“Where Did He Go?”

Scripture: John 20:1-9

Have you ever had one of those days when you desperately needed the Lord’s guidance, but you felt as though you were hanging out there, completely on your own? No matter what you did – prayer, meditation, talking with others – nothing seemed to bring you closer to God’s answer. There may even have been some screaming and crying out to the Lord for his help – but still nothing would come!
Where was God? Was he off on vacation, was he too busy to help, was he just not listening – what was going on? That was where the disciples and other followers were on Friday when the Christ was executed, and now, on this Easter morning of discovery, when the ultimate calamity of theft had been revealed, things were going from bad to worse. The pain of losing their Master and Teacher 2 days ago was bad enough, but now, to believe that his body had been looted and moved to some unknown and unholy place, was almost too much to endure. It was one tragedy piled on top of the one before, and these followers were so lost, they didn’t know what to do next.

Actually, when I asked if you had ever had one of these days, I knew the answer – of course we know what this is all about! We all have had those moments when God seemed to be missing from our lives, and we didn’t know what to do about it! But the truth is that the Lord is always with us – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – and the only reason that we feel alone, is that there is something of earth that is getting in the way. The love of Almighty God never fails, but our human hearts and minds do – all of the time!

Last week, we saw Mary Magdalene’s reaction – first, to her great heart break, and then to her blessed discovery - and today, we consider John and Peter’s run to the tomb and their own brand of discovery.

Read John 20:1-2

Mary and the other women had come to the tomb to complete the burial ritual. Sabbath had begun on Friday at sunset, and continued until Saturday at sunset, and there just hadn’t been time to get everything done. Sabbath during Passover was the most sacred of days, and there would never be anyone who would violate the holiness of that time. So the final arrangements had to be postponed until Sunday morning.

But the tomb was open, the body was gone, and the despair that had filled her began to well up and overflow from her broken heart. She ran to tell the others of the distressing news, and can you even imagine how they would feel? She shared her discovery with Peter and John – the recognized leaders of the band of disciples. These were two of the disciples that Jesus took with him up the Mount of Transfiguration (Luke 9:28-36), Peter was the one at Caesarea Philippi who proclaimed that Jesus was “the Messiah, the Son of the Living God” (Matthew 16:13-20), and even though he promised that he would die for his Lord if necessary (Matthew 26:31-35), a few hours later, after Jesus had been arrested, he would deny ever knowing him – not once, but three times (Matthew 26:69-75). And yet, Peter would become the recognized leader of the faith after Christ’s ascension.
And John? He alone, among all of the disciples, would stand at the foot of Jesus’ cross with the women, and he, alone, among all of the disciples, would live to die a natural death in old age.

They both would soon be leading the faithful into a new day of ministry, but what kind of leaders would they be in this moment of trial and uncertainty, in this time of the unknown?

Read John 20:3-5

The news was unbelievable! Gone? How could his body be gone? They had to go and see for themselves. It would seem that the old saying “Seeing is believing” would be their mantra today, but would it? Would they finally believe?

Faith is a strange thing. It has nothing to do with sight, it has nothing to do with logic, it has nothing to do with proof, and it especially has nothing to do with common sense. Faith, even as a certainty, is based in the heart, not in the mind, and the heart is where it must grow and thrive. But for Jesus’ followers that day, faith was still on its way toward their heart – it had yet to arrive. For the past three years, the disciples had been learning about God and his ways, and for the most part, it was a difficult process, to say the least. Jesus taught from the heart of God, not from the Law of Moses. The way of legalistic faith had lived in the minds of Israel for centuries, and it had only grown through understanding in human terms.

In Deuteronomy 32:28-29, we read that the people were “a nation without sense”, that “there [was] no discernment in them.” Humanity has a tendency to believe what they want to believe, to believe what makes human sense, to believe what confirms their own personal point of view. Change is difficult at best, but it is absolutely necessary if the truth is to take hold in our lives! To accept the “improbable” is not a human trait, and yet, we must and can believe, by faith.

John had arrived at the tomb before Peter, but fear held him outside, and the truth of Jesus Christ, while he had heard it and seen it and believed it before, the impact of experiencing that truth was still too much for him to face. And why not? The world had ruled their very existence for at least the last several days – or at least it appeared to be doing so - so why not believe that the world was still in charge? Fear still had its death grip on them, uncertainty was their daily and constant companion, and the hatred that earth felt for believers in Jesus Christ had filled them to the point that there was so very little room left for “faith”.

Read John 20:6-9

Then Peter - impulsive Peter, spontaneous Peter - arrived and, without hesitation, entered the burial place of his Messiah. He saw the emptiness of the crypt, he saw the folded cloths, and while he recognized the physical, it would be some time before he could come to the realization that his Lord and Savior had defeated death and was living for and within him.

And John - after working up the courage to enter this place of death, he would see the same things that Peter saw, but in some unexplained way, would come to the realization of the truth of that day. He would believe! Neither of the men would understand what they saw, but John, remembering all that his Lord had been teaching him, would believe that it was true.

For these two men, for Mary, for all of the fearful followers of Jesus Christ, the next few weeks would be crucial to the mission that lay ahead for them. Without heart-felt faith - a faith that would transcend those things that we see with our own eyes, and faith that lived beyond proof from our own intelligence, and faith that lived beyond making sense in our own understanding – without a faith that believes and trusts in the most impractical and irrational ways of God, the call to mission and ministry that comes from the Most High God will never accomplish those things that our Lord has planned for us.

What does it take for us to fully believe and trust in all that Christ would have us accept? To paraphrase an old saying, “Faith believes, and absolute faith believes absolutely.” It take more than a simple and shallow faith to be a disciple of Jesus Christ – it takes an absolute trust in Godly ways, and in Godly wisdom, before we are able to take every step that Jesus would lead us in.

Do we believe absolutely? Do we trust Jesus absolutely? Are we prepared to follow wherever He may lead? With our whole heart, do we want to go where Jesus goes, regardless of where that may be?

If you do, be ready to go to places, and to do incredible things, unlike anything you would ever choose on your own! And when we trust, and when we believe, and when we follow in his way, the journey with Jesus will be marvelous.