Why We Believe

Brad Sullivan
3rd Sunday of Easter, Year B
Sunday, April 26th, 2009
Emmanuel, Houston
Acts 3:12-19
Psalm 4
1 John 3:1-7
Luke 24:36b-48


Why do we believe in the Gospel? We haven’t seen Jesus raised from the dead. We haven’t seen Jesus’ apostles heal anyone. By and large, most of us haven’t seen anything supernatural. We haven’t seen great signs; been given visions by angels, nor heard testimony from eye witnesses of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.

The apostles saw Jesus after his resurrection. The first heard about his resurrection from Mary Magdalene who was told of it by the angels. They were told again about his resurrection by Cleopas and his companion who saw Jesus on the road to Emmaus, and Simon saw Jesus. The disciples even proclaimed “The Lord is risen indeed…,” and then when Jesus appeared among them, they didn’t believe. They thought he was a ghost. Then, when they saw he has flesh and bones, they still felt it was too good to be true, so Jesus ate some fish just to prove that he really was alive there among them. He wasn’t a ghost. He wasn’t a reanimated corpse, like a vampire or a zombie. He was and is Jesus, alive and well, just like he told them he would be.

I find interesting the fact that the disciples believed until the saw Jesus raised. They believed the testimony of their friends which matched what Jesus had told them would happen, but seeing him alive before them, just three days after he had been killed was too much for them. Rather than increasing their belief and joy, seeing Jesus initially increased their fear and disbelief, and I think that’s a pretty reasonable response.

Imagine being in their position. Imagine a good friend of yours, an actual good friend of yours, someone you admire, someone who maybe teaches you. Imagine that person foretelling his or her death and resurrection. Imagine seeing that person die. Imagine the grief you’d feel, and then imagine seeing that person walking around three days later. My guess is, each of us would also meet our resurrected friend with fear and disbelief.

The disciples’ reaction to seeing Jesus seems pretty reasonable. Having never seen a resurrected human before, I can guess they had a little bit of fear of the unknown. This person before them looked like Jesus, but was he really? Was he a disembodied spirit? Was he still the Jesus they knew and loved? These were all reasonable questions for the disciples to have. Notice Jesus was not angry with them for their unbelief. Rather, he greeted them with peace. He told them to touch him; he ate in front of them. Jesus showed them that he really was the same person who had been their friend and teacher for three years.

So, what then does Jesus’ resurrection appearance among his disciples say to us? For one thing, Jesus’ resurrection tells us tells us that resurrection in general is true, that death does not triumph over God. The end of God’s creation is not death, but life. What kind of life is the resurrection? That is another question answered, at least in part, by Jesus’ resurrection appearance to his disciples. In the resurrected life, we will be largely who we were.

In his resurrection appearance, Jesus showed his disciples that he was the same person he had been. He was obviously changed in some ways. He couldn’t die anymore. He could appear and disappear at will, but he was still Jesus. So for us too, in the resurrection, we will be changed, but we will still be ourselves. Our loved ones will be changed in the resurrection, but they will still be themselves. As John tells us in his epistle, “we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him…” (1 John 3:2) If the resurrected Jesus was changed and yet the same Jesus as before, then we will also be changed and yet be the same as before.

We don’t know exactly what the resurrection life will be like, so there is still some unknown, but that unknown can hopefully leave us with excitement rather than fear. One reason Jesus became human, died, and was resurrected was to “…free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death.” (Hebrews 2:15)

Living in fear of death, one would hold on to all that one has with a vice grip, desperately grasping for anything to keep death at bay. Living in fear of death, one might accumulate exceedingly great wealth, things, and power, just to counter the powerlessness one feels regarding death. In today’s economic world, that one might hit home. Perhaps the folks responsible for our current economic downturn were living in fear of death and therefore accumulating too many things, driving up too much debt. The super rich aren’t the only ones who lived this way, aren’t the only ones responsible. Many Americans were living beyond their means. Many of us have too much debt. Many of us have more things than we need.

Perhaps many of us have been living with some fear of death. I include myself in this. I’ve never gone out and bought something thinking, “this will keep me alive another day,” but there have been times when I’ve felt a need or a longing for something and I’ve sated that need with a purchase of some kind. I think, on the one hand, my true longing was for God, but I also think mixed in there was fear of death and a longing for security.

Now, I usually don’t consciously fear death, but when I think of the resurrection, when I think of the next life, being at one with God, then I feel peace come upon me, and my desire for things tends to diminish. I find I have less desire for things when I think of the resurrection. So, I’m guessing I still have some unknown lingering fear of death, fear of the unknown that I sometimes try to quell with things. Maybe I’m not alone in that. Perhaps living out of our faith in Jesus can help keep us from over spending. So, our faith really can make a difference in our lives, in a tangible way by freeing us who have been held in slavery by the fear of death.

As Paul wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians, quoting Isaiah and Hosea, “‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’ ‘Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?’” (Isaiah 25:8, Hosea 13:8, 1 Corinthians 15:54-55) One of the beauties of Easter is that death has no sting. By believing in Jesus’ resurrection and believing that we will share in his resurrection, we can live lives of hope and love without the need of material wealth and security. Further, as followers of Jesus, we can share our hope and faith and love with others so that those who do not yet have this hope might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them. (2 Corinthians 5:15) We can share our faith, our hope, and our love so that those who fear death might not fear death, so that those who are longing to know God might come to know God.

Jesus told his disciples that they were witnesses of his death and resurrection, witnesses that were to share that witness with others, and I believe we also share in that witness. We get to witness to others the hope that is in us, the faith that we have been given. We get to witness as we have been witnessed to. We are not eye witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection. We’re going on the testimony of Jesus’ disciples, of the witness they gave and the witness given by so many generations after them. We get to witness so that others may believe as we believe.

I asked at the beginning of this sermon why we believe. We believe not because of what we have seen, but because of what we have heard. We believe because of what we have been told by those who did see. We believe because of God’s spirit dwelling within us, praying for us, even in times of doubt, praying for us with sighs too deep for words. (Romans 8:26)

We also believe, I think because we want to. I want to believe that death is not the end. I want to believe that there is life after death. I want to believe that the resurrection life will be a wonderful life lived with our creator. I want to believe that I have nothing to fear in death. I want to believe that I don’t need to build up security here on earth because my life is in God’s hands and this life is not the end. I want to believe that God became human in the person of Jesus, that he, lived, died, and was resurrected all out of love for us. I want to believe, and so I choose to believe.

How much do I believe? How much trust do I put in the testimony that I have heard? Well, that kind of varies. At times I trust more than others. My prayer for all of us today, the message I want to leave us with is that we would believe the testimony we have been given enough not to fear death. My prayer and message is that we would believe enough in Jesus’ resurrection to trust him and to have lives filled with hope, love, and peace. Let us pray. “May the God of hope fill [us] with all joy and peace in believing, so that [we] may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” (Romans 15:13) Amen.