Imagined Jesus (Part 5): Obscure Jesus

Well, welcome again to Orchard Hill Online.

Happy Easter.

I realize this is a really different Easter.

I miss being with so many of you in person and being able to greet you in person.

And yet at the same time, I'm thrilled that there are many new friends who are being able to join us and worship as part of the Orchard Hill community online, especially for this Easter.

And so I want to just take a moment and read the scripture that we're going to be considering today and then pray, and then we'll jump into talking about what is the significance of the moment in which we are living.

And so I'm going to read just a portion of John chapter 20.

John 20 · chapter mention

We're going to look at the whole chapter.

This is the end of our year plus of studying the Gospel of John together.

And so I'm just going to read this, and here's where I'll start.

Verse 24.

Now Thomas, also known as Didymus, one of the twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came.

So the other disciples told him, We have seen the Lord.

But he said to them, Unless I see the nails in his hands and put my finger where the nails were and put my hands into his side, I will not believe.

A week later, his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them through the doors.

Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, Peace be with you.

Then he said to Thomas, Put your finger here, see my hands, reach out your hand and put it into my side.

Stop doubting and believe.

Thomas said to him, My Lord and my God.

And Jesus told him, Because you have seen me, you have believed.

But blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.

This is the word of the Lord.

You pray with me.

Father, as we're gathered in homes and different places, uh, and not together physically in one place, I pray that you would speak today, that your words would be reflected in my word, in content and in tone, and in emphasis.

And Lord, I pray that you would use these words just to bring each of us to a deeper and fuller understanding of who you are and how we can relate to you.

And we pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Well, there's no doubt that our world has changed in recent days.

For sure, we have felt the impact in many ways.

Probably many of us have had to consider whether or not we retain workforces or lay people off.

Many of us have had to live through the reality of either having our job reduced or being laid off.

Certainly, when you go out into public and you go to a store and you wear a mask and you see the precautions that people are taking that you're taking, you think this is not the world that I lived in just a few months ago.

And certainly, even just things like washing hands has now become a true uh kind of issue for all of us, but it's even a bigger issue if we have to do it in public.

In fact, here's one video that shows kind of the dilemma that all of us feel like we face that we didn't face just a few weeks ago.

And this is sped up just to catch it in fast time.

So take a look.

Here's one guy's take when posed with the question of which option he would want in terms of where to be quarantined.

Because of coronavirus, you are going to be quarantined, but you have a choice.

Do you A, quarantine with your wife and child, or B.

Well, it isn't just those things that have changed.

For some of us, what's changed is that we're now concerned about money that we weren't concerned about, maybe just again a few weeks ago.

We're concerned maybe about health in a way that we weren't concerned just a few weeks ago.

Maybe what we're concerned about is the health of a loved one or where somebody is living or things that just weren't on our radar.

And so so much has changed.

But here's something that has changed that isn't being talked about much.

And that is as a country, we are being faced with mortality in a way in which maybe we haven't been faced with it in some time.

And here's the reason I say this certainly the COVID-19 virus has created a sense in which we are aware of and talking about mortality rates.

And we don't often talk about mortality rates.

In fact, as a country, we go out of our way to find euphemisms for the idea of death.

In other words, what we say is, well, he fell asleep, or he passed away, or he lost his battle with, and we fill in the blank.

And I don't know if you've ever been at a funeral home when somebody's been laid out, and people usually say something like, He looks so peaceful, she looks at rest.

And I never say this because it's not appropriate, but but I often have the thought, well, yes, rigor mortis will do that to somebody.

And so we we we find ways to try to soften this idea of death, but one of the things that COVID-19 has done is it has brought the reality of death closer to home because whoever we are, wherever we're living, we know the statistics, and that's part of why as a nation we've done the things we can do in social distancing and in taking the steps that we've taken.

And you know, there's a reason why we soften death all the time.

Because death really is a great enemy.

Because when we lose our earthly lives, it's the end of a lot of things that we find significant.

But the Christian message offers something completely different.

In fact, in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verse 55, we're told this or asked this rhetorical question, and that is, oh death, where is your sting?

1 Corinthians 15:55

Oh death, where is your victory?

And this is when the Apostle Paul was writing, and he was talking about the idea of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the resurrection of believers to everlasting life.

And he says, Death, where is your sting?

Where is your victory?

And one of the things that's different about people of faith than people who don't have faith is that people who have faith can live with a sense of saying, death is not the great enemy of everything.

But if we don't have faith, then death is completely scary.

And it's scary because we look at our lives and we say, death is the end of all of my significant relationships.

There's an Iron and Wine song that talks about how one of us will die within the arms of another.

And it's a supposed to be, I guess, a sweet song about a man and a woman growing old together and knowing that they have each other, but there's a hint of sadness because it says, even if we live a long time, even if our lives go the way we want them to, one of us will die without the other.

But the Christian message is a message that says, you don't just live a long life and then die one day and that's it, but you can be reunited with your loved ones who are also in the Lord.

You see, if if death is the end, then money is something that we spend our whole lives gaining and getting to have security, to have status.

And when we die, then it's just done.

But the Christian message is that your money that you use here to invest in eternal things is actually treasure that you're laying up in heaven.

That's what Matthew 6 says.

That you can live not just saying, hey, whatever I have, it all goes to somebody else, but I can have more in the future.

I mean, imagine facing death, not with the uncertainty and the fear of saying, not only what happens to me, but my relationships, to my resources, to my status, to my work, to saying, well, whatever I've invested my whole life in, somebody else will take it over, and who knows what they'll do.

But to say, I have invested my life in something better, that is the Christian message.

In fact, in first, or not in first, but in Philippians chapter 1, verse 21, uh, Paul again writing says this.

Philippians 1:21

He says, to live is Christ and to die is gain.

But here's the thing: you and I can't say to die is gain if to live is not Christ.

So if for me to live is about relationships, to die is to lose those relationships.

If for me to live is about money, to die is to leave all of that money here.

If for me to live is about status, to die is to be left without that status.

If for me to live is about my work, to die is to be without that work.

It's only when we say to live is Christ that we can say to die is gain.

And this is the Christian message.

And it's the message of hope in the face of a crisis like the one that we're currently facing.

Now, we live not just in a time of crisis, but a time in which the predominant view of Jesus Christ, I would say, has has been one of obscurity.

And the reason I say that is because obscurity is how people have generally viewed Jesus.

He's an obscure historical figure with obscure religious views that impact some people.

Some people believe it very desperately, but those are usually weak people who need some kind of a crutch.

And enlightened people see Jesus as just one option among many.

And we talked a couple weeks ago about Jesus being optional.

But what I'd like to do today is just talk about how the resurrection of Jesus Christ makes Jesus not obscure, but helps us to be completely clear about Jesus and thus about our future and be able to face death, escape death without the fear that goes with it for so many in our world.

Now, world religions have all promised an afterlife.

In Judaism and in Islam, there's this idea that basically says if you conform enough, if you adhere to the way, the path, that then you'll have an afterlife.

In Hinduism, the idea is that if you live your life well enough, then you'll come back a second time and a third time and a fourth time until you merge into the ultimate being.

And if you get it wrong, you come back as a lesser life form and you just kind of keep coming back until you get it right.

And in secular culture, people who say, I don't believe any of it, the idea is often much closer to this, and that is live your best life now, because who knows what the future holds.

And if it holds anything, if you're generally a good person, then you can hope that whatever that is will be okay.

And there's even Christian versions of this.

There are people of faith who will say, if I'm good, if I follow what Jesus wants, then I will have eternal life.

And if I don't, I won't.

But but the message of the cross and of Easter is so radically different because it's ultimately about this, and that is Jesus Christ went to the cross, and he, having lived a perfect life, paid the price for you and me that we do not get credited for what we do or don't do.

We get credited for what Jesus did if we believe in him.

And what the resurrection does is it brings Jesus not just to life, but it guarantees you and me that he's not just an obscure teacher teaching an obscure path to an obscure God, but he is the God of the universe who has seen the other side clearly and has told us what's there and told us the way out of it.

And therefore, this idea of this resurrection is really a key idea.

Sam Bush wrote something years ago.

Here's what he said.

He said, all too often the church preaches what the world has long been preaching.

The importance of community, service to others, trying to be a better person.

Well, all of these are good and well-meaning, none of them are distinguishing factors of Christianity.

In other words, the reason sometimes Jesus seems obscure to people is because their idea of what church is or Christianity is, is not that different from a good civic organization that says, be a community, help others, improve yourself.

But the message of Christianity, although it isn't counter to those things, is something radically different, and that is Jesus is the substitute for you.

In other words, it isn't about my sacrifices for Jesus, it's about his sacrifices for me.

Now, John 20, and we're going to look at the whole chapter, and I just read a portion of it, but John 20 begins with the account of Jesus not being in the tomb, and then he appears, Jesus appears to Mary, and then to the disciples, and then to Thomas throughout the chapter.

And people have tried to explain the empty tomb in a variety of ways over the years.

Some people have said, well, Jesus, when he uh died, and the people didn't find the disciples didn't find his body in the tomb.

The reason they didn't find it is because they went to the wrong tomb, because they didn't uh mark it well enough, and so they went to the wrong tomb and said, Oh, he must have risen from the dead.

And that spawned all of what Christianity is.

Um, hard to believe that that's what happened, especially in that culture with so many guards assigned to the tomb, because the people of that day expected there to be an uprising.

Others have suggested that Jesus was really one who was mostly dead, not all the way dead.

It's called the swoon theory, and that when he got in the grave, he was resuscitated to life from the cool temperatures and came out and overtook the guards, like a great action movie, you know, the hero rising from near death to overcome all.

But again, the accounts talk about how his side was pierced to hasten his death and and and the fact that he was checked on the cross.

Still, others would say, well, the disciples made it up.

They found a way to just simply try to extend their influence.

But they were certainly emboldened by this, and most of them went to their deaths believing that Jesus rose from the dead.

In other words, that this event moves, in my estimation, our belief in Jesus from an obscure teacher teaching about things, about an obscure God, to a God that you can say, this is clear.

And the reason this has so much life-changing potential for you and me is because when we get this, it means we escape death and all of its implications, all of what it brings to us.

And here's where we see this in in John 20, where we read about this, and I didn't read this.

When Jesus appears to the disciples, it says that they were huddled together behind a locked door.

And the reason that they were huddled together like this is because now they were afraid.

They were afraid for their very lives.

And in verse 19, it says that Jesus came and stood among them, and he said, Peace be with you.

And peace is a normal greeting.

But he says it a second time, as if to say, This is a normal greeting, but I'm using it with and imbuing this with far more significance.

And what Jesus was doing to a certain extent in this moment was he was saying, What I am doing right now is I am telling you that you have something because I'm here.

And Paul tells us about this in Romans 5:1 when he says that we have peace with God, we have access with God, to God, because of the death of Jesus Christ.

Romans 5:1

And you see, so often people look at Jesus and they want to say, Well, it's nice that he died, but but this resurrection seems obscure to us.

In fact, Mahatma Gandhi put it this way once.

He said, His death on the cross was a great example to the world.

But that there was anything like a mysterious or miraculous virtue in it, my heart cannot accept.

You see, Jesus, by coming and standing among his disciples and saying, Peace be with you, is saying, You can live with certainty and confidence in the face of any uncertainty, in the face of death, because I have conquered death.

And now I've come back to extend those benefits to any of my followers.

But not only that, Jesus gives his followers a mission.

He says, As the Father has sent me into the world, so am I sending you.

As the Father sent me, I'm sending you.

I send you.

And this is really something that speaks to a sense of mission.

You see, many times what happens is people will say, Well, I won't think about the future, I won't think about death, I won't have to deal with that at all.

But what happens instead is we say, I'm going to load everything into this life.

And one of the things that I think this virus has done and chasing people inside and away from their normal entertainments is it's revealed to many of us just how shallow our lives can be.

And Jesus says, I don't want your lives to be shallow.

I want you to live for something much greater.

And what is that mission?

Well, in Mark chapter 1, verse 14 and 15, what we're told is that the that Jesus says, I encourage you or ask you to repent because the kingdom of God is near.

Mark 1:14

And what he was doing is he was saying, My mission is to bring the kingdom of God to this earth.

And a kingdom is where things are as they should be, as the king wants them to be.

And so the mission that Jesus had was to demonstrate or show how things could be.

This is the point of why he did miracles to say, say the way the world was created was not to be filled with disease, not to be filled with dysfunction, not to be filled with abuse.

Instead, it's to be something different.

And so Jesus brought healing and restoration as a symbol of this kingdom.

And he says, this is what I want my followers to be about.

In fact, there's many things that if you live in the West, and probably most of us watching today live in the West, the things that we assume are things that the early Christians argued for, things that Jesus and Paul advocated for.

So things like human dignity, just simply saying every person has worth simply because they're a person created in the image of God, is a distinctly Christian idea.

In fact, if you think about this beyond this, it's not just personal dignity, it's individual rights.

It's respect for women that ancient cultures did not have, and still many cultures around the world do not have, but it was Christianity that was at the forefront of saying we will treat both genders with a sense of complete respect.

In fact, caring for the poor and saying we don't take advantage of poor people is again a Christian ideal.

And say having a stance against sexual abuse or harassment, that that's wrong, is a Christian-rooted idea.

And so many of the things that we assume in our culture come from a notion of Jesus and Paul and the kingdom of saying this is what we want it to be, but but it wasn't just to say we want to help make the world better.

In Luke 19, um chapter 10, we're told that Jesus' mission was to seek and to save the lost.

In other words, to always be about saying, I want to invite people into this kingdom.

I want more and more people to experience it with me.

And so Jesus doesn't just give us an assurance, but he gives us a purpose that's big enough to orient our lives around whoever we are, wherever we're living, whatever we're facing.

And not only that, but he gives us power.

He says here, receive the Holy Spirit to his followers.

And what the Holy Spirit does is the Holy Spirit empowers his people to live by these values and to and to live for something more, to face death with a sense of saying, This world is not defined for me by this, so I can face this with out having the same fear.

This uh virus has given uh many of us a little more time at home, and so a week or so ago I decided to tackle a project that has been staring at me for a while, and that is I had some rotted boards on our deck, and so I went out.

And took the boards up, and then I was putting down new boards, and it required both a saw and a drill.

And I just had one extension cord, so I would constantly be switching the cord between the saw and the drill.

And what would happen is invariably I'd go to make a cut and I wouldn't have the saw plugged in, and I'd go to saw and I didn't have any power.

I'd go to drill and I didn't have any power because I hadn't switched the cord.

And it was just a simple reminder of how when we're not plugged in, even if we're doing the right purpose, how little power we have.

But you see, Jesus coming back to life is a demonstration of the power of God.

And he says, I want my followers to have the Holy Spirit in full measure and therefore be able to do things, live in ways that they can't live on their own.

This is the message of Jesus to say, you, if you are my follower, can live without the fear of death.

You can live with a grander purpose, you can have a sense of mission, you can have confidence in the face of everything else that's going on.

Now, some of you are probably saying, well, that's nice, but I don't know if I believe.

And there's this little account of Thomas that's included here in this story where Thomas was not with the original disciples, and Jesus says to him, he says, stop doubting and believe.

And the actual translation is probably better, stop disbelieving and believe.

You see, Jesus welcomes honest doubt.

Throughout the pages of the Bible, you see that when he's met with somebody who doesn't believe, he's happy to interact and show evidence.

But sometimes what happens is our disbelief or our doubt isn't actually about disbelief or doubt.

What it is, is it's saying if it remains obscure, if it isn't true, then there's nothing binding about this God, nothing binding about this Jesus.

Sometimes I'll shop uh for groceries, and I say sometimes because my wife does the majority of that in our house.

And we have two very different approaches to shopping.

Her approach is very meticulous.

She knows exactly what she wants, the exact products that have found to be the superior products for the superior price over years of shopping.

And so when she has a list, it isn't just pick up some flour, it's get this kind of flour in this amount and you know, don't get any kind of bread, get this kind of bread.

When I shop, I have more of a seek and find mission, which is how fast can I get in?

How fast can I get it?

Um, bread is bread, I'm getting bread, I'm getting it, and I'm coming home.

Now, certainly the recent developments have maybe uh made my mode of shopping more acceptable in our home because being out in public, you want to get in, you want to get out, all of those kinds of things.

But here's what has happened sometimes in our marriage is my wife will say, Well, I would like you to get this and this, and she'll tell me very specifically, and it's a lot easier for me to shop if I say, Well, you just told me to get detergent, and it wasn't really clear to me which kind of detergent.

Now, the reason I tell you this is because obscurity gives me options.

But obscurity when it comes to Jesus may feel like it gives you options, but what it might actually do is cause you not to have legitimate doubt or legitimate questioning, but a kind of questioning that says, this is me trying not to, trying to avoid the implications of maybe what Jesus has to say.

And you see, doubt and isolation often go together.

Thomas was alone, he missed kind of the sense of community.

And here's how it ends with Thomas.

Jesus comes and says, put your finger in my side.

You can check it out, you can ask honest questions.

And then Thomas says, My Lord and my God, as an affirmation of saying, okay, I didn't believe the story of Jesus coming back to life.

I didn't believe that you were alive, I didn't believe that it changes everything, but now I've seen.

And here's what you can have today, this year.

You know, wherever you've been in the past about the resurrection, about Jesus, is this can be the year that you can say, Jesus really did come back to life to show us the way, and he has defeated death and given us a grander purpose than just seeing how much we can acquire for ourselves, how many Netflix shows we can watch, how well our sports teams can do.

But instead, he's given us something that is so much better.

And at the end of the chapter, verse 30 and 31, it says Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not recorded in the book.

But then it says this, but these were written so that you might believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing in his believing you may have life in his name.

Do you see it?

Evidence, belief, change.

Evidence, belief, change.

Sometimes we want to have the story go differently.

We want to have the the change or the impact without belief, or we want to believe without evidence.

But Christianity stands up to scrutiny, it stands up to an invitation to say, examine the evidence, to a legitimate question from a Thomas saying, God, I need to see.

And so this year, for some of us, Easter might be a time to say, God, I really need to see.

I need to know because I'm unsettled right now.

But don't just sit in a chair and say, God reveal, study the text that tell us about the eyewitness accounts of who Jesus is.

They're called the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

And they tell you about who Jesus is and what he did and what it means.

And this is a chance for you, for me, just to say, okay, God, I'll respond to that.

So just one more thing.

I started by saying that coronavirus has increased our awareness of death.

And it has in many ways.

But let me just tell you about something that happened to me a couple years ago.

A couple years ago, my father died.

And we didn't know for sure he was gonna die.

We knew he was sick, and and so the week that he died, I had been spending a lot of time with him.

But I also went and visited another person who we suspected would be close to death.

And and my dad has um he he did well in this world, but he didn't make a lot of money.

And this other person who I went to visit had done really well in terms of of money.

And the reason I just mentioned this part of it is here's what struck me.

I went and visited my dad, I went and visited this other person.

Both of them were in similar size rooms, one was nicer than the other.

Person with more money had a nicer room.

And both of them were in the exact same predicament of lying in bed and wondering if they would live.

And the reason I just tell you this is it was just a moment for me, once again, where I said, this life ends for everybody the same way.

And the real question isn't, will it end for you?

Because the death rate, whatever we're hearing about death rates, the death rate, just for you, for me, is one to one.

Every one of us will die.

Some of us may die sooner because of a virus, but all of us will end.

And when that day comes, the question is, will you, will I be a person who is free to say, this death will not hold me.

In fact, what Christianity teaches isn't just that the Christian doesn't have to be afraid of death, but that, but that death is actually a gateway to eternity, to all the good, to the restoration, to the reunion of relationships, to new status, to a time and a place where our physical bodies will be healed.

It is the good news of Christianity that says you don't have to fear the grave, but not only you don't have to fear it, but there's something better beyond.

And so today the question is, is that what you believe based on the evidence?

And if so, you have this new beautiful life that we're talking about.

Are you living in it?

Are you living in that reality or are you so caught up in the news that it's all you hear?

And if you're listening today and you say, I don't know, or I haven't been there, maybe today's your day just to say, God, I do believe that Jesus, as God, came to this earth, lived, died, went to the cross as a way to pay for my sin and rose to life.

And now I too can share in what Jesus Christ has done.

And you can do that by just saying, God, I know that I haven't lived a life that is always on par with what you ask.

And so today I come and I ask you to be my savior.

I acknowledge my sin and ask you to be my savior in Jesus Christ.

And you can be one of those people who passes from death to life.

See, Christianity isn't ultimately about going from good to great or from bad to good.

It's about going from death to life.

And based on the evidence and the eyewitnesses and our belief, then we can say, now I have this eternal life, and it changes how we interact with our current life and our current crisis, because having this life can make us the kind of people who say to live is Christ, therefore to die is gain.

And we don't have to live with the horror of saying, because to live has been my family, to die is to lose everything, or because to live has been my job, to die is to lose everything, or because to live has been money, to die is to leave it all behind.

I can say, to live is Christ, therefore to die is gain.

And that's the invitation that God has for each of us here today.

Happy Easter.

And as we partake in a beautiful song about how God works in and invites us into this reality, I pray that you will just take a moment and let kind of these words and this moment of decision just be a moment in which you turn toward the God of the universe and let his resurrection take you from obscurity to clarity when it comes to our God.