Easter
Dear friends in Christ. Here we are at the highlight, the center, of the Church’s year and message. Easter Sunday, our Lord Christ’s resurrection from the dead is the glorious completion of what we have been hearing in the season of Lent of our Lord Jesus’ suffering and death. For us, Easter is now nothing but a pure joy. But that first Easter, at least at first, was anything but pure joy.
Just a few verses before our text [Mark 15.40] we read that these same women in our text— Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome—among others were witnessing Jesus’ crucifixion, looking on from afar. They saw Jesus die. They saw Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus take Jesus body, wrapping it quickly in a burial shroud and placing it in the tomb. As St. Luke 24.56 records: They returned and prepared spices and fragrant oils. And they rested on the Sabbath according to the commandment. What a sorrowful and sullen Sabbath that must have been for these women! What thoughts must have been going through their heads! The One they thought was the long promised Savior, the Messiah, was dead and gone. They saw Him buried! All their hopes and dreams died with Him. But they still loved Jesus and tried to show Him the greatest and final tribute—a proper anointing for burial. That’s why on Friday they prepared spices and fragrant oils with what they had and as soon as the Sabbath was past, at sundown when some stalls in the bazaar opened up for a few hours before it got too dark, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him.
Notice their great love and devotion—which would the Lord would reward by making them the first witnesses of the resurrection. But yet they went so that they might go and anoint him. They had no expectation of the resurrection. Starting out when it was still dark, again, what sort of thoughts and emotions must have been racing through their minds! How the darkness of that very early on the first day of the week must have been a reflection of their thoughts and emotions—a far cry from our Easter joy today! In their sorrow—evidenced by their not thinking ahead as to how they would get into the tomb to anoint Jesus’ body—they were saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?”
But there’s a shift now in our text with the rising of the sun: when the sun had risen, they came to the tomb. The night was leading to the day; the festival day was being brightened by the light of the resurrection. And looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back—it was very large. And then the angel in the tomb gives the most glorious of announcements: Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. Did that announcement then send the women into the heights of greatest joy? Hardly! Instead we read: And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. They were stupefied/ mystified! We live almost two millennia later; we’ve heard the Easter account. But put yourself in the place of these women. They had just a few days before seen Jesus dead and buried; it was beginning to dawn on them that they had just been in the presence of a holy angel. They had just heard the announcement that Jesus was alive. Here they were trying to piece it all together. Because we have heard the Easter account so often, it does us good to see it through the eyes of the women; it does us good to really ponder what happened that first Easter and as we do so trembling and astonishment will seize us as well! We will be filled not only with exuberant joy but also holy fear and awe as we again hear the angel’s announcement this Easter He has risen; he is not here. Easter’s message, like it did, for the women takes time to sink in and to be absorbed; it cannot be rushed through. That’s why it does us good to hear once again this Easter He has risen; he is not here and to ponder it.
1. He has risen; he is not here. Easter is built on fact: Christ’s tomb is empty. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him. The angel makes it very clear that Jesus was dead. Notice he says: See the place where they laid him. Jesus was placed there in the tomb. The only reason a person is placed/ laid in a tomb is because they are dead. With all life gone, others place the body in the tomb—here Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea placed Jesus in the tomb. Lest there be any mistake, the angel says, You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. They are in the right tomb. The angels reminds the women of what they had just seen not that many hours before—Jesus of Nazareth—just like was written on the cross—was crucified. But now? He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him. The tomb—which once held Jesus of Nazareth—is now empty. The angel doesn’t ask the women just to take his word for it: He has risen. Rather, he directs them to the outward observable facts. He has them base their conclusions on the fact of the empty tomb. He—Jesus of Nazareth whom you saw crucified, dead and buried—is not here. See the place where they laid him.
Our Easter faith and our joy also rest on these facts. To be sure, we don’t see the angel; we haven’t stepped foot in the tomb but we have these eyewitness accounts of the women and the apostles. Our faith is grounded on the historical fact of Jesus’ resurrection that first Easter—certainly a well-attested historical event: not only do we have the preaching of the apostles and the establishment of the Church, but we have the witness and martyrdom of the Apostles who gave up their lives for it. Through the angel’s proclamation: He is not here. See the place where they laid him, the Holy Spirit worked faith in the hearts of the women, of people down through the centuries and in us today—faith in Jesus and His saving work. And that faith is not a leap in the dark or pie-in-the-sky; instead it is fully supported by the facts: he is not here. See the place where they laid him.
The angel’s announcement: He has risen; he is not here, points to Jesus’ bodily resurrection. He is not here! There’s no body! The linen wrappings that wrapped Jesus’ body in the tomb lie there undisturbed—like a balloon from which the air escaped. Jesus’ resurrection happened “in secret.” No one witnessed it, unlike the crucifixion for example. The world would forever be ignorant of this fact—of Easter—had the angel not rolled the stone from the door to the tomb announcing the resurrection. The stone was not rolled away so Jesus could get out—just like Jesus could be born without disturbing Mary’s virginity, just like He could appear to His disciples who were behind locked doors, so also could He leave the sealed tomb. But God, in grace, announced the resurrection to us by having the door of the tomb opened to reveal the fact of empty tomb: He has risen; he is not here. And lest there be any question, He has the angel announce it to the women and to us!
That open door of the tomb and the angel both announcing He has risen; he is not here, has great comfort and meaning for us. With Jesus’ resurrection we see that sin, devil, death and hell have all been conquered—by Jesus for us! On the cross, Jesus was charged with every single sin of every person ever to live; He became the world’s sinner. St Paul puts it this way [2 Cor. 5.18-19,21]: God…has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ…that is…God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them... and a few verses later: For [God] made Him who knew no sin [that is, the holy and sinless God-man, Jesus Christ] to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. On the cross, Jesus willing took on every sinner’s sin and suffered the wrath and punishment of God for them. Here we see the seriousness of our sin—each and every one of our sins earns us God’s wrath and condemnation. But on the cross, vial after vial of God’s wrath was poured out on Jesus who willingly bore it; when Jesus on the cross said [Jn. 19.30], It is finished, the sins of all had been paid for and sinful humanity reconciled to the holy God. God’s wrath over our sin is appeased.
Since Jesus made all our sins His own and laid down His life on the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world, His resurrection proclaims that the Father accepted His sacrifice and by it He announces the forgiveness of all of our sins; pronounces absolution on us. Sin—what causes death—is forgiven. That’s Easter’s pronouncement! And now since Jesus died, entered death, but rose again, He broke the bonds of/ shook off death; He took away its power. It is now for us a defeated enemy. Since death is overcome—and Jesus did that Easter Sunday: he is not here. See the place where they laid him—so too is the sin that brought death and so also is the devil defeated as the apostle writes [Hb. 2.14]: through death [Jesus destroyed] him who has the power of death, that is, the devil. Here is our victory too, which is ours through faith in Jesus: he is not here. See the place where they laid him.
2. But, dear Christian, Easter gives us no comfort if Jesus is merely gone. Jesus isn’t just “gone.” Instead, He is risen and glorified and as we confess in the Creed, He is at the Right Hand of the Father. Here in this position of authority and power, He is with His Church, with His dear Christians wherever they might be. So what does this mean? It means that when we hear the angel say he is not here. See the place where they laid him, Jesus is not dead and buried in the tomb but with His dear Christians—with His dear Christians wherever they might be. This is not just some sort of “spiritual” presence, but He is with us bodily because Jesus is both God and man. With His resurrection and ascension, Jesus did not stop being true man. Instead, as God He can be and is everywhere; and because He is One Person, where Jesus is as God, there He is also as man—with His resurrected and glorified body, that same body that the walls and door of the tomb couldn’t keep in.
And where Jesus is, there He is with His gifts and blessings. We get a glimpse of this in our text: But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you. His disciples had scattered and deserted Jesus; and especially Peter who had made a big show but denied Him 3 times. But now Jesus wants to gather them? And for what purpose? To chastise/ punish them? Hardly! Through the word, here spoken by the women, He, in His loving concern—especially for Peter who denied Him—He wants to gather them together to grant them absolution; to give them the forgiveness of sins.
That’s why Jesus comes among us today as well! That’s why Easter’s message: he is not here. See the place where they laid him, is not one of comfort if Jesus is simply gone. He’s not simply “gone”; instead, He’s among us--and what’s ever better He never comes empty handed. He always comes with the gifts and blessings He won for us on the cross and proclaimed by Easter’s empty tomb—forgiveness of sin, life, deliverance from death and the devil, and eternal salvation. As “He goes before us to Galilee” He promises to meet us where He has promised to—in His word and Sacrament, and in particular in Holy Communion in which He gives us His very body and blood for the forgiveness of sin and strengthening of faith.
How glorious for us is Easter’s proclamation: He is not here. See the place where they laid him. Here we see the certainty of our forgiveness and eternal salvation; and because Jesus is not dead and buried in His tomb but alive, He is among us in His word, the absolution and sacraments giving us the fruits and blessing of His work—forgiveness of sin, life and salvation. INJ