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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!)
Two new ostensibly “Christian” movies are now in theaters: one reportedly a straightforward telling of the end of the Apostle Paul’s life, and the other a feminist re‑imagination of Mary Magdalene, the first witness of the resurrected Jesus. If you remember Mel Gibson’s 2004 movie “The Passion of the Christ”, you may recall its being criticized for, among other things, barely acknowledging Jesus’s resurrection, and that not even all that accurately—you got a glimpse of a naked backside walking out of an open tomb, barely better than this morning’s bulletin cover. Now, Gibson is working on a future “Passion of the Christ” sequel that will focus on the resurrection, with Jim Caviezel again set to play Jesus and saying that he thinks the sequel will “be the single biggest film in history” (CBN). “The Passion of the Christ” reportedly cost only $30-million to produce, and made more than twelve times that amount in the United States alone, but lost in that movie’s gore and violence seemed to be why the crucifixion matters: that Jesus died for the sins of the world, including your sins and my sins. There may be little more hope for its sequel’s telling why the resurrection matters—for example, showing that God accepted that sacrifice for our sins—for, Gibson has said that that movie will also tell an out‑of‑sequence story that includes the time between the crucifixion and resurrection—about which the Bible is largely silent—possibly also with scenes in hell, and Gibson compared the movie to an “acid trip”. (Lifezette.) No “acid trip” from St. Mark! This morning we consider the Gospel Reading, especially the angel’s message to the women, “He has risen; He is not here”, but we do so under the theme, “Jesus has risen, and He is here”.
On Good Friday before the sunset start of the Sabbath, at least two of the women saw where Jesus was laid and presumably also saw the stone Joseph of Arimathea rolled against the entrance of the tomb (Mark 15:47). After apparently resting as Jesus’s body did on the Sabbath, on Holy Saturday after the sunset end of the Sabbath, the women bought spices that they might go and anoint Jesus, despite His already having said that a woman in Bethany had anointed His body beforehand for burial (Mark 14:3-9). Such anointing would be an act of love and devotion to the deceased, and it would also serve a practical purpose for any involved in funeral rites in the tomb. Very early on the first day of the week, they went to the tomb, perhaps lamenting, if not for the first time really thinking about, the task of rolling away the very large stone, but God had taken care of that for them. And, entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were alarmed. The angel told them not to be alarmed, that Jesus of Nazareth, Whom they were seeking, Who was crucified, had risen and was not there, in the tomb, as the angel invited them to see for themselves by the essentially empty place where He had been laid. That message that Jesus was risen and was not there in the tomb is the heart of this morning’s Gospel Reading and its parallel synoptic accounts (Matthew 28:6; Luke 24:6); although Jesus is not a central figure and does not “appear” in the passage, the Reading is still very much about Him (Nielsen, CPR 25:2, 25).
Now, the Gospel Reading’s narrative of the women’s interaction with the angel is like nearly every other Biblical narrative of people’s interactions with angels, except for one important thing (Marcus, ad loc Mark 16:5, 1080, with reference to Davies and Allison 2.660-661): after the angel told them to keep going until they privately gave a message to His disciples and Peter, the women, at least at first, did not! By Divine-inspiration, St. Mark reports that the women went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.
At some level we might understand the women’s failure at first to do what the angel said—their trembling and astonishment, or what St. Matthew describes as “fear and great joy” (Matthew 28:8), maybe their reverential awe for God, akin to the “fear and trembling” with which St. Paul says we should work out our own salvation (Philippians 2:12). Yet, there may well be not a little irony in that, when Jesus told His followers not to tell others about Him, they often nevertheless did, and, in this case, when told to tell others, at least at first they did not (Marcus, ad loc Mark 16:5-8, 1087). Does that sound like anyone you know? Children often do the exact opposite of what their parents might tell them to do, sometimes willfully, and all of us by nature are no different as children of God. We who believe still have sinful natures and so we continue to sin, at times we even sin especially dangerously, fully aware of what we should do and quite intentionally doing the opposite. Of course, any sin, even the smallest unintentional sin, merits death now in time and eternal torment in hell, apart from repentance and faith.
That we repent at all is no small miracle. The Holy Spirit calls and enables us to turn in sorrow from our sin—both our intentional and unintentional sin—to trust God to forgive our sin, and to want to do better than to keep on sinning. When we so repent, then God forgives our sin, all our sin, whatever our sin might be. God forgives our sin for the sake of Jesus Christ, Who died on the cross for our sin, and rose from the grave, demonstrating that God the Father accepted His sacrifice on our behalf.
I mentioned earlier that lost in Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” was why the crucifixion matters, and the Kilgore “Prayer Breakfasts” I went to this past week suffered from the same problem. Not one of the three days’ worth of speakers apparently could bring themselves to come right out and say that all that Jesus suffered, especially His dying on the cross, was for the sins of the world, including your sins and my sins. If we cannot talk about sin, then there is no point in talking about Jesus! For, God showed His love for the world by sending His Son to save the world from sin (John 3:16-17). As we heard in today’s Epistle Reading (1 Corinthians 15:1-11), of first importance is that Jesus Christ died for our sins and was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, not only according to Old Testament prophecies of His death and resurrection, but likely also according to New Testament Gospel records of His death and resurrection. By God’s grace, this Gospel of Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection for us is preached to us, we receive it, stand in it, and are saved by it, if we hold fast to the Word that is preached to us.
In Israel this holy season, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre has been closed recently as a protest over an Israeli tax plan (Egypt Today). Regarded by many as the site of Jesus’s crucifixion and burial, the Church is a popular tourist destination, despite the fact that in today’s Gospel Reading we heard the angel inside the tomb say, Jesus “has risen, He is not here.” Jesus is not in the tomb, but He is here. Wherever His Gospel is purely preached and His Sacraments are rightly administered there You will find Him, with His Church gathered around Him. Holy Baptism received in faith brings us into the Church, and Holy Communion received in faith keeps us here. Far better than the rich food full of marrow and the well-aged wine well-refined that we heard about in today’s Old Testament Reading (Isaiah 25:6-9) are the bread that is the Body of Christ given for us and the wine that is the Blood of Christ shed for us, for by them the Lord forgives our sins and so gives us life and salvation. Because Jesus is true God, He can and does use an incomprehensible, spiritual (or “illocal”) mode of presence to be really, physically present in the bread and wine of Holy Communion, just as He used that same mode of presence to leave the closed tomb (Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration VII:100)—it was opened so that people could see that it was empty. So, as the Lord rose on the first day of the week, and, in the time of the apostles, the Church gathered together on the first day of the week to celebrate the Lord’s Supper (Acts 20:7), so do we.
Also worth noting in today’s Gospel Reading is the angel’s sending the message to Jesus’s disciples “and” Peter, or perhaps “even” Peter or “especially” Peter (Marcus, ad loc Mark 16:5‑8, 1086). Peter, of course, had three times denied the Lord, and may even have thought of himself as no longer a disciple. Our forefathers in the Missouri Synod are among those who saw in the angel’s message to the women a special message of consolation for Peter (Pieper, III:210 n.106, citing the 1860 Proceedings of the 10th General Convention of the Missouri Synod), a message perhaps realized more concretely as individual Holy Absolution when Jesus later that day personally appeared privately to Peter (Luke 24:34), perhaps the first male disciple to see the Lord (Marcus, ad loc Mark 16:7, 1081). Such individual Holy Absolution is also available to us, so that we terrified sinners can more easily appropriate God’s forgiveness of our sins.
The women’s at first saying nothing to anyone at some point obviously changed. The truth got out! Harmonizations of the different Gospel accounts of the resurrection vary, but one has the women first reporting to Peter and John in Jerusalem and several of the women then going to tell the other nine disciples, who may have been in Bethany, with Jesus’s appearing to them as St. Matthew reports along the way (Matthew 28:10; Wenham, Enigma, 89, 95-99). Like from them, Jesus brings forth from us the obedience that we otherwise fail to give God. Even St. Paul in today’s Epistle Reading says that it was not he who worked but the grace of God that was with him. Likewise for us, and the good works that God brings forth from us, including our on the first day of the week putting aside something of that which God has prospered us for Him to use—they are not our doing but God’s (1 Corinthians 16:2).
Better than any unreliable cinematic portrayals of Jesus’s resurrection or of the figures involved in it, we have the sure and certain words of Holy Scripture, such as those of the angel’s, Jesus “is risen, He is not” at the tomb. This morning we have realized that “Jesus has risen, and He is here”, where we come in repentance and faith seeking and receiving God’s forgiveness for Christ’s sake. Ultimately our salvation is not about our obedience but His obedience. By God’s mercy and grace for the sake of Christ, now and on the Last Day, we can say as Isaiah in the Old Testament reading prophesied would be said: “Behold, this is our God; we have waited for Him, that He might save us. … Let us be glad and rejoice in His salvation.”
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 + + +