, camel and donkey. When Saul failed to completely carry out God’s orders. God takes the kingdom away from Saul. Today, we would call this kind of story a genocide.
  

What are we to make of passages like this? Are we to take them literally as the inspired, inerrant word of God?

It is very popular today to assert that the Bible is completely inerrant. But that is a very recent assertion. Christians only began to speak of the Bible as inerrant in the past 100-120 years and it is only in the last 20-30 years that that has become a wide-spread assertion. Martin Luther the great reformation leader did not hold that belief. In fact, I believe that Martin Luther, gives us some very helpful alternative views on Scripture.

Firstly, Martin Luther did not believe that the whole Bible without qualification was the word of God. He believed that the Bible contained the word of God. Much like at Bethlehem Jesus was held in a manger, a feedbox for animals. Luther taught that the Bible is like that manger, because it contains God’s word. The manger itself was ‘human’. It was made with boards and nails that were crooked and bent. Ultimately for Luther, the Word of God was a person, the person of Jesus. It was through Jesus that Luther believed that God had spoken most clearly. He even went on to say quite explicitly that the Bible, like the manger also contained a lot of straw. In other words there is a lot of useless worthless stuff in the Bible. In this way Martin Luther did not believe that everything in the Bible was of equal value or equal authority.

A colleague of mine used to make the statement that not everything in the Bible is Christian. It sounds like a shocking statement, but it makes complete sense when you look more closely at it. There is a lot of behaviour and even commandments in the Bible that fall far below what one would regard as acceptable for a Christian today, the stoning of adulterers, and rebellious children would be some of them. Not everything in the Bible is Christian.

For this reason, this same colleague would say that we are not called to follow the Bible. Rather, we are called to follow Jesus. We need to study the whole Bible, but we are called to follow Jesus. Thank God that there are few Christians today who would think it is a good idea follow those parts of the Bible that advocate the stoning of rebellious children, adulterous spouses and Sabbath breakers.

For Martin Luther, if Jesus was to be regarded as the Word of God contained within the Bible, then Jesus is also the measuring rod with which we evaluate the rest of the Bible. One of the reasons that Christians today don’t condone stoning today is because almost implicitly, we know that Jesus wouldn’t have approved of it. It does not accord with the spirit of Jesus.

This has been a very long introduction to our text today. I would like to make a few comments on the text itself.

Firstly, interestingly, this passage was never originally part of the Gospel of John or even part of the Bible. It is not contained in any of the earliest and most reliable Greek manuscripts. The first time it is mentioned anywhere outside of the Bible was by a Bishop in around 225 AD. It was probably a few decades before that, at some point, some Bible copyist heard of the story of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery, and felt that there was a ring of truth to the story. It sounded authentic and so decided to include it here in John’s Gospel so that the story wouldn’t be lost. Most Bibles today would indicate in the footnotes that the story is not included in many early Greek manuscripts. Other late manuscripts show that another copyist had a similar idea but instead included it somewhere in Luke’s Gospel.

Secondly, interestingly Jesus does not explicitly state that stoning is wrong. He just skillfully side-steps the issue. If he had explicitly stated that stoning was wrong he would have been completely discredited by the Pharisees as being a heretic because he didn’t uphold the law of God. But it is also clear that even though he doesn’t explicitly state that that stoning is wrong and against the spirit of God, the way he deals with the woman caught in adultery, with respect and compassion, implicitly, it is clear that Jesus didn’t believe that stoning was right.

Thirdly, Jesus cautions us against becoming the moral police of others. “Let he who has no sin cast the first stone”. Before we point out what we believe is wrong in others and wish to see them being punished for their crimes, Jesus urges us to clean our own houses first. Jesus advocates morality by example rather than by pointing out and policing the wrongs in others. It resonates with that teaching in Matthews Gospel (7:3-5) where Jesus tells us that before we try and take the speck of dust out of someone else’s eye, we should first take the log out of our own.

Fourthly, we see the bias of a male dominated culture. It is just not possible to commit adultery by oneself. By definition adultery requires two people. If she was caught in the very act of adultery, then where then is the male adulterer in the story. Did the other men conveniently let him off because he was a man? Or because he was a friend? Are we sometimes selective in the way we hold others to account?

Lastly, we see that in Jesus there is no condemnation (vs11 “Then neither do I condemn you”). Earlier in John’s Gospel we read that Jesus comes not to condemn but to save (John 3:17). In this story, while Jesus neither seeks to condemn or punish her, he still wishes for her to become the best person she can be. “Go and sin no more” he says to her. The word “sin” in Greek means to fall short. To sin is to fall short of all we have it in us to be. “Go and sin no more”. In other words, “Go, and become your highest and best self”. Amen.

On this Mother’s day, the reading set for today is in fact the parable of the prodigal son. It is a story about a father who waits patiently for his wayward son to come home. But even though it is a story about a father, Tim Bulkeley, a New Testament scholar suggests that the father in the story behaves a lot more like a mother.

According to most scholars, the behaviour of the father in the parable of the prodigal son, would culturally speaking be deemed to have been completely inappropriate for a man who sought to honour his own dignity in his family and in his community.

Firstly, there is the inappropriate request from the son. Give me my portion of the inheritance now. This would have been an unthinkable request at the time of Jesus. Many would consider it an inappropriate request even today. In Jesus day, it would have been an insult for a son to make such a request. It would have been tantamount to saying: “I really wish you were dead so that I can get on with my life and enjoy my inheritance!”

Secondly, not only is the question from the son inappropriate, but the fact that the father would even consider and give in to the request would have been seen as inappropriate to Jesus listeners. Within the wider Jewish scriptures, in a book called Sirach, it explicitly states that it is inappropriate for a father, a man of means and a man of dignity, to give his property or wealth to a son except as an inheritance when he died.

Thirdly, when the son comes home after having wasted his inheritance, it would have been considered completely inappropriate for the father to act as he did. Inappropriate to go running out to meet the son. This was below the dignity of a father. Inappropriate to be so ready to forgive. Inappropriate to welcome the son back to his former status. Inappropriate to lavish him with gifts. Inappropriate to throw a party to celebrate his return.

According to the cultural, patriarchal norms of the day, this would have been considered beneath the dignity of any man who would have wished to be respected in his community. In ancient Jewish culture, the father would have been viewed as severe, stern and authoritarian; and the mother as viewed as loving and compassionate. Children were meant to respect and fear the father. It was the mother who sons would love affectionately even after they are married. But such an understanding of the stern authoritarian father is completely absent in this parable of Jesus, instead he embraces his son and kisses him as a mother would have done.

For Jesus listeners, this would have been a shocking story. A shockingly undignified response from a father towards his wayward son. In fact not so long ago in upper class society here in the UK, such a son would have been completely ostracized.

Interestingly, Tim Bulkeley writes the following:

“If the story had been told substituting ‘mother’ for ‘father’ the tale would be unremarkable in both ancient and modern cultures, we expect mothers to be thus forgiving and welcoming of their wayward children. The parable is powerful, and has captured the imaginations of generations of Gospel readers, precisely because here the father acts as we expect stereotypical mothers to do!”

For most of the Old Testament, God was portrayed in the language and imagery that mirrored that of a powerful and strong male patriarchal figure: stern, severe, authoritarian, someone to be feared rather than loved. Strong, unpredictable, fierce, sometimes a ruthless disciplinarian. In some Old Testament stories, people found themselves punished far beyond the crime or disobedience they had committed. But here in Luke 15, Jesus invites us to encounter a much softer, even motherly image of God.

We see this too as Jesus speaks of God, in the rest of the Gospels, Jesus speaks of God clothing and feeding his children (Matt 6:26-32; Luke 11:1-2, 13; 12:30; John 6:32). He describes God giving gifts to both good and bad children alike (Matt 5:45); God is forgiving rather than punishing (Luke 6:36); God has special concern with ‘infants’ and ‘little ones’ (Matt 11:25; 18:14; Luke 10:21).

Bulkleley writes that one phrase that appears in the Sermon on the Mount, ‘your father who is in secret’, is particularly interesting. He says, Secret seems a strange word to describe a father’s place or role in the ancient world, for one major difference between fathers’ and mothers’ was precisely that, while a mother had influence in the private world of the home, the father represented that home in public.

Even though Jesus used the word Abba to describe God, the God he portrays is much more like that of a mother.

This image of God as mother is wonderfully captured in a hymn that we sang last week:

Praise to the Lord the Almighty the King of Creation... in a verse that has been left out of both our Mission Praise and Hymns and Psalms, the hymn writer captures beautifully a sense of God’s motherly qualities...

Praise to the Lord, who doth nourish thy life and restore thee,
fitting thee well for the tasks that are ever before thee.
Then to thy need
He like a mother doth speed,
spreading the wings of grace o'er thee.

And so on this Mother’s Day, as we celebrate the love and the gift of our mothers, we give thanks also for the gift of God’s motherly love. Where else does the love of our mothers come from if not from God’s own motherly heart of love.

In closing, a verse from Isaiah 49:15

"Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!”