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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!)
The joyous word “Alleluia”, meaning “praise the Lord”, has returned to the Church this Easter Day! Today we “praise the Lord” especially for His giving us the victory over fearful sin, death, and the power of the devil, a victory demonstrated by the resurrection of our Lord. Around us the world may seem to be more frightening than last Easter and than even at the beginning of this past Lent, but as Christians our reasons to be joyful are constant and unchanging. This morning we reflect on the Gospel Reading’s account both of events at the empty tomb and of an appearance of the resurrected Jesus under the theme “Fear and Great Joy”.
As we heard St. Matthew tell it, toward the dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, the two of whom had been both at the cross when Jesus died (Matthew 27:56) and in the garden when He was buried (Matthew 27:61), went to see the tomb. And, by the Gospel Reading’s end, they were going to tell Jesus’s disciples that He was risen from the dead and that the disciples would see Jesus in Galilee. In between, St. Matthew does not tell us what the women wanted to see at the tomb or what their emotions were before they got there, but he does uniquely report: an earthquake caused by the descent from heaven of an angel of the Lord, the angel’s rolling back the stone and sitting on it, and his frightening the guards but, in contrast, his commanding the women not to be afraid. However, they remained at least somewhat fearful, as when Jesus met them, He again had to tell the women not to be afraid.
The women had encountered both a heavenly being, whose appearance was like lightning and whose clothing was white as snow, and the resurrected Jesus, Whom they had seen die and be buried some 40 hours or so earlier. Their perhaps ongoing fear is arguably understandable. What about us? What makes us afraid? Is our ongoing fear as understandable? Is our sin unforgivable? Is sickness and death in the world a surprise? Does Holy Scripture not tell us that, although our adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, after we have suffered a little while, the God of all grace will Himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish us (1 Peter 5:8-10)? Have we not, as the Epistle Reading said (Colossians 3:1-4), in our baptisms already been raised with Christ (confer Colossians 2:12)? Are we seeking the things that are above? Have we set our minds on things that are on earth or on things that are above?
In today’s First Reading (Acts 10:34-43), St. Peter, as God commanded, preaches to the Gentile Cornelius and his relatives and close friends (confer Acts 10:24) that Jesus of Nazareth is the One appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead. Certainly that we are sinful by nature and actually have sinned against God and our neighbors in countless ways should make us afraid of that judgment and its sentence of eternal torment in hell that we deserve, if we do not turn in sorrow from our sin, trust God to forgive our sin, and want to do better than to keep on sinning. But, when, enabled by God, we so repent, then God forgives us. God forgives our wrongful fear, our lack of faith, and our misplaced focus. God forgives our sinful nature and all our sin, whatever our sin might be. God forgives us for Jesus’s sake. In the Gospel Reading, the angel still referred to those who previously shamefully had deserted—and, at least in one case, even denied Jesus—as His “disciples”, and Jesus Himself referred to them as His “brothers”. Their reconciliation and forgiveness was in some sense taken as a given, and, when we repent, we can likewise be sure of our reconciliation and forgiveness, for Jesus’s sake.
Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection, Good Friday and Easter, go together. Yes, not only Easter Day but also every Sunday is a celebration of Jesus’s resurrection, but Jesus’s resurrection is of Him Who was crucified. Even the angel in the Gospel Reading who announced Jesus’s resurrection still referred to Him as the Crucified One! His resurrection declared Him to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness (Romans 1:4). The resurrection of our Lord brings the dawning of a new age, but He is the same incarnate Lord. His dead body was not in the place where He lay, for He had risen from the dead, as He said He would; His prophecy was true. He was not a ghost of Himself, as the women could take hold of His feet. Standing is the Lamb Who had been slain (Revelation 5:6, etc.; confer Gibbs, ad loc Matthew 28:5, p.1599). The Father had shown that He accepted His blood shed on the cross as the atonement for our sins. Jesus was crucified and resurrected for us, both in our place and for our benefit (Romans 4:24-25). As Peter preached in the First Reading, all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in Him receives the forgiveness of sins through His Name.
In that Triune Name we are baptized, absolved, and communed. A few verses later in St. Matthew’s account Jesus and His disciples met up in Galilee (Matthew 28:16-20), as He had previously said that they would after He was raised up (Matthew 26:32). There, the resurrected Jesus commissioned His apostles and their successors, pastors today, to make disciples of all nations, by baptizing them in the Triune Name and by teaching them to observe all that He had commanded them, including, especially in St. Matthew’s context, individual Absolution (Matthew 16:19; 18:18-19; confer John 20:21-23) and the Sacrament of the Altar, bread that is the Body of Christ given for us and wine that is the Blood of Christ shed for us, for the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation (Matthew 26:26-29). In all these ways we not only proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes (1 Corinthians 11:26), but also we are connected to His death, burial, and resurrection (Colossians 2:12; Romans 6:3-5), and He Who is Immanuel, God present with us (Matthew 1:23), is miraculously present with us always, to the end of the age (Matthew 18:20; 28:20).
An insight into today’s Gospel Reading that God granted me as I studied the Reading this past week in preparation for this morning, pertained to the women’s departing quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy: while they still had fear, it was the joy that was great. Such great joy is only ever mentioned in connection with Jesus’s birth and His resurrection (Matthew 2:12; confer Luke 2:10; 24:52). The joy predominated in the women, as the joy should predominate in us. We can be joyful: our sins are forgiven. We can be joyful: death is but the gate to life immortal. We can be joyful: as we are in Christ, we have His victory over the power of the devil. Our minds are set on and we seek the things that are above. The guards and the women in some sense gathered at the tomb, saw the angel, felt fear, left to tell, and were told what to say—the guards to lie that the disciples stole Jesus’s body (Matthew 28:11-15) and the women to tell the truth that Jesus was risen from the dead (Davies and Allison, ad loc Matthew 28:1-15, p.659). We also leave this place to tell the truth of Jesus’s resurrection from the dead, in word and deed in keeping with our vocations.
The women leaving the tomb had “Fear and Great Joy”. They were told by Jesus to stop being afraid, but St. Matthew does not tell us whether or not they did stop being afraid, and commentators’ thoughts about it differ. More likely, they continued to have both “Fear and Great Joy”, and we do, too. Jesus tells us to not be afraid, and we hear both an indictment of our sin and His pronouncing our forgiveness (Buls, ad loc Matthew 28:1-10, p.79). As we fail to let the joy predominate, with daily repentance, we live in God’s forgiveness of sins, and we extend both His forgiveness and our own forgiveness to our brothers and sisters in Christ and to the world, until all fear is completely removed at our resurrections and there is left only great joy for all eternity.
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 + + +