NOTE: I am putting my weekly sermons on the church website. It will be on for two weeks (usually posted on Friday) and then placed in the Archives area by date. You can download in a matter of seconds.

Let me know what you think. The church Email is: SLUMC@att.net, Phone: 480.895.8766

March 31, 2002
Without A Doubt
Scripture: Matthew 28:1-10
Reverend Larry Gerber

Better Not Drop That Egg

"The Easter story is nothing but a myth," Jimmy's high school science
teacher announced to his class a few days before Easter break. "Jesus
not only didn't rise from the grave," he continued, "but there's no God
in heaven who would allow his son to be crucified in the first place."

"Sir, I believe in God," Jimmy protested. "And I believe in the
resurrection!

"Jimmy, you can believe what you wish to, of course," the teacher
replied. "However, the real world excludes the possibility of miraculous
events such as the resurrection. The resurrection is a scientific
impossibility. No one who believes in miracles can also respect science."

"God isn't limited by science," Jimmy responded. "He created science!"

Enraged by Jimmy's outspoken faith, the teacher proposed a scientific
experiment. Reaching into his refrigerator, he produced a raw egg and
held it up. "I'm going to drop this egg on the floor," he stated.
"Gravity will pull it toward the floor with such force that the egg will
most certainly break."

Fixing Jimmy with a look of challenge, he concluded his proposal. "Now
Jimmy, I want you to pray a prayer right now and ask

your God to keep this egg from breaking when it hits the floor. If he
can do that, then you'll have proven your point, and I'll have to admit
that there's a God."

After pondering the challenge for a moment, Jimmy slowly stood to pray.
"Dear Heavenly Father," he began. "I pray that when my teacher drops the
egg... it will break into a hundred pieces! And also, Lord, I pray that
when the egg does break, my teacher will have a heart attack and die!
Amen."

After a unison gasp, the stunned class sat in silent expectation. For a
moment the teacher did nothing. At last he looked at Jimmy and then at
the egg. Without a word he carefully put the egg back in the
refrigerator. "Class dismissed," the teacher said and sat down to clear
his desk.

The teacher apparently believed in God more than he thought he did. Many
people, like that teacher, deny that God exists, yet they run from him, question him, and attack him whenever they get the chance. Jimmy knew
God wouldn't strike his teacher dead, but he also knew that his teacher
wouldn't bet his life on it. As the old saying goes, "There are no
atheists in foxholes."

When your life is on the line, the idea of God suddenly makes a lot more
sense.
---------------
It's a sophisticated archaeological dig. One that has employed state-of-the-art forensic techniques and has cost American taxpayers millions of dollars.

The workers at the site are looking for bones. Not famous bones or even ancient bones, but some very specific bones -- namely, the remains of Navy Cmdr. Richard Rich, whose F4 Phantom was shot down on May 17, 1967, over Ha Tay, Vietnam.

This crash site is just one of hundreds of locations that are being scoured for the remains of American servicemen who disappeared during the Vietnam War. The United States remains determined to discover the fate of every single serviceman still missing, over 2,000 military personnel who are still listed as missing in action. A two-week search of the site last year gathered five bags of metal fragments and two bone shards and evidence than an F4 had indeed crashed there.

They're a small team, and even now, they're in Vietnam revisiting leech-infested jungles and murky swamps. As they work, they try to avoid contact with the green pit vipers known as two-step snakes: That's as far as you'll get -- two steps -- before you die, if you're bitten by one of them.

They're bone collectors. They're looking for the remains of GIs missing in action. In 1999 they found 36 sets of remains. In 2000, another 24, and by midyear 2001, they had recovered 23 sets. They plan to keep working until all 2,029 MIAs are identified.

On Easter morning, the original bone collectors were busy. The chief priests and Pharisees were worried that the disciples would sneak in and steal the bones of Jesus, so they posted a guard of soldiers to make the tomb secure. As the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb, to check out the body, to pay their respects. No one had any earthly reason to suspect that the corpse would not stay put.

After all, death is death. The end. The final curtain. The last dance. Once in the grave, bones don't tend to move -- for hundreds, thousands, even millions of years.

From time to time, you read news of bones that are believed to be the remains of Jesus. Just last year, Ron Dubay sifted the dust through a small sieve and found two tiny fragments of bone on the cliff-tops above the Dead Sea. Then he heard his partner, Dennis Walker, shout, "Whoa! We got something here." Walker's trowel held three vertebrae. Fighting their excitement, the researchers carefully dusted away for two days, finding skull fragments and the brittle, broken remains of at least one human body.

Dubay and Walker believe their find is important because, among the 1,200 simple graves at this location, only this tomb was inside a purpose-built structure. That may mean that the bones belonged to the "Teacher of Righteousness" mentioned in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Some researchers are speculating that the teacher may be one of the Maccabean kings of Judea, the apostle James, John the Baptist or perhaps even Jesus himself.

It seems as tho we must find the remains of Jesus in order to prove His death and resurrection. If we do not find some physical evidence, then the mystery remains. Or "faith" seems to hinge on scientific proof, rather than the miraculous work of God.

"He is not here," says the angel of the Lord. "He has been raised" (Matthew 28:6).

Jesus left no bones, and no body. Without a doubt, this is good news for believers, but bad news for bone collectors.

So why, like some of the early disciples, do we still feel a nagging sense of doubt?

For many of us, the resurrection story itself remains a subject for argument. In a country in which we spend millions of dollars to determine the fate of every single serviceman still missing in Vietnam, we simply aren't very comfortable with mysteries. We want rock-hard facts, empirical evidence, DNA matches and carbon-14 dating. None of us was present to feel the Easter earthquake or hear the angel or see the place where Jesus lay, so we wonder whether the story could possibly be true.

We forget that the resurrection is a faith event, and linear, prepositional arguments will carry little weight for those who refuse to believe. Moreover, it is somewhat problematic to put quite so much emphasis on the perceptions of our five senses. After all, scientists tell us that the earth is spinning on its axis at a speed of over 1,000 miles per hour at this very moment. Yet we have no sensation of motion. At the same time, the earth is soaring around the sun at a speed of 66,000 miles per hour. Do you feel anything?

Our planet is moving at an incredible speed, but we do not perceive it. Christian writer Ron Rhodes says that Albert Einstein made this point by striking two consecutive blows with his fist and saying, "Between those two strokes, we traveled 30 miles." Incredible motion with no perception! Yet we accept by faith that it is nevertheless true.

We wonder, "How can an infinite God have revealed himself in one man, Jesus? There are so many religions, and so many spiritual paths -- how can we claim Christ to be the way, the truth and the life?"

But the need to broaden our horizons should not get in the way of sharpening our focus on Jesus Christ. Regardless of how God is encountered in the other religions of the world, we are people who have discovered that God has come to us quite clearly in Jesus Christ.

And what a difference it has made.

Our challenge is to conform our lives to what God has done through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, not to make a case for Christ in some imaginary religious courtroom. We strive to love our neighbors -- and even our enemies -- because this is what Jesus demonstrated to be so powerfully good in his own life. We sacrifice for our spouses and children because the cross of Christ shows us the greatness of self-giving. We believe that new life can emerge from crushing defeats because the resurrection reveals the power of God over anything that threatens to destroy us.

Pluralism is not a problem for Christians, because we already know who we are, and, more importantly, whose we are. We are children of God, brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ, people who have discovered a quality of life that cannot be found anywhere else. Since nothing can change this, our response to diversity should be dedicated discipleship -- showing the world through our words and deeds that we are part of a loving, forgiving and hope-filled family of faith.

Our faith says "Without A Doubt He lives!" We hear about the women racing full-speed from the empty tomb, feeling an exuberant mixture of "fear and great joy" (v. 8), but we have to confess that we rarely experience this level of intense emotion. Perhaps we've heard the story so often. Perhaps we don't make the effort to go questing for the risen Christ. Perhaps we're satisfied with life the way it is, comfortable with the status quo, and don't see any reason to complicate it with a fresh and passionate commitment to Christ. Do we just say "Without A Doubt he Lives?", or do we really feel His presence?

Is there feeling in our heart when we say that I walked today where Jesus walked and felt his presence there, or is it a nice song without feeling?

Consider what the angel says to the women at the tomb: Jesus "is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him" (v. 7). Jesus is "going ahead" of us, always ahead of us. We are to walk behind him, to follow Him. To walk where he walked. If we do not follow him with some enthusiasm, then we will never discover where he is leading us, and we will never become the people he desires us to be.

Maybe it's time to stop collecting bones. Time to toss the tools you normally use in your dry and dusty search for facts and figures and empirical evidence. We've been looking for the risen Christ with the wrong tools. The tools of evidence will not produce the transforming power of resurrection life. We need, instead, to pull out the tools of faith to access the reality of the resurrection. That's not a matter of believing the impossible; it's a matter of trusting the invisible!

Christ is risen. He is risen indeed!

Let me know what you think. The church Email is: SLUMC@att.net, Phone: 480.895.8766