Resurrection Sunday

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I love Easter Sunday!

At the beginning of today’s worship service with a raised voice, I declared: “Christ is risen!” With the same enthusiasm you all responded: “Christ is risen indeed! Hallelujah!” 

Today we join hundreds of millions of Christians across the globe celebrating Easter Sunday. We give glory to God for what He accomplished for us through the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, His one and only Son. 

The first Easter Sunday began in a very different way. 

Today’s Gospel lesson teaches us that the celebration of the resurrection can never be separated from Good Friday and never be separated from the Old Testament and its fulfillment in Jesus. 

The Gospel lesson focuses on two groups of people. A group of men and two women. What brought these two groups together was a gravesite; a tomb that held the remains of a man who was put to death by crucifixion for violating Jewish laws. 

The guard had been placed there by Pontius Pilate, the highest ranking leader in this province of the Roman Empire. Following Jesus’ death, the chief priests and the Pharisees went to Pilate. “Sir,” they said, “we remember that while he was still alive that deceiver said, ‘After three days I will rise again.’ So give the order for the tomb to be made secure until the third day. Otherwise, his disciples may come and steal the body and tell the people that he has been raised from the dead. This last deception will be worse than the first.”

“Take a guard,” Pilate answered. “Go, make the tomb as secure as you know how.” So they went and made the tomb secure by putting a seal on the stone and posting the guard.

The sun peaking over the horizon was a sign of relief for the guard. The soldiers had been told to guard the tomb until that Sunday morning. They had encountered no grave robbers. The seal was unbroken. “Mission accomplished!” Visions of being back at their barracks and savoring a hearty breakfast, danced through their heads. Their sense of relief and satisfaction for a job well done was only for a fleeting moment. 

As the sun rose on that first Easter Sunday morning the ground convulsed and a being bearing heaven’s light appeared. The angel then singlehandedly dislodged and removed the massive stone in front of Jesus tomb. The angel’s presence caused battle hardened soldiers to quiver and faint. 

Do you blame them?

The angelic being ignored the authorized representatives of the civil authorities who laid prostrate on the ground. The angel had dislodged and broken a Roman seal. The crime of tampering with a Roman seal was serious and would normally have resulted in arrest and swift and severe punishment for the seal-breaker. The quivering cohort of Roman soldiers was in no position to enforce the law around official Roman seals and their desecration. 

The women had come to the tomb that morning full of grief. The Rabbi who they had grown to love was dead. They wanted to be sure that all the customary burial rituals had been observed for their beloved teacher. They had come to weep and lament and cry out in anguish. They had come to pour out their souls to God. 

Mary and her friend had felt the same earthquake and had seen the same luminous being from heaven. Like the soldiers, fear gripped their hearts and minds. They too were quivering and ready to faint. Their grief was to be as brief as the soldier’s relief. 

The angel did have something to say to Mary Magdelene and the other Mary. 

“Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said.” (Matthew 28:5-6). 

The messenger from heaven then invited the ladies to investigate the tomb; to inspect the place where Jesus’ dead body was laid to rest. 

Empty!

The angel then commissioned them: Go to his disciples and tell them: (1) Jesus is risen from the dead; and (2) that he will meet them in Galilee.

Mary Magdelene and the other Mary obeyed immediately. “So, the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples.” (Matthew 28:8)

I love the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is so real. It speaks to the reality of the human condition. The soldiers, Mary Magdelene and the other Mary were all afraid. All of Scripture testifies that when human beings encounter the divine, a paralyzing fear grips them. The same scripture testifies that paralysis of that fear is broken by the words of the heavenly being: “Do not be afraid, God has found favor with you. Now go!” The empty tomb and the angel’s orders to them had sparked a joy that rose above the fear that had gripped Mary Magdelene and the other Mary. 

The Gospel reveals that the Lord Jesus stood ready to drive out the fear and make their joy complete. The risen Christ stood before these two witnesses. They fell at the Son of God’s feet and worshiped him. “Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.” His presence, words and commands drove out their fear completely. Off they went, and the rest is, as they say, history. 

The women disappeared and so did the angel. The guard eventually got up and ran from the tomb. 

Some went to the High Priests and reported what had happened. An angel came and opened the tomb and that the tomb was empty. The guard’s report sparked fear in the High Priests. Not the fear of God and then the joy of resurrection. It sparked fear of loss. It sparked fear of losing control of their flock to a sect that would use resurrection to draw the faithful away from the one true faith. They had to crush this rebellion. Their weapon of choice: Disinformation and bribery. 

Disinformation and bribery are nothing new. The High Priests and elders did not need AI, internet trolls and blogs or non-traceable Bitcoin to pull it off. Cold hard cash went to the soldiers. They were paid to tell a story. This was the tale they were to tell. If you are asked by your superiors: “You are to say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.’” (Matthew 28:13). 

The soldiers’ response would have been: “If we report that we were asleep while on guard duty we would be guilty of a military crime punishable by death, just ask any soldier.” The High Priests’ response: “If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.”  (Matthew 28:14). 

So, the soldiers did as they were told. The Gospel concludes this vignette with these words: “And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day.” (Matthew 28:15)

The angel told the women: He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. (Mathew 28:6). Jesus said he would be killed and that he would rise from the dead. 

Jesus told Nicodemus, a member of the ruling elite, the Sanhedrin, also known as the elders, that he would be crucified and to see his crucifixion through Scripture: “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.” (John 3:14-15) The bronze serpent described in Numbers 21:4-9, fashioned by Moses and put on a pole and lifted up among the people, became a means of salvation for those who looked upon it with faith. Though bit by snakes whose venom would surely kill them, those that looked at the snake according to God’s command lived. 

Jesus identified himself with the bronze serpent. He declared that the serpent pointed to him, his mission and his coming. The bronze serpent evoked and pointed to the words of the Prophet Isaiah in Chapter 53 of his Book. The lifeless metal serpent lifted up on a pole in the middle of a sea of people, pointed to a man who would be lifted up in another large crowd of people. In Psalm 22, King David saw the Messiah hanging on a pole, hands and feet pierced. David saw the Messiah was surrounded by other criminals suffering for their sins, bulls (pointing to Israel’s religious elite) and dogs (pointing to gentile forces). Isaiah promised the crowd’s reaction would be mixed. 

Some would see the man hanging on the pole as a criminal, punished for his own sins. They would see him as a man who was justly judged by human and divine courts and cursed by God. The crowd would revel in his suffering. They would hurl insults at him, and gamble for his clothing. 

The man hanging on the pole would move the hearts of some to repent. They would see that they have gone terribly astray. Their sin would come before them. They would see their guilt and that they justly deserve the punishment the man on the pole was suffering. They would see in the man on the cross and offering for their sin. 

Both Isaiah and King David declared that the man on the pole would die and be buried. Both declared he would not stay dead but would come to life.

The serpent on the pole also pointed further backwards to the very beginning. The death and the resurrection of Jesus fulfilled another scripture verse they knew very well. God said: And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” (Genesis 3:15).

These words were spoken by God as an integral part of his pronouncement of judgement on Adam, Eve, Satan and the whole human race that followed them. God pronounced a death sentence on their offspring: from dust you came and to the dust you shall return. God then judged the serpent for his crime.

The Devil had a mission in the Gaden of Eden. Adam and Eve were in a perfect relationship with God. God walked with them. They stood before God is a blessed innocence we cannot imagine. 

Scriptures teach us that Satan had walked with God in the same way. Satan had sinned and rebelled against God. God cast him out of the heavenly realm. The perfection he had enjoyed with God was forever destroyed. Satan’s most passionate desire was to destroy the relationship between God and mankind. The evil one destroyed Adam and Eve’s innocence and ours by causing them to sin. By eating of the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve were transformed. They could not see one another and God in the same way. They were cast out of paradise. Their whole life they would suffer and then die. They were cursed for life and then wiped out. Fade to black….the end. 

In the middle of the death sentence, words of hope emerge. “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” (Genesis 3:15). With these words God had described an epic battle. A life and death struggle between Satan and a descendant of Eve. The fruit of the virgin’s womb, the Son of God and the Son of Man, just as Isaiah had foreseen. Satan would sink his fangs deep into the flesh of the Son of God and the poison would run deep into his blood. The vile snake’s bite should have proved fatal, however, that last deadly move by the serpent would prove to be fatal and his undoing. The Son of God would crush the serpent’s vile skull and reverse the curse of sin and death. 

Look at the Gospels carefully. All four say it. We hear it every Good Friday: When they came to the place called the Skull (Golgotha), they crucified him there, along with the criminals—one on his right, the other on his left. (Luke 23:33.). Jesus’ cross was planted on a rock called the skull. 

That hill outside Jerusalem pointed to the serpent’s head. 

On the first Good Friday the old serpent and Jesus were engaged in an epic battle. Satan’s fangs were embodied by nails in Jesus’ feet, his heels. The nails that pierced and sunk into hands also represented Satan’s deadly fangs. On Jesus head was a crown of thorns. A cruel joke. “So you say are the king of the Jews? Here is your crown.” Each spine on Jesus’ thorny crown was a tiny serpent’s fang that dug into his scalp. Satan’s fangs eventually did their work: “And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit.” The last of Satan’s bite took the form of a Roman lance that pierced his side. (Matthew 27:50).

Matthew’s Gospel reveals: At that moment (when he breathed his last) the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people. (Matthew 27:51-53).

The effects of Jesus sacrificial death were immediate. Those who had died, believing in the coming Messiah who would resurrect them from the dead, came to life. The massive curtain in the Temple that separated the Holiest place from the rest of the Temple, where only the High Priest met God, was torn. It was torn from the top to the bottom, signifying an act from God above. The curtain represented a barrier between God and humanity, our sin. The High Priest could only go into the Holy of Holies with the blood of a sacrifice. Jesus death on the cross atoned for our sin and those who believe in him and his atoning sacrifice could enter God’s presence. 

The serpent’s head had been thoroughly crushed. The curse of sin and death had been thoroughly reversed. 

Isaiah promised that the Suffering Servant would come to life, “and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and prolong his days.“ (Isaiah 53:10). God promised He would bless Suffering Servant and make him a leader. “Therefore, I will give him a portion among the great.” (Isaiah 53:12).

The risen Jesus bid the women to go to his disciples and declare he had risen from the dead and to meet him in Galilee. In Galilee Jesus declared to his disciples: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20).

The one who had crushed the head of the serpent had become the head of the church. The church that would go into the world and free those held captive by the power of sin, death and the devil. He had smashed them all on Good Friday and began the creation of a kingdom that exists already among us and will be perfectly fulfilled on Jesus’ second coming. 

The Easter gospel lesson reminds us that life is still ultimately centered around the tomb, the grave….the end. We are either the one in the tomb or around the tomb. Like Mary Magdelene and the other Mary we will continue to walk to gravesides to pay our last respects and to mourn the loss of ones we love. We still lose the company, comfort, presence and solace of our deceased loved ones. We still miss them horribly. Death still hurts and it still stings. I have heard many people lament: “I would give anything to get them back…anything.” Maybe you have said this. 

How do you respond? 

There is still a lot of disinformation out there. Jesus’ status as the Son of God, his death and his resurrection are still denied. Others have come up with other accounts of what happens when you die. 

There are gravesides that we are called to by Jesus. He calls us to come to these gravesides and make a pronouncement: “God knows you want your loved one back. You will get them back and you don’t have to give anything! You do not have to pay a ransom for the return of your loved one. Just as Jesus said: 

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”(John 3:16) 

“I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26)

We being the funeral services for our brothers and sisters in Christ with these words from the Apostle Paul: “When we were baptized in Christ Jesus, we were baptized into his death. We were buried therefore with him by Baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live a new life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” (Romans 3:5-6)

Like Mary Magdelene and the other Mary, we can leave the graveside with joy welling up within a grieving heart. Joy sparked by the faith and trust that the one who we buried, like the two Marys, encountered the risen Christ, not in a cemetery in Israel, but in eternity. Joy sparked by the belief that, because Jesus crushed the serpent’s head one day we too will meet Jesus face to face in the company of all who have gone before us. 

O death where is your sting?

O grave where is your victory?

He is risen.

Amen.

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