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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!)
Some people still follow the longstanding custom of wearing fancy new brightly-colored spring clothes for Easter. The custom apparently goes back at least to the earliest days of the Christian Church, with its custom of baptizing catechumens at Easter and clothing them in white linen robes, symbolizing Christ’s righteousness and the corresponding new life that they in Baptism received by faith. Then, early in the fourth century, when the Roman emperor Constantine converted and legalized Christianity, he decreed that the members of his court on Easter must wear the finest new clothing and parade in honor of Christ’s resurrection. New brightly-colored garments were a welcome change on Easter, after weeks of wearing the same darkly-colored clothes of penitence in Lent. After the American Civil War, following the custom gave us the Easter Parade down Fifth Avenue in New York City and the Easter Bonnet, both immortalized in a song by American songwriter Irving Berlin, first for a Broadway revue and later as the basis for a film titled Easter Parade. (McCallister, Wikipedia.) Today’s Third Reading has a bit of an emphasis on Easter “clothing” and, we might say, a “parade” of its own. This morning we primarily consider that Third Reading, and we do so under the theme “Easter Finest”.
As we heard the Divinely‑inspired St. John tell, the “parade” to and from the tomb on the first day of the week began when Mary Magdalene headed to Jesus’s tomb early, while it was still dark. When she saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb, and with Jesus’s promised resurrection apparently not even in her realm of possibilities, she leaped to the conclusion that someone, perhaps grave robbers, had taken the Lord out of the tomb, as she ran to tell Simon Peter and the disciple whom Jesus loved, likely the apostle John, who we hold authored the Gospel account that bears his name. So, they ran out to the tomb and saw both the linen cloths and face cloth in which Jesus had been “clothed” in keeping with the burial custom of the Jews (John 19:40), and at least John believed something, before Simon Peter and he left. Mary, who apparently had followed them back out to the tomb, persisted with her false conclusion in speaking both with the angels and even the resurrected Jesus Himself, Whom Mary for some reason at first mistook for the “gardener” (or perhaps better translated in a way that would suggest the cemetery’s attendant).
If Jesus’s grave clothes were still in the tomb, then Jesus, after He rose, must have essentially left the tomb unclothed (if He did not first miraculously make clothes for Himself), not that the incomprehensible spiritual mode of presence Jesus used to leave the closed tomb (Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration VII:100) required His leaving the clothes behind, for example, He later presumably came into and left the locked upper room clothed. But, the linen cloths and face cloth were binding, as you may recall that Jesus, after raising Lazarus from the dead, commanded those present to unbind Lazarus and let him go (John 11:44). More to the point, commentators say that the continued presence of the linen strips, mentioned three times, where they were, and the face cloth, mentioned one time, as folded up in a place by itself—all of that ruled out grave robbers, though the commentators do not agree on whether or not those circumstances fit with Jesus’s having risen through the grave clothes. Whether or not that is what St. John concluded, St. John really does not say.
What St. John really does say is that at the time they did not understand the Scripture that it was Divinely necessary for Jesus to rise from the dead. That St. John reports Peter’s and his own failure in that regard, as well as Mary’s mistaking Jesus for the cemetery attendant, are good indications that Holy Scripture is true. (Who would include those things if they were just making it all up?) Again, more to the point, St. John may be writing with a sense of his own deep regret for that failure to understand the Scripture (Lenski, ad loc John 20:9, p.1345), as if St. John is publicly confessing his own sin in that regard and inviting us to do the same. How often do we fail to understand Holy Scripture? What about our accepting as necessary the things that Holy Scripture says? When it comes to loved ones or our own temporal sicknesses and deaths as consequences of sin? Eternal damnation for failure to repent and believe?
Scripture indicated the Divine necessity not only of Jesus’s rising from the dead, as St. John says, but also, as Jesus had previously told them, His first being delivered over to the Gentiles, being mocked and shamefully treated, spit upon, flogged, and killed (Luke 18:31-33). All of that was Divinely necessary for us and for our salvation. Jesus took upon Himself your sin and my sin, and, having lived the perfect life that we fail to live, Jesus died unclothed on the cross the death that we deserve, for us, in our place. God in human flesh, Jesus had been “swaddled” at His birth (Luke 2:7, 12), and He was similarly swaddled after His death (confer John 11:44), but His resurrection declared His victory over sin, death, and the power of the devil, not only victory for Jesus but also victory for all who turn from their sin and trust God to forgive their sin for Jesus’s sake. With Job’s enduring words of our First Reading (Job 19:23-27), we also can say that we know that our Redeemer lives! For, when we repent, then God forgives our sin. God forgives our sin of failing to understand Holy Scripture and our sin of rejecting as necessary the things that Holy Scripture says. God forgives our sinful nature and all of our sin, whatever our sin might be.
God forgives our sins through His Word in all of its forms. St. John makes clear that Holy Scripture, including His own Gospel account, is to be the basis for our faith in Jesus Christ and so our life in His Name (John 20:31). Especially in Holy Baptism, that Word is combined with water to cleanse us and make us holy, so that we as the Church can be the spotless bride of Christ (Ephesians 5:26-27). As I mentioned earlier, the custom of wearing fancy new spring clothes for Easter is connected to understanding Holy Baptism as God’s clothing us with robes of Christ’s righteousness, as it were miraculously washed white in the blood of the Lamb (Revelation 7:14). When Jesus taught about the Kingdom of Heaven as a king’s wedding feast for his son, those invited were apparently given wedding garments necessary to enter and participate in the feast (Matthew 22:1-14), as we enter into God’s Presence by way of Holy Baptism and participate in the Sacrament of the Altar, feasting on bread that is the Body of Christ and wine that is the Blood of Christ, given and shed for us, for the forgiveness of sins and so also for life and salvation.
In the Revelation to St. John, the Bride of Christ at the feast of the marriage of the Lamb is further adorned with the righteous deeds of the saints (Revelation 19:7-9; confer Brighton, ad loc Revelation 19:1-10, pp.484, 486-487, 497-498), good works that we do having first been crucified and raised with Christ Jesus in Holy Baptism (Romans 6:1-14). For example, we better understand Holy Scripture and accept the things that it says are necessary, even for us. Again with Job, we say that after our skin has been destroyed yet in our flesh we shall see God for ourselves, with our own eyes. Then, as we heard in the Second Reading (1 Corinthians 15:51‑57), the perishable bodies of those of us who repent will be clothed with (NIV) the imperishable, and the mortal clothed with immortality. Talk about “Easter Finest”! Death has been swallowed up in victory, and we give thanks to God, Who gives us that victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!
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 + + +