Awaiting Test Results

Psalm 16; John 20:19-31; Acts 2:22-32; 1 Peter 1:3-9

Rev. Chris Harbin, Central Baptist Church—Lowesville, VA

30 March 2008

At some point, several of you told me you were awaiting test results. Doctors were awaiting to offer diagnosis or treatment until lab results came in. We await the scoring of tests in school. We await results of applications for college, employment, or financial assistance of some kind. We are often caught in this waiting game. On some issues, however, we do not really have to await evaluation, even while we are being tested. The proof is already in the pudding. Do we fool ourselves about where we stand in terms of God’s satisfaction with our faithfulness?

When we look at passages on Jesus’ resurrection, it is easy to get sidetracked into lesser issues. We wonder about Jesus’ body. How was it transformed? It can appear in the midst of a locked room, eat bread and fish, drink wine, speak, and disappear at will. It is no longer in the tomb, yet it is no longer the body that Jesus had prior to the crucifixion. The wounds are somehow healed, yet still open and visible. For all our concerns over Jesus’ body, that is a side-issue that would derail us.

We wonder why the disciples had such a hard time grasping that Jesus would and did rise from death as victor over the power of sin and death. The gospels, after all, tell us repeatedly that Jesus told them ahead of time that he had to die and rise again. It is hard to imagine that they would not have understood all the times he told them of his imminent death, even after Thomas observed to the rest “Let us go with him that we might die together.”^[1] The need for Jesus to die was not the issue, however, nor the knowledge of the facts of his resurrection.

The resurrection news is really only a marker—it is a pointer to the real issue, if we could but grasp it. It is central to all Christian theology and the New Testament, but the facts are not the focus. It is the import of those facts that need to take center stage in our thoughts and lives. You see, knowledge gained for the sake of knowledge is worthless. Knowledge must have a purpose if it is to have any true importance.

The disciples gathering in gloom on Easter evening had not risen to the test. They had heard of Jesus’ resurrection, but they were still not ready to trust the reality and import of that news. They were still in denial regarding the news, still in shock and despair over Jesus’ death. Like the family recently in the news who found their daughter who had been pronounced dead was actually alive, they were bewildered with the reports of Jesus alive. His death had been confirmed, how could he be living?

We are quick to fault Thomas as the doubter, but his words were not really any different than the thoughts of the others who gathered in despair only to be surprised by Jesus’ appearing in their midst. Of all the disciples, none really accepted the first notice that Jesus was alive. The women did not really believe the report of the angels, either, until face to face with Jesus. It took time for the news to settle in, but its importance took longer to register.

Peter’s words to the crowds at Pentecost cut to the point. They had failed the test in their response to Jesus. While Jesus lived, preached, and performed miracles among them, they allowed him to be carried to his death by those in power among the Jews and killed by the Romans. In the day of God’s visitation of the people, they had ignored God’s message and messenger. Well they recognized in Peter’s words affirming the resurrection that, if such were true, a response was needed. They had failed the test, so how could they rectify their situation before God?

Peter writes that through the resurrection we are introduced into a living hope—an imperishable inheritance for the receipt of which we are being protected by God. That ought to engender hope in our lives. It ought to make a difference in how we live and respond to the world around us. It ought to change where we place our priorities and how the issues of society at large affect us.

If we believe the resurrection, we believe that death is not the end. If we believe the resurrection, we believe that God provides for our needs through eternity, as well as throughout our temporal lives. If we believe the resurrection, we believe that there is nothing humanity can do to us that can remove the grace of God from our lives. If we believe the resurrection, we believe that we are under God’s eternal protection.

There is no more need to live in fear. Jesus had conquered death. There is no more need to live in anxiety, for death itself cannot interfere with God’s grace, love, and salvation. There is no more need to live in worry over what others might do to us, for God has given his own life that we might live in His presence. There is no more need to close the doors, batten the windows, and hide from those who might want to injure us as they did Jesus. When Jesus appears in the midst of our despair, the doors must be thrown open to share his presence with the world all around.

It took the resurrection to give the disciples real hope. It took the resurrection to grant them the courage to actually live as emissaries of the Reign of Christ Jesus. It took the resurrection to transform them from a bunch of cowards hiding in fear of a projected enemy into witnesses to the arrival of God’s reign of love, grace, and acceptance.

It took the resurrection for the disciples to realize God was interested in protecting them for an eternal reward. It took the resurrection for them to recognize the extent of God’s provision—beyond death into an everlasting reality of God’s unmediated presence. It took the resurrection to transform the lives of those disciples who could not grasp Jesus’ message into apostles who would bear witness to the power and will of God to draw all into intimate fellowship with their Creator.

The test results were becoming visible reality in their lives as they submitted to the reality of the resurrection of Christ Jesus. As they gave themselves to this new reality, their lives were transformed into part of the very proof of the resurrection gospel. No longer did they need to wait on the results. They lived the reality of resurrection results, confirming God’s faithfulness.

How do our lives witness to Jesus’ resurrection? Are we stuck on the issue of historical details and arguments of metaphysics? Do our lives anticipate something greater than the present age, changing our priorities into the very priorities of Christ Jesus? How will the story of our lives bear out the message of Easter? Until the importance of the resurrection message changes our response to the issues of the world all around us, we will be like those disciples, hidden in a dark room, worrying over an attack that wasn’t coming. Instead of awaiting test results, how about living in such a way that shows the world that the results are already in?

—©2008 Christopher B. Harbin

This sermon in pdf

¹ John 11:16.