Two Momentous Days

Good Friday and Easter.

Today is Good Friday—for those reading Friday’s Word on Friday. And this Sunday is Easter.

Two momentous days.

One no more important than the other.

On Friday evening, our great choir will sing, Without His Cross, there Is No Crown.

Without Good Friday, there is no Easter.

The “prop” for the Good Friday service tonight is a life-sized image of the burial shroud of Jesus.

The “Shroud of Turin,” as it is called.

(The radio-carbon dating was wrong. Two more recent dating tests are right. It comes from the time of Jesus.)

The Shroud image will be referenced as we follow the story of Jesus’ last hours from John’s gospel.

John’s gospel carries the close-to-first-hand account provided by “the beloved disciple.”

It is powerful.

Standing at the foot of the cross were four Marys: Jesus’ mother, Mary the wife of Clopas. And Mary Magdalene.

Jesus’ aunt, his mother’s sister, was also there.

And “the beloved disciple.”

That is the only way he is named in the Gospel of John. I do not believe he was John. He was not one of the twelve. We do not know his name. But his witness takes us close to both the death and the resurrection of
Jesus.

I turn to that witness again on Easter Sunday morning.

Please consider this your personal invitation to both of these services.

Tonight, we have a light supper at 6:30 before worship. The service starts at 7:00.

On Sunday the kids hunt Easter eggs at 10:00.

Easter worship starts at 11:00. Let us, too, gather at the foot of the cross.

Can We Be Certain?

Jeffrey Long, a radiation oncologist, was fascinated by near-death experiences.

And for 30 years he has studied them as a scientist and a doctor. He has also written extensively about them. He now says he is certain there is life after death.

Being “certain” about life after death may seem strange to you. But you can also be certain.

All you have to do is what Dr. Long has done:

Look at the evidence.

I once heard a teacher at Perkins, our Methodist seminary at SMU, deride certainty—and people who claimed to be certain.

He said, “The opposite of faith is not doubt, it is certainty.”

He would define faith as trusting things we can’t be certain about. Trusting things that may turn out to be wrong.

That means he teaches future ministers of the Gospel things that he feels are only possibly true.

But they may be wrong.

In other words, faith is a guessing game.

I don’t believe that.

I’m with Jeffrey Long.

If you look at the evidence long enough, you can come to conclusions.

You can reach certainty.

I am certain about the Resurrection.

I have found that, when God does a work among us, God will always give us sufficient evidence to believe it.

The evidence for the Resurrection is more than sufficient.

When I stand in the pulpit on Easter Sunday morning, I will tell a story I know to be true.

Join us.

But remember—the only way to Easter is through the Cross. Good Friday worship is at 7:00 p.m.

A week away.

Easter is 11:00 a.m.

Come. Behold what God has done for love of us.

A Misconception

The late John Shelby Spong, Episcopal Bishop, was a skeptic. He asked of the Resurrection:

Do bodies dead for 36 hours resuscitate and walk out of graves?

Do these revived bodies have working vocal cords allowing them to speak? Do they have a functioning skeletal system so that they can walk?

And how can such a body walk through walls with locked doors and barred windows?

Clearly, Bishop Spong thought the Christian claim for Resurrection meant a resuscitated corpse. And he did not believe in that.

I don’t either.

But Bishop Spong had no other concept. And I suspect many (or most) Christians share the same misconception.

A resuscitated corpse would simply put Jesus right back in the world.

Flesh and blood again—someday to die again.

Is this what you believe?

Have you ever really thought about it?

This is where the image on the Shroud of Turin becomes a vital witness.

For those who are willing to think about what they believe, the image on the Shroud presents a powerful picture.

The Shroud image records a physical event that left physical forensic evidence.

Jesus did not resuscitate. His body transformed.

It dematerialized in a quantum physics event.

It returned to the spiritual state from which it had come.

The cloth fell through the body, recording x-ray-like images of the bones in the hands and the sockets for the teeth.

A life-sized replica of the Shroud will feature in our Good Friday service two weeks from today.

Light supper at 6:15.

Worship at 7:00.

A Good Lunch Wouldn’t Do It

Scientists have tried a new peer-reviewed test on the Shroud of Turin. It’s called a Wide-angle X-ray Scattering test.

It dated the cloth to the time of Christ—as have 210 other tests, including one other dating test.

Only the Carbon 14 tests of 1988 came up with a date in the Middle Ages.

It is scientists who keep the Shroud conversation going. Many of them who have studied the Shroud are convinced by it.

I’m not a scientist.

But I’m smarter than I look. And I am convinced.

And have been for 40 years.

I did a mean thing once, back in theology school. Just for fun, I asked one of my professors what he thought of the Shroud.

Apoplectic. I think that’s the word for his response.

“That old rag!” he said.

He didn’t want it to be real. His idea of the resurrection is something like this: Jesus died.

The disciples were sad.

They had a good lunch.

Felt better.

“Hey!” they said. “It almost feels like Jesus is still with us.”

Let’s go tell the world!

Was there something in the meatloaf that set them on fire?

Or was the grave empty?

And did Jesus appear to them?

I would guess the latter.

A filmmaker in England has offered one million dollars to anyone who can reproduce the Shroud.

No takers yet.

But here’s how you do it.

To reproduce the image on the Shroud, you would have to crucify somebody.

That’s the easy part.

(Except for the poor guy who gets crucified.)

Next step: You wrap the poor chap in linen and persuade God to raise him from the dead.

That’s it!

You’re a millionaire!

Now—From the Other Side

I may have caused some discomfort these last two weeks. I provoked one reader to say, “You have now gone crazy.”

I’ve been talking about extravagant ways God may intervene in our lives.

One woman reported to me that just as her car was about to plow into a truck, both vehicles seemed to dematerialize—and passed through each other. Not even a dent. No one was hurt.

I have eight similar accounts. They say it takes three trees to make a row.

Eight is a small forest!

Now, let me take it from the other side: Scott, age 18, was grieving the death of the friend who helped him get off drugs. Marty died at just 17.

After Marty died, Scott’s grief was so strong he started to think of drugs again. Then, one night as he slept on the couch in his living room, his world changed. Let Scott tell it:

I was awake.

The clock said 2:05.

And suddenly, there was Marty 10 feet away from me. I sat in shock. One part of me was scared—but I was also happy.

He came over to me. It was light all around us. He said, “Don’t be upset, OK? I’m happy. Don’t keep your mind on me. Go on with your life.”

He was smiling like he never did in life. I gave him a hug. I could smell his scent and feel his body heat. I felt his breath when he talked. It was the weirdest thing.

Then he was gone.

Scott was lifted—and stayed off drugs.

But note the physical element of the encounter.

Matter can move from insubstantial to substantial.

Or, scientists would say, from wave to particle and back to wave.

God has made the world so that what God wants to happen, can happen.