Are We an Easter Church? Part One: Are We Able to See Jesus?

In this series of Easter sermons, we will be asking the simple question: Are we an Easter Church? As we'll see, going to sunrise services, singing "Up from the grave he arose", and decorating with Easter lilies doesn't make a group of people an Easter church. As important as signing one's name to a statement of faith that believes in a literal bodily resurrection of Jesus, believing such a thing only with the mind does not make a group of people an Easter people. We'll probe into what does make a group of people an Easter people.

Dr. Mark Rutland tells the story of a young teenager who refused to be impressed by anyone or anything. His parents, who cared deeply for their bundle of joy, were at the limits of their creative parenting. As a last resort they decided to take him on a vacation with them and chose the Grand Canyon. If this won't do the trick, then nothing will. They spoke to their tour guide/park ranger ahead of time about their ultimate desire of impressing their boy. So, the guide takes the family to the highest point in the canyon. Calling the boy to his side, he explained that the drop they were viewing was a whole mile.

The boy replied with obvious excitement, "That's a mile?!"

"Yes," the guide replied, winking at the parents, who were thrilled.

Upon the boy's going to sleep, they looked for his journal. Finding it, they turned to that day's entry, which read, "Today ... I spit a mile."

Several people have told me that seeing the Grand Canyon in person revolutionized their appreciation of our Creator-God. Now, the little boy and these people to whom I just refered all saw the same canyon. Yet, their mental filters made all the difference in the world. Many people living today and in Jesus's time all have seen Jesus. Yet, many of us are simply blind to him as he really is. Many of us simply wave Jesus around as our mascot, rather than worshipping him as our master. So in this sermon, I'll be asking the question: Are we able to see Jesus?

We'll be using Matthew 20:17-21:17 as our text. We'll see various vignettes of people who all saw Jesus, but came to radically different places concerning his lordship.

Matthew 20:17-21:17:

and as Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, he took the twelve disciples aside, adn on the way he said to them, "See we are going up to Jerusalem. And the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death adn deliver him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged adn crucified, and he will be raised on the third day."

Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came up to him wiht her sons, and kneeling before him she asked him for something. And he said to her, "What do you want?"

She said to him, "Say that these two sons of mine are to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left in your kingdom."

Jesus anwered, "You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink?"

They said to him, "We are able."

He said to them, "You will drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father."

And when the ten heard it, they were indignant at the two brothers. But Jesus called them to him and said, "You know that the rulers of the Gentile lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."

Let's skip to chapter 21:1:

Now when they drew near to Jerusalem and came to Behphage, to the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, "Go into the village in front of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anthing to you, you shall say, 'the Lord needs them,' and he will send them at once."

This took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet, saying: "Say to the daughter of Zion, 'Behold your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.'"

The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them. They brought the donkey adn the colt and put on them their cloaks, and he sat on them. Most of the crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road.

And the crowds that went before him and that followed him were shouting, "Hosanna in the highest!"

And when he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred up, saying, "Who is this?"

And the crowds said, "This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth of Galilee."

21:12:

And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons.

He said to them, "It is written, 'My house shall be a house of prayer,' but you make it a den of robbers.

And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, "Hosanna to the Son of David!" they were indignant, and they said to him, "Do you hear what these are saying?"

And Jesus said to them, "Yes; have you never read, 'Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise'?"

And leaving them he went out of the city to Bethany and lodged there.

21:18:

In the morning, as he was returning to the city, he became hungry. And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, he went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves. And he said to it, "May no fruit ever come from you again!"

And the fig tree withered at once. When the disciples saw it, they marveled, saying, "How did the fig tree wither at once?"

And Jesus answered them, "Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, Be taken up and thrown into the sea, it will happen. And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith."

21:23:

And when he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came up to him as he was teaching, and said, "By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?"

Jesus answered them, "I also will ask you one question, and if you tell me the answer, then I also will tell you by what authority I do these things. the baptism of John, from where did it come? From heaven or from man?"

And they discussed it among themselves, saying, "If we say, 'From heaven,' he will say to us, 'Why then did you not believe him?' But if we say, 'From man' we are afraid of the crowd, for they all hold that John was a prophet."

So they answered Jesus, "We do not know."

And he said to them, "Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things" (ESV)

In each of these vignettes runs a common thread. They all saw Jesus, but they missed him. In 20:17-28 Jesus tells the twelve that he's going to be executed. Two of them respond by sending their mama to plead with Jesus on their behalf for high ranking positions in his kingdom.

In 21:1-11 Jesus enters Jerusalem to much cheer and applause. The crowd is huge, waving palm branches (we learn in other places of the exact nature of the trees). The palm branch was the symbol of the successful Maccabean revolt against Israel's powerful Gentile rulers. For the first time in about 500 years Israel is free of Gentile rule. Jesus rides in to their profound and deadly misunderstanding of his messiahship.

In 21:12-17 Jesus encounters marketers in the temple, and he throws them out. Buying and selling of sacrifice material was actually permitted by Torah. However, something ugly and horrid had taken place. Herod the Great began to build onto the temple in Jerusalem. In so doing, he added a special court for women and a special court for gentiles. Jesus tells them in another place that the temple should be a house of prayer for all the nations. The marketers had overtaken the gentile court, leaving the gentiles with no place to worship.

When the temple officials see this cleansing for the purpose of authentic worship take place, their only response was to tell Jesus to make the children shut up (ie not worship). They were blind to the nature of his cleansing of the temple.

In 21:18-22 Jesus curses the fig tree. Many interpret the fig tree to symbolize the temple, which he had just cleansed and its official who categorically misunderstood Jesus. In asking how the fig tree withered so fast, Jesus merely responds by saying with the proper faith they could cast that mountain into the sea. It is very possible that the mountain in question actually referred to the palace built by Herod the Great, known as the Herodium. King Herod symbolized nominal Jewish leadership who were in cahoots with Rome and Hellenistic culture. Jesus also said with proper faith they could cast it into the sea. For the Jews of his day, the sea represented the grave, the abyss, the place of death and destruction. In the days of Jesus many Jewish factions looked for ways to remedy their nationalistic plight. Yet in Luke 19:41-44 we see Jesus weeping over Jerusalem, prophesying death and destruction to her ... because she did not recognize their visitation from God. Ray Vander Laan says they missed their king for their own kingdom.

Lastly, we have in 21:23-27 the temple authorities questioning the authority of Jesus. Scrutiny is not all bad. However, Jesus lived the Old Testament and fulfilled it. Yet they missed his messianic fulfilling of the Old Testament completely. Interestingly enough this missing the authority of Jesus being rooted in the Old Testament came on the heels of cleansing the temple. In the mid Second Century BC the Gentile King who ruled over Israel hated the Jews. Antiochus Epiphanes IV was king of the Seleucid Empire. Out of cruelty he went into the Temple and sacrificed a pig on the altar. During the Maccabean Revolt the Temple was cleansed ... sort of. The altar was smashed. The Jews believed when the messiah would come he would cleanse the Temple and put the altar back together again. Out of disbelief, the Temple authorities demanded to know the signs which demonstrated Jesus's authority to cleanse the Temple. They had been deliberately blind to the signs which he had earlier given them.

Interestingly enough we have sandwiched in the middle of these vignettes a rather pitiful story.

Matthew 20:29-34:

And as they went out of Jericho, a great crowd followed him. And behold, there were two blind men sitting by the roadside, and when they heard that Jesus was passing by, they cried out, "Lord, have mercy on us, son of David!"

The crowd rebuked them, telling them to be silent, but they cried out all the more, "Lord, have mercy on us, Son of David!"

And stopping, Jesus called them and said, "What do you want me to do for you?"

They said to him, "Lord let our eyes be opened."

And Jesus in pity touched their eyes, and immediately they recovered their sight and followed him (ESV).

Sandwiched in between several vignettes is this heart-wrenching story of two blind men. They are calling to Jesus, calling him "the Son of David." They understand, unlike all the others we have read, that he is the long awaited messiah. In the midst of stories about people being blind to Jesus in his reality, we have here two blind people who see. Yet they want to have their physical eyes opened. "And Jesus in pity touched their eyes...." The physically blind had 20/20 spiritual vision, whereas those who should have known better were blind as bats and preferred to stay that way.

If we are to be an Easter church, we need to strive to see Jesus ... as he really is. We need to have our eyes open ... those eyes who quite often have cultural cataracts blinding us to the true Jesus of the Scriptures. "Open our eyes, Jesus!!!!"