Sermon by Pastor Robert Green, Easter Sunrise, 4/8/12, Yr. B, No. 935,
Ascension Evangelical Lutheran Church, W.E.L.S., Harrisburg, PA, based on John 20:1-18
Take God at his Word: Be certain of the resurrection and of your salvation!
Easter morning should always be a day of great joy for we celebrate our Risen Lord because his resurrection proves though we die we will rise from the dead and live forever. However, early on the first Easter morning, no joy filled the air. Put yourselves back in time with the disciples and the women who went to the tomb on that first Easter morning. Morning broke very gloomy, not because of the weather, but because of all that had happen in the last week.
The week started so great with Jesus’ Triumphant Ride into Jerusalem and the thunderous welcome by the thousands who lined his way casting their cloaks and palm branches before him. Then Jesus taught in the Temple courts all week and arranged for the disciples to share the Passover Meal. On Thursday evening, after the meal, things began to unravel, for a brother betrayed him and the religious authorities arrested him chaining him like a common criminal. Then the soldiers brutalized him and the people who had welcomed him shouted and demanded his crucifixion.
To make matters worse, on the night he was arrested all the disciples fled from Jesus in great fear for their own well-being. Some of the disciples hung around and witnessed the flogging, beating, humiliation and mockery of Christ, but they stood at a distance doing nothing to stop it or help Jesus. Three times Peter had denied being with Jesus and even called curses from heaven upon himself if he even knew the man. Then the horrors of the crucifixion played out in front of them and all those who loved Jesus could do nothing but watch. Not one of the disciples had the courage to help Joseph and Nicodemus bury Jesus. The burial was hurried and incomplete for sundown was soon upon them marking the start of the Sabbath during which anyone touching a dead body would become unclean.
The greater sin of the disciples and the greater cause of their despair was that not one of them seemed to have reflected on God’s Word that had proclaimed all this would happen. Not one remembered how Jesus had taught them many times that it would be necessary for them to go to Jerusalem where Jesus would be betrayed, flogged, beaten and put to death, but how on the third day, he would rise from the dead as their Savior and King. Instead, paying no heed to the Word of God, the disciples reflected on their own plight and hid behind locked doors out of fear of the Jews.
Mary Magdalene and the other women had been following Jesus along with the disciples for a long time. On that first Easter morning, the women reflected no more on God’s Word and promise of the resurrection than the disciples did. The sadness that comes from having to bury a loved one hung in the air as the women got up and made their way to the tomb early in the morning to finish the burial, hastily began on Friday. They went expecting to find a dead Jesus.
The other gospels tell us a group of women went to the tomb, that Easter morn. While the other women went up to the tomb, the Apostle John focusing on Mary Magdalene, tells us in the reading for today, “Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. 2 So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”
Mary Magdalene jumped to conclusions immediately upon seeing the stone rolled away from the tomb and thinking that someone had stolen the body of Jesus, she left the women and ran to tell the disciples, not about the resurrection, but about a dead Jesus missing from his grave. Oh, what a difference it would have made for Mary Magdalene if she had been reflecting on God’s Word like the passage in Isaiah, written seven hundred years before that speaks of Jesus suffering, death and resurrection.
Isaiah, speaking about the Savior, said, “Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the Lord makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand. 11 After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities.” If she had taken this passage to heart, she would have every reason to taking God at his Word and would have run to the tomb expecting to find it empty and hoping to see the Risen Lord! Sadly, she did not have any part of the Word in mind, but thought only of having seen Jesus die on the cross. By not focusing on the Word despair descended upon and crushedher with the idea that was Jesus dead, so seeing the open tomb, she assumed the worse and gave not a thought to the promised resurrection.
The disciples had even more reason to believe Jesus had rose from the dead, for Jesus told them about six months before his death,(Luke 18),“We are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written by the prophets about the Son of Man will be fulfilled. 32 He will be handed over to the Gentiles. They will mock him, insult him, spit on him, flog him and kill him. 33 On the third day he will rise again.” Had the disciples woke that morning and remembered the Word, no one would have stopped them from running to the empty tomb in great joy, but alas, not for a moment did they think about Jesus’ Word occupied as they were in their fearful thoughts in utter despair.
This Easter morning is full of hope and joy for us because all the gloom shrouding that first Easter morn exploded in the brightest colors of great joy when the angel told the women that Jesus was not there for he had risen. Our Easter joy arises because we trust in the Word of God, which tells us Jesus rose from the dead and lives and rules eternally. God wants us base all that we believe on what he says, so that this morning and every day wetake God at his Word and are certain of the resurrection and of our salvation!
John tells us that after Mary Magdalene told the disciples the body of Jesus was missing, “So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb.4 Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first5 He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, 7 as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus’ head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen. 8 Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed.9 (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) 10 Then the disciples went back to their homes…”
The Apostle John, the author of these words, was the running with Peter to the grave. What were they expecting to find? John hesitated to go into the tomb, but not Peter. Notice how God in his grace gave them physical evidence of the Risen Savior. If someone were to steal a body, they probably do not take the time to remove the linen wrapping and even if they did, they would not take the time to fold the cloth covering the face, but would toss it aside. The Savior left the unwrapped linen and folded the head cloth as items of evidence,as one would do upon arising, which screamed the Good News to John and Peter, “I am not here, it is the third day and I have risen, just like I said I would!” Indeed, John tells us he got it, for he believed, but did not seem to understand the meaning of the empty tomb.
Had they then remembered Jesus’s Word that he would raise on the third day, the empty tomb with its evidence of the resurrection would have been the greatest news they could possibly have ever heard and we would probably read about them running and shouting to every soul that Jesus lived! Yet, when John and Peter saw the incredible evidence that Jesus lived, they did not run through Jerusalem shouting that Jesus lived, but they simply quietly went to their own home keeping the evidence of the resurrection to themselves. It seems they were uncertain what to make of all this. They still were not taking Jesus at his Word.
God vividly proved he wants us to base our faith on sight but on his Word, for Jesus did not appear to the disciples that morning, but to the women. He sent Mary and the other women to tell the disciples they had seen the risen Lord, so that they would learn to trust in his Word. John tells us, “Then the disciples went back to their homes, 11 but Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb 12 and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. 13 They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?” “They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus15 “Woman,” he said, “why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?” Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.” 16 Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means Teacher). 17 Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” 18 Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had said these things to her.”Notice that Jesus did not reveal himself to her until he spoke her name. He wanted Mary to hear, believe and based her faith not on sight, but on the Word and he wants no less for you and me.
Dear believer, what this means for you this Easter morning is that by taking God at his Word we can be filled with the joy of knowing our Savior lives, that he accomplished his mission to suffer and die for us, and that the Father accepted the sacrifice, just like God had long before promised. It means at all times you can join with Isaiah and say, “Surely God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid. The LORD, the LORD, is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation.” Dear Christianif you take God at his Wordyou will be certain of the resurrection and of your salvation!To God be all glory, amen!