SJLC Sermon – Easter Sunday
Matthew 28:1-10
Sermon
Christ is Risen!
He is Risen Indeed!
(x3)
These words are an ancient proclamation. They are words right from scripture and repeated often by Christians for nearly 2000 years. They are peculiar in the story they tell. Christ is Risen. Did he wake up from a nap? Did fall down and stand up again? Has he climbed some stairs or taken the elevator to the top of a building?
They tell a story… but we need to know where that story begins.
This morning we hear the story of two women gathering at the tomb on the first day of week, on Sunday morning. But a week before this moment, Jesus had ridden into Jerusalem on a donkey as a saviour. The people shouted from the streets, they laid their clothes down with palm branches on the road in order to show their respect for a king entering Jerusalem. They were hoping for a warlord, someone to get rid of their oppressors, the Roman Empire. They shouted Hosanna, Blessed is the One who comes in the Name of the Lord. Hosanna, which means Save Now. Hossana for a man named Jesus, which means God saves. But that was last Sunday.
Between that excitement for a saviour and now, the mood in the city changed. Hope for a messiah of action and power, turned into resentment and anger for a messiah of inaction and passivity. By Thursday night the people who were shouting Hosanna were shouting Crucify. Save Now became Kill Now.
And on Good Friday, the people did just that. The mobs, the religious authorities, the Roman governors and soldiers nailed this man named God Saves, named Jesus, to a cross. Humanity nailed God in flesh to a cross. But that was Friday.
This is Sunday. And this morning the two Marys come to the tomb… to see their beloved teacher one last time. They are hoping to finish the Jesus story, to end it in their own way. They don’t like the ending that Pilate, the temple authorities and the mobs tried to write. They don’t want the cross to be all there is. They are trying to add a little mercy, and little respect. To say goodbye on their terms. But they don’t get to write their ending either.
Instead, they hear a new story. A short, simple story that we have already told each other several times today.
Christ is Risen
He Is Risen Indeed
There is so much to tell in three simple words. So much to say and so much to hear. We get lost in all the details, all the goings on of this past week. From the Triumphal Entry in Jerusalem, to the Last Supper, to the Betrayal in the Garden, to the trial in front of Pilate, to Peter’s denial, to the crucifixion itself. It is easy for us to get lost in all the goings on. All the stops we make along the way, Palm Sunday, Maunday Thursday, Good Friday. All the details can start to cloud the simplicity of the story we tell this morning. But it isn’t just the details of Holy Week that can obscure. The details of life get in our way.
Work, school, grocery shopping, the weather, hockey playoffs, elections, family gatherings, spring cleaning, taxes… they all complicate things, they fill our minds and our attention with details to occupy us. And they are just the everyday things of life. The big moments can have us completely forget the story. Birth, graduation, marriage, illness, grief, death. We can stop hearing the story that Christ Is Risen. It can be drowned by all the other noise of life. We can lose our ability to hear it and it becomes one story among many in our ears.
And when there is so much noise, so many different stories going on in life, it is all we can do to try and wrap them all up. To end each one as best we can. To finish up all the details we can.
(Pause)
So, when you heard the Gospel lesson today, did you notice that the women didn’t faint?
It is a part of the story that passes by quickly. But when they come to the tomb and the Angel from heaven appears like lightening, the guards… the Roman Soliders, members of the most well trained military force that the world had ever seen, folded like cheap tents. But the women weren’t even afraid. Do you remember that part of the story?
It is a place we know well in our lives. It is where we live. We have heard the story, we have seen the most amazing events, yet we do not know what to think or do. We live in a world where most of us have flown across the country or around the world, and a few human beings to the moon even. We have talked to relatives on computer screens that are thousands of miles away. We can cook a bag of pop corn in two minutes. We can pull out a phone and ask it a question, and it will answer!
So if an angel appeared like lightening in our midst, instead of fainting, most of us would clap for the nice show that was put on at church today, because we have seen or heard that miraculous story before.
Now, do you remember when the women do fall to the ground?
It isn’t when they meet the Angel. It is when they meet Jesus.
They heard from the Angel that Jesus is Risen but it is when Jesus comes to them, that the real power of the story hits them. The words grab them and hold them, the words bring them to their knees. The words pull them out of the details, away from the distractions, and they become the only words worth repeating.
Christ is Risen!
He is Risen indeed!
These words have power. This story makes people want to tell it over again. The women run off to tell the other disciples the Good News. Jesus has risen from the dead. Three simple words have changed their entire world. All those other details, about betrayals, trials, crucifixions and burials, they don’t matter anymore. The woman have heard and seen the story of the resurrection. They have fallen down at the feet of Jesus and the story has been etched on their very beings for ever. It is a story given, so that it can be told over and over again.
You see, that is what is so powerful about this story. That is why this story is different than all the other stories we tell in life, all the details we experience. Work, family, school, hockey playoffs, elections, grocery shopping, birth, graduation, marriage, death. All the things have endings. All these things will one day finish.
Christ is Risen!
(He is Risen indeed!)
That story doesn’t end. That story is all about going on, going forward. Jesus rising from dead means the story isn’t done and will not ever finish. It was told to Mary and Mary at the tomb by an Angel. It is told here and around the world two thousand years later. We tell the story each Sunday, and each Easter. It is a story that has power over us and that compels us to keep telling it. It is what makes us fall down and worship today too.
It is a story that changes our life. That enters into all our endings, all our deaths and takes away their power. Christ’s rising from the dead, is our rising from the dead also. Jesus came into the world so that our stories would become his story AND today, Jesus’ story becomes ours. That is the power of the story for us.
Because Jesus has walked out of the tomb, so shall we. Because Jesus has defeated the power of the death, death will not defeat us. Because Jesus is alive, we shall live also.
Christ is Risen!
He is Risen Indeed!
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