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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!)
Those of you who a month or so ago saw with us the movie “Risen”, or who have heard or read anything about it, probably know that the movie tells the story of a fictional Roman soldier named Clavius, who, after Jesus’s Resurrection, searches for Jesus’s presumably‑dead body. The movie was said to be unique in its approach to the story of Jesus’s Resurrection by telling it through the eyes of an unbeliever, but, as I studied today’s Third Reading in preparing to preach on it this morning, I was struck by how even its account of Jesus’s Resurrection could be characterized as unbelievers searching for Jesus’s presumably-dead body. With details of events that are largely unique to St. John’s Divinely‑inspired Gospel account, the Third Reading is easily divided into two parts, each of which includes a virtually‑identical statement from Mary Magdalene, one to the disciples and one to the angels, about others and her not knowing the location of the Lord’s body. Yet, as we heard this morning, the living Lord eventually located Mary (and, as we will hear next week, He located Peter and the other disciples, too), but Mary’s and the disciples’ search for Jesus’s body has implications for us, so this morning our reflection on the Third Reading has the theme, “Locating the Living Lord”.
Mary and the other women who went to the tomb with her early that first day of the week certainly knew where the Lord Jesus’s body had been laid. In the verses immediately before today’s Third Reading, St. John tells: how Joseph of Arimathea, with Pilate’s permission, came and took Jesus’s body away; how Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes; how they bound Jesus’s body in linen cloths with the spices; and how they laid it in a new tomb in the garden where Jesus was crucified (John 19:38-42). And the other three evangelists all add that Mary Magdalene and other women were sitting right there and saw where and how Jesus’s body was laid (Matthew 27:61; Mark 15:47; Luke 23:55). Yet, when they got there and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb, they leapt to the conclusion that people—presumably the Jewish leaders, grave‑robbers, or others (we are not told whom they suspected)—had taken the Lord out of the tomb and laid Him somewhere else. Regardless of whom they suspected, they apparently had no thought of the Lord Jesus’s living and having Himself changed His location. When Peter and the other disciple, who is commonly held to be John the evangelist, ran and went into the tomb and saw the cloths lying there, which probably ruled out at least the grave‑robbers, and when John believed something, they still did not “understand”, or “know”, the Scripture that Jesus must rise from the dead. And, again, Mary Magdalene, even when she looked right at Jesus, still did not know that it was Him but supposed that He was the gardener! And some people think that Jesus’s followers made up this account of His Resurrection! I think that, if I were to make it up, I would make it up so that I did not look so foolish!
Of course, lest we be too critical of Mary Magdalene, Peter, and John, we best remember that we have the benefit of Holy-Spirit-given hindsight that knows more of the story (as they themselves did later [John 2:22; 12:16; 14:26]). And yet, we are guilty of the same sins, even if we commit them in different ways. We leap to conclusions without considering all the relevant evidence. We limit the possibilities to what we think are reasonable. We do not fully appreciate the Scripture about both Jesus’s resurrection from the dead and our own resurrections from the dead. We look right at Jesus and do not know that He is there, whether in His Word and Sacraments or in the persons of our fellow human beings, whom He calls us to love as we love ourselves. And, we make false suppositions about people, who they really are or what they really are like. As Mary Magdalene and the disciples were sinful by nature, so also we all are sinful by nature, and so, apart from faith in Jesus Christ as our resurrected and living Lord and Savior, we all deserve temporal death and eternal torment. But, God calls and enables us to repent, to turn in sorrow from our sin and to faith in His Son, as Mary Magdalene turned to Jesus twice in the Third Reading (confer Bertram, TDNT 7:714-715). When we so turn in repentance and faith, then God forgives our sin—all our sin, whatever it may be—for Jesus’s sake.
Jesus certainly gets around! True God begotten of the Father from all eternity, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, Who is personally united with the man Jesus born of the Virgin Mary, descended from heaven, lived the perfect life we fail to live. And, for our failure to live it, He died on the cross, rose from the dead, and ascended back into heaven (confer John 3:13; 6:62)—all for us and for our salvation. Regardless of whether or not the disciples at first understood from the Scripture that Jesus must rise from the dead, that Resurrection and the death that preceded it were the eternal will of the Father and so the testimony of His Holy Scriptures, both in their prophecy and in their fulfillment. Later the disciples came to believe and understand all of that, after Jesus personally spoke to them, as He did to Mary Magdalene (confer TLSB, ad loc Jn 20:14, 1824), and opened their minds to understand the Scripture (Luke 24:45-46).
Not only in Jesus’s post-Resurrection appearance in today’s Third Reading but arguably also in all of them: Jesus comes to His followers, not the other way around. And so it is with us: Jesus comes to us. The Holy Spirit calls us to repentance and faith, working through His read and preached Word and through that Word combined with water in Holy Baptism, spoken by a pastor in individual Holy Absolution, and connected with bread and wine in the Sacrament of the Altar. In Holy Baptism, God calls us by name (confer John 10:3) and puts His Name upon us, thereby forgiving our sins and bringing us into His holy family, so that, as Jesus referred to the disciples in today’s First Reading, we are His and one another’s brothers and sisters. When sins against one another and against God particularly trouble us, when we know and feel them on our heart, we privately confess them to our pastor for the sake of individual Holy Absolution, forgiveness from the pastor as from God Himself. And, so absolved, we are admitted to the Sacrament of the Altar, where Jesus is present with His Body and Blood by the same miraculous power by which He both exited the sealed tomb and appeared and disappeared to His followers for the forty days between His Resurrection and Ascension. Had the disciples understood the Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead, they probably at least would not have looked for Him in the tomb; we understand from the Scripture where the resurrected Jesus is located now, and so we look for Him and for His forgiveness here, in His Word and Sacraments, where He promises to be found. (God’s Sacraments, incidentally, are things the movie “Risen” just “happened” to leave out!)
In the Third Reading, Mary Magdalene stood weeping outside the tomb, and both the angels and then Jesus Himself asked her why she was weeping. We probably assume safely, once He by His Word enabled her to know Who He was, that her sorrow turned to joy. We, too, may grieve the loss of loved ones from this world, and in some cases we may even grieve the loss of their bodies, but we do not grieve as those who lack sure and certain hope, hope both of the resurrection of the body and of believers’ blessed reunion in heaven before the eternal presence of the Living Lord (confer 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17). Until then, with repentance and faith, we live every day in His forgiveness of sins through Word and Sacrament, where our Living Lord is located now, and where even now we are joined together with those who have gone before us in the faith. As we sang in today’s Appointed Psalm (118:15-29), we will not die but live and recount the deeds of the Lord. With Job in today’s First Reading (Job 19:23-27), we believe and know that, even after our skin has been destroyed, yet in our flesh we shall see God. And, with St. Paul in today’s Second Reading (1 Corinthians 15:51-57), we believe and know that death is swallowed up in victory, and so we say thanks be to God, Who gives us the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ!
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 + + +