Grace, mercy and
peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
Do
not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he
is not here. See the place where they laid him.
Prayer: Dear Lord
Jesus, breathe out upon us all your Holy Spirit, to me that I may preach well,
and to all of us that we may hear well. Amen.
Right at the end of the Gospel of Matthew, we
read in the last chapter about how Jesus rises from the dead, and appears to
his disciples. And then right at the end of the chapter, we read where Jesus
says to them: All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go
therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that
I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.
Once Jesus has risen from the dead, he sends
his disciples out to all nations. And right at the heart of the
disciples’ message is going to be that Jesus is risen from the dead. In fact,
if Jesus was not raised from the dead, then Christianity is nothing. If Jesus
was not raised from the dead, then it’s time for you all to go home. If Jesus
didn’t rise from the dead, then Good Friday also was all for nothing, because
if Jesus hadn’t risen from the dead, then all of Jesus’ suffering would have
been all for nothing, because his bones would still be in a tomb somewhere near
Jerusalem.
So, if Jesus was in actual fact raised from
the dead, then this must change the way we think about everything. Every
temptation and trial to our faith comes down to one thing: whether Jesus was
raised from the dead. If Jesus wasn’t raised from the dead, then there really
is no light at the end of the tunnel after all. But he has risen from the dead,
and if he’s raised then we know that on Good Friday it was our Lord and our God
who was there dying for us. If Jesus is raised from the dead, then it means our
sins are forgiven. If Jesus is raised from the dead, then it means that death
is defeated.
So – if there is a place where Jesus is
preached as risen from the dead, then that is called the church. If there is a
place where people are gathered to hear the message that Jesus laid down in the
tomb and then on the third day stood up and walked out of the tomb, then that
is called the kingdom of light.
If we are in a place where Jesus is preached
as not having risen from the dead, then that place is called a false church.
That place is called the kingdom of darkness.
One thing that we have to realise today is
that are plenty of Christians who come together at Easter, and don’t celebrate
the resurrection. They might celebrate that Jesus lives on, that his Spirit
lives on, but that’s not the resurrection. The resurrection means that he was
truly dead, and then he stood up and walked out of the tomb.
There are plenty of people who don’t pretend
to be Christians. They simply don’t believe that Jesus rose from the dead at
all. They might not believe that he even lived in history at all, but that’s as
ridiculous as saying that any great people in history didn’t live, like Julius
Caesar, or Alexander the Great. Of course they lived. Of course Jesus lived.
But when we come together at Easter, we
celebrate something that has never happened to anyone else in history.
Sometimes when a person dies, like a close relative, people say that they lives
on. They might be saying that they live on in our memories. They might be
saying that their qualities live on in the people they knew. But that’s not
what we we’re talking about when we’re talking about Jesus.
Some people who call themselves Christians
say that Jesus must have been just such a wonderful person to meet, such a
charismatic personality, that when he died they just couldn’t cope with that
reality, so they made up a story to say that he rose from the dead. And then
people say that it doesn’t really matter if he rose or not—the most important
part of Christianity is that Jesus lives on in our hearts.
Now, all of this stuff, sounds so close to
Christianity, but it’s not Christianity. Yes, Jesus does live in the hearts of
Christians. But is he dead, or is he alive? If he didn’t rise, then the only
spirit of Jesus that lives on in us is a dead spirit, a spirit of death. Remember
there was a man who lived among the tombs who was possessed by a legion of
demons. If Jesus didn’t actually physically rise from the dead, then Christians
are just a group of nutcases that live among the tombs possessed by the spirits
of the dead.
No—that’s not Christianity. The Christian
faith believes that Jesus truly, really, physically rose from the dead back to
life, and now he has all the power of death and life, all authority in heaven
and earth, given to him, and he is the one who breathes out upon his disciples
the living, Holy Spirit—not the spirit of the dead, but the eternal Holy Spirit
of life.
One last thing—Jesus and the Holy Spirit are
not the same person. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are all equally
truly God. But Jesus has a human body, flesh and blood. The Holy Spirit does
not. Jesus breathes out the Holy Spirit. But if there’s no physical body of
Jesus risen from the dead, then there’s nobody who breathes out the Holy
Spirit.
When Jesus says to the disciples, I am
with you always to the end of the age, he doesn’t mean the Holy Spirit will
be with them always, he means he will be with them always. We know this because
Jesus doesn’t say, “The Holy Spirit will be with you”, but he says, “I will be
with you”. Because when there’s no Jesus, there’s no Holy Spirit. Jesus is
physically risen from the dead, he is physically present in his church (even
though he is invisible) with his human flesh and blood, descending into our
midst while sitting at God’s right hand, and he is the one who breathes out the
Holy Spirit upon us from his resurrected lips and his resurrected mouth.
If we look all through the book of Acts, we
see St Peter and Paul going about preaching Christian sermons to people. For
example, Peter preaches the first Christian sermon the day of Pentecost. And on
that day, Peter says: This Jesus God raised up, and of that we are all
witnesses. Do you hear the resurrection there? God raised Jesus up.
In Acts 10, we read about St Peter going and preaching to the Gentiles, and he
says: They put him to death by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him on
the third day and made him to appear, not to all people but to us who had been
chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the
dead. Do you hear the resurrection
there? God raised him on the third day. When Paul went to Athens are went
an preached to the Greeks there, he says: God has fixed a day on which he
will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of
this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead. By doing
what? By raising Jesus from the dead.
When the apostles went out and preached about
Jesus, they went and told people that he was truly raised from the dead.
And so, even in our country now, the gospel
need to be preached to us. We are part of those nations who need to hear the message
of the resurrection preached to us. Many so-called Christians have forgotten
what Easter is, and what it’s about. In Australia, especially in our Lutheran
Church, we have lost the sense that the Gospel needs to be heard and preached
to all nations. We used to have a sense of this, and now we’ve lost it. Why
have we lost our zeal for mission? Because we’ve forgotten that Jesus has risen
from the dead, and unless people are told that fact, it would never even occur
to them to come up with the idea. And so, if we have lost our sense of bringing
the gospel to all nations, then let us pray that people from another nation who
do believe that Jesus has risen from the dead would come to our nation and tell
us. Our whole society needs to be told that Jesus is risen from the dead, right
from the professors and intellectuals in the highest levels of the
universities, to every backstreet and every homeless person sleeping under
every bridge. Christ is risen from the dead! And this message is for all people
and every single person.
Because without the resurrection of Jesus, we
are nothing. Listen to what St Paul says about this: If Christ is proclaimed
as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection
of the dead? And if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ
has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in
vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God,
because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if
it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not
even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is
futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep
in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of
all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead,
the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.
So you can see—if Christ has actually risen
from the dead, then your sins are actually forgiven. If Christ has actually
risen from the dead, then it means that your baptism actually made you part of
God’s family and his church and you were filled not with the spirit of some old
bones, but the living, eternal Holy Spirit. If Christ has actually risen from
the dead, then it means that he is alive and living to meet you here in the
Lord’s Supper, giving you his body and his blood to eat and drink. If Christ
has actually risen from the dead, then it means that Jesus is actually here to
speak his blessing to you upon your life.
Listen to what the angel says in our Gospel
reading tonight: Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was
crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him. But
go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee. There
you will see him, just as he told you.
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
Do you see? He is not in the tomb any more.
He can’t be found there anymore. There is no need for their spices, because
there is no dead body there anymore. He is risen, he is truly risen, he is
risen in deed, he is risen in deed and in truth. He is truly risen from the
dead, and he is nothing less than truly risen from the dead.
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
Amen.
Dear Lord Jesus, we pray to you now because
your ears have not rotten away in a grave, but because you stood up and rose
from the dead. Come and enter into our church, living Lord Jesus, and breathe
out upon us the living Holy Spirit. Strengthen our faith, dear Lord Jesus, in
your resurrection, and lead us to everlasting life with you. Amen.
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