Sunday, April 17, 2022

Easter Sunday, the Resurrection of our Lord
Easter Sunrise
Job 19:23-27
Psalm 118:15-19
1 Corinthians 15:51-57
John 20:1-18
Easter Day
Isaiah 65:17-25
Psalm 16
1 Corinthians 15:19-26
Luke 24:1-12

Then the end comes, when he will deliver up the Kingdom to God, even the Father, when he will have abolished all rule and all authority and power.

It is always strange to write about Easter on the Wednesday before Good Friday, especially since we’ve been following the footsteps of Jesus during His week of Passion. While Tuesday of Holy Week is the most written about damy, the record is relatively silent about Wednesday. The leaders of Israel were meeting to plan how to deal with Jesus and Judas visited them to offer help. We don’t know what Jesus did. We can suppose that Jesus spent the day with the disciples, perhaps with Lazarus, Martha, and Mary. He probably continued to teach the disciples, preparing them for what was to come. He likely spent much time in prayer. There is still much to happen: He will celebrate the Passover meal with them. He will be arrested, beaten, tried, and crucified. He will die. But on this day we’ll look ahead to the promise that is fulfilled with the raising of Jesus in just a few short days.

We have buried the Hallelujahs for the past six weeks. We have listened to Jesus. We have considered our place in God’s Kingdom and our need for repentance. We have prepared for this week with fasting, prayer, and devotional practices. Are we ready for what is to come?

There are two separate lectionaries for Easter Sunday. The first is meant to be read early in the morning, at the sunrise. Some churches hold special services away from their regular worship spaces, often partnering with other churches. We attended a beautiful sunrise service on a dew-covered hilltop when we lived in England. There is something sobering about greeting the day when it is still dark outside, as it might have been for the women who went to the tomb that first morning.

We go to church on Easter Sunday excited about the end of Lent, knowing the secret that Jesus has been raised, but those women had no idea. They were going to the tomb to do what they couldn’t do on Good Friday. They were there with arms filled with spices to properly prepare Jesus’ body. He was dead and they were mourning, the work they would do that first Easter morning was part of the process for grieving. Their eyes were probably red and puffy, they were tired from lack of sleep. They were angry at what happened to their Lord. It wasn’t a happy day. We forget that when we walk into a church building filled with the scent of lovely spring flowers and other Christians wearing beautiful new clothes. By the time we hear the lectionary for Easter Day, the somberness of Good Friday is long past for us. But it wasn’t for those women.

Mary Magdalene is found at the tomb alone in the account from John of that first Easter day. We see the grief in her eyes; she’s been weeping, perhaps for days. It was still dark when she went, so she probably had no sleep, anxious to stand vigil at the tomb as she waited for the other women. Instead of finding everything as it had been left on Friday, she found the stone rolled away. She didn’t look inside but ran to tell the disciples. “They’ve taken the Lord!” she exclaimed. Peter and John went to the garden toward the tomb. John reached it first and looked inside, seeing the linen clothes. Peter arrived and went inside, noticing not only the clothes from His body that were cast aside but also the one from His face which was neatly folded. They didn’t understand; they had not yet pieced together the promises of scripture that Jesus would rise from the dead. They left, sadder than before.

There is a story that in the days of Jesus, there was a Hebrew tradition that a servant would stand near the table when the master was eating, waiting for the time to clear the table. The servant knew that he should not touch the table until his master was finished eating. When the master was finished, he would rise from the table, wipe his fingers and mouth, clean his beard, wad up the napkin and toss it onto the table. Then the servant could do his work. A wadded-up napkin means, “I am finished.” However, if the master neatly folded the napkin and set it by his plate, that meant “I am coming back,” so the servant would wait patiently.

It is said that the neatly folded face cloth was Jesus’ way of saying “I am coming back.”

Peter and John left the garden, but Mary stayed by the empty tomb, weeping. She looked inside and saw two angels at the head and foot of where Jesus’ body would have laid. There is significance to this scene that we understand from atonement in the Old Testament. Each year the High Priest scattered the blood of the Lamb on the mercy seat of God, which was the atonement cover of the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark had two angels, one at each end. It is as if Mary was peeking into the Holy of Holies, where the very presence of God dwelt among men. The stone where Jesus lay was the mercy seat of God. In that scene, we see that God’s forgiveness was complete and the promises of God were fulfilled.

The angels asked Mary why she was weeping, and she answered that they had taken Jesus away. She then turned and saw Jesus but did not recognize Him. We wonder how that could be. The disciples, including Mary, spent years with Jesus, and it had only been a few days. When we don’t see someone for a long time, it is easy to mistake them for someone else. Haven’t you ever been in a position where you see someone you think you should know, but can’t place them?

We have a party for our friends early in December every year. It is an open house with an invitation to everyone who can come. Though I don’t ask for an RSVP, many of our friends will tell us they’ll be there so that I can prepare for them all. The doorbell rang one year and when I opened the door there was a couple standing there. I thought they looked familiar, but I could not place them. It was some old friends from California we hadn’t seen in decades. I did not recognize them because they weren’t where I expected them to be.

Mary didn’t expect to see Jesus standing in front of her. He was dead. There may have been something about His appearance that was different, although she recognized Him as soon as she said her name. Would we have known it was Jesus if we were there in that garden so early that first Easter morning? Probably not. Jesus appeared to others in the first days after the Resurrection and none of them knew it was Him. The disciples on the road to Emmaus didn’t know until He broke the bread. The disciples in the Upper Room didn’t know until they saw His wounds. They saw what they expected: a gardener, a fellow traveler, a spirit. They didn’t see Jesus until He revealed Himself to them.

Mary went back to the disciples and told them everything Jesus said to her. That dark, sad morning was beginning to look brighter.

It is easy for us to look back at those first disciples and think that they were foolish for missing it. Didn’t Jesus tell them this is how it had to be? How could they not realize that a little patience would prove Jesus’ words to be true? It is easy for us for two reasons: we know the rest of the story and we have the Holy Spirit to help us see. We would not have been any different if we had been there. We will experience the grief of Good Friday with the knowledge that it happened because of our own sin and for our sake, but we will do so with the knowledge that we’ll sing Hallelujah on Sunday.

Hindsight is twenty/twenty vision.

We also see now how all the Old Testament scriptures fit into God’s plan. They knew the words and hoped for their promise, but it wasn’t until after the Resurrection that they know it was true. Job said, “But as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives. In the end, he will stand upon the earth.” The psalmist sang, “For you will not leave my soul in Sheol, neither will you allow your holy one to see corruption.” Isaiah said, “For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former things will not be remembered, nor come into mind.” These are all promises that point to the work of Jesus on the cross. He is our Redeemer. He is our Salvation. He gives us life. His new covenant will bring new things to the world. It was planned; the promises were fulfilled on the cross and then in the empty tomb.

We will see in the texts for the next few weeks, during the forty days of Easter, that Jesus had to reteach everything He had taught them in the three years leading up to the cross. Even then, they needed Pentecost to bring it all together.

Through Jesus God created new heavens and a new earth. This was as great an accomplishment as the first heavens and the first earth, also created through Jesus. The first creation was made out of chaos, out of nothing, out of darkness. With just a Word, the Logos which is Christ, God made everything good. The new creation is made out of the failures of God’s people. We were created and commanded to care for the earth, but we failed. We failed to care for all that was entrusted to us, especially our relationships. In our sin we broke the harmony between God and man and between one another. Our sins, though against each other, hurt God even more because in our sin we were not living as He intended us to live.

But God’s love for His people is greater than our failure. He is faithful to His promises even when we are not. So, in response to our sin, He promised to make things new, a new creation that will lead to a new beginning for the world. This promise of new heavens and a new earth is a future promise, something that will come in the day God has promised. That day began with Jesus Christ, who lived and died for the sake of mankind. He restored the relationship of men and God, made it possible for men to restore their relationships with one another. Yet, the fulfillment of that day is not now; it will be some day. Though things began anew with the raising of Jesus, there is another day coming when we will see everything as it was meant to be.

God’s salvation is in the future, but it is also now. In that salvation we live and breathe the Gospel in this world, offering hope and peace to those who are still lost in the darkness. The world is being recreated one heart at a time as we, God’s people, share His love to the world. In our words and works, things are transformed and people are changed. We can see a glimmer of what is to come when we will no longer labor in vain or be subjected to misfortune. How great a day it will be when the earth is new, when the wolf and the lamb, the lion and the ox shall share the bountiful gifts of God's abundance!

Not everyone understands the significance of our Easter celebrations. Most are excited about baskets full of candy and brunch with family. For them, our Hallelujah’s are pitiable. Paul knew that this was the way non-believers looked at the early church. He even uses the word “pitiable” in the passage from his first letter to the Corinthians because for many non-Christians we are to be pitied. However, they think we should be pitied because we believe in these myths or fairy tales about Jesus of Nazareth being raised from the dead. They think that we should be pitied because we believe in eternal life in heaven with our Lord Jesus Christ.

For many people, religion is about how we live in this world and the work we do to make it a better place for our neighbors. It does not take faith in God or in Jesus, to do good deeds and living rightly. Many people who are not followers of Jesus Christ do good deeds and live rightly in this world.

But Christianity is unique in that we do believe in something more, something beyond this life. It seems odd that Paul would call us the most pitiable, but consider the world in which the Corinthians lived. It was a pagan world, a world where there were dozens of gods available for human consumption. You could take a pilgrimage to any of the larger cities and find massive temples in honor of those gods as well as all the tourist trappings to help make your trip more enjoyable. You could enjoy the physical pleasures of that religion: the food, the wine and the prostitutes. Christianity has always set a different standard, a standard of moderation and of self-control.

For many people, Christianity is to be pitied because they prefer to live for the satisfaction of their hedonistic desires, which the religions of Paul’s world satisfied. Unfortunately, many today have the same expectations, even some Christians. Faith, to them, is about feeling good, about self-satisfaction, to live their best life. And though the Christian response to God’s grace often brings about good feelings, satisfaction and a transformation into something new and better, Christ never promised that our life with Him in this world would be easy. As a matter of fact, Christian faith is hard. The Christians in Paul’s day were persecuted because they did not live by the societal expectations. Even though they had faith, Christians got sick and they died. Though there were some Christians with wealth, many of the Christians were outcast and poor, often because of their faith in Jesus. Christians truly are to be pitied if you expect faith to be rewarded in this life.

If there is no eternal life then we are indeed to be pitied, but we have a hope that goes beyond today. The non-Christian who pities a Christian for faith in heaven or eternal life sees no purpose of living beyond the here and now, they want an immediate reward. Those without faith in Christ can’t see the point of it. A person once told me that Jesus is dead, and that I should just get over it. But our hope and the foundation of our faith is that Jesus Christ was the first of many; He is the first born of the dead. He rose and through faith we will rise with Him. Christ lives and in Him we live also.

Easter is about life. Certainly, the raising of Jesus is about new life for Him, but it is also about new life for all of those who believe in Him. The empty tomb is a guarantee of the promise that we will be restored to Him and that we will share in His life forever. In baptism we die with Christ, in faith we are raised again. Life is our end, which is completely opposite of the reality of our flesh. We will die, no matter what we do. Even believing in Jesus will not keep our flesh from decay. The life of moderation and self-control may extend our lives, but not forever. We will die.

Death is obvious, even in our church spaces. There is often a cemetery attached to church property. In some places, prominent members of ancient congregations were even buried inside the church. We saw that often in England, where floor engravings marked the resting places of wealthy landowners or exceptional members of the clergy. Churches like Westminster Abbey appear to be little more than huge, elaborate tombs. While that church is known for other things, like weddings and the coronations of monarchs, funerals and even secular gatherings, most people visit to see the resting places of hundreds of famous people from poets to kings.

We knew that’s what we’d see as tourists when we visited a few years ago. I particularly wanted to check out Poets Corner. With monuments to the likes of Chaucer, Tennyson, Browning, and Dickens, some of the most amazing minds are remembered in that corner of the church. Though William Shakespeare is not buried there, he is remembered with a memorial in that area. I was also interested in the legacy of the Tudors, several of which are buried in the church. Fascinating stories about their life battles and death reunions make a visit to the church like watching a soap opera. The architecture, something that always fascinates me, is amazing and beautiful. It is worth a trip for anyone in England.

Yet, it is a living church. People gather there each Sunday for worship, to hear God’s Word and to receive the sacraments. As a matter of fact, the church offers several worship services every day, including weekdays at lunch. Anyone visiting and workers from the city are welcome to worship the living God in the midst of the hustle and bustle of life. We visited during lunch hour, and we heard the worshipped announced over the loudspeaker when we were in the middle of our tour. We asked one of the staff how to get to the service and he was so excited that we wanted to worship that he took us through red velvet ropes and against the flow of visitors so that we could be there in time.

I was disappointed when we arrived at the worship space because there were only a few dozen worshippers. There were hundreds of tourists that day, but in the midst of that chaos we few received the body and blood of Christ. I wondered why as I watched the visitors filing by that they would spend so much time with the dead when they could be worshipping the living God. For them, Westminster Abbey was nothing more than a tomb.

Our world is truly upside down. Luke wrote that after the resurrection the women went to the tomb seeking Jesus’ body so they could finish the work of anointing Him for death. As they were there, two men in dazzling robes appeared asking them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” They did not yet know that Jesus had been raised, though He told them to expect it. They did not understand what He meant until later when He appeared before them alive. As Christ lives, so do we. Unfortunately, we often see the world with a skewed point of view, seeking death instead of life. We would rather spend an hour looking at the tombs of famous people than worshiping the living God. This happens in our daily lives also as we chase after the things that will perish and decay, following the ways of the world instead of dwelling in the promises of God.

We wander for forty days during Lent, learning everything we need to know in a world full of chaos and confusion. Then we spend forty days after Easter learning everything we need to know, but there’s something different. We see that chaotic and confused world through a new perspective. During Lent we see the promise as they did in Jesus’ day, that the Messiah came to set us free from the world. During the Easter season we finally see that Jesus wasn’t an earthbound king we must follow, but that He is the Living God who redeems us and sets us free from sin and death. The Old Testament promises have new meaning, and we have a much different purpose. We are not called to simply follow Jesus, but we are sent out to be His people, to take the Gospel to the world.

It is finished; the work is complete, and yet Jesus folded the napkin and has promised to return. We live in the already but not yet of God’s promises. We have eternal life even as we wait for it. We think of Easter as the end of a journey. Many of us will stop whatever Lenten discipline we began forty-some days ago. We’ll eat too much chocolate and drown ourselves in the coffee we’ve avoided for too long. We’ll set aside our devotional books, thankful that they helped us through our wilderness wandering but glad that we will have that time for ourselves again. We don’t have extra church commitments. As crowded as our congregations will be on Sunday, next week will seem empty. To many, Easter will be over and it will be time to get back to normal.

But Easter is only beginning this Sunday; we will learn during the next forty days that all our work stands on the promise of that empty tomb and that there is still much work to be done. God made so many promises to the poor, to the lame, to the deaf, to the possessed, to the imprisoned, to the lonely, to the outcast, to the ill and more, but the promise of Easter is the foundation of it all. The empty tomb means that all our tombs will also be empty, that we will be raised with Christ and that we will rejoice in His presence for eternity. We are Easter people, founded on the hope of eternity. In that hope we can go out and face the reality of the world in which we live. Sometimes that means we’ll face suffering and pain.

Christian faith does not guarantee a charmed life. The empty tomb of Easter does not mean that everything will go well. It was the empty tomb that set the apostles on a road to persecution; most of them were martyred. The empty tomb does guarantee that we will join our Lord Jesus in eternity. He was the first of many, raised to new life to live forever in the new heavens and earth. It is the world we see promised in those Old Testament texts.

Resting in His promises we can say that we know our Redeemer lives and that faith in Him will get us through today and tomorrow until we finally dwell in His presence forever. The world may pity us for standing on myths and fairytales, but we belong to Jesus Christ and He will deliver us into His Kingdom to dwell in the presence of our Father in heaven forever. Death will no longer rule, and the world will be restored as God always intended it to be.