Sermon: Easter – 2025

20 April 2025

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!

Dear friends, we often hear both our Old Testament reading from Job, and our Epistle reading from First Corinthians, at funerals.  And the reason is clear: Christian funerals are not a wallowing in sorrow about the past, but rather about our joyful and expectant hope for the future.  And for us Christians, our hope for the future is Jesus.  For He died on the cross on Good Friday to redeem us from sin, and He rose again within the tomb on Easter Sunday to free us from the wages of sin, that is, death. 

For those who have no hope because they do not confess Jesus with us, death is devastating.  This is because those without hope can’t connect the dots between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.  They cannot see beyond death to resurrection.  They take comfort in memories and spend their lives in a maudlin search for meaning in pennies on the ground and cardinals and perhaps even in forbidden things like fortune-telling. 

But for the Christian, although death is painful, and we mourn the loss of our loved ones – because of Easter, we know that it is a temporary separation.  Centuries before Jesus came into our world, Job confessed: “I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will stand upon the earth.  And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another.”

And having heard the voice of Jesus years after His resurrection, St. Paul left us this promise of God, that, “When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.  O death, where is your victory?  O death, where is your sting?’  The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.  But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

The day before yesterday, we called to mind the most extraordinary funeral in history.  It was God’s funeral.  For God had been assassinated by a collusion of a traitor among His closest friends, His own nation, the world’s most powerful empire, and the devil himself.  And our God who died a shameful death did not receive the courtesy of a proper funeral.  The funeral rites had to be interrupted because the Sabbath was coming.  God was laid in a borrowed tomb, awaiting the completion of the funeral rites on Sunday morning, when the Jewish Sabbath would be over.

So God rested on the seventh day, spending the Sabbath asleep in the tomb.  He rested from all of His work in recreating the world.  He rested on behalf of mankind, who had become mortal because of sin, but who, in Christ, will once more put on immortality.  But when God’s rest was over, He rose again, “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.” 

Jesus rose some time when the darkness brought forth the first day of a new week, “when the Sabbath was past.”  He rose, and left the tomb, folding the linens and setting them on the slab.  The heavy stone sealing the tomb was powerless to contain Him.  The seal placed by the government had no authority over Him.  The sentinels who were placed to keep watch were as useless as dead men to keep our Lord inside.  For this was a weird, abrupt funeral that had been put on hold: first in order to remember the Seventh Day when God rested, and then, once again, on the First Day – when God rose from death and went back to work.

The funeral of Jesus would never be completed.  The spices will not be used on Christ’s body – but we do use them in our incense that burns in churches all over the world.  The oils that would have been used to anoint His body were simply not needed – first because Jesus is the Christ, that is, the Anointed One, and second, because He is alive, never again to die.  We Christians use oil instead to trace the sign of the cross on the heads of the baptized, and to anoint the sick as Scripture teaches us pastors to do in giving pastoral care to those in need. 

Jesus’ body is not in need of purification rituals.  Jesus has awoken from death.  Jesus has conquered death by dying.  Jesus has conquered sin by His perfect righteousness.  Jesus has conquered the devil by rising again, overcoming the evil and the malice of His murderers, and atoning for the sins of mankind that resulted from the chaos that the serpent introduced in the garden.

It took the world a little while to learn the news – the best news in the history of the universe.  It must have been a strange moment – that little window of time after Jesus rose, and before anyone other than God, the angels, and the demons knew about it.  The heavens were rejoicing, but the world was still mourning.  But the world is about to find out.  And the messengers will be the most unlikely of witnesses: the women who came to finish the funeral.  Instead, they will go and tell Peter and the rest of the men whom Jesus will ordain to tell the rest of the world the Good News – the very Good News, the Gospel, that the apostles will preach. 

You have to admire the faith of these women.  They left at the break of day laden with heavy supplies to finish the funeral, bringing the rest of the spices and oils, but not knowing how they would get inside the tomb – for the stone sealing it was very large.  They didn’t know how this would work, but they went anyway.  That, dear friends, is faith.  Somehow, they knew it would all work out.

And did it ever, dear friends! 

They found that the stone had already been moved.  They were alarmed.  For they did not expect to see this: a tomb without a silent, dead body, but with a talkative, living angel.  In spite of their being alarmed, they are still there to do what duty compels them to do – not yet realizing that, like the funeral of the son of the widow of Nain’s, the funeral of Jairus’s daughter, and the funeral of Lazarus – this funeral has been rudely interrupted by Jesus.  This time, Jesus walks out of the tomb as a victorious preview for all of us who confess Him, who plead His blood as atonement for our sins, and who lay hold of His promise that our own funerals will be similarly interrupted by Jesus.

“Do not be alarmed,” says the angel.  “You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified.  He has risen; He is not here.  See the place where they laid Him.  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.”

Now, this secret is only known to God, the angels, the demons – and this little group of women who have just been fired as funeral directors and rehired as messengers.  We know that this was overwhelming for them – as Mark reports: “And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

St. Mark leaves us at this awkward stopping point – but at some point, he added a few more verses, giving us a few more details of our Lord’s work after His abandoned funeral.  The other Gospel writers give us a lot more detail.  We will talk more about that later in this glorious Easter season, since Easter will continue for six weeks, dear friends, just as Jesus will appear to Peter and the disciples at Galilee – and elsewhere – for forty days.  Easter is just starting today. 

And so for now, it is sufficient to ponder the mystery that Jesus, God in the flesh, paid for our sins by dying as a sacrificial Lamb at the cross, that His blood atones for us in a fulfillment of the Passover, that we can confess with Job: “I know that my Redeemer lives,” and we can taunt death along with St. Paul: “O death, where is your victory.”  We will hear the Good News.  We will eat His body and drink His blood.  We will rejoice.  And we will defiantly confess with the angel who made that first announcement from the empty tomb:

Christ is risen.  He is risen indeed.  Alleluia.

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

Sermon: Good Friday – 2025

18 April 2025

Text: John 18:1 – 19:42

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

All of human history has led up to the events of Good Friday.  It is painful to listen to, but it is how God Himself is restoring and recreating the world.  It is through the pain and sorrow of the cross that God Himself is restoring and recreating us, taking a chisel to humanity to renew the image of God that we traded away for a little bit of forbidden knowledge about good and evil.  The remaking of  mankind is painful and shocking – and God Himself received the blows of the hammer and the cuts of the chisel.  God Himself took flesh to suffer and to die.  This story is the most exciting in all of human history – and it really is the sum total of what it means to be human, and what our lives are all about.

For in spite of our rebellion, God did not abandon us.  In spite of our sins, God does not recoil from us.  Rather God becomes one of us, and we recoiled from Him: whose “appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance… despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.”  But His passion is not just another act of gratuitous violence.  Rather there is a purpose: “He was wounded for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His stripes we are healed.”

Good Friday is a story that is too remarkable not to be authored by God Himself.  For God steps into mankind’s story – the Author becoming a character.  The Creator takes on the nature of a creature, in order to save creation by creating it anew.  It is a story of betrayal, of suffering, of death – but also one of redemption.  It is a story that was thousands of years in the making and in the telling.  For God began to not only tell the story – but to bring it to reality – in the Old Testament.  The story of Good Friday shines like a light on the Scriptures of the Old Testament that were kept in darkness until that very day when darkness came at high noon.

St. John records the passion for us in great detail. 

We begin in a garden – even as all of human history began in a garden.  And in this garden, we begin with our Lord’s arrest – where even there, as He is outnumbered by “a band of soldiers” armed with “lanterns and torches and weapons,” the mention of His name throws them to the ground. 

Jesus is first taken to the Jewish Council, where He is put on trial before the so-called high priest.  Jesus is, of course, not only the true High Priest, but also the King of Israel.  But He willingly submits to these corrupted men who ironically judge Him.  Seeking the death penalty, they bring Jesus to Pilate: the Roman governor.  For the Romans will crucify criminals who were not citizens of Rome.  Jesus confesses to Pilate that He is the King – but that His kingdom “is not of this world.”  And in spite of His innocence, Pilate has Jesus flogged and subjected to the cross.

John points out the details of our Lord’s passion and crucifixion that were indeed prophesied by the prophets in the Word of God, hundreds of years before.  Once again, the cross serves as the torch that lights the words on the pages of Scripture.  Without the cross, one cannot even see the words, let alone understand them.

The unthinkable happens at the cross.  God meets His own mother according to the flesh.  This reminds us of who Jesus is.  He is God who has come to redeem and recreate the world.  But He is also a man – a flesh-and-blood part of the world who was not only “conceived by the Holy Spirit” but also “born of the virgin Mary.”  And as He breathes His last, Jesus takes care of His mother – giving her to John to care for her. 

And once this last arrangement has been made, Jesus is ready to carry out God’s plan that was made “before the foundation of the world.”  Before breathing His last, He fulfills one last prophecy concerning His thirst, being “poured out like water,” saying, “I thirst.”  And it is here that the greatest tragedy and the greatest victory in all of human history happens: “It is finished.”

“It is finished,” dear friends.  Our Lord’s suffering is finished.  The life of God as a man subjected to the hatred of other men is finished.  The project to reclaim and renew the world is finished.  It is made complete.  The mission has been accomplished.  Jesus “bowed His head and gave up His spirit.” 

“It is finished.” 

And though the story is finished, there is an epilogue.  There is a story within the story that will play out on the third day after.  But today is the eve of the Sabbath – the holy Passover Sabbath.  The body of Jesus cannot remain on the cross.  Jesus has more to do in the flesh now that His mission to save us has been finished.  Jesus is going to show how foolish it is for men to try to interfere in the will of God. 

God speaks prophetically yet again, as John witnesses the blood and water pouring out of our Lord’s side, like a fountain of life, like baptism and the Lord’s Supper by which Jesus continues to come to us where we are, in His flesh, in bringing His miraculous presence to us in space and time. 

“It is finished,” Jesus continues to say concerning our sins, concerning the devil’s influence over us, concerning our death and the grave.  For Jesus has completed the mission, and He has rescued us as our own Kinsman-Redeemer. 

John tells of the mercy of our Lord’s friends Joseph and Nicodemus: Pharisees and members of the Council who risked their lives to take care of the body of Jesus.  John continues to point out the remarkable fulfillments of passages of the Old Testament that Jesus completes and fulfills even as His body is laid in the tomb – in a garden.

We are back in a garden: the Garden of Eden and the garden where our Lord’s passion began.  His passion ends in a garden, in the borrowed tomb.  The story of our Lord’s passion begins and ends in a garden.  “It is finished.”  But though the story is finished, dear friends, though it has been brought to completion – it isn’t over.  For a garden is not a place of death, but of life.  All of human history has led to this point.  It is indeed finished, dear friends, but this is not the end of the story. 

Amen.

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

Sermon: Maundy Thursday – 2025

17 April 2025

Text: John 13:1-15, 34-35 (Ex 12:1-14, 1 Cor 11:23-32)

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

“What I am doing,” says our Lord, “you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.”

Peter and the disciples are confused.  They have spent three years with Jesus.  They have seen all of His miracles.  They heard His preaching.  They witnessed Him forgive sins.  Peter had previously confessed that Jesus is not just a good man, not just a preacher, not just a prophet – but rather the Son of God, the Messiah, whose words are the “words of eternal life.” 

But nothing in those three years would prepare them for what was going to happen next – even though Jesus had told them three times, in plain language, that in Jerusalem, He was going to be arrested, handed over to the Romans, tortured, nailed to a cross, die and be buried – and that He would rise again the third day.  Just after He explained this for the third time, James and John were still mindlessly asking for favors. 

They are clueless about what Jesus is about to do.  They don’t even understand why He is washing their feet at Supper.  That’s not part of the ritual.  That’s demeaning slave-work.  Peter even scolds Jesus: “You shall never wash my feet.” 

Jesus is about to become the sacrifice for the sins of the world, and His closest friends, the men who knew Him best, the hand-picked disciples who were chosen to turn the world upside down – are on the verge of a mutiny.  Peter is sassing Jesus at the Last Supper. 

Of course, we are like this as well.  God has a plan for the world.  And that plan is centered on Jesus and the cross.  You’re part of that plan.  We all are.  We were created because we are part of God’s will.  And because we are believers in Him, and because He chose us to serve Him in His kingdom – we have to trust Him – even when it is hard.  For that is what faith is.

In spite of his protests, Peter finally simmers down: “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head.”  Jesus explains to the typically intense and exuberant Peter that he is already clean.  Jesus washed their feet because that’s the one part that is no longer clean when you start walking around.  Jesus has come to cleanse us, to cleanse the world of its deadly defect of sin.  Jesus has come to turn sinners into saints.  Jesus came to take a sinner like Peter, who would deny Him three times, and turn him into a heroic saint, who would – just as he so brashly claimed he would – die for Jesus.

But more importantly, Jesus dies for Peter – and for all of us.  Nobody understood that at the time.  But Jesus called them to trust, to be patient, to wait.  And when the fullness of time came, they would understand.

For they will be bitterly confused as Jesus dies on a cross.  He will not come down.  He will not miraculously destroy the Romans with His mighty power.  Rather, He will bleed out like a common criminal, with His Roman occupiers and Jewish collaborators mocking Him.  The Shepherd will be struck down, and the sheep will scatter. 

But that all changes on Easter and on Pentecost.  We know about the cross, and we understand it now, but they did not at the time.  Jesus asks you to trust Him today, to have faith that He is God and He knows what He is doing – even when it just seems like He doesn’t, even as you bear your own cross.

Jesus did something else that they did not understand at the time.  He celebrated the Passover meal with them as is the custom.  He commemorated the exodus that we called to mind once more in our reading from the Book of the Exodus.  For in Moses’s day, the people didn’t understand why they had to “kill their lambs at twilight” and “take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel” – surrounding the doorway with blood.  This was not a normal sacrifice.  But they did as Moses told them.  And the angel of death passed over them.  When God saw the people marked by the blood of the lamb, they were spared.  And this was a “memorial day” and a “feast to the Lord.”  It is to be done “forever.”  And so we are, dear friends.

The disciples ate this Passover Supper with Jesus yet again – just as they and their ancestors had been doing for nearly 1,500 years.  But something was different this time. 

For this night – the same night when He would be betrayed, our Lord “took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, ‘This is My body.”  And “in the same way also, He took the cup, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in My blood.’”  They did not understand what Jesus was doing, but they would understand it “afterward.”  “Jesus said, “Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.”

And we have been doing this now for nearly 2,000 years. 

Jesus gave them a miraculous meal in which He multiplies His own flesh and blood like He multiplied the bread and the fish.  Jesus makes wine to be His blood even as He provided wine for the wedding feast at Cana – all by the power of His Word.

And though they didn’t understand what He was doing at the time, they were to come to understand later.  Eleven of these twelve men, all of them except the betrayer, would in three days understand that Jesus was the victor over death, that He is the true Passover Lamb, and that in “doing this” in remembrance of Jesus, with His authority, by His command and invitation – they would truly be “proclaim[ing] the Lord’s death until He comes.”

That is what we are doing tonight, dear friends.  With the Lord’s command and authority, we are proclaiming His death – His death which is the atonement of the sins of the world – and we are eating the True Passover Lamb.  The same blood that protected the Israelites from death, and the same blood shed on the cross “for the forgiveness of sins,” is placed on you, on the door of your mouth and the threshold of your heart.  And so even if you don’t know what Jesus is doing in all of the messy complexities of this life, He has washed your feet – and your hands and your head – in Holy Baptism. 

And here, dear friends, the angel of death passes over you.  The blood of Christ covers you.  Jesus claims you as one for whom He died – to save you, and to give you the promise of an eternal future.

And truly, we don’t understand it now.  Jesus says He is returning, and we have questions.  Jesus says that we will die but we will rise again, and we can’t quite make sense of it.  Jesus says that He is going to recreate the world anew – perfect and eternal, and that we, the people for whom His blood protects from death – are part of that eternal kingdom – and that is why each one of us has been created.  We don’t understand it, but like St. Peter, we submit to our Lord – because we trust in Him.

He says, “Take,” and we take.  He says, “Eat,” and we eat.  He says “Drink,” and we drink.  He says “Do this… in remembrance of Me,” and we do it in remembrance of Him.  And Jesus says, “as often as you drink it” – so we take His body and blood often.  This is not an annual feast, like the old Passover.  For the blood of Christ pleads for us continually.  Jesus abides in you and you abide in Him in the New Testament.

And we still don’t understand how bread is His body, and how wine is His blood.  But it doesn’t matter.  For we heard what Jesus said to Peter: “If I do not wash you, you have no share with Me.”  But Jesus does wash us.  We partake of this miraculous meal of His miraculous Presence.  We will understand “afterward.”  But what we do understand now, dear friends, is that we have a promise – a promise from Him who died and rose again, whose Word is the Word of God: “the words of eternal life!”

“What I am doing,” says our Lord, “you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.”

Amen.

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