“Why?” Easter 2022: Isaiah 65: 17-25; John 20: 1-18
So, in confession, there was more to the title of this sermon than just “why?” However, as I was typing for the bulletins, I got distracted and forgot to add the rest of the title. Then I forgot what the rest of the title was actually supposed to be. And now, here we are. Why? To some degree, it’s a bit of a fair question these days. Why this journey, why this experience, why am I sitting here? Most of the unanswered questions in our lives involve…why? Most of the time we ask these questions about where the future will lead, and what the journey will be like. Sometimes we ask why we so often feel like we journey alone in this life. I’m sure many of us feel have those moments when we feel misunderstood, unseen, and alone.
The band Green Day, which half of you can’t believe I’m referencing and the other half of you probably don’t know and definitely wouldn’t like, has a song titled “Boulevard of Broken Dreams.” A line from it says, “I walk a lonely road, the only one that I’ve ever known. Don’t know where it goes, but it’s home to me, and I walk alone.” Laying aside that it’s angsty millennial rock music, those words, I think speak to us, this feeling that we are often alone on life’s journey.
Many of us feel alone in life even if we have friends or a network of people. We call it feeling unseen in the midst of a crowd. We may have hit the age where there are too many funerals. We may have found many folks we thought were our friends were users and not companions. We may have life changes and developments which seem a very personal to our journey and others simply don’t get it. Or we may actually be very much alone in life.
It’s a familiar and often stress-filled and painful place for many. I remember counseling someone who had lost their spouse. They told me that they would wander the aisles of the Wal-Mart and Target to avoid going home to an empty house, all alone. We heard that hymn on Good Friday, “Jesus walked this lonesome valley. He had to walk it by himself; O nobody else could walk it for him. He had to walk it by himself.” A friend of mine recently posted an article on Facebook which said that the church’s response to the pandemic and social upheaval of the past few years make her feel like she’s lost her faith, the church, and religion she called home. We are no strangers to loneliness and walking a lonely road in life.
Good Friday was a time where fear, sadness, and loneliness came and dwelt with Jesus and the disciples. Jesus walked to Calvary by himself, abandoned and betrayed. The disciples locked themselves into a room in fear and feeling alone without Jesus to lead them. Why? They didn’t really understand that the suffering, the anguish they felt in their soles was temporary, but the hope Christ gives us is never-ending. Jesus had the power over death. Jesus had the power to appear in the upper room with the disciples. And Jesus gave them the Spirit to ensure they would never, ever be alone in this life.
The journey for Jesus was lonely, but we are promised that we are never alone when we have faith in God. When the followers fell asleep as Jesus prayed earnestly in the garden, he still prayed with them. When Jesus was betrayed, he was calm and gentle with all of them, loving and forgiving. When they abandoned Jesus, denied him, cowered in fear lacking all faith to believe his Word and his promises, he still loved them and gave everything he had to bring them closer to him and love them more and more. As the hymn says, “And he walks with me, and he talks with me, and he tells me I am his own.” The days may seem dark, and we may feel alone, but through it all and in it all God still walks with us and never leaves us. As a pastor friend said, “If God cared enough to create us, then God loves us enough to see us through.”
Isaiah’s prophetic words speak to this promise, saying in verse 19, “I will rejoice over Jerusalem and delight in my people. And the sound of weeping and crying will be heard in it no more. You see, God has promised, in the miracle of resurrection that hope outweighs the suffering of this life. It’s hard to see when you’re going through the suffering, but that doesn’t take away from how grand and glorious that hope from God truly is. That hope is two-fold. It is the hope that reminds us that death is swallowed up in the victory of life in the God who loves us. But it is also the hope that in every moment of life, and in every moment of toil and struggle we face, God is with us every single moment—loving us, strengthening us, and reminding us of that unbelievable presence that walks with us.
When you look at the Gospel, you can feel just how alone and frightened the disciples were. Mary cries out to Jesus, whom she mistakes for the gardener, asking where they have taken him. Peter and the disciple Jesus loved run to the tomb when they hear the news. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, there’s an angel to announce the resurrection of Jesus. Here that doesn’t happen. Mary, this disciple, and Peter are left with only that stark emptiness of the tomb—this startling reality that Jesus is not only dead, he is gone.
But something powerful happens, something that can only come from faith. When the disciple Jesus loved arrives at the tomb, he’s hesitant to go in and encounter those empty burial linens and folded head wrapping. But then, the Gospel tells us that this disciple “went in, and he saw and believed.” The words about hope, life, and resurrection—they all made sense. This wasn’t the death, burial, and end of everything Jesus had said and taught.
Instead, this was a new beginning. Jesus was back to end our walk on a lonely road with a promise to be with us. And indeed, in just a short verse or two later, Jesus appears to the disciples and assures them that hope is the final word over pain, over suffering, over fear and loneliness in this life. Hope, life, and God’s love have the final word, end of story.
We may face days and pathways that feel lonely. With the loss of loved ones, with journeys and places in life we must face on our own, with the uncertainty we must sometimes live with, we may be facing lonely roads ahead. But though the way may seem weary and lonely, it’s not. As we begin or continue our faithful journey and those times of fear and doubt creep in, we will find Jesus, our constant companion, Savior, and friend. Then, like Mary, we can proclaim boldly, “I have seen the Lord.”
Worship Video: https://www.facebook.com/fccmacon/videos/354734936610570