I See Jesus the New Adam

 April 17 2022

John 20:1-18

The Lord is Risen! The Lord is Risen, indeed! We rejoice today in the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is a day marked by some of our favorite songs, such as “Christ the Lord is Risen Today” with is familiar alleluia chorus. A more modern song written by the Gaither’s is the song, “Because He Lives”. Now, I’m going to preface what I am about to say that this is a wonderful song, it is very beautiful in its simplicity yet what I take issue with is that it portrays the resurrection as merely as a means to face tomorrow, an anchor for our hope because we know who holds the future, which is all so very true but my concern is that people will begin to think that all the resurrection is about is just about hope, just about a future joy, so much about tomorrow that it seems as if that the resurrection does not have much to say about life here in the present. Have you ever asked yourself just what does the resurrection of Jesus have to say about your everyday, ordinary life, in the here and now? Or is the resurrection of Jesus more like an insurance policy that when we believe in it we one day will be able to know that we will have an eternal life beyond our ultimate death?

You see, when all we think about the resurrection is that it is some future assurance of us being whisked off to go and be with Jesus then we are going to miss out on the very real fact that the resurrection of Jesus is not just about a future hope but the resurrection is about a very real faith for today. As Paul tells us in the fifteenth chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians, if Christ has not been raised then our faith is futile. But we proclaim that in fact Jesus has been raised from the dead, and so, now our faith, what we believe is true about our life with God, this faith is very much alive and well.

We have to keep in mind that the resurrection of Jesus is very much about what we believe, what we hold to be true about God, about who he created us to be and about just what it is that Jesus has done and continues to do for us. If we don’t understand that the resurrection of Jesus is about our faith then we are going to miss the message that John is trying to communicate to us. We encounter this message of John right at the beginning of the twentieth chapter of his gospel where he states that it was “the first day of the week”. In the Greek, what it actually says is that it is day one of the week which is a rather strange way of putting it. Yet to John, this stating that is day one, makes perfect sense because for him it was day one, the very first day of the new creation. Only as we understand that this is what John is telling us can we make sense of what Pilate exclaimed at the trial of Jesus as found in the nineteenth chapter of John where we hear Pilate say about Jesus, “Behold the man”. Now, the word translated here as “man”, is the Greek word for humanity, and it is the Greek equivalent for the Hebrew word, “Adam”. Here as Jesus is faithful unto his Heavenly Father as his Heavenly Father is to him, Jesus can be seen as being the true human, the one who reflects the very image of God in his earthly life. So, to John, this announcement that Jesus is the Adam, corresponds to the sixth day of the creation story, the story John references in the first chapter of his gospel when he speaks of Jesus as being the Word, the one through whom all things were made.

After Jesus was crucified and laid in the tomb, John expects us to understand that this was the seventh day, the Sabbath day of rest. And then came the first day. The very first day of God’s new creation. Just as in the first creation story, this story of the new creation begins in darkness, in the hushed waiting for the words, “Let there be light”. In the first chapter of John, we hear of how Jesus is the light of men, the light which shines in the dark, and the darkness has not overcome the light, yet here in the darkness of Easter morning we are left wondering if such a statement is true as Jesus has died and been placed in the tomb, his life, his light, extinguished it seems by the forces of darkness. There in the darkness came Mary Magdalene, to care for the body of Jesus but when she got to the tomb she found that the stone which had sealed the entrance of the tomb had been mysteriously taken away. Afraid, she ran to Peter and the rest of the disciples and told them of the tragedy that someone must have taken the body of Jesus because why else would the stone have been rolled away. So, the disciples took off, running, in the dark, desperately wanting to witness this crime for themselves. We are told that the disciple which Jesus loved, had gotten to the tomb first, and he merely peered in through the opening, perhaps not wanting to go in on account that if the dead body had been present he would have become ritually unclean. This is John’s subtle way of telling us that the disciples had not yet figured out that everything had changed, that what held true in the past creation no longer could be adhered to in the new that had come. Peter, as only Peter could do, rushed headlong into the scene of the crime, yet what he saw was puzzling. Yes, the linen clothes which had covered Jesus were there yet even more peculiar was that the linen cloth which had covered the head of Jesus was found to be folded up, nice and neat all by itself. What is universally known about grave robbers is that when they come to take a body they never take time to fold the cloths that covered the body. I’m sure at seeing this little neatly folded pile of linens and thinking through just what it must mean, Peter called to John to come in and see for himself the strangeness of that empty tomb. When the disciple that Jesus loved rushed in and took a look for himself, we are told that he believed. This is John’s way of pointing out that here in this empty tomb, this is where faith happens. We are not told just what it is that this disciple believed because they had not as yet understood the scriptures which told of how it was that Jesus was to rise from the dead. All we know is that instead of the fear that he had once had, now this disciple, in some strange way, believed.

The disciples, we are told, decided to go back home but Mary Magdalene decided to stay behind, to grieve the loss of her dear friend, Jesus. She also decided to go and look within the tomb but what she saw was very different from what Peter and the beloved disciple saw when they went in. We can’t help but hear the many references throughout John’s account that Jesus always invited people to come and see. We can almost hear an echo of these words as Mary Magdalene enters the tomb, as she is invited to come and see with her eyes of faith. What she beheld was the presence of two angels, one sat at the head of where Jesus was laid and one angel sat at the feet of where he was laid. Now, to us, this may be indeed quite mysterious, but in a Jewish context this scene would have been quite apparent. This scene beheld by Mary Magdalene in the tomb was that of the mercy seat which sat on top of the ark of the covenant in the Holy of Holies. This mercy seat, was a lid which had on either end, the figures of angels guarding the most holy of places. It was there, in the Holy of Holies, that once every year the high priest of the Temple would enter with blood to sprinkle upon the mercy seat to make atonement for the people of Israel. So what John is whispering to us is that this very common, ordinary tomb of the dead had been transformed in some way, into what can only be described as a Holy of Holies. Here this stone ledge upon which the body of Jesus was laid, here where his blood flowed out upon this rock, here was the very mercy seat of God. This is what Paul wrote of in the third chapter of Romans, that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forth as the mercy-seat by his blood, to be received by faith”. This is what Mary Magdalene was given eyes to see, the place of God’s redemption, the place where we were cleansed and declared righteous before God by the blood of Jesus. In this vision, John wants us to know that Jesus has done everything necessary so that we might be forever united to God, to be at last one with God, as the term at-one-ment means.

The angels, see the grief of Mary, they watch as her tears stream down her face and listen as she cries and they ask her just why it is that she is weeping. This seems like an obvious question, doesn’t it, I mean, she loved Jesus, she watched as he cruelly endured crucifixion upon a criminals cross, and now she finds that his body is missing and has no clue as to where her beloved Jesus might be. Sensing someone behind her, Mary turns back toward the opening of the tomb and she sees a man who, in the darkness, she is unable to make out just who he is. This man asks the same question that the angels had asked her, why is she weeping. And then this man adds, just who it is that she is seeking. She must have thought, just what is it with everybody and their painfully obvious questions. Mary does not know just who this is who is speaking to her, her best guess is that this man is the gardener. We have to ask, just why is this detail so important to the story. Well, what is clearly implied is that the tomb which housed the body of Jesus is located in a garden, a garden just like the very first garden, a garden called Eden. In the second chapter of Genesis we are told that God took the man he had created and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.  Perhaps then, Mary mistook Jesus for the gardener because he in fact was the gardener, the new Adam, the caretaker of God’s new creation.

Mary asked the man whom she thought was the gardener if he had carried Jesus away. If he had placed him somewhere she would be glad to go and bring him back to this tomb. Then this man spoke and simply said, “Mary”. He knew her name. She knew that voice. This was the one known as the Good Shepherd, the one who knows our name, the one whose voice we know, this is Jesus. She turned to the voice behind her and cried out “Rabboni”, the Aramaic word for Teacher. Here, John is alluding to the writing of the prophet Isaiah, as found in the thirtieth chapter, “Therefore, the Lord waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait on him. For a people shall dwell in Zion, in Jerusalem; you shall weep no more. He will be gracious to you at the sound of your cry. As soon as he hears it, he answers you. And though the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself anymore, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it” when you turn to the right or to the left”. This is the very experience of Mary. She has seen the mercy-seat of God on which the blood of Jesus was spilled, she witnessed the graciousness of God in that most unlikely of places. She wept and at the sound of her cry, there Jesus answered her. The teacher she loves would no longer be hidden from her, her eyes at last could behold him. She had heard his voice behind her and she knew that this was the voice of the one she longed to hear, the voice of the one she obeyed.

Mary longed to rush and wrap her arms around Jesus. What joy she longed to share with him, yet he abruptly told her that there was something more important for her to do. Jesus told her that she was to go and tell the good news of his resurrection to his brothers. She was to tell them that he was ascending to his Father and he was ascending to their Father, to his God and their God. Here again we must go back to the beginnings of John’s gospel, to the first chapter and hear how those who received Jesus, those who believed in his name, trusting that in Jesus the God who is grace and truth is truly present with us, to those who receive and believe, Jesus extends to them the right to become children of God, children not born of blood, children born not by will of the flesh, nor children born by the will of man but rather they are truly children of God. This is the possibility that has at last been opened to us because Jesus has been raised from the dead. Now, because he has been victorious over death because death could not hold him as he was without sin, now Jesus could be for us, the new Adam, the firstborn of the first fruits of the new creation. Jesus, the new Adam is the first human to live in perfect unity with the Father through the Spirit and now, because we share in his humanity we can be for ever united with God as well, drawn into that same relationship that Jesus, the Son of God, has always had with his Father and our Father. This is why when Paul speaks about the resurrection of Jesus in the fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians, he tells us that “the first Adam became a living being ; the last Adam became a life-giving Spirit”. The first man was from earth; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have born the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.” This is the good news of the resurrection of Jesus Christ! We at last are able to bear the very image of the man of heaven, the one who is perfectly what God created us to be. Jesus has made this possible because he has not only risen from the dead but he has ascended to the Father, his Father and our Father. When he ascended he sent us the gift of the Giver, the Holy Spirit, the one who is as Paul tells us in the eighth chapter of Romans, the very Spirit of our adoption, the one by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father.” The Father who has always known us, the very searcher of our hearts, he is now at last able to be known by us, through the gift of the Spirit of  sonship given to us by the risen Jesus. This is why Paul can also say in that eighth chapter of Romans, that those whom the Father has always known, these are the ones that he destined ahead of time to be conformed to the image of his Son so that Jesus might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. Those who share in this destiny, these are the ones are Heavenly Father has called out to, these are the ones that our Father has declared to be righteous because of the shed blood of Jesus, and these are the ones who some day will be at last glorified with Jesus Christ.

You see, the very same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead now is given to us without measure to raise us up to sit with Christ in the heavenly places as a child of God. Yet this same Spirit is with us everyday here on earth. Through him we hear the voice of the Teacher, the voice that Mary heard there on that early Sunday morning. Now, because Jesus lives forever, his voice is ever with us, the voice of the Teacher who speaks to us every moment through the Spirit. This is what Jesus told his disciples, that when “the Spirit comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. The Spirit will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you”. In the garden of the new creation of which we now find ourselves, Jesus, our new Adam, tends and keeps his garden through his word. No more will the lies spoken to us by the devil bring catastrophe upon God’s good creation. Now, we will heed the words of Jesus because his is the voice of love, the voice we know we can trust because he gave his very life to save us.  Jesus speaks and his word does not return to him void because his word now accomplishes the purpose for which it was spoken. Jesus speaks to bring us the children of God to full maturity, to be like him. Jesus is alive. Jesus is speaking. Jesus is teaching us lessons of holy love so that he is not only the forerunner of our faith but he is the perfecter of our faith as well. This is the truth upon which we have our faith, in the here and now. Yes, the resurrection of Jesus is our great hope for tomorrow, but even more, the resurrected Jesus speaks his truth to us today and every day so that more and more we might be conformed to the man of heaven. The question then is this : “Do you hear him?”and if so,“Will you obey him?” To God be the glory! Amen!