Luke 24:1-12

In the name of the Father and of the ✠ Son and of the Holy Spirit

    The women had been up late into the night on Saturday preparing spices and ointments.  Jesus had been buried in a hurry on Friday since it was only a couple of hours until the Sabbath started and all work had to stop.  Everything had been done quickly–hardly the proper way to honor a beloved teacher and friend.

    So early in the morning, before sunrise on Sunday, they made their way to the tomb. “How are we going to roll the stone away from the entrance?” they wondered aloud to each other. Perhaps together they could budge it. What about the seal on the tomb and the guards?  Hopefully they would let these women do their work.

    But as soon as they arrived at the tomb, different questions filled their minds. The guards were gone. The seal was broken. The stone was rolled away. They looked inside.  No body!  What happened?  The grave clothes Jesus was wrapped in were there.  Grave robbers wouldn’t have removed those.  What was going on?

    And then, two men, bright angels, suddenly appear standing next to them, and scare the pre-dawn daylights out of them, saying, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?”  That’s the real question for the morning.  “Why are you looking for the Lord of Life in a graveyard?  He isn’t here.  He is risen.  Remember His words, how he told you in Galilee that the Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and on the third day rise.”  And they remembered His words.  Learn from these women when you are fearful and confused, when death or loss has turned your world upside down.  Hear and remember Jesus’ words.

    Note here how it was not the disciples, not the men, but the women who were honored as the first ones to hear the news of the resurrection.  This is not an accident.  In the Garden of Eden, Eve was the one who had been tempted and had handed on the forbidden fruit to Adam, and together they brought the curse of death into the world.  But now at this garden tomb, the women are given the good news which conquers death and annihilates the devil.  And they hand on that message of life to the men.  What a wonderful “in your face” to the evil one!  Here Jesus, the new Adam, accomplishes a complete reversal of the fall into sin.

    “Why do you seek the living among the dead?”  That’s the question for us today, too.  For like those in the Gospel, we’ve heard Jesus’ words and promises time and time again.  And yet so often we live as if Jesus was still dead and wasn’t around, as if His dying and rising again didn’t change anything, as if this fallen and cursed creation is all there is.  

    Why do we look for life and happiness in what is dead and dying–having money and possessions, searching out great recreational experiences, being praised and honored by others, indulging our desires for food or drink or sex?  We do that because as the fallen children of Adam, we are born looking for life in the cemetery of the self–self-fulfillment, self-expression.  The very things we look to for life and happiness wind up bringing death and sorrow.

    But the angels at the tomb direct us to the right place.  Jesus is alive, just as He said!  He doesn’t lie; His words are true.  His promises are always fulfilled.  And they bring us real life that is abundant and lasting.  

    Now we must admit that if we were those first hearing the women say that Jesus was alive, we too would probably think it was all hysterical nonsense, like the disciples did at first.  Most of the world today still thinks of Easter as just a fairy tale, perhaps with some moral or religious value, something good to teach the children, but nothing more.  However, I am here to proclaim to you on this holy day that the resurrection of Jesus is not just a pious myth.  It is the historic fact that confronts the world.  It’s real.  It’s the pivotal point around which all of human history turns.  

    Never forget that this was at a time when the Roman government and the Jewish authorities had complete control.  If there had been a body to produce, they would have produced it, and put it on public display to silence the rumors of resurrection.  That was the point of having the tomb securely guarded in the first place.  Remember, too, that Jesus was seen risen from the dead by over 500 people.  This wasn’t just one lone hallucination or an impostor or some disembodied ghost of Christ appearing to people.  They touched His hands and His side.  He ate with them.  Jesus Himself said, “Why are you troubled? . . . Handle Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have.”  There was nothing left in the grave but the graveclothes.  Jesus, God the Son, is alive, in the flesh, in His glorified humanity as victor over sin and death and the devil, nevermore to die again.  

    This is extremely important for you, for at least three reasons.  First of all, Jesus’ resurrection means that His death on the cross was a sufficient sacrifice for your sins.  The wages of sin is death, but Jesus paid those wages in full, and then some, so that now your sin is taken away and your death overcome.  When Jesus said, “It is finished” on the cross, the work of your redemption was truly finished and complete.  Nothing more needs to be done.  Easter shows that the Father accepted Jesus’ sacrifice in your place; you are now forgiven and reconciled to Him.  If Jesus hadn’t been raised we would never know for sure that He had done the job on our sin.  If He remained in the tomb, that would mean that the deathly curse of sin hadn’t been broken.  That’s why Paul says in the Epistle that if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins!  But now that Christ is raised from the dead, we know that He is the victor over all of our enemies, and that in Him, we too are victorious conquerors over sin and death.

    Secondly, the resurrection of Jesus means that your bodies are important.  Jesus doesn’t just care about your spirits but also your flesh.  Otherwise He wouldn’t have taken on your flesh and blood in the first place in the womb of the blessed Virgin.  

    In our culture we are strangely schizoid when it comes to the body.  On the one hand we treat our bodies like they’re the most important thing of all.  All the talk is about supplements and diets and exercise and cleanses and good health care and “body positivity.”  You can’t avoid the emphasis on the physical in our visual, screen-focused age.  And yet at the same time, in the digital world the body becomes something we see merely as a vehicle for our “authentic inner selves,” something that’s changeable like an avatar in a video game, something you can run through a social media filter to smooth out your skin and make your eyes prettier, something you can photoshop in cyberspace or even re-gender in real space.  The spirituality of our age says that in the end our bodies have no eternal consequence or meaning, that the body is like a tin can to do with as you wish and to be discarded once it’s outlived its usefulness.  Live in whatever way makes you happy; bodily morality isn’t important.  You just do what works for you, because once you die, that’s it for the body; scatter the ashes to the wind.  It’s supposedly only what’s in your heart and spirit that counts and that lasts forever.

    But what happens with our bodies does in fact matter to God.  God created our bodies, declaring them to be good, giving us our identity.  He baptizes our bodies.  He nourishes and blesses them.  He makes our bodies His temple.  We are to glorify God with our bodies, Scripture says.  It’s not only your spiritual life or what’s going in your heart but your physical life that counts to God, too.  For the fact of the matter is you can’t really separate your spiritual and physical lives anyway.  Your soul is the life of your particular body.  And what you do with your body is a spiritual matter.  It’s not as if they are two separate things.  The only thing that rips them apart is death.  And death, we heard in the epistle reading, is our enemy, not our friend.  Our goal is not to escape the body and go off into some ethereal spiritual existence.  We confess in the Creed that we look forward to the resurrection of the body.  

    Your life in the body counts with God; it’s important.  And that needs to be emphasized especially to those who think it’s fine to just show up here at church only every once in a while. That choice to be physically elsewhere most of the time is a dangerous spiritual decision.  The risen Jesus is here in the flesh, bringing Himself to you in bodily ways.  It’s important for your souls that you are here bodily each week where Jesus is present for you so that He can speak His life-giving words into your ears and feed His risen body and blood into your mouths for your salvation.  What goes on with your bodies matters enough to God that He took up your sin and death into His body, was nailed in the flesh to the tree, and then rose from the dead bodily.  He is still a bodily man at the right hand of the Father even now.  Jesus came not to deliver you from your bodies, but to deliver your bodies from all sickness and disease and pain and death and to restore them to wholeness and health, so that you may share fully in His bodily immortality as the risen Son of God.

    Thirdly, then, Jesus’ resurrection means that you who believe and are baptized will rise from the dead–bodily, tangibly, literally.  For the Scriptures say that Christians are members of His body.  And where the head goes, the body must follow.  St. Paul calls Jesus the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.  The first-fruits are like that first tomato to ripen on the vine.  It is the sign of more to come.  The resurrection of Jesus means that there is more rising from the dead to come, your own real, bodily resurrection to life on the Last Day.  Death has been dealt the decisive blow, not just for Jesus, but also for you.  Jesus said, “I am the Resurrection and the Life.  He who believes in Me will live, even though He dies.”  Philippians 3 says that Christ will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like His glorious body, perfect and imperishable.  That is your sure and certain hope because of Easter.

    And that’s why we say with St. Paul, “O death, where is your victory; O grave, where is your sting?  The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the Law, but thanks be to God, He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

    So believe in this Easter Gospel.  It is true–literally, physically true.  Don’t seek God among the dead ways and philosophies of this world.  Seek Christ where He is to be found.  He is here among us in the flesh at the altar, giving us His living body and blood for our forgiveness.  He is here speaking His words which are life and truth.  The risen Christ is in our midst with saints and angels and the whole host of heaven.  He is here to give you real life that doesn’t pass away.  “This is the day the Lord has made.  Let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

    The Lord is risen!  He is risen indeed.  Alleluia!