"Last At The Cross, First At The Tomb”

In Jesus Holy Name April 17,2022

Text: Matthew 27:66-28:1-3,5 Redeemer

“Last at the Cross, First at the Tomb”

Easter is a wonderful celebration. I’m so glad you are here this morning to enjoy the experience of Easter worship. The spring flowers bloom in the sunshine. There is excitement as families come together. The music renews our soul.

Easter is not about us. Easter is not about our new Easter clothes. As much as our children enjoy an Easter Egg hunt. Easter is not about Easter eggs and chocolate Easter bunnies. Easter is about Jesus. Easter is about hope. Easter is knowing that death on this earth is not the end of life. Your soul, your spirit, was created by God to live forever. Easter is about Jesus and His resurrection from death and the grave, securing the promise that we too will rise from death.

One of my favorite lines in Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” was the discussion that Pilate had with his wife during the trial of Jesus. Pilate was sharing with his wife the question he had asked Jesus just before Pilate sent Jesus to Herod. The question: “What is truth?” Pilate’s wife then looks at her husband and said: “If you cannot see truth when it is in front of you then no one can tell you what it is.”

To Pilate’s credit he could recognize truth when he saw it. He knew Jesus was not guilty of the accusations brought by the religious Pharisees. He was totally innocent. To his shame, Pilate gave in to peer pressure and chose to ignore the truth. History has judged the judge of Jesus and found him wanting. When it came time for Pilate to stand up for truth, he faltered and failed. Truth was thrown out the window and Pilate worshiped the god of expediency.

What is truth? Did Jesus rise really from the grave? Did he come back alive after the Roman soldiers made sure he was dead on Friday? The Pharisees had worried about that possibility…. That’s why they asked Pilate to post a guard at the tomb. On Friday evening, after the crucifixion, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Mary and Mary Magdalene were the last ones left at the cross. Everyone else had drifted away. They were waiting for Joseph of Arimathea to return.

Mary the mother of James, and Mary Magdalene, went to the graveside with

Joseph and Nicodemus to help prepare the body of Jesus for burial as best they could before the Sabbath sunset. They knew the body of Jesus was placed in a stone tomb. That was the plan. He was all boxed in.

Many of you know what it means to be the last one at the grave of one you love when all the others have gone home. There are tears, loss and memories. The tomb was sealed to keep Jesus there. Pilate placed a guard of soldiers by the entrance to the tomb to discourage body snatchers. No one was going to steal the body of Jesus. That should have been the end of the story.

It was not! That’s why we are here… the stone box and the linen shroud in which the body of Jesus had been placed…was empty. Death could not hold the Living God. The resurrection of Jesus is not a questionable addition to the Christian faith; the resurrection is the foundation of the Christian faith.

The resurrection of Jesus from death after his crucifixion is the lynchpin of history. The apostle Paul wrote: “If Christ had not been raised from the dead, your faith would be futile, and you would be dead in your sins.”

Look at the events of that first Resurrection Sunday. The women who had been closest to Jesus didn’t wend their way through the narrow streets in the predawn darkness so they might put together the ingredients for the first Easter Sonrise breakfast. They were going to the grave to complete the burial details. In their hands they carried spices. It was their last measure of devotion for the one they thought was going to change the world. They will be the first to visit the tomb.

And the disciples? In the hours since Jesus had died, they were not putting together a mass choir to sing the Hallelujah Chorus at the entrance to the tomb. Neither the men nor the women spent Saturday night dyeing Easter eggs and buying chocolate Easter bunnies and multicolored Peeps.

The disciples did none of these things. They were hiding. They were afraid. They thought they would be next; arrested, tried, whipped, beaten, crowned with thorns and crucified. They had forgotten the promise of Jesus. Not once, not twice, but three times Jesus had told them that he would be arrested and crucified. And then each time Jesus added… “I will rise from the dead on the third day.” They should have remembered.