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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!) If you just now in that exchange of Easter greetings confessed the importance of and your faith in the physical, bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, then you are not alone. The majority of respondents to a number of recent surveys of Christians make a similar confession. The minority of the ostensibly “Christian” respondents apparently do not think that the resurrection is important or that the body of Jesus Christ actually physically rose from the dead. Or, perhaps the minority of the respondents are somewhat like the trembling and astonished women at the end of today’s Gospel Reading, who “said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid”. Still, those women at least apparently somewhat believed, after seeing the empty tomb and hearing the angel’s dramatic announcement, paraphrased as our theme for this message, “Jesus Who was crucified has risen”.
Where our Gospel Reading ends is where the earliest and most-reliable manuscripts of St. Mark’s account end, with the women going out and fleeing from the tomb, silent—a seemingly odd ending, to be sure. Bible scholars differ as to whether or not that is where St. Mark by divine inspiration intended to end his account, or whether he never finished it or whether part of it was lost. But, his having never finished his account or part of it’s being lost does not fit well with our understanding of the inspiration and preservation of Holy Scripture, and his ending his account there arguably does fit well with the context of his original hearers. Those original hearers probably were believers in mid‑to‑late first‑century Rome, who were very afraid of being put to death for confessing their faith. Still, traditions of other endings have come down to us, and the Church, including The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther himself, has used verses of one of those disputed endings the same way as any other Holy Scripture. (I would be remiss not to say at this point that nothing pertaining to our salvation depends solely on verses of that disputed ending.)
How are you and I like those original hearers of St. Mark’s Gospel account and so also like the women of the Gospel Reading who were silent because they were afraid? Or, should I first ask whether you even believe in the resurrected Savior, Jesus Christ? Or, maybe even before that question, should I first ask whether you even think you need a Savior? St. Mark’s original hearers and the women certainly thought they needed a Savior; they were following Jesus because the Holy Spirit had made them both aware of and turn in sorrow from their sin. Are you and I aware of our sin, and do we turn in sorrow from our sin? We would expect that St. Mark’s original hearers and maybe even the women believed in Jesus Christ as their savior (the “trembling and astonishment” St. Mark describes the women as having accompanies faith in other New Testament contexts). Do you and I have faith in God, that is, do we trust God to forgive our sin, on account of Jesus’s death and resurrection for us? Okay, so, if we, like St. Mark’s original hearers and the women, think we need a Savior and believe in the resurrected Savior, we can go back to my original question: are we like them in sometimes being silent about that faith because we are afraid? Few of us face being put to death for confessing our faith, but are we sometimes as much afraid of being rejected when we tell someone about our faith? Are we sometimes afraid of not being liked by family or friends when we live a Christian life? Or, do we let something else trouble us and thereby take away the joy we should have because of Jesus’s resurrection?
For our sins of letting other things take away the joy of the resurrection, for our sins of being silent about our faith when we should have confessed it in deed and word, for all our sins and for our sinful natures themselves, Jesus took on human flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary, lived the perfect life we fail to live, and died a brutal and shameful death on the cross—all for us! The altar cross has a representation of Jesus hanging on it in order to emphasize both His taking on our human flesh and His dying on the cross for us. The angel in the empty tomb still refers to Him as the Crucified One even after the resurrection! He was taken down from the cross dead, so an empty cross would no more better‑symbolize His resurrection than an empty tomb would have symbolized a resurrection even if He had remained dead and, as Mary Magdalene at first might have thought, His body been taken by grave robbers. (We talked about that earlier at Matins, in case you missed it.) There were no witnesses to the miraculous resurrection itself, only a miraculous earthquake and an angel for witnesses to see and hear that “Jesus Who was crucified has risen”. Despite that message, perhaps none of the people in the resurrection accounts really, fully believed Jesus was resurrected, or at least appreciated what the resurrection meant for them, until they heard, saw, and touched Him in some way for themselves.
“Jesus Who was crucified has risen”; He is a living sacrifice—a contradiction in terms! For something to be a sacrifice in the religious sense it must be dead, yet He lives! Jesus’s resurrection proves that He is the Son of God and that His teaching is true, but, more importantly, Jesus’s resurrection proves that the Father accepted Christ’s sacrifice for us and that, since He lives, we, too, will live! No wonder that St. Paul by divine inspiration calls the believers in Rome and us to present our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God. We should love Him and our neighbors, but we do not always do so. The resurrection peace and joy should permeate our lives, but it does not always do so. We need His help, in specific ways.
One of those recent surveys of Christians that I mentioned at the outset also shows that a majority of respondents in one group did not think going to “church” every Sunday was necessary to be a good church member. Of course, the respondents are entitled to their opinion, but the Bible certainly suggests the facts are different. “Church” is where we hear, see, and touch the Resurrected Jesus and so receive the help we need in order to love God and our neighbors, to make up for the times we do not, and for the resurrection peace and joy to permeate our lives. St. Paul writes in Romans that in the waters of Holy Baptism we are baptized into Christ’s death and buried with Him so that we are united with Him in His resurrection and rise with Him to walk in newness of life. In our Gospel Reading the messenger of God in a white robe singles out Peter, and Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod fathers have suggested the angel did so because Peter needed and, as the Epistle Reading indicates, received from Christ individual absolution for the sin of his three times denying Jesus, which particularly troubled Peter. You and I likewise can privately confess the sins that particularly trouble us and receive individual absolution from a messenger of God in a white robe. But, our greatest opportunity to hear, see, and touch the Resurrected Jesus is on this altar. From this altar Jesus is present with His body and blood in bread and wine, in much the same way that His resurrected body came out of the tomb without the stone being rolled back for Him. The Sacrament of the Altar on this Easter Day is essentially the Feast of Victory of our God, the Lamb’s High Feast at which we sing praise to our Victorious King. Better than the best of meats and the finest of wines the Old Testament Reading might have us imagine, you and I receive bread that is Jesus’s body and wine that is Jesus’s blood, and thereby you and I there receive forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. Throughout our earthly lives we need to hear, see, and touch the Resurrected Jesus in these ways—maybe not every Sunday, but certainly far more than two or four times a year, or maybe even more than twenty‑four times a year.
As with St. Mark’s original hearers, you and I can both relate to and share with the women of the Gospel Reading all their feelings of fear, as we work out our salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, with trembling and astonishment. His Word and Sacraments convince us that, ultimately, given Jesus’s resurrection and what it means for us, there really is nothing to fear. And, we let our faith teach that truth to our minds and hearts. We know from the other Gospel accounts—if not from the disputed endings of St. Mark’s account—that the Resurrected Jesus later appeared to the women and that they did eventually tell of hearing, seeing, and touching Him. And, since we, too, have heard, seen, and touched Him, we pray that God enables us likewise to declare with deeds and words, to those whom He places in our lives, that “Jesus Who was crucified has risen”.
Amen.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +