The Resurrection

            Grace, Mercy and Peace to you from God our Father and His only Son, Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, Amen.

        During the time of Christmas, we hear comments like, ‘If only people could keep the Christmas Spirit year round.’ And, ‘If only we could have peace on earth and love for our fellow man all the time instead of just at Christmas.’

        I don’t recall people walking about Easter time saying such things. ‘If only people could keep the Easter Spirit year round.’ We do get a day off from work, but it seems to me that Easter is treated more like Thanksgiving than Christmas.

        I believe it is this way because, like Christmas, people do not really understand the true meaning of Easter. Even as Christians, I sometimes wonder if we understand the full effect of Christ’s resurrection from the grave.

        For the past 40 days, we have bent our ears to the voice of our Savior as he completed His work of our salvation here on earth. We listened to the witness of His very disciples as they told of Jesus’ human attributes, which lent to Him weariness, hunger and thirst.

        We cringed at the narrative of temptation by Satan. We felt sorrow at the death of His friend Lazarus and joy at his resurrection, just as He felt sorrow and joy. His actions and His struggles are real to us as human beings because He was a real human being.

        We listened in awe at the blessing from His Father in heaven at His baptism. As Peter relates to Cornelius:

“You know what has happened throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached— how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him.” [Ac 10:37–38]

We watched with Peter, James and John as His divinity was revealed on the mountain in His transfiguration. We felt the betrayal and scorn as we saw a mob of people stirred up into false belief so that those who followed their own idolatry could remain in power and control of their nation. “We are witnesses of everything he did in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They killed him by hanging him on a tree…” [Ac 10:39]

        Yes, we even felt contempt for those who crucified our Lord even while He Himself forgave them their trespasses against Him. We may even have felt a bit of shame when Christ Jesus gave up His last breath to His father in heaven.

        This is usually as far as most people get before they lose comprehension.

        You see, we can understand evil. We do not have to stretch our imaginations very far to believe a story of man’s inhumanity to man. We can understand hunger, thirst, fatigue, and suffering and pain because we have all this in our lives. We can understand ridicule, hatred, and fear. We can understand how a few can control the well-being of many. These are all concepts in which our minds can grasp.

        Yet where we lose the thread, the train of thought or the conception of what has been revealed to us, is in the resurrection from death to life. We have trouble with this because we do not come back to life after we die. So to celebrate the resurrection goes beyond the pale.

        If someone you knew had told you that he was preparing to die and on the third day rise again, would you have believed him? Would you have left your livelihood to follow Jesus knowing that He believed He would come back from the dead? This sounds very strange and even a bit crazy.

        The reason we have such difficulty in this is that we are still in the bodies of our sinful, mortal flesh. We seek things here below instead of those that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. [Colossians 3:1b]

        It is true that it is difficult for us to look at ourselves as we truly are, blackened through and through with sin. No one wants to look into the face of death knowing their very lives are not considered righteous before God. We look into our dark tomb and it does not hold comfort, peace and joy, but fear, anguish and eternal separation from our creator.

        It makes us uncomfortable, so we change the subject. Too much doom and gloom, we say to ourselves. Let us make it bright and cheerful, cute and sweet. Let us not think about death, but about life. This is how those without hope or faith believe and this is how they cope, with candy eggs and chocolate bunnies.

        However, we have been raised with Christ. We were buried with Him through baptism into death, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. [Ro 6:4]

        This is our faith. This is our hope. We believe in the resurrection of the body and in life everlasting. Why? Because the torture, hate, and sin borne by our Lord was not the end of God’s plan. Jesus was not born to fulfill the law, die on the cross and enter into the grave, never to be seen again. This work alone would not save you and me.

        Christ entered into death in order to overcome the final barrier between God and His people. This was something that we could never do. To Jesus it was a stumbling block, but to us it is a mountain of a stone that seals us into the cold darkness of the tomb.

        Three times Jesus predicted His death and resurrection. He did it. He rose from the dead. The word from the tomb is this: “He is not here, for he has risen, as he said.” [Matt 28:6] The Word of Jesus is vindicated. He is proven true. His Word is proven reliable. This is the linchpin of our faith, that He “was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification” [Rom 4:25].

        We now share the comfort and joy of knowing our Redeemer lives. The stone was rolled back from the grave and our lives were restored. We may now depart quickly from the tomb, as the two Mary’s did, with fear and great joy.

        This is the true spirit of Easter, fear and great joy. If only people could keep the Easter Spirit year round. This may sound a bit paradoxical, fear and joy together. Yet we know the power of our God is so great that He can give eternal life or eternal death. This awesome power is right to be respected and feared. Yet it is this same power over life and death in which we hold great joy.

        This joy comes from the promise of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who said, “He who believes and is baptized will be saved” [Mk 16:16a] and, in the words of the Apostle Paul:

“For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.

God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” [Romans 5:8,10]

This is the joy of a God who has power over death. This is the joy of our loving Father in heaven, who gives us life eternal through the resurrection of His Son.

        This is the true spirit of Easter.

“I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you.’” [Matt 28:5-7]

The message of the angel rings out from the tomb, across the centuries, to your ears here today. “He is risen!” Mary Magdalene and the other women saw, heard, and bear witness. Peter and John saw and bear witness. The Eleven and the two on the road to Emmaus, the five hundred, James and all the apostles, Paul, all of them testify, many bearing witness with their lives as martyrs to the fact of Jesus’ resurrection.

        We live in a privileged time. We live in the “last days” of the old creation, the time of the fulfillment. The work of saving this fallen cosmos is accomplished. The new creation has dawned. The dead are raised. You can be as confident of your resurrection as Jesus is risen from the dead and lives and reigns to all eternity. Our preaching is not in vain. Your faith is not in vain. Your sins are forgiven. There is hope in this life, hope in your death, hope for eternal life with God, hope for a new creation. And it all hangs on this little sentence: ‘He is risen.’

        We have come a long way in our Lenten pilgrimage through Holy Week to this bright and glorious day. We have heard the words of Christ to us: the pardoning Word of His forgiveness, the promising word of paradise, the faithful word spoken in abandonment, the compassionate word to His mother, the suffering word of His thirst, the dying word committing His spirit to the Father, the remembering word of the Lord’s Supper, the fulfilled word of His mission— “It is finished!” the restful word of His tomb.

And here today, the vindicated and vindicating word of the resurrection.

Rejoice, dear baptized, believing children of God. Rejoice. He is risen! Remember what He told you.

For Your resurrection, for Your appearances to eyewitnesses, for Your Word, Your Baptism, Your body and blood, Your forgiveness, life, and salvation, for the sure hope of eternal life and our resurrection, we give You thanks and praise, most holy Jesus.

Amen.