The following is an
excerpt from my personal journal dated July 4, 2015.
“…but these words
seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter rose and
ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by
themselves; and he went home marveling at what had happened.” (Luke 4:11-12,
ESV)
The resurrection
of Jesus Christ still seems like an “idle tale” to many “...and they did not
believe.” In our cynical, reality-obsessed culture, we gravitate towards the
gritty. We are suspicious of happy endings. Real life isn’t tied up neatly with
pretty ribbons and bows. The resurrection seems to us like a fairy-tale finish
to an otherwise powerful and poignant tragedy. It’s too good to be true, so we
dismiss it as false.
The disciples
apparently felt the same way. Jesus was dead. That was real. They saw it. They
knew it to be true. It must have seemed a cruel joke in poor taste for these
women to come barging in with wild, “idle tales” of a risen Jesus. Yet there was one man
among them who dared hope their words were true, enough to get up and go see
for himself.
Peter’s last encounter with Jesus ended badly. Betrayal. Vehement
denial that he even knew Jesus. Cowardly self-protection at the expense of His
Lord. Worst of all, Jesus had known him better than he knew himself. He told
Peter he would do this.
But He also said,
“When you return…” He knew Peter would deny Him, yet offered him hope that
there was a way back. So when Jesus was killed on the cross, that hope had
died. Jesus was gone and Peter never got the chance to make it right again
before He was killed.
Until today. If He was alive, then maybe… He got up and literally ran to the tomb. And
here’s the part I personally love in the text, the specific word picture Luke uses:
“stooping and looking in.” To stoop means to bow down, to get low. It means to
make yourself smaller so you can enter. It’s a humbling of self. Had Peter
refused to make himself lower, all he would have seen was the stony outside of
a garden tomb. But “stooping and looking in, he saw…” There is a whole different perspective awaiting the one
who will stoop and look in. You have to want it bad enough. Peter did.
Ordinarily, it
would be nothing special for a person to bend down in order to see into a
small, low space. But there was more going on inside Peter. The action was
pregnant with spiritual implication. Peter, whose pride and self-preserving
instincts wouldn’t let him risk his own safety to identify with Jesus just a
few nights earlier, now had to lower himself to peer into a tomb to know if
there was any hope for him beyond his own death.
Did he see Jesus? No, and that’s a good
thing. If Jesus had been in the tomb, then all hope for redemption was lost –
for Peter and for us. Instead, he saw the shell of empty grave clothes laying
there, no body to fill them, as if to shout, “I couldn’t hold Him! He is too
strong! I was no match for Jesus!”
Maybe the reason
the story seems like an “idle tale” to so many is because they will not stop to
look in for themselves. Maybe they are afraid of what they will see if they do.
If they dare get low in front of all their peers and take a hard, honest look
inside that tomb, it might really be
empty. And if it really is empty, then Jesus might actually be alive. And
if Jesus rose from the dead, then He has claims on their lives that they cannot
shake. No, it’s too risky. Better to stay home with the scoffers. It’s safer
that way.
Safer. At least until the sky cracks wide,
and that Risen Jesus returns in triumph to claim His place as rightful King
over all. The those who rejected Him, who refused to stoop and lower
themselves, who dared not look inside for fear of what they would – or would not -- find there, they will cry out for the
mountains to fall on them and for the rocks to cover them. Anything to escape
the penetrating gaze of that “Idle Tale” turned “True Story.” For them there
will be nothing left but the wrath of a Holy God who did everything in His
power to save them except force them to love Him.
For the Christ
follower, stooping is the new standing. It is a permanent position of humility
before a glorious Savior. Jesus stooped far lower than He asks any of us to do.
Yet stoop we must. Lower ourselves we must. If we want to see for ourselves
what is true and live a life of freedom, hope, and victory, then we must do it
from the stooping position.
