Preached by Alison Moffitt at St Oswald’s Haberfield, 20 July 2023. Photo below taken by Alison Courtney. The audio recording from the funeral can be listened to below.
Psalm 116
John 20.1-10
I wanted to talk to you a bit about John Peter Moffitt’s name.
We’ve inherited a great naming convention from my parents: to pass on our parents’ names to our own children, as middle names. Sophia is Grace. Tom is Robert. When we found out in April that John was a boy, we knew instantly that his middle name would be Peter.
And John for a first name. We liked that. A good name. A bible name. A Greek name. And a family name. John is the name of Theo Yianni, Yiayia’s brother. John is the name of one of my brother’s lifelong besties. Closer to home, John is the middle name of Matt’s middle brother Adam. But most of all, John is the name of Matt’s other middle brother, Shaun, who was stillborn at 36 weeks.
We had wanted to check with mum and dad what they thought about naming a living son after his stillborn uncle. But then, maybe John has been a good choice after all. We are so thankful how mum and dad taught us to honour and remember Shaun as a member of our family, and we’re clinging to their example this week as we remember John too.
We also named John out of today’s Bible reading, from John 20. In real life, 2000 years ago, John and Peter were great mates, disciples of Jesus and among his closest of friends. The Bible has a string of wild, poignant and hilarious stories about these two men and their interactions with Jesus, so we liked the idea of pairing these best friend names together. One of the funniest episodes is the one we read today, and it makes me laugh to read it (when it’s not John’s funeral). It is actually a serious story. Mary Magdalene goes to mourn at Jesus’ tomb, but when she gets there it is open and empty. So she runs in confusion to Peter and John, who race off to see for themselves. But John himself is the one recounting his story. He is the author, so he reports his perspective with some bonus details. First up, when John talks about himself, here and in all the other moments of Jesus’ life he appears in, he shows a lot of confidence! He has no problems talking about himself in the third person, in fact, he doesn’t use his own name, he very earnestly talks about himself as ‘the other disciple’ and ‘the one who Jesus loved’. Such confidence! But the part that makes me laugh, the part that has been turned into the most memes, is verse 4:
‘The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in, and he saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he didn’t go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb.’
John and Peter discovered evidence for the resurrection of Jesus; but also, John thinks it’s very important that we know he is a faster runner than Peter.
I want you to remember this story, everytime you see two kids racing home, or back to a car, you need to remember John and Peter, these two grown men racing like two little kids: ‘I touched the car first!’l ‘yeah, but I got in first!. And then remember the sass of John, the one who got to write his testimony down, so that 2000 years later, when we read these sacred words about God, the author of life, and the disciples discovery of the resurrection of Jesus, we get John’s very important bonus detail that he was actually really good at running.
We thought about this text a lot when we found out John was sick, when the doctors explained to us how hard John was working to fight off this disease, how hard his heart was pumping. It was a great comfort to remember the other John all those years ago, working hard, running fast, heart pounding, trying to get to grave as fast as possible to see what had happened to Jesus, who he loved.
When John and Peter got there - they didn’t realise it straight away - but when they got there, they’d found the resurrection of Jesus. Jesus was, he is, stronger than death, and the grave couldn’t contain him.
When we imagined John, our John, racing like this John to see the resurrected Jesus, we hadn’t quite realised that he would encounter the resurrected Jesus so quickly. But he has. Our John ran his race really fast, his heart pounded really hard, and now he has discovered the life that the living Lord Jesus has to offer.
There is one more story about John and Peter that I wanted to talk about before I step down this morning. It’s recorded in the book of Acts, it happened about two months after this race to the empty tomb. We actually preached about it about a month ago, Angus and I both, ‘cause it’s a story with far more detail than John 8, so it took two Sundays to cover it all. But the last time I was up here like this, it was to teach about Peter and John, and our John Peter was here with me. He was with me as I prepared, kicking me as I sat at my desk. I have a little stash of sherbet lollies in my drawer, and when I wanted to feel John move, I would eat one. And sure enough, 5 minutes later, I could feel little kicks inside. John was with me as I stood here speaking, and I couldn’t wear that flipping roving microphone because it wouldn’t attach properly to the maternity dresses I’d had to start wearing as John grew.
What did we speak about? It was the episode in Acts 3 and 4. About two months after John and Peter raced to the tomb, two months after they’d realised that Jesus was in fact alive, and had the power to overturn death for everyone, Peter and John went to the temple in Jerusalem to pray. Outside the temple they met a man who couldn’t walk, not just because he had broken his leg, but because he was born with a degenerative illness. He had never walked – for 40 years. As Angus put it:
“Chicken-legs would have been a generous way to describe this man”. His thigh muscles were non-existent, his calves couldn’t be seen, his toes had never wriggled, cracked or curled.
But Peter told him, in Jesus’ name, to stand up and walk. And the man did. He went walking and leaping and praising God. Peter, John, and everyone there that day witnessed the resurrection power of Jesus at work in that man’s body.
Again and again in the Bible we see how God can create things out of nothing and restore what is broken.
He can call things into existence that had never existed before.
He can put healthy muscles into the legs of a lame man.
He can make new life out of the grave.
Our John never stood on his legs. Our John never got to grow his muscles.
But Matthew and I know, have always known, but now we know in an even more profound way, that Jesus makes life where there is no life. Jesus has the power to create something new where there was nothing before.
When Jesus comes back, he will make John’s legs, John’s heart, John’s everything new. We will see John live and walk, and leap, and praise God.
Jesus’ resurrection is not a metaphor.
And the hope we hold for our own resurrections when Jesus comes back: it’s not a metaphor either. If we take Jesus seriously at his word, we know that John’s body, our own bodies, will live again.
That’s why, today, in the presence of our dead son’s body, weeping uncontrollably, Matthew and I can say with Psalm 116 that God has delivered our souls from death,
our eyes from tears,
our feet from stumbling.
We know that we will walk before the Lord
in the land of the living.
Resurrection is not a metaphor. But the resurrection is an unprecedented concept and hard for us to imagine, so the Bible uses many metaphors to speak about what this resurrected life will be like. It’s crocuses blooming in the desert. It’s a garden city, a thriving green metropolis, where trees can bear fruit in all seasons. But for Matthew, and I, and I think for our children, the metaphor that we love the most is this: the resurrected life will be a wedding feast, with delicious food, and the choicest wine, a guest list longer than the eye can see because God isn’t concerned about the numbers. And Jesus has invited every single one of us to come. I hope to feast with you there. I’m hoping for some good dancing. John got to dance with us back in April at Phil and Hannah’s wedding. But he was in my womb, so it wasn’t quite the same. How wonderful it will be, in the life to come, at Jesus’ wedding, to see John himself walking and leaping and praising God. It will be good to dance with him.
We really can’t wait.
Come Lord Jesus.