Summary 

The resurrection of Jesus Christ presents humanity with an unavoidable choice: accept it as the greatest truth ever proclaimed or dismiss it as history's most elaborate deception. Charles Colson, one of the Watergate Seven, provides compelling evidence for its authenticity by comparing the disciples' forty-year testimony under persecution to the inability of twelve powerful men to maintain their Watergate lie for even three weeks. If the disciples were fabricating the resurrection, they would never have endured decades of beatings, torture, imprisonment, and death for what they knew to be false.

Transcript

Great God, we pray again that you would stir in our hearts the wonder of your resurrection, the wonder of life in the kingdom where death cannot hold you down. God, I pray that you would speak to us again this morning. That you would speak to us specifically or that you would call us to greater life and to greater faith in you. We ask in your name. Amen.
Now I will admit that I actually intended a longer text there. I'm going to be focusing our attention on three of the narratives in the Gospel of John this morning. But I want to tell you a story that you've probably heard before. At least you've heard the gist of it. On Saturday, June 17th in 1972, five men were arrested and they arrested for breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters.
You've probably heard of this. The security guard at the office complex had noticed that there was tape that was covering the door. You know how you can do this? You can cover it so that when it shuts it doesn't really lock. And so he had noticed that and he'd actually taken it off.
He said, that's weird. And, and then he went back and he found that there was tape on again. And he said, well, something's fishy. And so he called the police and an unmarked police car arrived. And while the burglars, the burglars sentry across the street, they were distracted by watching tv.
That's when the car arrived. Well, the five men were arrested and they were arrested for conspiracy, right? Burglary, attempted wiretapping. Y' all know the story. That wasn't the big story.
The real scandal happened when the President of the United States, Richard Nixon and his committee to reelect him was found to be behind it all. Scandal and deception, right? Lies. It's the stuff of, actually it's the stuff of the great stories and the great movies, things that kind of draw us in wondering what's going on and who, who done it, who's at fault? Of course.
What's that known as? Known as Watergate. Right? Those buildings are still there, standing there. I've pointed them out and told the story to my children.
One of the President's men was known as the hatchet man. One of the President's men was Charles Colson. He was one of the Watergate seven. The seven men who were advisors to the President, who are part of the COVID up story, part of the scandal. And you probably know that he became a Christian.
He actually became a Christian reading C.S. lewis, his book Mere Christianity. And he was eventually put in prison for a Little while. And then he started a wonderful ministry called Prison Fellowship. Some of you may have been involved with that at times.
Anyway, Charles Colson talks about the resurrection like this and I love this, he says, I know the resurrection is a fact and Watergate proved it to me. Watergate proved to him the resurrection. This is why, he says, this is why. Because 12 men testified they had seen Jesus raised from the dead. Then they proclaimed that truth for 40 years, never once denying it.
Everyone was beaten, tortured, stoned and put in prison. That's what happened to the disciples. The Gospel or John, you know, the, the disciple John may have lived in prison on Patmos and may have died naturally, but all the rest of the disciples were tortured and killed. And he was probably, probably died in that exiled island in prison. He says they would not have endured that if it weren't true.
Watergate and roiled 12 of the most powerful men in the world and they couldn't keep the lie for three weeks.
Three weeks. He says, you're telling me the 12 apostles could keep alive for 40 years? Impossible. Watergate showed him the truth of the Resurrection. Of course.
I wonder this morning, what do you make of the Resurrection?
Make of it? I also wonder what is, what does it make of you?
Many people, many people believe the Resurrection is a Watergate, a scandal, a cover up.
It's a self producing, self reinforcing kind of lie that we just kind of live into. And so many people have been duped over the millennia about the Resurrection. It's a cover up put together by some of Jesus disciples to dupe the Roman authorities, to say gotcha to the religious leaders.
And people have just been believing that story time and again. That's often what's said. Is Easter a Watergate, a cover up? Is it the Easter gate? Right.
But I wonder what you make of it. What do you think of it? What do you think of, what do you think of the Resurrection? I mean, it's the central thing of Christianity. Paul says, as I mentioned earlier, if it didn't happen, Christians are to be pitied, maybe laughed at, scorned.
Look at all these people. They come in week in, week out, confess their sins, believe that they're truly forgiven because of the work of Christ. Is it all a big cover up? Well, the Gospel of John gives us a few different narratives that I think kind of invite us into this kind of process. One of them you probably know of, it's, it's the Doubting Thomas story.
One of his own disciples, one of Jesus own disciples after the resurrection and he's wondering if it's true. And in some ways, I think actually Thomas is sort of interacts with Jesus how we would expect. He doubts this reality of what God has done. And I think there's a little bit of this. There's a couple reasons why we think this is what we'd expect.
One is that Thomas is an interesting character in the Gospels. He doesn't appear too much. He's not like the apostle Peter or John or James. They get a lot of attention. Thomas doesn't get a lot of attention.
But at one point In John chapter 11, he basically says, well, if we're going to go with Jesus, let's die. Maybe he's kind of a dower guy.
Chapter 14, he basically tells Jesus, lord, your teachings not very clear. Which, you know, that's. I mean, that's true sometimes. Sometimes you're kind of wondering what's going on. But on this, on the first Easter, all the disciples are gathered together right in a room, and that door is locked and Thomas isn't there.
And in some ways, at least first when Jesus appears to them. And in some ways that's maybe not a big surprise because of his own kind of history, but also because he understands what we understand. Maybe he had thought to throw in the whole towel on the whole thing. Maybe he had actually seen Jesus, hands nailed to the cross, he had seen him breathe his last, all that kind of stuff.
Maybe he knew what you and I know, which is not new to sort of modern science, that once people breathe their last, they don't breathe again. When you die, you die.
In the Gospel of John, there are some that are simply sort of hostile to Jesus. You can think of the religious leaders who plot to kill him, right? You can think of the. The crowds that we remembered last Sunday who shout Holy Hosanna. And then on Good Friday, they're saying, crucify him.
Do away with him.
There are a lot of people who just misunderstand Jesus. You know, again, think of last week. You know, the people are mixed, right? That's what I was saying last week. They're throwing these palms and these cloaks down and they're thinking, okay, you're going to kind of do away with the empire, do away with the Romans.
They're not quite understanding Jesus. And then there are some who believe. And then there are people, other people like Thomas, right, Initially here, at least in that story. And I want to suggest to you that maybe that's you. You're not necessarily hostile.
You just kind of go, I don't know what to make of this stuff. I don't know that I kind of buy it. What do you do with a God who comes and heals people and declares the forgiveness of sins? What do you do with a God who dies on a torture instrument? And Christians celebrate that.
What do you do with a God who comes and liberates?
What do you do with a God who rises from the dead? Right? I mean, some, at least you're maybe scratching your head and you're wondering, I don't know what's going on here.
Thomas, I'm suggesting to you in some ways is who we expect him to be, but it's who we expect him to be because it's the case for so many. No doubt it's the case for some of you this morning that you hear the story of Thomas and his doubting of whether or not Jesus rose from the dead and you go, yeah, I get that.
Rowan Williams, who was the last, well, I guess two archbishops, Canterbury ago now, says death and the hells of dereliction and abandonment eat people up. You know, like our life kind of eats us up. Broken hearts and broken relationships, bodies that don't work exhaust us, they scrape us out, they bring us to nothing. And it's often even in that that we kind of go, there is no hope. And so we hear of something like resurrection, we go, I don't know, I'm going to have to see some of that.
I don't know if I buy that. We live lives of death and loss. We live lives where our minds are often confused, where sin persists, where death really does seem to run rampant. And resurrection, real resurrection, life is just too much to buy into, maybe too much to believe.
So again, I just want to ask you this morning, do you think of the resurrection as just kind of this fanciful story, maybe a cover up for something else? Maybe like some people say, it was a hallucination, it was Jesus raising in their hearts so they could feel good about stuff.
So the claim of Christianity, the claim of the Scriptures is that God truly rose real life body. So what you have in the story of Thomas is Jesus meeting him in that place of doubt and wonder and questioning, not shirking him off, not pushing him away, but coming to him and saying, here, put your, put your hands in my hands, place your hand in my side. Don't disbelieve, but believe.
And this morning I want to suggest to you, if you're kind of somebody who's like figment of the imagination, probably didn't happen, everybody's duped. Would you come to the Lord in that place? Would you maybe invite him to say it's true?
Let Jesus draw you into a world where Good Friday is not the end of the story, where it breaks away into Easter morning, where the cross becomes a flowering tree. Well, another story, actually, the one that precedes that in John's Gospel, is the story of the disciples, right? So the disciples are gathered and Thomas isn't there. They're gathered in this room together. And what the text tells us is that the room's locked.
And think with it. Why would the room be locked?
I would guess that the disciples are full of fear.
My guess is that Peter told them stories. You know what? When I was following Jesus around after he got arrested, people were like, hey, you were with him. You were one of. You were one of them.
Your accent betrays you. You're from Galilee. I saw you with them. And they saw what happened to Christ on Good Friday. Nailed to a tree.
They're locking the door, right? They're locking the door. They don't want people to come in. Certainly not the people that might say you were one of his people and one of his disciples.
And in comes Jesus. That's how the story goes. They got a locked door and in comes Jesus.
He doesn't come in through the door. He's bodily. But this resurrection, bodily is a different kind of bodily dynamic. He just appears and they can touch him. Thomas touches him.
He's as real as real can be. And he comes to them in the midst of this place where the door is locked. And the first thing he tells them is peace. He repeats it, peace, peace be with you. And they touch him again, and he says, peace be with you.
So the first thing that the resurrection does to this group of fearful disciples is it brings peace. It comes to a world that is the world of Thomas, right? The one who properly doubts that this kind of good news can really happen. Because the Resurrection comes to a world that is full of death and decay and despondency and depression and despair and all of that. That's the way of this world.
And it says, that's no longer the order of things. That's what the resurrection does. It speaks into this world that is full of understandable fear. And Jesus says, peace be with you.
Jesus comes and he brings peace. And when he does, it's not just that we have to make something of the Resurrection, but the Resurrection made something of those disciples. It changed them. And specifically, actually in that text, it makes them into a sent People, because right after he gives them peace, he says, as the Father sends me, I'm sending you. Which is great when you're locked in a room.
Because what he's saying is, get out, get out of this room. Go unlock the doors.
He's sending them out into a Good Friday fear filled world with an Easter hope.
Get out and tell people that death is no longer the order of the day. Life is. Get out. Get out from your fear, from your locked up self. Nothing can hold you back.
Death is no longer a real obstacle for you. All of the disciples gave their life for that truth. They went out of that room, locked up, opened door, all of it. So it was a sent people. But it also, this is an interesting thing in the text too, is it makes them people who are the presence of God in the world.
Because after he says, get out, I'm going to send you out, he says, I'm going to give you the Holy Spirit. And he says this, if you forgive the sins of any, they're forgiven. If you withhold them, they're withheld. Which is a really weird thing for Jesus to say in that moment. But he immediately follows that up with receive the Holy Spirit.
Which he's. What he's saying is, you are my presence. You are the good news presence into the world. Get out and go in my name and do my work. So what does that look like?
Here's what someone suggested. How is a Christian to prove the tomb is still empty the day after Easter? They dare to love difficult neighbors. They repent for wrongs a little bit more quickly. That's partly how you believe in the Resurrection.
You repent a little more quickly. You repent and engage with conflict a little less defensively. That's hard. You return to work with a fresh sense of purpose and mission. You commit to praying for the impossible situation that you're finding yourself in.
That's part of believing in the resurrection. You quietly preserve in the long term battles with depression. You approach your spouses and your children, your roommates, with fresh wonder and fresh affection, fresh hope. You can risk serving where nobody else wants to go. That's what is happening there.
Go out, forgive. Here's the Holy Spirit.
Fleming Rutledge. Some of you have read her wonderful book the Crucifixion. It says it cannot be said too often. If Christ wasn't raised, was not raised from the dead, we would never have heard of him. Of course, the flip side is, is that because you heard, because he did rise from the dead, you have heard of him.
You have gathered together. Broken relationships are healed. Forgiveness really is on offer. New life in the midst of death. Disciples would have never been sent.
The disciples, I mean, think about them. They were a motley crew. Peter, of course, was impetuous. He's always doing crazy things. Some of them we don't hear anything about.
But some of them, you know, they're zealots. Simon the zealots. He's, he's wanting to take up arms against the Romans. Matthew's a tax collector. He's in cahoots with the Romans.
They're just a weird group of people. And somehow that weird group of people, God changes in that moment. He sends them out with his good news and it changes the world. Christians throughout the world this morning and Christians throughout time are gathering together not because of some cover up, not because of some scandal, not because of some wishful thinking, But because the resurrection made something of them, made them into ascent, people, into the presence of God in this world of death.
But here's the great thing, is that the first story actually that tells of the resurrection in John's Gospel is when John or when Peter meets, what am I saying? When Jesus meets Mary. And Mary comes to the tomb that first Easter morning and she comes, right, with spices. That's part of a big part of the story. Why is she coming with spices?
Because she knows that dead bodies smell. She's not thinking, this will be fun, maybe I'll see my Savior again. She's thinking, this will not be fun. It will smell and I'll need to cover up the stench. And when she comes, she stoops down, right?
It says she weeps. She probably cries. She probably cries bitterly. And my guess is, you know, sort of those deep weepings, deep times of tears, times of loss and estrangement, of death, the death of a loved one, where tears sort of have their own timetable and they just kind of keep flowing until they sort of stop. They have their own rhythm to them.
And as she wonders what's happening, as she's weeping, it seems as though there's figure there. She's wondering, where have they taken my Lord, right? She's, she's looking and she's saying, where is Jesus?
Where is his body? And then it's in that moment that Jesus comes to her.
If you remember that story. One of the things that she says is that she thought that he was a gardener.
But she doesn't say gardener. She, she, she mentions, she, she speaks to him in a sort of impersonal way. She says, sir, sir, you know where have they taken my Lord?
And in that moment, actually Jesus speaks her name specifically, which is to say in the midst of her tears, in the midst of her experiences of Good Friday reality, death on this side of glory. He knows her pain. He says Mary.
And it's sort of like saying Bella Bettina, Alec, Devin, Peter, Bruce.
Part of what's happening in this story of the resurrection art is the reality of the specifics of God knowing your experiences of living in the Good Friday world, your experiences of doubt and wonder and questioning, your experiences of weeping and crying and pain.
He speaks to her and he turns her weeping also then into going.
He turns her weeping into a life towards others. You might remember that she goes back and tells the disciples, what do we make of the Resurrection? Well, part of the question is, what is it doing to you?
Is it just a figment of our imagination? Is it a scandal or is it a cover up? Is it a cute fairy tale that gives us reason to eat chocolate?
As if we need a reason to eat chocolate. Right? We don't need one of those. Is it a parable that though bad things happen in the world, don't give up?
Is it a moral story? Love is stronger than death.
Wishful thinking. Did it really happen? Because if the resurrection didn't happen, nothing matters.
If it did, everything matters. If Jesus really rose from the dead, physical, everything physical is sort of charged with wonder, glory and beauty that God would come among it and declare it good and worth redeeming. What do you make of the Resurrection?
I'm going to tell you a story.
There is a beautiful ritual in the Habsburg family, you know that Austrian Empire, when, when the emperor, emperors would die, they would be brought to the cathedral. I looked up the name of this cathedral, but I honestly, I feel like sometimes I try to say things in other languages and they just don't come out very well. I was like, I'm not going to write it down because it was too tricky. But they come to this cathedral in the middle of Vienna and if you go down deep into the steps below there, there's the crypt where these emperors are buried. And the tradition when an emperor dies is that they are brought, their cask is brought down and there is a door that is locked.
It's sort of like the story there in the Disciples. It's all locked.
And the master of the ceremonies comes and he knocks on this door and a voice from inside says, who's there? Sounds spooky, but it's just part of what happens. Right? Well, the tradition goes, is that the master of ceremonies responds by saying something like this. Franz Joseph, Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary, King of Croatia, and then rattles off all 27 titles that the Emperor had.
Who's there? Right, let me tell you all of what I have, all the titles that I have, let me in.
And inside, the monk responds, yeah, we don't know him.
So anyway, the master of ceremonies, he knocks again, and the voice from inside says, who's there? And the tradition goes that this time the master of ceremonies is to recount the Emperor's great deeds, the peace treaties that were made, the wars that he won, who he married, what children he had. He's supposed to rattle off all of this great stuff, but the Emperor did. What's the reply from inside? We don't know him.
And then a third time, third time, the master of ceremonies knocks and the monk from inside says, who's there? And the reply, the third time is, Franz Josef, a poor sinner.
And this is the invitation to this new life. The doors opened up, the crypt is just a temporary thing for somebody that comes to Jesus and says, I'm just going to rest in your grace for me and trust that death is just an entrance into a whole new life. That all the things that I've sort of added up, all the titles I've gained, all of the jobs I've done, all of the blah, blah, blah, blah, the. That I think earns me something. All I need to do is come to you and knock, Come to you and say, I'm a sinner.
And Jesus says, let me give you new life.
Resurrection, hope is on offer for you. Just come to Jesus. Come to Jesus and knock, and the door will be opened to you. What do you make of Christ? What do you make of the resurrection?
What do you make of it today? And what. What if you gave yourself to following this, Lord, coming to him and just saying, I'm a poor sinner and I need you. What might it do to you?
You pray for us, Lord. Thankful that Good Friday is not the end, that this world that we live in now that is so full of despair and death and despondency and so many reasons for doubt, Lord. So many reasons why we can see ourselves right there next to Thomas going, no way. So many reasons why in the world that we live in, something like resurrection, hope, death, not actually having the final say seems impossible. But I pray that we'd come to you this morning and just say, lord, I'm a sinner.
Give me belief that we'd come. Maybe like Thomas and desire to put our hands into the our fingers, into your hands and into your side, and to hear Jesus say, don't disbelief, but believe. And I pray that as we do that, Lord, that we would become a resurrection people, that we'd be people that press into the dark places of life, that we press into the dark relationships of our lives. We move out into the world with a hope and a belief that you can do the impossible and that you are with us. Hear this, Lord, we lay these prayers before you.
Transform us by your resurrection power. In Jesus holy name, amen.

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