by David Melton
The New Testament is amply clear that the theological ramifications of the bodily resurrection of Jesus are immeasurably beyond words. We are saved when we believe in our hearts the Lord has been raised from the dead! We pass from death to life because he did. No one should ever diminish the attention due that truth. Yet there is another side to this wonder. And it’s very personal.
My favorite of the crucifixion and resurrection accounts is John’s Gospel. Most likely John was the youngest of Jesus’ 12. He is always listed after James, he is a “Boanerges” but seems to be from the middle or the back of the pack. John is likely the young man who runs for his life from Gethsemane, literally runs out of his clothes, but he also stands at the foot of the cross when no other apostles do. I believe he loved Jesus dearly, but it is also likely, because of his age, he was not the same kind of target as the older disciples would have been. That’s probably the best reason to understand John standing on Golgotha while other apostles were absent. It should also be remembered John lived to almost the end of the first century, which by my math, means he may have only been a teen when he first began to follow Jesus.
Young John is not only close by on crucifixion day, but he is also the one who does that Easter Sunday morning sprint to the tomb. Peter huffs and puffs in second place, getting to the tomb after John, but the old fisherman outdoes the hesitant younger man and barges right into the sepulcher (what could have been more Peter-esque?). Only once burly Peter has dared, does young John follow into that “new tomb” of Joseph of Arimathea — probably the first time that Galilean teenager had been inside a grave in his life. Only John’s Gospel records the astounding detail of which he himself had been an eyewitness. Inside the tomb, in one place the linens in which the body of Jesus had been wrapped were found together. But nearby, the cloth that had covered the Lord’s face was separately folded (literally “rolled” — maybe like nice hotels often do with their washcloths). Jesus left a tidy tomb! Young John noticed that.
The teenaged disciple believed right then and there, even though he still didn’t know from the Scriptures the resurrection was necessary. Why at that moment? John had spent three years — three formative years, his first years away from home, watching Jesus day and night. He leaned on Jesus’ breast at the Last Supper, surely an indication his habit was to shadow Jesus, picking up every detail he could. On Easter Sunday, John was awakened by a message from the women that Jesus’ body had been stolen! But once he sprinted to the tomb and dared step inside, his personal understanding of Jesus sealed the deal. That Sunday morning, what John saw inside the tomb was not a crime scene where thieves had snatched and grabbed. Housekeeping had already come! The Lord of all Glory had stood up over death, tidied up the way he usually did, and left the tomb in as good a shape as he found it — ready for the next occupant! Only someone who knew Jesus so personally would have picked up on that. How many times, as they moved from town to town, had John seen Jesus pack up his few belongings? Laundry room lessons from Jesus led to a young man’s rock-solid faith that the crucified one had also defined himself as the resurrected one!
That kind of personal, practical faith in the resurrection changed John, and it is what changes us. Yes, it changes us theologically and soteriologically, but it also changes us in basic ways, real-life ways. The early Christians made the resurrection the focus of everything they did almost immediately. They used the fish or the cross as their cryptic symbols (after all, how would you draw the resurrection?), but they began to have their meetings on the first day of the week. The resurrection changed their personal schedules. Every Sunday was Easter! The Sabbath was for rest, but Sunday was for celebration! Paul told his churches it was the perfect occasion to “lay by in store” as they had been prospered by God. And as an elderly man, we meet John again, five or six decades later, when he is exiled on Patmos in the midst of the Aegean Sea. The old disciple was still personally celebrating Resurrection Day. He was “in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day” when he was given the Revelation. I see an old man, stooped and bruised, alone on a rocky outcropping surrounded by water, restricted from the ones he loved and from the churches that needed him. But it was still Sunday morning — the Lord’s Day. So alone, that old apostle determined to salute that first Easter Sunday one more time. It was personal for him as it should be for us. Every week starts with a resurrection morning.
When we truly believe that, the personal impact is tangible. Death isn’t it. There is life after the grave. Our Lord reigns over even the grim reaper. That is a reality! As Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, believers don’t even grieve in the same way others do. We see death, not as the end of the story, but as the startling end of just one chapter. The epilogue will be just fine! This is an essential and personal aspect of living as a Christian. Death isn’t it. Jesus is risen and now, for the believer, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord!
Years ago, someone — a strong biblical believer — recounted an amazing experience to me that occurred during her vicious battle against cancer. At a very low point, when she felt she was dying, she had a dream of a much-loved father who was already with the Lord. In that dream, her dad was relaxed, grinning a familiar grin, as he sort of leaned through a billowy open door. There were no conversations, just a loving dad’s smile with a hint of, “Maybe I’ve got a surprise for you.” (Surely everybody who ever had a great dad knows that kind of smile?) But then, her dad gestured her to wait — a gesture she had seen countless times before in her childhood. She didn’t die that night. She did, in fact, wait a while. I think she waited about another year to go through that door.
I don’t recount that to make any statement about near-death encounters, but it reminds me of how incredible personal our faith in the resurrection is. Those we have lost to heaven — and at this point of life, I sometimes feel I know about as many on the other side as on this side — are alive and well. With the Lord! Healthy. Even holy. That’s not just some creed and it’s certainly not just wishful insanity. It’s personal faith, like John had. Easter says we must not and cannot grieve like those who have no hope. Death itself is dead. Jesus killed it on that Sunday morning in Joseph’s tomb.
For me, the personal resurrection truth found me a few months back, in a place I would least expect it. Two friends from out of town came to see us in Boston and wanted to see a baseball game, so my wife, Kim, and I made it a double date and headed out to Fenway Park. It was a beautiful evening, a New England masterpiece, with just a touch of a mild breeze and perfect short-sleeve weather. We got to the park early to watch batting practice, and to have an Italian sausage. The four of us talked, snacked, people-watched, all with the crack of the bat in the background and the buzz of the steadily filling stands. It was the epitome of a wonderful earthly moment. Good company, fun sounds, the aroma of comfort food, all in the setting of an impeccable green vista under a fading blue sky. What more can life give? Then it happened. About 15 rows in front of me, with his back to me looking out over the Red Sox dugout, I saw him. It was my dad. I wouldn’t realize it until later, but it eventually dawned on me that dad and I had our first Fenway experience together when I was just a kid, maybe 15 feet higher up in those very same grandstands. But, I hadn’t seen dad in almost 20 years, yet there he was at Fenway! In fact, the last time I saw dad he was in a hospital room and had on an oxygen mask, he did one last poof of exhale, and then all the monitors went to zero. Dad left us for heaven back on that miserable April night in 1995. But there he was at Fenway Park on this beautiful evening all these years later. I know you are thinking I’m crazy right now, but I tell you with my hand on a Bible, the man I saw, from the back, was the spitting image of my dad. It took my breath away. It was such an incredibly personal moment that I couldn’t bring myself to mention it to anyone for a few days. Of course, the man eventually turned and I realized he was just another baseball fan, not my dad at all. But the memory, unlike anything I have ever experienced at any other time, was a lesson. A personal one.
I do believe in the resurrection, right down to the core of who I am. That night at Fenway proved it to me! Jesus lives! And because he lives, we live. And those who have died in Christ, they too, live. I didn’t see my dad at Fenway Park that night, 20 years after he first touched heaven’s shores. And I’m not expecting to see him again anywhere on this earth. But dad is alive and well, so my eyes of faith didn’t flinch as my befuddled mind gawked at that man in the ballpark, all my senses short-circuited in incredulity — the venue wasn’t right! Yet it is not ridiculous to think we will see our loved ones who are “present with the Lord” — it is reasonable! Death didn’t beat them. Well, maybe death did beat my dad, but it didn’t beat my dad’s Lord.
Jesus took death by the throat and beat that old monster. Then, the Lord of all the ages stood up in Joseph’s tomb and did a bit of cleaning — polite people always take care of things they borrow. Jesus finished by rolling up the napkin that covered his face for 72 hours — and I think he rolled it the same way he had always packed up his things. The way John had watched him do it so many times during three years of itinerate travel. Once packed, the Lord of Glory told a buff angel to roll back the stone because, “Peter and John will be here in a little bit.” The resurrection thing was now going to be a matter of public record. Henceforth, death — the death of Jesus and subsequently the deaths of all those who know Him — death itself would have a new address. Death is in his pocket. Jesus owns it. The value of that historical and theological truth is incalculable. But it’s also so very, very personal. It was for John. It is for you and me.