God's Last Words

Easter Message: “Failure was the option”

John 20: 1-18   (NRSV)           

There are 2 phrases that I almost shudder when I hear used in our culture: “That’s what I’m talking about” (which is actually from a 1929 Fats Waller song “This Joint is Jumping’”) and the phrase made up especially for the movie Apollo 13 BECAUSE no one ever actually said it (AND IT's ALL MOVIE HYPE)– “Failure is not an option.”

Both phrases seem to suggest a confidence that problems will be handled and troubles will fall away. Most of the time these types of phrases are used in jokes or in conversations. They, like many other euphemisms, are used and abused.  

Neither would be appropriate or should be used to explain Easter. Alexander Solzhenitsyn once said, “There is eternal simplicity to a solution once it has been discovered.”

Friends, Easter is a solution. It was success cloaked in the appearance of human failure. Easter’s resurrection story solves an eternal problem and sets into motion the greatest love story ever told. If anything it can be described as God’s “Failure was the option” moment.

Easter is the moment that the death of Jesus turned into the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the King of Kings, Israel and the world’s long awaited Messiah. 

The question I ask you this Easter Morning is what are the disciples saying when they are told Jesus’ body is missing? The phrase that comes to our mind is “He is alive!” But apparently this outcome was not considered by the disciples. It’s more like “uh oh.”

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. ²So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, ‘They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.’  

³Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went towards the tomb. ⁴The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. ⁵He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in.  

⁶Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb.

He saw the linen wrappings lying there, ⁷and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself.  

⁸Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; ⁹for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. ¹⁰Then the disciples returned to their homes. 

 But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look^* into the tomb; ¹²and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. ¹³They said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping?’ She said to them, ‘They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.’ ¹⁴When she had said this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus.  

¹⁵Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?’  

Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.’ ¹⁶Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’  

She turned and said to him in Hebrew,^* ‘Rabbouni!’ (which means Teacher). ¹⁷Jesus said to her, ‘Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” ’ ¹⁸Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord’; and she told them that he had said these things to her.  

What a wonderful moment for Mary, what a wonderful moment for John, what a wonderful moment for the world. To see that all was not lost, and that there was hope in death.  

Easter morning we, like the disciples, encounter the unexpected, and see Jesus as more than human and more than a teacher.

 

We see Him as the resurrected Son of God who has taken away the sin of the world.

 

Praise the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

This is only time I will joyfully say, “That’s what I’m talking about!” Amen.