This is a transcript of the sermon preached by Dr Tamie Davis at Broadview Baptist Church, 5.4.2026 on John 20. Picture by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash.
There is an ancient call and response that we say at Easter time. I say, “He is risen!” and the reply is, “He is risen indeed!” This is a saying that unites Christians throughout time and all over the world. In Tanzania, they say, “Amefufuka!” And the response is, “Kweli amefufuka.” I’m sure many of us here would know this phrase in other languages or cultures.
It’s a powerful statement, because it affirms something incredible. Think about it. If you’re there, in the first century and someone says to you, “Jesus is risen!” The most likely response is, “Wait, what? No, that can’t be right. Are you sure?” I was trying to think of an equivalent in our day and age, something equally unlikely. And I thought, what if someone came to you and said,“You can buy a house for 200 grand.” What do you say? “Yeah, sure mate. Nice one. Are there drop bears in the backyard?” If someone comes to you and says, “You can buy a house for 200 grand” you don’t say, “You can indeed!” You say, ‘As if!’
And when Jesus was raised, and the news comes, ‘He is risen,’ it would be kind of weird to respond, ‘He is risen indeed!’ It seems so unlikely. So unreal. You would only believe it if you saw it. But in John’s telling of the resurrection here, the striking thing is the lack of seeing, at least at first. Because a lot of this passage is people NOT SEEING Jesus. Mary goes to the tomb, doesn’t see Jesus. John and Peter go to the tomb, don’t see Jesus. Jesus comes to Mary in the garden and she still misses it, at least at first. By the time Jesus appears to his disciples in the room, NONE OF THEM except Mary HAVE SEEN HIM yet! And then there’s poor Thomas who isn’t there and misses out on seeing him. And that’s intentional.
We’re meant to be struck by the weirdness of the situation. There’s a tomb, with empty grave clothes. Where on earth is the body? At least when Lazarus was raised, he came out with the grave clothes still on, but in this situation they’ve been separated, disentangled. So, where is the body? Maybe it’s been stolen – that’s what Mary thinks. She’s reaching for something there, isn’t she? Because if she thought about it for a moment, why would the thieves undress the graveclothes from the body and steal just the body? Like, the whole situation is wild. But stealing still seems more likely than resurrection.
In fact, only one person concludes that it means Jesus has risen – John himself. He’s called ‘the other disciple here’. Did you catch that in v.8? He and Peter come to the tomb, they see there’s no body inside. John goes inside and on the basis of that, believes. Believes in what? The next verse tells us – it’s the resurrection.
And that’s good news for people like you and me, on Easter Sunday. Because this is the boat in which most of us find ourselves. Like John, we have the evidence of the empty tomb, but Jesus has not appeared in person to most of us. And John’s point is: that doesn’t matter. He believed on the basis of the empty tomb. Not the basis of an appearance from Jesus. And he didn’t even have the testimony of the Scriptures, which we do. In fact, we have more than John: we have the evidence of the empty tomb, plus all the other signs he has written about. He said that at the end of the reading, didn’t he? Verses 30-31. Jesus did lots of other things but these ones are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
John’s point is, you are not second-class Christians because you didn’t see Jesus in person after his resurrection. Sometimes we think that the disciples were so much more blessed because they walked with Jesus and saw him after his resurrection. But Jesus says the opposite: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” (V. 29). He’s not asking for blind faith. After all, John saw the empty tomb, and he’s written down these signs for us. But it’s also not the case that we are missing out.
We can say, with full confidence, ‘He is risen indeed!’ Don’t let anyone tell you that you need more than the Scriptures. I mean, if you want to pray for a vision of Jesus, all power to you! That’s basically what Thomas does and there’s nothing wrong with that. Jesus doesn’t rebuke Thomas. But the Scriptures – (like) John’s gospel here – are God’s gift to us that we might believe and have life in his name.
Many of you know that I am a twin. My twin, Steph, is no longer with us – Jesus called her home eight years ago, and of course it’s the resurrection of Jesus, which we’re celebrating today, which gives me confidence that we will see each other again. But when she was alive, Steph once had a very clear dream in which Jesus spoke to her. And people were often very impressed by that, they would say to her, you must be so spiritual. Or sometimes, they would wish that Jesus would appear to them, so they would know exactly what to do. She laughed at them. She said, in the dream, Jesus said exactly what I knew the Scriptures were saying, but I was just too stubborn, so God had to get his bommy knocker out and hit me over the head with it.’
As we heard John 20 read for us earlier, as we come to look at it now, we have all that we need. Let’s be open to hearing God’s voice. In this passage, it’s Jesus’ voice which makes his identity clear, as he says Mary’s name. That’s when she realises who he is (v. 16). Just as he said earlier in John, he is the Good Shepherd, he calls his sheep by name and they hear his voice. So, Jesus has called Mary; what does he say? Well, he says something kind of odd! “Do not hold on to me,”
Which seems odd, doesn’t it? She’s just got him back from the dead. It’s very normal to come for a hug! But Jesus is the Good Shepherd; he will lead her in the right path and that’s what he’s doing here. He’s not saying “Don’t touch me,” so much as “Don’t get too attached to me.” Why? Because he’s actually going away again! He immediately starts talking to her about his ascension: “I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”
It isn’t the case that Jesus is back and everything’s going to back to how it was before. Jesus is not returning to life with his disciples; he is returning to life with the Father. And they need to understand that, because, it turns out, he has work for them to do. And we see that, because when Jesus appears to the disciples, he does the same thing he did with Mary. He immediately starts talking about what that work is. They’re in the room, he turns up, “Peace be with you,” (v 19) they’re overjoyed and rather than having some kind of reunion party, Jesus says, “Peace be with you. [again] As the Father sent me, so I am sending you.” (V 21) And he breathes on them and gives them the Holy Spirit. He’s immediately re-orienting them. Straight down to it, no messing around. There they are, fearful of the Jewish leaders in a room, and Jesus turns up and tells them to get out there because he’s got work for them to do.
Today is a wonderful day, when we celebrate the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. But don’t get stuck in celebration mode for too long. Let the voice of Jesus re-orient you, as he reoriented the disciples. Friends, if we think that the resurrection of Jesus is just for our benefit, or just for the people in our family, or our church, or our nation, Jesus re-focuses our priorities here. He asks us to broaden our gaze, to look beyond ourselves, our own needs or our own salvation. Yes, Jesus is for you; but Jesus also sends you out. Just like he did his disciples. As the Father sent him.
Because his bit is done. He has died for the sins of the world; he has risen as the first fruits of a new creation, and he is ascending to the right hand of the Father. And just as the Father sent him, now he sends us, as the Father sent him, into the world, with the Holy Spirit and the news of sins forgiven.
I wonder how that makes you feel, this mission given to us by the risen Jesus to be sent into the world as he was sent. Do you think much at all about Jesus’ world? To be honest, some days I prefer not to think about the wider world. Abroad we hear of multiple wars, of bombings and missiles and dictators, of hostile takeovers or invasions in South America, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, North Africa. And we think, I just can’t face the news today. It all seems so hopeless, I feel so helpless. I’m just trying to make ends meet at the petrol pump. And maybe we don’t want to look at the broader world, because, lurking behind all that we see there, is the question, where is God in this world? In the warmongering and the bleeding and the starving and the terror, where is he? This world is too much for me; is it too much for him? Has he abandoned it? These are heavy questions; questions it’s sometimes easier not to ask.
But friends, let me suggest to you that it’s the resurrection which not only gives us the courage to look at these questions, but helps us to answer them. Because when John believes, he has not yet seen Jesus; he has not received the Holy Spirit, he has not had his vision of the glorious new creation when there will no longer be any crying or mourning or shame. And yet, he believes. And we’re told, there are still some things he’s got to work out, he’s not worked it out from the Scriptures yet, but he believes. He believes that Jesus has risen. Why? Because the tomb is empty. The tomb is empty. Which means, Christ the Lord is risen today. It means, death could not hold him down. In fact, endless is the victory he has won over death. O trampled death, where is your sting? The angels roar for Christ the King!
Friends, we see the chaos of the world, we feel that pain and yet, we believe. We believe that death has been arrested, because the grave has no claim on the Lord Jesus, and it has no claim on those of us who are in Christ. We see our world, and we believe. We believe that this not the end of the story. Because Jesus in the grave was not the end of the story.There is a better, beautiful, truer story. It’s the story of the one who turns graves into into gardens, he brings beauty from ashes; it’s the story of Christ, our hope in life and death. And it is no mere story. This is no pipe dream, like buying a house for 200 grand. He is risen. He is risen indeed!
Everything is different now. He has opened the way for the world to live again, Hallelujah! We believe it, not because we see it as we read the news, but because the tomb is empty. We, the people of the resurrection believe though we do not see the full picture. We say, I don’t know what God is doing here. But I know my God. My God is not dead. He was dead. He was dead and buried and laid in a tomb. But today, He is risen! He is risen indeed. And so we look at our world and we walk by faith and not by sight.
It’s the resurrection which powers us to go into the world. That’s why Jesus immediately breathes on his disciples and sends them out. Jesus has passed from death to life; those who believe in him have passed from death to life, and so, they go into his world knowing that death has no hold on them. Someone said to me the other day that Jesus’ resurrection didn’t matter, because all his disciples died – like Paul and Peter. And I said to him, no, you’ve got that backwards! Paul and Peter and the other martyrs of the early church could give themselves up even to death, because they knew death was not the end. The witness of the disciples doesn’t look what we expect it to look like. If Jesus is indeed victorious over the grave, over every power and dominion, if Satan has indeed been defeated at the cross, why is it that his followers are persecuted instead of powerful? Didn’t he say that he had come to bring life? Well, it’s a different kind of power, isn’t it? Because it’s a different kind of king and a different kind of kingdom. It’s a kingdom unlike the ones of this world. So the boldness of Jesus’ followers will be expressed not in domination but in humility, because their King did not come on a warhorse but on a donkey. He was crowned on a cross. And it was from there that he was vindicated; so no loss of rights or freedom or status or life is to be feared by any of us who are in Christ Jesus. Jesus breathes on his disciples and sends them out to extend the offer of forgiveness of sins. Here is life, here is freedom, here is victory. To go, giving ourselves in love for others, because we belong to the Lord Jesus, not to death.
One part of my job is preparing missionaries for service in Jesus’ world and I always recommend this book, The Insanity of God by Nik Ripken. It’s a bunch of stories of God at work, in the most difficult and trying parts of the world. One part of it is stories from the house church movement in China in the twentieth century and Ripken meets with all these leaders of house churches, and he realises, every single one of them has served at least one 3-year prison term for their faith. They casually mention torture and starvation and that’s not extraordinary for them – it’s normal. And while Christians in the west are very concerned about this, the Chinese leaders don’t seem resentful at all, and new believers who had not yet been to prison did not seem especially fearful either. They were just kind of calm and accepting.
Not because they were resigned. But because the tomb was empty. They knew the empire of their day could try to extinguish the light of the Lord Jesus, and they knew the darkness would not overcome them. And you know what they told Ripken? They told him: Because so many of them were arrested, and all gathered together in prison from all over China, they had more Christian fellowship in prison than they had ever had before. They had more freedom to preach inside prison than they ever had outside, and they saw more converts. One said, I know more believers inside prison than I ever knew outside. They described their prison years – years of torture and deprivation – as sweet, years when their faith was strengthened. Who would have thought? The people of the cross and the resurrection would have thought. Because the tomb is empty; and we might not see the whole picture, but we believe.
So as the Jesus sends us into his world, his resurrection sets us free to serve, because we know death has no hold on us, because we know God’s work is often found in the unlikeliest of places. God was at work as Jesus was dying on the cross, and death could not hold him. The tomb was empty! When all looks hopeless in our world, God is at work, so we can go into his world with confidence. Who is he? Who is our God? He is risen! He is risen indeed.
As the band comes up, I want to invite you today to see this new reality with me, to believe it and to declare it. We’re going to do it like a call and response thing. So, when you hear me say ‘He is risen’ let me invite you to respond with ‘He is risen indeed.’
So, won’t you stand with me.
When we look at the world, because the tomb is empty, we say, He is risen! [He is risen indeed.]
When I feel anxious, still I can say, He is risen! [He is risen indeed.]
When my family or my world are in chaos, I believe He is risen! [He is risen indeed.]
When it seems like evil has triumphed, He is risen! [He is risen indeed.]
When I feel helpless or hopeless, He is risen! [He is risen indeed.]
When we meet those struggling to make sense of the world, we have this hope to offer them: He is risen! [He is risen indeed.]
Dr Tamie Davis is a missiologist who served in Tanzania for ten years, partnering with the Tanzania Fellowship of Evangelical Students. She is a Mentor with the Angelina Noble Centre and Mobilisation Lead for CMS SANT. Her PhD explored the prosperity theology of a group of Tanzanian women.
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