This morning, we focus on the greatest story ever told. God is more powerful and more wonderful than we can understand. On the first Easter morning, God’s love stopped the powerful Roman Empire’s cruelty in its tracks….God’s love overcame it all.
Listen to the Easter story as it if found in the twenty-fourth chapter of the Gospel of Luke:
Scripture Reading: Luke 24: 1-12
On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb.
They found the stone rolled away from the tomb,
but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.
While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them.
In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?
He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee:
‘The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’ ”
Then they remembered his words.
When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others.
It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles.
But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense.
Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened.
AMEN.
Here ends this reading of the Word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Message Empty Tomb
Christ the Lord is Risen today: Alleluia Amen!!
On the first Easter, the impossible happened. Jesus, a human man brutally killed by his Roman executioners, rose from the dead. He had been dead three days…three days in a temperate climate….smells and decomposition would have set in. Today the high temperature in Jerusalem is predicted to climb to 77 degrees fahrenheit…three days at 77 degrees is long enough for unpleasant changes. Jesus was in the tomb for three days….and then the impossible happened.
The women came early in the morning to the tomb where Jesus had been laid to rest on Friday. They had a duty to perform – in their society, women prepared bodies for burial. They wanted to anoint his body with perfume and oils and rewrap it in linen burial cloths. They loved Jesus and wanted to send him off following their traditional burial practices. They were devastated by his death, and the preparation of the body was the last kindness they could extend to him.
When they arrived at the tomb, the women probably thought their eyes were deceiving them. Instead of Jesus’s body, they found an empty tomb. They would have been horrified. A series of conflicting thoughts would have rushed through their minds: His body was stolen. His body was taken by the Romans for further assaults. His body was stolen so that the religious authorities could display it and mock them. They would never be able to bury him and lay him to rest following their traditions. The women’s despair and sadness would have deepened.
And, then two angels appeared. The women were astonished. They bowed before the angels. They probably cowered, because angels are described into scripture as being frightening looking. And the angels told the women Jesus wasn’t there not because his body was stolen, but because he had risen from the dead! And, the angels reminded the women of the prophecies about the resurrection of the messiah…and Jesus’s own words predicting his resurrection. He was risen.
The women rushed out of the tomb to tell the others the news. And, I love how Luke described the reaction of the men and the other disciples – Luke says; “But, they did not believe the women because their words seemed to them like nonsense.” This was not the first time that the excited words of multiple women talking all at once sounded like nonsense to a group of men.
Peter rushed to the tomb to check it out for himself. He wondered what happened….did Jesus rise like the angels told the women?
We know the rest of the story. Jesus began making appearances to his friends. First to Mary Magdalene. Then to disciples walking to Emmaus. Then to the disciples gathered in the upper room. Then to others. Jesus made regular appearances during the first season of Easter…he appeared for forty days ... .and then he left them and ascended to heaven.
Christianity would not exist without the Easter story. If the Messiah had died on the cross on Good Friday, but then didn’t resurrect, Jesus would be regarded as a wise teacher. A wise teacher to the Jewish people. He may have been remembered by a few faithful people. He may have become a footnote in Josephesus’ history of the Jewish people. But, for the Jewish followers of God, other things happened during their Roman occupation that would be remembered with more detail….the destruction of the Temple happened in the first century. The Jewish people were cast out of the Holy Land in the first century. The diaspora changed the history of the Jewish people forever. So, if the resurrection of Jesus had not occurred, Jesus and his teachings could have become an afterthought, or a footnote, or forgotten.
But, on that first Easter morning, something amazing happened. The man who was dead, who was crucified, died, and was buried, after a descent into the land of the dead, was raised from death to life. On the third day he rose from the dead. Jesus came to tell us that the Romans didn’t get the last word. The anxious priests and religious authorities didn’t get the last word. People who make mistakes and sin and mess up didn’t get the last word. God got the last word. God wanted us to know that God’s plan for the people of the world is the the plan that is taking place…nothing we do to each other, nothing we do to ourselves, nothing we do to Jesus is able to stop God and God’s plan.
And, God’s plan is love. God so loved the world that God gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in God will have eternal life, will have a blessed life, with God. God loves us. God loves us no matter what mistakes we make. And, Jesus’s resurrections is the ultimate symbol of God’s love. No matter how awful we are, God loves us. God forgives us. And God wants the best for us.
In response to God’s love, we are called to love each other. And, not just the people in this room….not just the people in our families…not just the people in our communities….not just the people in our country….but we are called to love the people of the world, no matter what our tribe or affiliations. And, we are called to lived out that love in our attitudes and actions. We are called to care for each other. Look out for each other….to be generous to each other and on behalf of each other. And, to make sure each of us take action to improve the lives of other people, especially the people who don’t have enough of what they need.
Let work to respond to the love we receive from God with love. Today and always. Amen.
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