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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
When I was working in television news some twenty years ago, a session at an Illinois News Broadcasters’ Association convention taught those of us attending an important lesson about the reliability of eye‑witness testimony. The session was ostensibly about something else, until a group of masked gunmen stormed the room for a few minutes. Journalists were then selected to write up individual reports of what had been staged for that purpose, and the differences in their resulting stories were shocking! Journalists, law enforcement officials, and lawyers generally know all too well that ordinary eye‑witness testimony is notoriously un‑reliable. Bible critics sometimes want to use that unreliability of ordinary eye‑witness testimony both as an excuse for differences between the Gospel accounts’ reports of the Resurrection of Our Lord and to discredit the individual testimony of the witnesses included in any one account. (If you stick around for the later Divine Service, you will have a chance to note for yourself some of the differences between St. John’s account that we heard moments ago and St. Mark’s account that we will hear then.) Of course, the Gospel accounts are not ordinary eye‑witness testimony but extraordinary eye‑witness testimony. The accounts and their individual witnesses are divinely inspired and therefore without error. So, we can believe Mary Magdalene in today’s Gospel Reading when she says, what I have taken as our theme, “I have seen the Lord.”
Of course, at first Mary Magdalene herself did not know what to believe. Mary Magdalene was standing by the cross of Jesus when He died Friday night, and Mary Magdalene saw where Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus laid Jesus’s body before the Sabbath began. After resting on the Sabbath, she left home very early on that first day of the week, while it was still dark, to join other women at the tomb, from what we know, to finish annointing Jesus’s body. But, the tomb was open, and she apparently left the other women there to report to Peter and John her conclusion that someone (maybe grave robbers) had taken Jesus out of the tomb. Meanwhile, back at the tomb, other women apparently saw the angels and left. Eventually, John and Peter went inside the tomb and saw the burial cloths and left. Then, after weeping outside the tomb, Mary Magdalene stooped and looked inside, saw and talked to two angels, and then saw Jesus but somehow mistook Him for the gardener. He asked her why she was crying, and then He asked her whom she was seeking. Finally, He called her by name, and at last she recognized Him. He commanded her to go and talk to His brothers, and she went and told the disciples, “I have seen the Lord.”
Jesus’s question “Whom are you seeking?” is an interesting one. Some think the question helped Mary Magdalene realize that she was looking right at Jesus, but the question also is relevant for us this morning. “Whom are you seeking?” Maybe that question presumes you are seeking anyone at all. Is your answer to the question of “Whom are you seeking?” the same as or related to your answer to the question “Why are you here?” Some may be here because they were pressured to come and so may not be seeking Jesus at all. Others may be here because they are seeking Jesus for the first time, or maybe for the first time in a while. Still others may be here because Jesus has found them and so they know what He offers them and its importance. Whom you are seeking and why you are here matter, especially when it comes both to what you take with you when you leave here and to what you do after you leave here.
That Mary Magdalene was at the tomb because she was seeking Jesus is plain enough, but, to be honest, she was seeking the dead body of Jesus not the living Lord Jesus, Who was resurrected as He promised. Such a resurrection seemingly was not in her realm of possibilities. The tomb is open? She apparently thinks of grave robbers. The God-man Whom she is seeking appears inside the tomb with her? She thinks He is the gardener. Oh, but picking on Mary Magdalene is too easy. Are you and I any better? If you are not seeking Jesus at all, why not? Do you think that He did not really rise or that you have no need of a Savior? If you are seeking Jesus for the first time or the first time in a while, why are you seeking Jesus? Do you want Him to give you more than the forgiveness of sins, such as material wealth and earthly happiness now? If Jesus has found you and me and we know what He offers and its importance, is it having its way with us in all aspects of our lives? Or, do you and I somehow forget that even though Jesus has gloriously risen from the dead that our paths to glory include taking up our crosses daily and following Him in suffering?
Regardless of whom we are seeking or why we are here, we all have our sinful natures in common, and, on account of our common sinful natures we all sin. Whether or not we realize it, the fact remains that we all need a savior from sin, and Jesus is such a Savior from sin. He died on the cross and rose from the grave in order to save us from our sins. As the Lord triumphed over Pharaoh’s chariots and horsemen in the song Moses and the people of Israel sang in the First Reading, so the Lord has triumphed over death and the grave. You may reject His resurrection, but the fact remains that He did rise, as the inspired and therefore inerrant Scriptures say. So, He is the Son of God, His teaching is true, God the Father accepted His sacrifice for our sins, and all believers in Christ will rise to eternal life. Those who do not believe will also rise, but they will rise to eternal death. You do not want to realize the undeniable truth when it is too late. Twice the Third Reading says Mary Magdalene “was turned”, and it uses a specific word used of God turning the hearts of people to Himself. God likewise wants each of us to turn from our sin and to trust Him to forgive our sin for Jesus’s sake.
When we so turn and trust, God, out of His great love for you and for me, through faith in His Son Jesus Christ, freely gives us the forgiveness of sins, which is far more valuable to us than material wealth and earthly happiness now. He freely gives us the forgiveness of sins through the preaching of His Word, through the washing of regeneration in Holy Baptism, through individual absolution that follows private confession, and through bread that is His body and wine that is His blood in the Sacrament of the Altar. Through these means the Holy Spirit finds us, giving us faith and sustaining that faith once given. In the Third Reading, even Peter and John, whom it says believed something, did not right away understand from the Scripture that Jesus must rise from the dead until the Holy Spirit further enlightened them. So, we let the Holy Spirit work through the preached Word to prove to us that both our Lord’s past resurrection and our own future resurrections are true. As Jesus in the Third Reading called Mary Magdalene by name and commanded her to give a message to His “brothers”, so with the water and the Word of Holy Baptism God calls you and me by name and makes us His children, brothers and sisters in Christ with all our fellow believers. As St. John goes on to tell after our Third Reading, on the evening of that day, the first day of the week, Jesus appeared to ten of His disciples and gave them the Holy Spirit with the authority to forgive and retain sins. So, when particular sins trouble us, we confess them privately to God’s servants who then on God’s behalf absolve us individually. So absolved, we come to eat the family meal with our brothers and sisters in Christ, where Christ our resurrected Lord continues to be present with those of us He finds through the means of grace that give us the forgiveness of sins.
When we are so found by God, the forgiveness we receive through His means of grace has its way with us in all aspects of our lives. Just as all bread with yeast was removed at the time of Passover, so the Second Reading tells us Jesus has removed all traces of sin, and so we remove all that remains of the old fleshly world. God’s forgiveness enables us to take up our crosses daily and follow Him in our suffering on our way to His glory. We sang in the Office Hymn that “nothing ever saddens / The joy within [our hearts],” but our experience is that Holy‑days such as The Resurrection of Our Lord can especially be times of disappointment and frustration, maybe when gatherings of family and friends do not go as we might have liked. Throughout the year, difficulties with family, school, work, or maybe with our own or a loved one’s health might even “shake”, though, in the Office Hymn’s words, not “take / The hope which God’s own Son / In love for [us] has won.” In His wisdom, God permits us to continue to struggle in these ways, even as we continue to struggle with sin. So, we continue to turn from our sin and to trust in Him.
Despite her struggles, Mary Magdalene, from what we know, was the first to see the Lord, and He clearly used her to communicate news of His resurrection to His disciples. We must not make too much of that, however, for our Lord did not ordain her nor any other woman to preach publicly, and those church bodies that do ordain women to the preaching office, against our Lord’s practice and against His apostle’s express command, show themselves to be not only “un‑apostolic” but also “anti‑apostolic”. Nevertheless, in keeping with her vocation, Mary Magdalene announced what she saw and heard. We likewise do well, in keeping with our vocations, to tell what we see and hear, to be, what was called at one of the Men’s Breakfasts this past week, “a living example of the Resurrected Lord.” I know none of us needs anything else to do, but we already are an example or witness, for better or for worse. Though we are not inspired in such a way so as to be inerrant, the Holy Spirit, Who gives us the forgiveness of sins to take with us when we leave here, can and does affect what we do after we leave here. May He always enable us to live as better eyewitnesses and so say with Mary, “I have seen the Lord!”
Amen.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +