Easter Sunday — there’s only so many different ways to say Jesus isn’t dead anymore, so here’s this year’s attempt.
Luke 24:1-12; 1 Corinthians 15:19-26; Psalm 118:1-2,14-24; Acts 10:34-43
Christ is Risen! <He is Risen, indeed> And we are all now officially doing better than the disciples. Well, for clarity’s sake, we are doing better than the men disciples. The women disciples were doing just fine.
It’s very early on Sunday, and the women (Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and others) set out wanting to anoint Jesus’ body in the traditional way. But when they get there, the found the tomb open and the body gone. At this point, Luke’s gospel doesn’t mention anything about soldiers posted guard, or a confusion about how they were going to roll away a stone. So I’m sure the women were trying to figure out what happened. Their first instinct would have been that someone stole the body. It’s what we read in Matthew’s gospel that the Pharisees and teachers of the law assumed.
But then, as the women were still trying to figure out who would have moved the body, two men in really bright clothes showed up and said, “What are you doing looking for Jesus in the tomb? He’s not here, He is Risen <I enjoy that a little too much.>. Don’t you remember what he said? ‘The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified, and on the third day be raised again.’”
At that point the women figure it out – they knew that Jesus had been raised from the dead. The men, on the other hand, didn’t have near as good of a reaction. When the women showed up telling their story, the other disciples didn’t believe them, because it seemed to be nonsense. People don’t just come back from a crucifixion after all. The women must have gone to the wrong tomb, or were so distraught that they imagined it. The disciples believed anything but the reality.
Looking back, it’s almost hard for us to think that the disciples wouldn’t expect Jesus’ resurrection. I mean, he told them he was going to die and rise again on the third day, and he told them this a lot. But by the time they actually got to it happening, it was the last thing on their minds. Even Peter, after visiting the tomb himself, didn’t understand, he went away wondering what might have happened.
But He is risen from the dead, and before long all the disciples had seen him (with no apology to the women at the tomb of course). Then, as we have recorded in our reading from Acts, Jesus commanded them to preach and teach that everyone who believes in him doesn’t have to worry about any bad they’ve done, because through Jesus those things go away and we are given a new life, an eternal life, in Him
Because He is risen, we are risen. But we’re not just risen in eternity, we have new life in him now. Look at the disciples: this rag-tag bunch of misfits before Jesus’ resurrection – several fishermen, a tax collector, an accountant, a terrorist – became a force that, within 300 years, literally changed the world. Peter, the first to talk and last to think, 50 days after the resurrection preaches a sermon that would lead to 3,000 people becoming followers of Jesus. Paul, a fervent persecutor of the church, after encountering Jesus on the road to Damascus, became a missionary and wrote a 13 of the 27 books in the New Testament. St. Moses the Black, an escaped slave turned bandit leader, found his new life in a monastery, where he became actively non-violent, even to the point of welcoming a band of robbers into his monastery after they tried to steal from it.
All of us have this same new life, now and in eternity, through faith in Jesus, as long as you believe. It’s a kind of rebirth, for as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians, “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away… the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself.” This is why we celebrate today, because Jesus’ resurrection gives us a new life in him, a life for God.