Preached · April 16, 2017
Everyone loves a comeback story
Everyone loves a good comeback story, right? The stories of the underdog rising up and vanquishing their enemies or their challengers. Or maybe someone who was great and then fell down low, and then had to build back up — usually in a montage scene in a movie — and then they could beat their enemy again.
I was talking to my brother about all the different comeback stories I was going to tell, and he wanted to know what I was going to say. I was like, "Oh, you know, there's Rocky, there's the Mighty Ducks," and I listed a few others. He said, "Anthony, you haven't listed the most important comeback story of all time: the 2016 Chicago Cubs, who lost three games and then came back and won the World Series." That's what he told me happened. Everyone loves a good comeback story.
Jared Wallace
Jared Wallace was someone who was great, who started out on top. He was a competitive runner in high school, and then suffered this excruciating leg pain and eventually had to have surgery to correct it. Well, the surgery went wrong, and he had complications, and his muscles began to atrophy in one of his legs. And he tried to keep running, tried to keep racing, until one day he collapsed, he fell on the ground. He had the leg of an eight-year-old and a 19-year-old body. And so at that point he cursed God, and he started running again, but this time running away from God. And eventually that leg continued to get worse and worse, until it actually had to be amputated.
Well, in his darkness and his despair, he believes that he heard God speak to him. He said, "Jared, I have a story for you to tell. Keep running." And so Jared got a prosthetic and joined the U.S. Paralympic team, and went to London in 2012, and ran the race — but his team was disqualified that year. So again, Jared was devastated. And again, Jared heard God's voice say, "Keep running. I've got a story for you to tell."
And so the following year, Jared ran the prelims of the 200-meter at the World Championships in Lyon, France. And during the prelims, he actually set a new world record. And the interviewers kept asking those dumb questions that sports interviewers ask, and their question that day was, "Are you going to run faster tomorrow for the actual race?" And Jared couldn't think of anything else to say except, "I hope so." And so he went to bed that night, getting ready for the next day, and he felt God's peace come over him, saying, "Jared, I've got this."
So the next day comes around. It's the World Championships for the 200-meter. Jared Wallace, he's in lane four, right in the middle. Let's see what happens.
[A video of the T-44 men's 200-meter final, Lyon 2013, is shown. Jared Wallace wins in 22.10, breaking his own world record from the day before.]
And so Wallace beats his own world record and wins the race. Everyone loves a good comeback story.
Comeback stories start in dark places
But here's the thing about comeback stories: they start in dark places. They start in bad places. That's what makes them a comeback story. If it weren't for the place where they started, it wouldn't be a comeback story.
Now, it may not be a lost limb for you, but we have all suffered loss. We've all been in dark places in our lives. We've lost maybe parents or children or siblings to death. Maybe we've lost a job, or we've lost a relationship. Many of us have felt like we've been on top of the world, and then felt like we were brought way down low.
One of my own darkest moments was as a six-year-old. I remember standing in the city hall of Seward, Alaska, a long way away from home. My mom had been taken into another room, and I knew that she was in trouble. But I knew that any moment she would be coming back through those doors to get me. Except it wasn't her that came back through those doors. I was immediately put into a car and driven away with a foster family, never to see my mom again.
For a group of men and women 2,000 years ago, their darkest moment was when the person they thought was going to be the king of their nation — the person who would defeat all their enemies, who would bring in a new creation, who would make all things right and just — that person, Jesus, was instead lying dead and cold and buried in a small tomb under a hill.
Catching up on The Story
If you have been with us over the past few months, you know we've been in a series called The Story, where we've taken a look at the story of the Bible, put it in chronological order from Genesis through Revelation. If you haven't been with us, let me get you up to speed.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and he desired relationship with his people. But his people rejected him, and so God embarked on a mission to rescue creation. He began by gathering a group together under his name, named Israel. And Israel was meant to be a kingdom of priests, a light to the world — they were supposed to tell about this God that they worshiped and how good and loving and forgiving he was. Except Israel failed at their mission. And so God knew that he had to go to extreme lengths in order to accomplish his purposes, to have his rescue mission work. And so God came in the flesh in the person of Jesus — the incarnation, all that we celebrate at Christmas.
And what we can say about Jesus, we can say about God. Jesus wanted no one to be sick, so he healed people. He wanted no one to be hungry, so he fed people. He wanted no one to be under oppression or abuse. He wanted to stop violence. He wanted to stop empires. So all of those things that we can say about Jesus, we can say about God.
But on the one hand, Jesus was just the latest in a long line of people claiming to be Messiah, claiming to be the Son of God, God's anointed and appointed ruler to make all things new. Jesus was just the latest in this long line, just the latest to gather a crowd and gather a circle of disciples that followed him. There were many that came before Jesus and many that would come after. And on the other hand, Jesus was also the latest in the long line of Messiahs who ended up dead, thanks to the efficient brutality of the Roman Empire. And those many followers of Jesus, those who stuck close with him — people like Peter and Andrew and John and Mary and Martha and Salome — they were like many of the old fools before them who had followed Messiahs, people who had thrown their lives away, sacrificed everything to follow this rabbi, this supposed Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth. And while at first Jesus did seem different from the rest, in the end Jesus ended up just as dead as all the rest. And the disciples were left with nothing but a bad reputation.
A historical problem
So when you have an embarrassed group of disciples who are now left with a dead Messiah, you have to ask this question: how on earth did the followers of Jesus, and the movement they began, go on to become the official religion of the most powerful empire on the planet, and then the most influential movement in the history of the world? Talk about your comeback story. But how?
Well, in order to answer this question, we need to take a look at death and resurrection in the ancient world. And we'll start with the largest population group, the Greeks and the Romans. For Greeks and Romans, there existed the concept of resurrection. And resurrection was the physical, bodily rising up, or bringing back to life, of someone previously dead. It was always bodily, it was physical, it wasn't reincarnation. There was no such thing as a spiritual resurrection — that would be an oxymoron. It was a physical, bodily rising up of someone who was once dead, now being brought back to life. And here's what the Greeks and Romans believed about resurrection: it never happened.
We like to think of ourselves as modern thinkers, very esteemed in the way we think. We know that people don't come back from the dead; we are good scientific people. But people back in the ancient Near East — well, they believed in things like that all the time, right? Ghosts and whatnot. But the fact of the matter is, it's not true. In any of the ancient records you look at from Greek and Roman writings, none of them believed in, none of them gave the option of, resurrection. It just didn't happen. And as a matter of fact, if you brought it up, you were likely to be ridiculed and mocked. There's a story of an ancient Christian missionary named Paul: when he tries to talk to a group of Greeks in Athens, the records say that at the phrase "raising Jesus from the dead," the listeners split, and most laughed at him and walked off making jokes. So from a Greek or Roman point of view, there existed the concept of bodily resurrection, and they knew it was an impossibility. You might exist as a ghost or a shade in Hades, but it wasn't a pleasant experience. And everyone knew that once you were dead, that was it. There was no coming back.
Now the Jewish world, on the other hand, thought a little differently about this. They were of two minds. There was a small minority that believed death was a permanent end, just like the Greeks and Romans. If you've ever heard of the Sadducees, that's what they believed: Sheol, or the pit, or the grave, was the final resting place of all people. But there was a larger majority, people like the Pharisees, who believed that resurrection would happen — but it would be all at once, all at the same time, at the end of time. It would happen to righteous people all at once, at the end of time. And again, for a Jew, resurrection is always physical. It's always a dead person's body being restored and renewed and coming back to life. It's not disembodied souls plucking harps on clouds of heaven. Resurrection was about this world, these bodies being restored. Also, there is no place in Jewish literature where it was suggested that one person might be resurrected first, and then sometime later everyone else would follow. It was always supposed to be a universal resurrection, all people.
When it comes to Jewish beliefs about their Messiah, the person who would come and make all things right, everyone before the time of Jesus believed that, one, Messiahs don't die — that's ridiculous. Messiahs are meant to come and start an everlasting kingdom, so no one expected them to die, particularly to die in an embarrassing way by the very people that they were meant to defeat. And number two, if they don't die, then they definitely don't come back to life. Yes, sure, everyone will come back to life at the end of time, but Messiahs stay alive. They don't need resurrection.
And so about 20 years after the death of Jesus, we've got what we like to call a historical problem. The problem is this: there is a significant group of Jews and Greeks who have, for some reason, radically left behind their culture's belief systems about death and resurrection. So it breaks into two groups.
Number one, we've got Greeks believing in resurrection. Whereas most Greeks and Romans thought the idea of bodily resurrection was ridiculous, there is now a group of them, 20 years after the death of Jesus, that believes resurrection actually happened to someone named Jesus of Nazareth. And moreover, they believe that Jesus' resurrection was the firstfruits, the beginnings, the promise — that what happened to Jesus would happen to all people who trusted in Jesus and his message. Not only that Jesus was resurrected, but that eventually everyone would be.
Historical problem number two: 20 years after the death of Jesus, we've got Jews believing in a dead-and-alive-again Messiah. You've got Jews who, despite their religion having no basis for it, believe that the Messiah had already come, had been killed despite all evidence to their previous expectations, and that this Messiah had come back to life ahead of everyone else as a sign of the resurrection yet to come.
So here you've got two very different groups of people who have left behind each of their culture's beliefs on death, and they came to agree on a brand new, never-heard-of, never-seen-before system about death and resurrection, all centered around Jesus of Nazareth. And what you have to keep in mind is that this change of mind would have come at great social cost. By believing these things, you would have become an outcast to your society. You would be cut off from your family. You would be cut off from your household. You would lose the ability to buy and sell at the market. You may even face jail time and death, because your beliefs were considered a hazard to society. If you believe that after you die you'll be resurrected and come back to life again anyway, who knows what crazy revolutionary ideas you might take up without fear?
Think about it. Imagine that you went to work for a presidential campaign. You sold your house, you picked up your family, you moved across the country, and you gave everything you had for this presidential campaign. And then that candidate ends up being convicted of a crime and executed. Well, how would you return home, return to your family, and save face? Would you say, "Well, actually, that person came back to life"? That's probably not going to work. "Well, actually, maybe they were adopted by aliens, and they're going to come back in, like, 3,000 years, it's okay." No, you would be ridiculed. Your family would reject you if you came back thinking that about the candidate you'd gone on supporting. In the same way, that's what's happening to these followers of Jesus of Nazareth, who are supporting these absolutely outlandish ideas about death and resurrection.
So our problem has a question attached to it: what on earth could possibly cause such a large group of people to so drastically change their beliefs about life, death, and resurrection, at such personal cost? Well, what I would dare suggest is that, possibly, just possibly, something extraordinary really and truly happened at the tomb of Jesus on the third day after his death. Is it possible that the best logical and historical explanation for the growth of the church in the first century and beyond is that Jesus of Nazareth really did bodily come back from the dead, in his resurrection to everlasting life?
How the early church remembered it
Here are some records of how early Christians remembered the resurrection story:
After the Sabbath, as the first light of the new week dawned, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to keep vigil at the tomb. And suddenly the earth reeled and rocked under their feet as God's angel came down from heaven and came right up to where they were standing. And he rolled back the stone and then sat on it, and shafts of lightning blazed from him, and his garment shimmered snow white. And the guards at the tomb were scared to death. They were so frightened they couldn't move. And this angel spoke to the women: "There's nothing to fear here. I know you're looking for Jesus, the one they nailed to the cross, but he's not here. He was raised. He was resurrected, just as he said. Come and look at the place where he was raised. Now get on your way, and quickly go and tell his disciples. He's risen from the dead. He's going on ahead of you to Galilee. You'll see him there." That's the message. The women, deep in wonder and full of joy, lost no time in leaving the tomb. And they ran to tell the disciples. And Jesus met them, stopping them in their tracks. "Good morning," Jesus says, as if nothing weird's happening at all. And they fell to their knees, embraced his feet, and worshiped him. And Jesus said, "You're holding on to me for dear life. Don't be frightened like that. Go tell my brothers and sisters that they are to go to Galilee, and I'll meet with them there."
And then it changes to first person:
So Peter and I, John, left immediately for the tomb, and we ran neck and neck. And I got to the tomb first (because that's what's important, John outrunning Peter). And stooping to look in, I saw the pieces of linen cloth lying there, but I didn't go in. Simon Peter arrived after me (yes, we get it), entered the tomb, observed the linen cloths lying there, and the kerchief used to cover his head not lying with the linen cloths, but separate, neatly folded by itself. Then I, the one who had gotten there first (yes, we get it, John), went into the tomb, took one look at the evidence, and I believed. Later on that day, the disciples had gathered together, but fearful of the Jews — because, remember, they had aligned themselves with this revolutionary figure, Jesus — they had locked all the doors in the house. And then Jesus entered, stood among them, and said, "Shalom, peace to you." And Jesus showed them his hands and his side. And the disciples, seeing the Master with their own eyes, were exuberant. But Thomas, sometimes called the Twin, one of the Twelve, wasn't with them when Jesus came. The other disciples told him, "We saw the Master." But Thomas said, "Unless I see the nail holes in his hands, put my finger in the nail holes, and stick my hand in his side, I won't believe it." Eight days later, the disciples were again in the room, and this time Thomas was with them. And Jesus came through the locked doors, stood among them, and said, "Shalom, peace to you." And then Jesus focused his attention on Thomas: "Take your finger and examine my hands. Take your hand and stick it in my side. Don't be unbelieving. Believe." And Thomas said something that would be blasphemous to all his fellow Jews, all his friends, all his family. He said, "My Master, my God." And Jesus said, "So you believe because you've seen with your own eyes. Even better blessings are in store for those who believe without seeing."
The worst possible way to invent a religion
Now let me tell you something. If you wanted to invent a religion out of thin air in the first century, it seems as though the early church did everything in its power to do the worst possible job. Five reasons why.
Number one, they used women as witnesses. Now, we are much more cultured than they, but back in the first century, women were considered the worst possible witnesses in a court of law or if they were giving testimony. You couldn't trust women — they were always spinning old wives' tales and things like that. But the early church puts women first and foremost in their story: the first who see Jesus, the first evangelists, the first preachers in the story.
Number two, to a Greek and to a Roman, monotheism — the belief in one God — is absurd. Greeks and Romans knew that there were hundreds, if not thousands, of gods ruling over creation, ruling over the affairs of men and women. And yet early Christians believed and proclaimed that there was but one God who ruled everything. Not just one God above all other gods, but one God, period.
Number three, to a Greek and to a Roman, resurrection is laughable, ridiculous. It never happens. They know better. And yet Christians are foolish enough to hang the center of their faith on a historical event: that resurrection actually happened.
Number four, on the other hand, Jews are the most strict monotheists possible. And yet Christians say that Jesus is in fact God, the second person of the Trinity. This would deeply offend any Jew.
And finally, number five, as we talked about, Messiahs don't die, and they don't need to get resurrected. Messiahs don't die at the hands of the people they're supposed to defeat, and resurrection happens all at once, not in two stages. And yet Christians claimed that Jesus was Messiah, that he did die — he died the worst possible death, a death that would have considered him cursed by the Jewish people, being hung on a tree; that he died at the hands of the people he was meant to defeat; and that he was resurrected as the first stage of the resurrection, with a second stage yet to come.
In other words, the Christian message was absurd to every possible person, in every possible culture, in every possible way. And yet its message spread like wildfire. How?
The best possible solution
Well, I would suggest that our historical problem's best possible solution is that the resurrection is true. What if the story that Christians were telling was so absurd, such a terrible made-up religion, because it actually happened? What if, as hard to believe as it is, Jesus' death really wasn't the end, death didn't have the last word, and the grave really was empty — that there really was a living, breathing Jesus standing outside of it? What if Jesus had the best comeback story of all time?
And that's what Christians believe. That is the bedrock, the foundation, of everything else we stake our lives on. An early Christian missionary, a man named Paul of Tarsus, wrote this. He said, "If Jesus is not resurrected from the dead, then we are to be pitied above all other people. Our faith is meaningless; we might as well give up now." But since Jesus' resurrection happened in history, on a specific day — April 22nd, to be precise — then everything must change.
And because Jesus has the best comeback story of all time — the best story ever of an underdog rising up to defeat the biggest enemy ever, death itself; the best story ever of the reigning champion, God, being brought down low to the depths of hell itself, and then coming back for ultimate victory — if Jesus has the best comeback story of all time, then it empowers all other comeback stories. Again, this is the missionary Paul of Tarsus, putting it this way:
Christ has been raised from the dead. He is the first of the great harvest of all who have died. And just as death came into the world through a man, now the resurrection from the dead has begun through another man. Everyone who belongs to Christ will be given new life. There is an order to this resurrection: Christ was raised as the first of the harvest, stage one, and then all who belong to Christ will be raised when he comes back, stage two.
In other words, what happened to Jesus will happen to anyone who puts their faith and trust in Jesus. Just as death has no hold over him, so death does not have the final say over anyone who puts their trust and their life in Jesus. And more than that, the resurrection that's going to take place after we die — the fact that we too will be resurrected, that we too will be brought back to life — that resurrection power can be in our lives now. Our comeback story can start today.
Again, Paul writes:
God's grace is enough. It's all you need. His strength comes into its own in my weakness. And therefore I quit focusing on my handicap and began appreciating the gift. It was a case of Christ's strength moving in on my weakness. Now I take limitations in stride and with good cheer — these limitations that cut me down to size: abuse and accidents and opposition and bad breaks. I just let Christ take over. And so the weaker I get, the stronger I become.
In other words, the lower we fall, the darker our darks, the lowest our lows — the better the comeback story.
What's your comeback story?
And so what's your comeback story? Or rather, what's the beginning of your comeback story? What's your darkest moment? What's your lowest low? Are you in it right now?
For my brother David, his lowest low was in his early 20s, sitting in county jail. He had gotten drunk at a bar and had driven away in a truck without a license, had a cop try to pull him over, at which point David tried to outrun the cop — which never works well. And so David crashed the car, gets out of the truck, and starts to run away, at which point the cop releases the canine unit in his car, which then tackles my brother David, does a number on his face and his body, and he ends up in jail. And my brother and I, we had made a promise to each other that we would be each other's best man in our weddings. And David broke that promise that year, because instead of being at my wedding, he was in jail.
And it was at that point, at that lowest of lows, that David knew it was time to turn his life around. And it wasn't like it was a one-way, uphill, easy journey from there. There were still struggles and mistakes and bad choices. But a few years later, he met a girl named Katie, and they loved each other, they moved in together, and they decided together that they were going to stop the drinking and get involved in a local church. And it's then where David turned his life back over to God. He started drumming for the worship team, and he realized that he should marry this girl he'd been living with. And so last year, I had the privilege of also not being the best man at my brother's wedding, but instead marrying him and Katie off. And not even two weeks ago, they gave birth to their first child.
Yes, one of my own darkest moments was as a six-year-old being carried away to a new foster family, never seeing my mother again. What I didn't know was that I had a serious heart defect that was slowly robbing my body of oxygen and gradually killing me. And if I hadn't been put into protective care, I would have never had the open-heart surgery I needed to save my life, and eventually be adopted into my family, which would give me a new last name and a new start in life.
No matter what your darkest dark is, no matter what your lowest low is — if it's the terrible mistakes of others toward you, if it's the mistakes and the accidents of this world on your life or the life of those you loved, or if it's your own mistakes paying a toll on your life — no matter what the beginning of your story is, I truly and honestly believe it's the beginning of your comeback story. It's the beginning of God's new work in your life. It's the beginning of God's resurrection power starting to do what it does best: bring what you thought was dead and lifeless and hopeless back from the grave.
And it's not a promise that it's always going to be easy or painless. World-record holder Jared Wallace still doesn't have a leg. My brother David still has the scars from that canine unit. I still have the scars from an open-heart surgery, and a mother I'll never see again. But what God does promise is that for all those who put their trust in him, there's no fear in death. There's God's strength pouring out of our weakness. There's a magnificent light shining into our darkness.
The church is the evidence
The best evidence we have for the resurrection of Jesus is what we're all sitting in right now: the church. Despite the absurdity, the craziness, the counter-cultural, counter-intuitive claim that Jesus rose from the dead — here the church stands. Those early first-century believers made the outrageous claim that our faith lives and dies in a historical act, that God reached down onto earth and big-banged the new creation, the restoration of all things, in the resurrection of Jesus. That the resurrection of Jesus really and truly happened, and with it comes the promise that it will happen for all those who put their faith in him. And that resurrection power can live in you today.
So I don't know where each of you are today. I know many of you have lived this faith out for a long time. So I hope and pray that a message like this encourages you, inspires you, and reminds you that the resurrection really happened, friends — and that this will drive us all to greater acts of courage and faith for the sake of God's kingdom. And even in the midst of our grief and our pain and our suffering on this earth, that we can be confident that God will make all things well.
Maybe some of you put your faith in Jesus a long time ago, but in reality it's meant very little to you day to day. In fact, you're living right now as a practical atheist, knowing somewhere in the back of your mind there's a God out there maybe somewhere, but it doesn't really affect your life today. And so maybe today for you is a day of rededicating your life to Jesus, rededicating your faith to the fact that what we're talking about today is true and real and can turn your life around.
Or maybe for some of you, someone promised you a ham dinner, and you're here despite your best efforts not to be. And maybe you've never given your life over to Jesus, or you did because your parents told you you had to, but you've left that faith of your childhood a long time ago. And maybe today is the day when you say, "It's true, all of it." And you want to be confident that that resurrection power lives in you too.
Response and prayer
So I'm going to invite our worship team and our ushers forward, and we're going to do two things. Right now we're going to take up an offering, but our time of offering is also a time of prayer — a time for you to maybe pay attention to what God is saying to you right now, to listen to God's voice, to hear where you are in maybe those three different groups. And if you do decide to give to Good News this morning, I want to give my personal promise and assurance to you that we do our utmost and our best to leverage our money in the best possible ways to help those who are hurt and broken and who need new life. So if you want to give today, we want you to know that we will do everything in our power to make sure that what you give is used in the best possible way to help the most people possible. But more important than even giving your money is, I want you to give your attention to what God is saying to you right now.
And so as our worship team leads us in the song "It Is Well," I invite you to give, to close your eyes, to give your attention to God.
Almighty God, we know that you are in this place, and we know that you are doing a good work in your people right now, God. So would you bless these tithes and offerings, that they would be leveraged to help the most amount of people. And God, would you speak to your sons and to your daughters. Help them to know what their next step is. Help them to know that you offer new life in Jesus, that the resurrection is real. We pray these things in Christ's name. Amen.
