Seeing and Believing
Seeing and Believing by Rev. L. John Gable
April 17, 2022 (Easter Sunday)
For as many years as I can remember we have opened our Easter services as we did this morning with this reading from the 20th chapter of John’s Gospel. Regardless of the text to be preached on we continue to draw on John’s telling to bring us to the glory of this day and the essence of the Christian faith: Jesus Christ, risen and alive!
Why John rather than any of the other Gospel writers? Because in these very few verses he tells the story like no other, with energy and passion and excitement, as only one who was actually there could tell it. You know how you can always tell when someone is repeating someone else’s story. There is always a subtle difference, but John here is telling his own story, which through his telling has become our story. This is how he came to faith and this is his desire for each and all who hear it. As he writes, “These words are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in His name” (20:31). In every sense of the word, the story we hear this morning, the story we’ve come to hear this morning, no matter how many times we’ve heard it before, has changed the course of human history, and it has the power to change your life and mine.
It was early on the first day of the week, and though it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb, presumably to finish preparing the Lord’s body for burial, or perhaps only because, in her grief, she was not quite ready to let go of Him. When she got there she saw that the stone which sealed the tomb had been removed. Perhaps only glancing in, she presumed the only thing imaginable, that grave robbers had come and stolen the body, a not unreasonable assumption. Rather than looking any more closely than that, she ran to tell the disciples, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb and we do not know where they have laid Him” and with that, two of them, Peter and John, began running for the tomb to see for themselves.
Among the twelve, there were three, Peter, James and John, who formed the tightest circle around Jesus, and of those three, Peter held the pole position; he was the first among equals. However, being the younger of the two, John ran faster, but out of deference for Peter’s authority, when he got to the tomb he looked in and saw the linen clothes used for burial lying there, but stopped before going in, allowing Peter to enter first. Isn’t it interesting that John makes certain to tell us that he outran Peter? That he got there first? A little first century spiritual competition and one-up-man-ship, perhaps; or could it be that what he saw there stopped him cold in his tracks?
That question is answered in just four words: “he saw and believed”, or since know that this is John telling his own story we could also read that as “I saw and believed”. I will admit to you that that simple phrase was very formative in my own faith development. These four words, “he saw and believed” has helped me to say the same.
So, what did they see? John writes that they saw “the linen wrappings lying there and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself.” So, what of it? What is it about that that helped him, and me, and through the ages countless others, to say they now believe?
Consider the way a burial took place in first century Palestine. The body would have been washed and prepared for burial by those who knew and loved the deceased; in this case, Joseph of Arimathea whose tomb they were using and the Pharisee Nicodemus, who together had asked permission for the body of Jesus to be taken from the cross, as well as Mary Magdalene and perhaps other women. Once washed they would wrap the body in long strips of linen cloth, at each turn adding layers of spices, such as the nard Mary poured on Jesus’ feet just days before, up to 100 pounds worth, in order to mask the stench of death. That wrapping would cover neck to toe, like a mummy; but then a separate linen cloth would be carefully woven and wrapped around the head, like an elaborate turban; the body then laid on a platform cut in to the rock and the tomb sealed.
When Peter and John looked in to the open tomb, this is exactly what they saw: the linen cloth which had covered His body, now lying there flat on the platform, like a chrysalis without the butterfly, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Not wadded up and thrown in to a corner, but carefully, elaborately folded and in its place, separate from the linens which had wrapped His body. Picture this like your having laid your Easter outfit on the bed in the guestroom last night; your clothes laid out without your body in them. That is what those first two saw which caused them to believe. Not that the body had been stolen. What robber would take the time to unwrap a corpse, and even if they had would ever have taken the time to refold them. Not that Jesus had suddenly awakened from a swoon and struggled Himself free from His grave clothes, particularly not after His having been beaten and flogged and crucified, then left for dead for three days. Not that the disciples, or anyone else for that matter, had snuck in to steal the body in an attempt to stage a mock resurrection in order to deceive others to believe. No, despite all that Jesus had previously told them would happen, even His closest followers were as surprised and unexpecting as everyone else when they found the tomb empty, and they were hardly of a mind set to pull off a big deception. No one is willing to die for what they know to be a lie. No, none of these, rather what they saw, which caused them to believe, is that Jesus had not been raided, roused, or revived, but risen!
Theologian Karl Barth writes, “Christians do not believe in the empty tomb, but in the living Christ. This does not imply that we can believe in the living Christ without believing in the empty tomb. It forms an indespensible sign which obviates all possible misunderstandings.” Put another way, first century Christians did not believe in the resurrection because they could not find His dead body; they believed in the resurrection because they did find a living Christ.
This is what John saw which allowed him to believe, and that is why he was able to tell his story with such passion and conviction, yet so simply, a mere ten verses to describe an event which has changed the entire course of human history. This is the evidence of the resurrection which convinced John that Jesus was who He said He was and it is the invitation of the Gospel which is given to us still today. We too are invited to come and see for ourselves, that we too might see and believe.
“Why did Christianity arise?” writes distinguished New Testament scholar N. T. Wright, “And why did it take the shape it did? The early Christians themselves reply: We exist because of Jesus’ resurrection…there is no form of early Christianity in which the resurrection was not a central belief. Nor was this belief, as it were, bolted on to Christianity at the edges; rather it was the central driving force informing the whole movement”, and it is still today. Take away the Easter story and we are not here today. Take away the resurrection and Jesus is just another would-be, wanna-be Messiah, lost and forgotten in the annals of history. As Paul would write in his first letter to the Corinthians, “If Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. If Christ has not been raised your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.”
For John seeing the grave clothes as he did was proof enough, but one of the most convincing proofs of the resurrection is not what happened on that first Easter morning, but the effects that it has had on those who have come to believe ever since. Of course, we can’t take the fact of the resurrection out of the equation, but even without yet fully understanding what God had done for Jesus, we can see evidence of it rippling through history. Lives continue to be touched and changed still today.
Through the years I have known many who have had an encounter with the living Christ which has touched their hearts and changed their lives. Youth on a mission trip or at a conference, college students who have heard the Gospel message with new ears and eyes, men and women who have been befriended by another and loved in to the Kingdom, still others who have sunk to deep depths who were then given the gift of new life, and even those, like myself, who have had the privilege of hearing the Gospel message and been blessed with the gift of faith. Each of them, each of us, can tell their own stories in their own words, different as their experience may be, of how Jesus rose out of the pages of Scripture and became living and real in their own lives which has enabled them to say the very same thing: “I saw and believed.”
But what of those of us who have never had an “open tomb-like” encounter with Christ? Are we left out if we haven’t had a markable, remarkable experience, like John and Peter, and Mary and Paul, and countless others? Absolutely not. Notice, even in this story, Peter and John both saw exactly the same thing: open tomb, grave clothes lying in place, body missing, yet we read that only John “sees and believes”, Peter does not, at least does not yet. And we know that the disciple Thomas had an experience of doubt all his own which we will talk about in a couple of weeks. For some of us “seeing is believing”, but for others of us it is believing that allows us to see. St. Augustine writes, “Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore, seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.” Do we have questions and doubts about matters of faith? Of course we do, but seeking to believe, even before we fully have all of our questions answered, allows us to see evidence of God at work in ways far beyond our understanding.
For John to say “he saw and believed” doesn’t mean all of his questions were answered. It might be more honest to say, he likely had more questions after this experience than he did before. For him, and for all of us, faith is an ever unfolding, ever deepening experience of coming to know Who Jesus is and what He has done for us, but it all starts right here, with the events of the first Easter morning.
When John, or any one of us, says we “believe” in essence what we are saying is we believe that Jesus really is who He says He is. That by being raised from the dead we believe that He really is the Christ, the Promised Messiah of God, and, believing that,
that death really has been defeated and
that everything that He said is true and
that all of His promises about life, abundant and eternal, are assured, and that one day His Kingdom will come on earth as it is in heaven, that the kingdoms of this world will one day become the Kingdom of our Lord and
of His Christ and He shall reign forever.
All of this we say we believe because of what happened on the first Easter
morning.
Friends, the invitation of Easter is the same today as it was 20 centuries ago. We are invited still to come, to see, to listen and explore and investigate for ourselves, so that by seeing we might believe and by believing we might see;
that by seeking we may be found;
by knowing we may be known;
by reaching out in faith we may take hold of the One who has taken hold of us;
all to the glorious end that we might say with John, and with the faithful through the ages, “I saw and believed.” Amen.
Rev. L. John Gable
Tabernacle Presbyterian Church
Indianapolis, IN