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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!)
Some people love to tell “tall tales”: reporting as if true, something that ultimately is unbelievable. And, since everything is bigger in Texas, the “tales” seem to be “taller”, more exaggerated, here. Maybe such “taller tales” provide an entry-point for you and for me as we hear and reflect on today’s Easter Gospel from St. Luke’s Divinely‑inspired Gospel account, in which the women’s words about Jesus’s Resurrection seemed to the disciples as an idle tale. This morning we consider that Gospel Reading with the question: “Resurrection Words: Idle or Productive?”
St. Luke’s report of the faithful women who had come with Jesus from Galilee’s going to His tomb, early on the first day of the week, certainly has much in common with the other evangelists’ reports, perhaps most importantly their finding the tomb empty and hearing from the heavenly messengers. But, St. Luke uniquely reports some of both who the women were and how their message carried back to the disciples, perhaps before the women even saw the Resurrected Lord, was received by the disciples. In so doing, St. Luke describes the disciples’ characterization of the women’s words with a Greek word used only this one time in the whole New Testament; the word modifying the women’s words is variously rendered by Bible translations as “idle” tale or talk or simply “nonsense”. Perhaps the disciples thought the women’s Resurrection words were a silly joke, but, perhaps more to the point, other than getting Peter to the tomb and marveling (whatever that means in this context), their words seemed to produce no real effect.
In one of my recent yoga practices, the leader was talking about something—I do not remember precisely what now, but at the time I thought that—that whatever it was just sounded like nonsense. I understood the words well enough, but the way the words were strung together did not mean anything to me, and I pretty much disregarded them. Perhaps that is how the women’s Resurrection words seemed to the disciples. The women themselves had been perplexed about the empty tomb until the heavenly messengers appeared, and even then the women were frightened. In many of the Bible’s accounts of Jesus’s resurrection, His closest followers did not seem truly to believe that He was risen until they saw Him for themselves, if even then (for example, Matthew 28:17). That Holy Scripture reports their skepticism arguably goes to Scripture’s credibility and ultimately comforts us as we also can be so skeptical.
Of course, by nature, we are not inclined to believe any of these things. Apart from the Holy Spirit, we do not accept the things of the Spirit, for they are foolishness to us, and we are not able to understand them because they are only spiritually discerned (1 Corinthians 2:14). And, even with the Holy Spirit, we still struggle with our fallen flesh. Like the women at the empty tomb with the angels, we may be perplexed and frightened. Like the disciples hearing the women, the Resurrection words may seem to us to be an idle tale, nonsense, and so, in the end, we do not let them produce any effect. Apart from faith in Jesus Christ, because of the original sin we inherit and because of our actual sin that results, we deserve death now and separation from God for eternity. But, God calls and enables us to repent: to turn in sorrow from our sin, to trust Him to forgive our sin, and to want to do better. When we so repent, then God forgives our sin, all our sin, whatever our sin might be, for the sake of His Son Jesus Christ. Thanks to God’s love for us in Jesus Christ, Crucified and Resurrected, we also are resurrected, from the death that we by nature deserve, to eternal life with Him.
Composer George Frideric Handel’s oratorio Messiah was first performed in Dublin around Easter in 17-42 and has since become “one of the best known and most-frequently performed choral works in western music” (Wikipedia). Often more associated with Advent and Christmas, arguably two thirds of the oratorio centers on Jesus’s Passion and Resurrection. In Part Three of the oratorio, among other things (such as reportedly quoting from a Martin Luther hymn), lyricist Charles Jennens has the chorus sing words that we also heard in today’s Epistle Reading (1 Corinthians 15:19-26): “For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead; for as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” (I can hardly hear whose words read without hearing them sung to Handel’s music!) God’s plan of salvation for you and for me necessitated the God-man Jesus’s death and resurrection. So, not only the words of the Old Testament but also, as the angels told the women, Jesus’s own words told how the Son of Man, Jesus Himself, must be delivered (or “betrayed”) into the hands of sinful men, be crucified, and on the third day rise. Jesus’s death and resurrection for us is no “tall tale” or “idle talk” but prophecy and its fulfillment!
I am the first to admit that at times my sermons may sound to you as my yoga leader’s teaching that I mentioned sounded to me, as words strung together without meaning. In today’s Gospel Reading, the angels told the women to remember Jesus’s words, and then the women did remember His words; St. Luke does not say whether or not they also believed them (see Matthew 28:7), but he does report their telling everything to the disciples. To be sure, whether God’s Resurrection words through the angels to the women or God’s Resurrection Words through me to you, God genuinely wants to use and does use His Resurrection words to create faith. In order for people to obtain saving faith (and so obtain the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation, God gave the Office of the Holy Ministry for the preaching of His Resurrection words and for the administration of His Resurrection words in His Sacraments.
Some Church Fathers understand the day of our Lord’s Resurrection, the first day of the week, as the day of re-creation, and so they connect it with the eighth day of different Old Testament festivals and rites, such as circumcision, which took place on the eighth day after a boy’s birth. For us, the day of our Baptisms essentially is the eighth day of re-creation, recalled by our eight-sided Baptismal Font. In Holy Baptism, St. Paul describes to the Colossians, we, who were dead in our trespasses, are buried with Christ and made alive together with Him, all of our trespasses having been forgiven (Colossians 2:11-13). And, so baptized and then also individually Absolved, we are admitted to the Sacrament of the Altar, where, as we remember Him as He commands (Luke 22:19), eating bread and drinking wine, He Himself is present with His Body and His Blood (confer Behm, TDNT 1:349), for the forgiveness of our sins and so also for life and salvation. Here, the Resurrected and Living Lord gives life to you and to me. By His Resurrection Words in all these forms, the Lord wills to bring and efficaciously does bring us to faith, sustains us in the faith, and transforms our lives (such as leading us to tell others, regardless of their reaction)—but all that if only we do not resist and reject His working in these ways.
Ultimately, our response either of unrepentance and unbelief or of repentance and faith answers the question of whether the Resurrection Words are for us idle or productive. Perhaps today’s Gospel Reading serves us by to some extent leaving open whether or not the disciples got past their thinking the women’s Resurrection words were an idle tale, forcing us to ask ourselves whether we make the same judgment. We know from the rest of the New Testament that, after personal appearances by the Resurrected Jesus, they did repent and believe. The Resurrected Lord appears here for you and for me, may God grant that we always likewise repent and believe.
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 + + +