Text: Mark 16:1-8, 1
Corinthians 15:1-11
V The Resurrection of our Lord … According to the Scriptures In the name of our risen Savior, God, and King, dear
friends in Christ: Today we join the
Holy Christian Church on Earth and the saints in glory in celebrating the Feast
of the Resurrection. It’s the day on
which our Lord Jesus proved the success of his mission to atone for our sins
and release us from the curse of death by rising again from death’s cold grasp
and showing himself to his overjoyed disciples.
This victory is the single greatest event in human history. It is the best news that sinners like us
could possibly hear. Small wonder then
that Easter is considered by faithful Christians to be the highest of high holy
days. That
being the case, did you notice anything missing from this morning’s Scripture
readings? In the Old Testament lesson we
heard about the great feast of celebration that the Lord has planned for his
people on the final day when death is forever behind us. In the Epistle reading St. Paul stresses the
foundational importance to our faith of Jesus’ death for sin and his rising to
life again. And in the Gospel reading we
join the women who rose early that first Easter morning and went to the garden
tomb in order to complete the hastily performed burial of the Friday
before. To their shock and horror, they
find the stone rolled away, and the gaping mouth of the tomb standing
open. With no small amount of trepidation,
they peer inside expecting to find … find what?
I’m not sure. Presumably the
gruesome evidence that his enemies weren’t satisfied just seeing him abused and
killed in worst way imaginable; no, they must have continued to vent their fury
on him by desecrating his corpse. It’s
something like that that they expect to see, and they brace themselves for the
worst; but instead they see an angel appearing as a young man in a dazzling
white robe. He’s seated there calmly in
the gloomy shadows of the sepulcher as if just waiting for someone to stop in
for a chit chat – which isn’t too far from the truth. To say that he startles the women would be a
gross understatement. But they are even more shaken by his message: “Don’t be alarmed”, he tells them, “You’re
looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He’s risen; he’s not here. See the place where they laid him. But go now, and tell his disciples and Peter
that he is going before you into Galilee.
There you will see him, just as he told you.” They just don’t go as instructed; we’re told that they were so full of terror that
they actually fled from the tomb. And there the story ends. So,
what’s missing in all three of these readings selected by people a whole lot
smarter than me to be the lessons for Easter Day, the Feast of the Resurrection,
the highest of the Church’s high holy days?
Well, Jesus is, of course. Here
we are to celebrate his rising from the grave, and the risen Lord Jesus doesn’t
even appear in any of our readings. Now
maybe you wouldn’t expect him to show up in the Old Testament lesson; but if
that’s true, I feel my eleven plus years here have been wasted. Jesus is all over the Old Testament. And perhaps you wouldn’t expect Jesus to make
an appearance in the Epistle lesson; though that’s not out of the question
either. I mean, there are a number of New
Testament texts other than the four Gospels in which Jesus does indeed appear. Surely they could have picked one of
them. But since they didn’t, it only
makes sense that on Easter Sunday of all
days we should have a Gospel reading in which the risen Lord Jesus shows up
in such a way that someone actually sees him.
But no; instead the story ends abruptly with frightened women fleeing
from the tomb without having seen
Jesus. In fact, there’s strong evidence
to suggest that in the earliest edition of St. Mark’s Gospel that’s where the
whole story ends. It’s very likely that
Mark ended his Gospel right there without any mention of anyone having actually laid eyes on the risen Lord. But whether that’s the end or not, the women
are instructed to tell the disciples of Jesus’ resurrection without themselves
being eye witnesses of the central truth of the message they are to deliver. That’s kind of strange, don’t you think? Not
that it makes much difference anyway. We
know from the accounts of the other evangelists that the disciples didn’t
believe the women when they reported that they saw an angel. They thought the women were hysterical, or
overcome with grief, or letting their emotions carry them away so that they
were having hallucinations.
Whatever. They simply didn’t
consider them to be reliable witnesses. It
only stands to reason that they wouldn’t have believed the women if they said
they’d actually seen Jesus. And all
of this got me to thinking: here we are
gathered to celebrate Jesus’ victory over death and the grave – the central
truth of our faith – the truth on which Christianity literally lives or
dies. Let me ask you, how do you know
for sure it’s true? I’m willing to wager
that none of us has ever seen the risen Lord Jesus. And if anyone here claims to have seen him,
we’d all be thinking the same thing the disciples were about the women who
claimed they saw an angel: you’re
absolutely nuts. And yet you believe in
the resurrection of Jesus, don’t you? At
least I assume that you do since you’re here this morning to celebrate it. So, why do you believe it? I’ve
read a number of books on the topic of Christian apologetics. It’s the field of theology that attempts to
defend the truths of the Christian faith using arguments from reason,
philosophy, and by taking into consideration primarily non-biblical sources of
information. The authors of these books
usually claim that the resurrection of Jesus is one of the best attested events
in the history of the ancient world.
They argue that if any reasonable person just sat down and objectively
considered the evidence, they’d come to the inescapable conclusion that Jesus
Christ did indeed rise from the dead. But what evidence is there really? Isn’t it true that when all is said and done
we are in exactly the same place as the women who fled from the tomb that on first
Easter morning? All we have is
somebody’s word on it. We haven’t seen
the risen Jesus. We believe in his
resurrection only because somebody told us it’s true. In today’s Epistle reading, while building his case for
the truth of the resurrection, St. Paul stresses the number of eye witnesses –
people who actually saw the risen Lord. Paul
writes, “He appeared to Cephas (that’s Peter), then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred
brothers at one time” most of whom were still alive when Paul wrote to the
Corinthians in AD 55, though, he admits, some had already passed on. What Paul is saying is, “Hey, if you don’t
believe me, you can ask them. They saw
Jesus too” – which was great for the Corinthians, I suppose; but friends, all of
Paul’s witnesses are long dead now. So not
only have you not seen the risen Lord Jesus, you can’t even talk to an eye
witness and get a first hand account. And
even if by some miracle you could hear from one of the eye witnesses, what
would you have except for another person’s word on it? And look, eye witness testimony is not all that it’s
cracked up to be. Recent studies have
proven how easy it is to influence what a person thinks he or she saw just by
the way questions about an incident are worded.
For example, they’ll show a group of people a film clip of a car
accident. Then they’ll ask half the
viewers how fast they thought the offending car was moving when it smashed into the other car, and the
other half how fast they thought it was going when it bumped into the other car.
Guess what? The smashed group
will estimate a much higher average velocity than the bumped group every time
even though they watched the same thing.
The indication is either that eye witnesses tend to tell questioners
what they think they want to hear, or that their actual memories of an incident
can be influenced and perhaps even altered by the words others use to describe
it. Either way the point is that eye
witness testimony isn’t all that reliable.
Couple that with the many folks who claim everything from having been
abducted by UFOs to having recently seen Elvis Presley in a shopping mall and,
well, you could probably find yourself someone who claims to have seen just
about anything you can imagine. So where does that leave us? Right back with those women who fled from the
tomb, that’s where. We haven’t seen the
risen Lord Jesus. All we have is
someone’s word on it. And we’ve seen
that the eye witness testimony of humans is always subject to doubt. After all, there are outright liars, there
are those with delusions and hallucinations, and there are honest people who
are mistaken about what they think they’ve seen. We simply can’t rely on human testimony. And yet we are called upon to believe in the
historical fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, because as St. Paul
correctly points out, it is the central truth on which Christianity stands or
falls. You’d think, then, wouldn’t you,
that we’d be left with something more reliable, something more concrete on
which to hang our hats of faith? If the
truth of the resurrection of Jesus is so critically important, and it is, don’t
you think the Lord should have given us a more reliable witness? Of course! And it turns out that he did. And though you might have missed it in
today’s readings, it’s there – it’s there three times. It shows up first in the Epistle reading where
St. Paul says, “for I delivered to you as of first importance what I also
received: that Christ died for our sins in
accordance with the Scriptures.” The
second time is in the next line, where he says, “that [Jesus] was buried, [and]
that he was raised on the third day in
accordance with the Scriptures.”
That little phrase “in accordance with the Scriptures” is often
misunderstood by modern Christians. We
tend to think it means that Jesus died and rose again just like the Bible says
he did as recorded in the four Gospels:
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
But that’s not what it means at all.
We know because at the time Paul wrote to the Corinthians these books
hadn’t been written yet, or if they had, they hadn’t yet got much
circulation. No, when Paul says that
Jesus died and rose in accordance with
the Scriptures he’s talking about the Old Testament – Moses and the
prophets – he’s referring to what he
would have considered to be the Scriptures in his day. What he’s saying is that Jesus had to rise from the dead because God in
his Holy Word promised that he would.
Men can lie or be mistaken; but God can’t – which is why Paul lists God
as his first witness before he starts to run down the human eye witnesses. He’s putting his best witness on the stand
first when he writes “in accordance with
the Scriptures.” He’s saying you
have God’s Word on it. What Old Testament Scriptures speak of the resurrection
of Jesus? There are too many to name;
but we read one earlier in the Introit where the Spirit of Christ says through
the psalmist, “My heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices; my flesh also
dwells secure. For you will not abandon
my soul to the grave or let your Holy One see corruption.” In this and many more passages like it, the
Son of God speaks of what is to come and what will happen to him – including
his resurrection from the dead. But I told you the witness of God’s Word showed up three
times in this morning’s readings. The
third time is in the Gospel when the angel says to the women, “[Jesus] is going
before you into Galilee. There you will
see him, just as he told you.” The angel is referring to the several
occasions that Jesus himself had told his disciples what was to come. He told them that he was going to Jerusalem;
there he would be rejected, suffer, and die, and on the third day he would rise
again from the dead, and that he would meet with them again later in
Galilee. And so there’s an implied
rebuke in the angel’s message to the women.
He’s saying why are you looking for Jesus here? He told you to meet him in Galilee. Why didn’t you believe him? Why aren’t you waiting for him where he said
he’d be? In Luke’s account of the
women’s visit to the tomb this comes across even more clearly; but the point is
the same: they had God’s Word on
it. That’s all they needed because the
Word of God cannot be broken – not even by death. And that, my friends, is good news for us, because we are
the inheritors of both the Old Testament promises of God and his New Testament
record of their fulfillment in the person and work of Jesus Christ. So we are not left to wonder or doubt if
we’ve been lied to or deceived by someone who was crazy or mistaken. We have God’s Word on it. And through God’s Word the Holy Spirit works
to create and sustain faith in our hearts so that we can be confident of
Christ’s resurrection from the dead – and with his resurrection, everything
that means for us; namely, that in him we are guaranteed the forgiveness of
sins, our own resurrections from the grave one day, and eternal life with him
in glory. We can be sure these things
because they all must happen
precisely as God has revealed his truth to us according to the Scriptures.
In Jesus’ name. Amen. Soli
Deo Gloria! |