Sermon: Easter Sunday - 2021

 

4 April 2021

Text: Mark 16:1-8 (Job 19:23-27, 1 Cor 15:51-57)

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

“Death is swallowed up in victory.  O death, where is your victory?  O death, where is your sting?”

St. Paul is quoting an old saying, and he is pointing out that this is what awaits us when our Lord returns, when we will be raised from the dead.  And he points out that this victory over death is nothing that we have earned, but is rather a gift: “But thanks be to God,” he says, “who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

For our Lord is the victor, and He shares His victory with us – with every one of us who is baptized and who believes, from the babies to the elderly, from the new convert to the lifetime church member.  This gift is ours, dear friends. 

St. Paul elsewhere teaches us that death is “the wages of sin.”  In other words, we die because we deserve it.  We are sinners.  We do not keep the law.  We act on the sinful nature that we have inherited from our parents and their parents before them, all the way back to our first parents, who rebelled from God in the garden, tempted by the devil.  We deserve to die.  We deserve hell.

And because death is the penalty for sin, and because God’s justice requires that we should be perfect – for that is how mankind was made: perfect – we are lost and condemned.  We have no hope.  We are in debt beyond what we could ever even imagine to pay.  We are in a deep hole without a ladder.  We are helpless, and just waiting to die.

But, dear friends, God does not just throw us away.  He doesn’t abandon us to that which we deserve.  Rather He comes to us bearing His own riches, and Jesus empties Himself of His wealth to become a slave, to become a man without so much as a cloak, to become a condemned prisoner – all so that He could give His riches to us, so that we might indeed pay off the impossible debt.  Jesus descends to where we are in the deep hole where we are stuck.  He is the ladder envisioned in Jacob’s dream, and He Himself bears us on His back, which is bloodied by the lashes of His scourging, carrying us to safety, as a Good Shepherd seeks and saves the lost lamb, carrying him home.

And instead of us merely waiting to die, Jesus Himself intervenes, dying on our behalf, but then rising on our behalf – giving us the promise that because He “gives us the victory,” we too will mock death: “O death, where is your victory?  O death, where is your sting?”  For Jesus destroyed death by dying, and He proved it by walking out of His own tomb under His own power, defying not only death, but the sinful men who conspired to kill Him, as well as the most powerful empire and army known to history.  The sealed tomb and the guard of soldiers were helpless before our Lord, for nothing could or would stop Him from fulfilling the Father’s will that we be rescued – no matter the opposition or the cost.

The women came to the tomb early that Sunday morning, the first Easter, and the first Lord’s Day.  They expected to find what one always finds in a tomb – a lifeless body, unable to move and beginning to decay.  They brought the embalming spices to perform the rites for Jesus that He was denied in the hurry to get Him into the tomb before the Sabbath began.  They came out of love, but they also came in mourning.  They came feeling helpless, and probably greatly confused.  The story was not supposed to end like this.  But still they came.  They came in faith that somehow they would roll away the stone.  They came in faith that they could at least delay the decomposition of the body of Jesus, at least for a little while.  They came even as death seemed to have had the last word.  They came seemingly defeated, and yet they came anyway – still with a little faith.

We too come to Jesus, dear friends, even when we seem to be defeated by death or sorrow or disappointment or any number of things that seems to defeat us.  We come beaten down by the devil, the world, and our sinful nature.  But still we come.  We come week after week on the Lord’s Day to hear the Good News, to be absolved of our sins, and to partake of the Lord’s body and blood, which come to us by means of a miracle – the same body that hung upon the cross to save us, the same blood that dripped onto the world to bless it and reclaim it for God – the very blood that atones for our sins and marks us as redeemed.

And when the women came to the tomb, their first surprise was that “the stone had been rolled back.”  This could not have happened by natural means, like the wind blowing it away.  For “it was very large.”  And where was the seal that had been placed on the tomb by the governor?  Where were the soldiers assigned to guard it? 

This is certainly not what they expected to see.  It must have been weird, and frightening.  And yet, in their faith, they did not run away.  They were looking for Jesus.  They were still looking for Jesus.

And they saw something truly remarkable inside the tomb, “and they were alarmed.”  For tombs normally contain dead bodies, not “a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe.”  And normally, people in tombs don’t talk.  But this mysterious man did: “And he said to them, ‘Do not be alarmed.  You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified.’”  And what he said next was very good news.  In fact, we call it the Gospel – the Good News that will soon spread throughout the whole world.  But as of this moment, the only ones who know the good news are these women with their embalming spices.  The messenger bears the message: “He has risen.  He is not here.”  And he invites them to see with their own eyes: “See the place where they laid Him.”

But there is no time to marvel, to celebrate, to wonder if they are dreaming, or even to be afraid.  For the angel has work for them to do right away: “But go, tell His disciples and Peter that He is going before you to Galilee.  There you will see Him, just as He told you.”

They did what they were told to do, in spite of their “trembling and astonishment.”  They kept this Good News to themselves until they were able to find Peter and the other ten.  They were afraid, but they “went out and fled from the tomb” on their mission to pass along this Good News.

This Good News is still being circulated around the world today, dear freinds.  Not a single day since that first Easter has there been a lapse in one person repeating the Good News: that Christ is risen, and that His death atones for our sins, and that we too shall rise!  We can indeed taunt death, and we can also look forward to Christ’s return, for He does not come as our judge but as our Advocate, not as our executioner, but as our Redeemer.

And this Good News runs like a scarlet thread throughout the Bible, from God’s declaration to Satan in the Book of Genesis that the Seed of the Woman would crush his head, to the confession of Job – which we heard anew this morning: “I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will stand on the earth.  And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God.”

Dear brothers and sisters redeemed by our Lord Jesus Christ, we shall see God and we shall see Him in our own flesh, in our own skin, and with our own eyes.  We will be just as physically complete as Jesus was when He did indeed appear to the disciples and to many people during the forty day celebration of that first Easter, that triumphant time when the risen Lord could indeed say, “O death, where is your victory?  O death, where is your sting?”  For during that first forty-day Eastertide, our Lord would ordain the Eleven and send them out to preach the Good News that they heard from the women who had gone to the tomb.  They will be made apostles, authorized to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them.”

And that is why we are here today, dear friends, to be forgiven and redeemed, to hear again and to rejoice in the Good News, and to praise God for His mercy.  We are here to mock death.  We are here to celebrate life.  We are here to continue to hear and repeat the Good News.  And we join Christians around the world, saying:

Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.