by Dave Wilkinson

John 19:31-42

April 7, 2002

I really don’t want to offend any math teachers who are in worship this morning. I also don’t want to disappoint parents who rightly expect their pastor to be a good model of academic diligence for their children. It’s just that I never liked math.

Now part of this was because I was in school when something called the new math was all the rage.

You may remember the New Math. It didn’t have questions like "If you have a hundred dollars and take away eighty dollars, how much do you have left?" New math questions went like this: "The cardinality of set ‘M’ is 100. The set "S" contains 80 fewer points than set ‘M’’. Represent the set "S" as a subset of set ‘M’ and answer the following question: What is the cardinality of the set "R" of remainder."

This approach stuff didn’t just confuse me. It also confused the teachers. It even confused my father who was a chemical engineer. I used to ask him to help me with my homework just to see how red he would get in the face.

But the main reason I didn’t like math was because it didn’t give much scope to my creativity. Math — at least until Arthur Anderson came along — had only one right answer. And much of my early academic career was based on my ability to — expand.

As many of you have discovered, expanding is a skill that allows you to write essays in English and social studies with a bare minimum of information. I got so good that I could build a thousand word essay out of a single unimpressive thought.

Now repetition can have a point – a point. But we don’t need to expand today. We have real ideas to talk about.

On these communion Sundays we are looking at the faith we profess when we affirm the Apostle’s Creed. On February 3^rd, we looked at the word "crucified." Today, we affirm that after Jesus was crucified, He was "dead and buried."

"Crucified, dead and buried."

Well, one action generally does follow the other. So when we read "crucified, dead and buried," we tend to ask, "Were the early believers assigned to write a creed of a certain minimum number of words and decide to go for a little filler? Did their quills get locked on full automatic?

I like the story about a stiff upper lip Englishman who was approached by a sympathetic friend who said, "I heard you buried your wife the other day." The Englishman replied, "Had to. Dead you know."

Maybe the early church fathers could have learned something from the unemotional logic of this Briton. When you are crucified you die. When you die, it’s important to be buried. Don’t tell us what we already know.

However, the words in the creed are not a mistake and they certainly aren’t just filler. The apparent repetition has a point. For all three words of this short phrase are vital for our faith.

The central belief of the Christian faith is that Jesus was crucified and rose again. He has promised, on the authority of His resurrection, that we will also be raised with Him to eternal life. That’s what our faith is built on. That’s what last Sunday was all about and why we are still here today.

This great message of Easter is why it’s important for us to absolutely know that Jesus really died. This might seem obvious. But right from the earliest days of the church, some people offered an alternative to the resurrection based on the claim that Jesus was raised from the dead because he didn’t really die. Perhaps, they said, Jesus only appeared to die. Perhaps somebody – maybe Barabbas or Simon of Cyrene – died in His place. Maybe He only fainted on the cross and the coolness of the tomb revived Him. The hope that someone had overcome the "last enemy" was unthinkable to many. It still is.

A woman wrote to an old radio preacher named J. Vernon McGee and said,: "Our preacher said that on Easter Jesus just swooned on the cross and that the disciples nursed Him back to health. What do you think?"

I love McGee’s reply: "Dear Sister, (that’s his voice) beat your preacher with a leather whip for thirty-nine strokes. Nail him to a cross. Hang him in the sun for six hours. Run a spear through his heart. Embalm him. Put him in an airless tomb for three days. Then see what happens."

Hopefully that won’t be necessary. Hopefully this pastor will finally be able to read the Word and see what it says. For the gospel writers, like the writers of the creed, go to great lengths to show us that Jesus was really dead.

Luke 23 says "Jesus called out with a loud voice, ‘Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.’ When he had said this, He breathed his last." Matthew says, "He gave up his spirit."Mark continues the story with the testimony of the centurion. "When the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, heard His cry and saw how Jesus died, he said ‘surely this man was a son of God.’"

We have other witnesses. In his Pentecost speech, in Acts chapter 2, just a few weeks after the resurrection. Peter declared, "This man was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge, and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross." He said this to people who knew the facts. Peter told the crowd, "You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this."

John also claims to be an eyewitness to Jesus’ death, John 19:34: "They…found that he was already dead…. One of the soldiers pierced Jesus’ side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water. The man who saw it has given testimony, and his testimony is true."

Why does John hammer on this so much?

To him it was the final, unanswerable proof that Jesus was a real man with a real body who died a real death. Here is an answer to all of the Greek influenced Gnostics who taught that Jesus was a phantom who had not died a real death and therefore was not really raised from the dead. John insists that Jesus is not a truth force or a divine principle but "bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh" who died a genuine death of our death.

Finally, Paul insists, in I Corinthians 15:3 that the reality of Jesus’ death is of vital importance. "For what I received, I passed on to you as of first importance, that Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures.

Why is all this so important? Why do you need to know this?

Because you’re involved. I am too. For no one gets out of life alive.

I know, at least intellectually, that someday a group of men will process in a cemetery and lower a coffin. Everyone will go home. But one will not come back and that one will be me. I will be dead and buried.

That’s why I need to know that Jesus’ death was not defeat but victory -- victory for me. Jesus’ last words from the cross, "It is finished", were not the cry of a disillusioned idealist whose dream was now shattered. It was a shout of triumph from the Son of God who, in order to defeat death, was now going into the last stronghold of his enemy in order to deprive the enemy of power. The words were not, "It is over" but "It is complete"; not "I have failed" but "I have accomplished it!" Accomplished it for us – for our very real deaths, our very real burials -- with the very real promise "Because I live, you will also live."