Resurrection: All things new!
Please read John 20: 1-18 and then pray: Jesus, Lord of heaven and earth, thank you for your victory over sin and death. May this glorious and mighty truth continue to transform my life, strengthen my eternal hope, and enflame my love for you and your glory. Amen!
I do not think I need to remind you how vitally important the resurrection of Jesus is to our precious faith and hope! One of the quotes for Holy Week placed in April’s Chronicle is this; “The Christian Church has the resurrection written all over it.” (E.G. Robinson) I often refer to 1 Corinthians 15 as The Resurrection Chapter of the Bible. In that chapter, the apostle Paul who personally encountered the risen Christ on his way to Damascus to destroy the Church (15:8), write this stark message;
If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. (13-14) And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead…” (17-20a)
Our whole faith hangs on the Resurrection of Jesus. His resurrection signals the reality and certainty of our own future resurrection, our own eternal hope – but not just ours, the eternal hope of all creation. In what is one of the greatest pieces ever written about the supremacy of the person and work of Jesus, Paul writes this in his letter to the Colossians; (Read Colossians 1: 15-20)
Notice that Paul refers to Jesus “as the beginning and the firstborn among the dead.” Jesus was the first to be raised – but many others can now be raised because of his resurrection and victory over death. Notice also that through Jesus who has been raised and exalted “all things will be reconciled to him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.” All things are to be restored and redeemed through Christ. This is why “all things” worship the Lamb who had been slain in Revelation. Jesus receives praise from all because Jesus redeems all.
Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, all that is in them, singing: To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honour and glory and power for ever and ever!” (Revelation 5:6 & 13)
We have been considering all of creations importance to its great Creator in recent weeks, and our responsibility to care for creation. All creation has hope because of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. His resurrection signals what Jesus refers to as “the renewal of all things” (Matthew 19:28) – the reconciliation of all things to God – the complete overturning of the curse in Eden (Genesis 3) and the coming into being of the new heaven and the new earth in which righteousness and peace reigns forever. The One seated on the throne declares; I am making everything new. (Revelation 21: 1 & 5) The apostle John, who wrote the gospel from which we have read today and Revelation, is told to; “Write these things down, for these words are trustworthy and true. (6) Jesus’s victory over sin and death means there is no turning back. This is God’s plan, God’s eternal indestructible will.
Perhaps there are strong hints of all this glorious renewal in John’s gospel, and in the resurrection story. People will often argue that the resurrection narratives are full of contradictions, but there are no contradictions in the 4 gospels, only 4 different perspectives on the same events. And what I find fascinating about John’s perspective is the prominence of one woman – Mary Magdalene.
John 20 v 1 reveals her prominence. In the other gospels, it is Mary and the other women. In John it is just Mary Magdalene. This is not because there is a contradiction, but because John wishes to highlight this Mary’s contribution to the great story of Resurrection Day. She was the one who came dashing to Peter and John with the news that Jesus’s body had gone from the tomb. But even more significantly, she is one who is the very first witness of the risen Jesus. Initially mistaking him for the gardener, she then recognises Jesus as he tenderly speaks her name.
As I have taught in a previous sermon some years ago, John was the first to believe in the resurrection, (20:8) but Mary was the first to see the risen Lord. Mark’s gospel specifically states this. (16:9) “When Jesus rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, our of whom he had driven seven demons.”
This is what John wants to emphasise in his version of the events of Easter morning. Mary Magdalene’s role was special. She had stood by the cross with others right to the end of Jesus’s life. (19:25) She had stood by watching Jesus’s body being placed quickly in the garden tomb by Joseph and Nicodemus. (Luke 23:55) She led the women to the tomb early on the Sunday morning. The Lord Jesus chose to appear first to her – and to her alone. I will come back to Mary and Jesus in a moment, but let me for now turn back to the cross and some of the facts about Good Friday. We are still in John’s gospel.
At the beginning of John 19, we are told how Pilate had Jesus flogged, hoping that that would be enough of a punishment to satisfy the baying crowd. We also hear twice about the “crown of thorns” that had been cruelly and mockingly placed upon Jesus’s head. (19:2 & 5) Why a crown of thorns? Why was this important? Where else do we hear of thorns? In Genesis 3, after the fall of Adam, the ground is also cursed, and Adam is told by God; Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.
Jesus, through his suffering and death, took the curse upon himself so that humanity and the whole of creation that fell with Adam might be free from that ancient curse. This is shown powerfully and particularly through the crown of thorns. The blood that redeems and restores all things, including you and I, first flowed from his head, only later from his hands and feet and side. He took the curse that we might be set free and liberated from its effects.
Jesus also carried his own cross (19:17) upon which he was crucified (23). The cross is of course wooden and made from a tree. But Jesus’s cross is often referred to as a tree. Jesus hung upon a cross, a tree. Peter writes this in his first letter. “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.” When the apostles preach in Acts, the cross is sometimes referred to as the tree. (Acts 5:30, 13:29) In Acts 10, Peter is preaching in the home of Cornelius; “We are witnesses of everything he did in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They killed him by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him from the dead on the third day and caused him to be seen.” (10:39-40) And Paul in his famous piece in Galatians writes; “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: ‘Cursed in everyone hung on a tree’.” (Galatians 3:13). One of my favourite Christian writers Tim Keller puts it like this: Jesus took the tree of death that you could have the tree of life. And where does that tree of life thrive? In the new heaven and the new earth. (Revelation 22:1-2)
Jesus took the curse, the wrath of God, the judgement of God on sin upon himself through a crown and a cross, but then then after death, his lifeless body is moved into a garden. Thorns, a tree, and now a garden tomb. John 19:41, “At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid. Because it was the Jewish day of Preparation and since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.” The risen Jesus will meet Mary Magdalene in this garden. She will even mistake him for a gardener. But is there more to that than meets the eye? Is it not true to say, that as our Creator as well as our Saviour, Jesus is the Divine Gardener who keeps and tends the garden of all the earth?
But what of the man and the woman in the garden of Eden? Is it not interesting that Jesus is referred to as a second Adam in the bible who came to do what the first could not do. And in the that great Resurrection chapter of 1 Corinthians 15 – we have this; “But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ will all be made alive. But each in his own turn: Christ, the first-fruits, then when he comes, those who belong to him.” (See I Corinthians 15: 20-23 and 44-49)
We are among those “who belong to him.” Hallelujah! And when we are raised and fully redeemed at the coming of our Lord, then according to Paul, that will signal the long-awaited and anticipated redemption of all creation – the creation that fell with Adam, will now be restored and redeemed and set free. (See Romans 8: 18-25) All creation, not just those men and women who are in Christ, will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into glorious liberty and hope. “The renewal of all things” which Jesus spoke about (Matthew 19:28) will finally and fully take place. “Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind.” (Isaiah 65:17)
Creation understood the importance of Jesus’s death – the Divine Rescuer dying for the whole cosmos. Hence the whole land became shrouded in a darkness from 12-3pm on Good Friday. Then the earth shook violently. (It was to shake again on the third day). Then rocks split: the rocks than nearly cried out on Palm Sunday. Then tombs opened. Then the great curtain the Temple was torn in two – significantly from the top to the bottom. The Creator bowed His head which had been crowned with thorns and cried out: “It is finished.”
And finally, back to Mary Magdalene. The woman in the garden who Jesus chooses to meet first after he has risen. Is she a kind of Eve figure? That may be stretching things way too far, but I know this for sure. This is the woman from whom, with both mercy and power, Jesus drove out seven crippling demons from her broken life. (Luke 8:2, Mark 16:9) Jesus drove out that ancient serpent also known as the devil or Satan. And the serpent was exorcised from a garden where there was now an empty tomb and an all-victorious Saviour and Lord. The prince of this world had been driven out, just as Jesus said he would be. John 12: 31, 16:11) The hour of His victory was the time of the Serpents total and humiliating defeat. (Colossians 2:15)
On this Easter Sunday, may we rejoice, not just in what Jesus has done and achieved for us through his obedient life, suffering, death, and resurrection, but may we rejoice with all creation, because of the reconciliation of all things to God the Creator. This the power of the cross! The reconciling power of the blood of the Lamb! And may we realise more than ever, that every piece of service we do for Christ, is not done in vain, but done with a view to the restoration and renewal of all things. (1 Corinthians 15:58) May we too rejoice with inexpressible joy as Mary Magdalene did, knowing that Jesus truly lives in us by His Spirit. All darkness and evil are vanquished! Mary was the first to see him – risen, alive, true King and Lord. But there is a day coming when we too shall see Him as He is, in all His glory and majesty, still bearing wounds of love in his hands, feet and side. We will not only see Jesus, we will be like him. (1 Corinthians 15:49). “Behold,” says the Lord, “I am making everything new.”
Amen!
Revd Peter J Clarkson (20.4.25)