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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!
No April Fool’s joke here! Just as He said He would, Jesus Christ rose from the dead on the third day after His death on the cross for your sins and for mine. How do you and I know that He rose from the dead? We trust Jesus’s Word, which contains the testimony of people who saw Him for themselves, people such as Mary Magdalene, Peter, and John. Of course, in this morning’s Third Reading, only Mary saw Jesus, and, even then, she took some convincing that the man standing before her really was Jesus. As the angels had asked Mary, Jesus did, too: “Woman, why are you weeping?” And, when Mary did not answer Jesus, He asked, “Whom are you seeking?” Those were good inductive questions for Mary, and those are good inductive questions for us to consider this morning, too: “Why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” First, “Why are you weeping?”
Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. Apparently without looking into the tomb then, and leaving there the other women who were with her, she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, who is usually understood to be the apostle John, who by the Holy Spirit authored the account that bears his name but does not refer to him by that name. After they ran back, verified that the tomb was empty, and went back to their homes, Mary stood outside the tomb weeping.
As Mary Magdalene wept, she stooped to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain. The angels asked Mary, “Why are you weeping?” Similar to what she earlier had told Simon and John, she answered the angels, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid Him.” From her seeing a stone that had been taken away from the tomb, she had deduced not only that the Lord was gone, but also that some unnamed group—perhaps the men who had buried Him (John 19:42), the Jewish leaders, grave-robbers, cemetery staff, or some-bodies else—had taken Him away, and she had further deduced that He was still lying somewhere. That she was talking about the Lord, Who presumably cast out seven demons from her and for Whom she provided out of her own means (Luke 8:1-3), and Who repeatedly had predicted not only His crucifixion but also His resurrection, never seems to have registered with her. Almost never mind Peter and John’s not yet understanding that the Old Testament Scriptures had said He must rise from the dead, they all did not yet seem to understand Jesus’s own words that said He would rise from the dead.
Mary apparently was weeping because the Lord’s body was missing, but she might well have been weeping anyway if His body had been there as she expected, as perhaps also we would be weeping for eternity (Lenski, ad loc John 20:13, p.1351; confer Morris, ad loc John 20:13, p.739 n.34). Yet, do we not nevertheless sometimes still weep as if Jesus has not been raised? How often do we leap to our own conclusions, or follow our own thoughts and feelings, and otherwise fail to understand the Word of the Lord (Kretzmann, ad loc John 20:1-2, 521)? Even when Jesus Himself is right before our eyes are we not nevertheless sometimes so engrossed in our own trouble or grief that we fail to see Him and appreciate what His resurrection means for us (Kretzmann, ad loc John 20:11-13, 523)? As Jesus told the women who were mourning and lamenting Him as He went to be crucified, they should not weep for Him but they should weep for themselves, weep in repentance over their sin with faith in Him to forgive their sin, in order to avoid the coming judgment (Luke 23:26‑31; confer Rengstorf, TDNT 3:722-725). We also should so weep!
The second question Jesus asked Mary Magdalene was “Whom are you seeking?” She supposed He was the gardener—or perhaps some sort of other “cemetery” keeper, like a night‑watchman (Wenham, Enigma, 83, 95)—whom she may have been seeking to ask about Jesus’s body. But, after Jesus called her by name, she recognized Him as her Teacher. God the Father seeks those who will worship Him in His Son Who is the Truth (John 14:6) and in the Holy Spirit (John 4:23). As the Triune God so seeks us to worship Him, He enables us to seek Him, to weep in repentance over our sin with faith in Him and so avoid the judgment we deserve on account of our sin. As with the drowning of Pharaoh’s chariots and chosen officers in the Red Sea for the benefit of the Israelites, the Lord triumphed gloriously over the Egyptians, leading to the Israelites’ deliverance and song of praise that we heard in the First Reading (Exodus 15:1-11), so, with Jesus’s dying on the cross for us, the Lord has triumphed gloriously over sin, death, and the power of the devil, leading to our deliverance and songs of praise. No one else is like the Lord: majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders! Because Jesus wondrously laid down His life just like ours and was restored, so ours will be restored on the Last Day (Lutheran Service Book 475).
Jesus’s second question to Mary Magdalene—“Whom are you seeking?”—is said to have helped her realize that the One Whom she was seeking could be standing before her again alive. Once Mary recognized Jesus, she apparently grabbed hold of Him and was afraid to let go, but Jesus seems to have assured Mary that He would be around yet for at least a little while, so He sent Mary, the first witness of His Resurrection, privately to relay a message to His disciples. To be sure, Jesus did eventually stop being present as He was during the forty days between Easter and His Ascension, but He never stops being present with His Church in even better ways (confer Lenski, ad loc John 20:17, 1361). The Lord calls us by our names in Holy Baptism (John 10:3) and makes His Father our Father, He makes His God our God. Through those He sends as public ministers, He forgives the sins we know and feel in our hearts in Holy Absolution (John 20:21‑23), applying the Resurrection’s impact to us as individuals. And, greater than the unleavened bread and wine of the old Passover meal, in the Sacrament of the Altar, we eat bread that is the Body of Christ given for us, and we drink wine that is the Blood of Christ shed for us, that we might have the forgiveness of sins, and so eternal life in resurrected and glorified bodies.
In today’s Second Reading (1 Corinthians 5:6b-8), the Divinely‑inspired St. Paul draws on the old Passover meal’s custom of cleaning all the yeast out of one’s house before celebrating the festival, to encourage the Corinthians and us to put away our sin, for example through our Lenten season of repentance and the forgiveness that we receive in the Lord’s Supper, and then to celebrate the festival in sincerity and truth (TLSB, ad loc 1 Corinthians 5:7, 1952; chapter 5, 1953; confer Nocent, 3:162-165). We gather here not just on this first day of the week but on the first day of every week, for as today’s Psalm (Psalm 118:15-29; antiphon v.1) and the Hymn of Invocation (LSB 903) put it, this is the day the Lord has made, for today He rose and left the dead, and Satan’s empire fell; today the saints His triumphs spread and all His wonders tell. We cling to His Word of those wonders and let it direct and comfort us!
The devil may have thought he had pulled something like an April Fool’s joke on God, but, it was more like the other way around. In fact, a centuries-old Easter Cantata (a multi‑movement musical composition for voices and instruments), with texts by Salomon Franck and music by Johann Sebastian Bach, begins with the line “Heaven laughs! Earth exults …” (BWV 31 history and text). Even our Office Hymn (LSB 467) sang of laughing sin to scorn! Considering Jesus’s questions to Mary Magdalene—“Why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?”—this day we have realized that we should weep in repentance over our sin, but being sought by the Lord and in turn seeking Him in worship transforms our sorrow to joy (John 16:20). To paraphrase a psalmist (Psalm 126:2), our mouths are filled with laughter and our tongues with shouts of joy, now and for eternity (confer BWV 110).
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 + + +