In Jesus Holy Name March 23, 2008
Easter Sunday Redeemer
Text: Matthew 28:5-8,11-15
“The Rest of the Story” Part II
“The Mystery of the Missing Body”
He is risen! He is risen indeed!
Easter is the ultimate test of faith. The one great watershed that ultimately divides believers from unbelievers
is the resurrection of Jesus from death. St. Paul confirmed this reality when he wrote in I Cor. 15:14 “If Christ has not been raise, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.”
You can’t have it both ways: Either Jesus actually rose from the grave or he did not. There is no middle ground. You can not say he rose in spirit but not body, although some try. (Paul L. Maier Lutheran Witness, 2007)
The message of the angel to the women who visited the tomb early that first Easter morning has “lifted Christianity out of the category of dead superstitions and archaic religions and made it an abiding faith of Christians” through the centuries. When the message of the empty tomb and risen Jesus was whispered in the streets of Jerusalem and spread to the market places of Corinth, Antioch & Athens, it was shocking news. (Decision Billy Graham April 2003)
He is risen! (wait for response) quickly became the central message of those unlettered fishermen from Galilee. Within 50 short days after the death of Jesus, the city of Jerusalem and the temple courts rang with the good news… He is risen! With boldness the unlettered fishermen declared that God had raised Jesus from the dead.
Everywhere the Apostle Paul went he declared that God had raised Jesus from the dead. In Athens, in the market place he proclaimed the same message. Jesus lives and will judge the world. Those who heard about the resurrection from the dead had two responses. “some of them sneered but others said, we want to hear more.”
Those who deny the physical resurrection of Jesus have offered numerous imaginative suggestions in their attempt to discount the message of those first eye witnesses recorded in the four gospels.
Here are several examples: (from Paul L. Maier the Lutheran Witness April 2007)
First. There is the stolen body theory.
The disciples removed the body so they could hatch the myth of a risen Christ. The stolen body theory was started on the vary day Jesus rose from the dead by the Jewish authorities who paid the soldiers to say: “While we were sleeping his disciples came during the night and stole the body.”
The problem: the eleven disciples were hiding in fear of being arrested, tried and crucified like Jesus. So it was the women who went to the tomb.
Second. There is the wrong tomb theory.
The women on Easter morning got their directions crossed up. It was dark and they stumbled upon an open tomb instead of the one in which Jesus had been placed.
Of course we are told that on the day of his death the “women saw the tomb and how his body was placed in it.” (Luke 23:55) Then on Easter morning we are told that the Roman guards experienced the earthquake, saw the angel roll away the stone, and were paralyzed with fear. When Peter and John arrived at the tomb they found the burial shroud simply lying, undisturbed on the stone bench.
Third. The swoon or Jesus never died theory.
Jesus only appeared to die, perhaps from the narcotic affect of the liquid drugs he received at the cross but later revived in the cool of the tomb.
This false explanation discredits the Roman military who were grimly efficient when it came to crucifixions. The centurion put a spear into the heart of Jesus. He was dead.
Fourth. The hallucination theory.
Confronted with an empty tomb, the women later claimed to see visions of Jesus. The Apostle Paul tells us that over 500 people, plus the disciples, saw the risen Jesus in Galilee. There is no such thing as “mass hallucination”.
Fifth. The Lost tomb of Jesus theory.
Recently we heard that “the lost tomb of Jesus” was discovered. In March 2007 the Discovery Channel had a documentary which claimed that several “bone boxes” had been discovered south of Jerusalem. These ossuaries, as they are called, contained the names of Mary, Joseph, Yeshua (Joshua, Jesus) and Judah the son of Jesus.
The problem: 1 out of every 4 Jewish women had the name Mary. Josephus the famous Jewish historian cites 21 Yeshuas (Jesuses) in the 1st century who were important enough to be recorded.
The 2nd problem: Scholars have known about these ossuaries since 1980. Third, why would they family of Jesus be buried in Jerusalem when they lived in Nazareth? Fourth, the Christian historian Eusebius of Caesarea tells us that Mary the mother of Jesus was in Ephesus with John and she died there.
Fifth, even Israeli archaeologist and authorities who are not Christian could have used this “discovery” to discredit the Christian claims of a resurrection, but they did not.
When all the evidence is weighed carefully from non Christian sources and from Christian sources the borrowed tomb of Joseph of Arimathea was empty on Easter morning. All that remained….the burial shroud, undisturbed.
The resurrection of Jesus guarantees the words of Jesus to us. “Your sins are forgiven.” “whosoever believes in me will have eternal life…” in heaven.
The bible tells us that the full deity of God the Father dwelt in the person of Jesus. When he died on the cross, God accepted his holy blood, shed there ….enough to restore humanity to friendship with himself. We have peace with the righteous judge of the universe because Jesus shed his blood on the cross and died. At the cross God chose to remove all the commandments we had broken by nailing the list of sins we had committed. (Colossians 2:14)
God cares for you and me. His care, His love caused the angel to say to the shepherds near Bethlehem. “Unto you this night is born a Savior, who is Christ the Lord, you will find the child in a manger….”
Rick Warren tells the story of when his son Josh was 3 years old. He writes: “When my son Josh was three years old, we were on vacation in Hawaii and we nearly lost him three times. The kid was getting into everything. We were staying in a hotel on the 15th floor and we walked in the room and he was out on the balcony. He had moved a chair over and, with over half of his body leaning over the top, saying: “Mommy! Daddy! Look at the garbage truck!” Obviously, we in horror pulled him back. Later on, we were going to see some site and he broke away from my hand and ran out right in front of a car and just in a split second I was able to reach out and grab him and pull him back. Then a third time we were up on a tall cliff and a gust of wind came and nearly blew him off the cliff!
Each of those times…he was only three years old… he desperately needed to be rescued, but he didn’t have the slightest idea that he needed it.
You many never have realized how much you need a savior, but you do. If you didn’t need a savior, Jesus would not have come to earth and died on a cross for you.
He wouldn’t have wasted the effort if you didn’t need somebody to rescue you.
Jesus has rescued us from the guilt of our past. I’ve never met anybody who doesn’t carry some level of guilt. Everybody has made mistakes. We’re all imperfect. The bottom line is this: “when you break God’s laws you pay God’s penalty. God is a just god and God is a loving God, but he has to satisfy the justice because he can’t wink at sin. The punishment for sin is death.
The Good News: Christ died to rescue us from the penalty of our sins. Somebody has to pay the penalty for the things you and I have done wrong. God chose to pay the penalty himself in the person of Jesus Christ.
Jesus has rescued us from a meaningless life. So many people just exist. The just go from job to job, from work to home, back and forth, back and forth….but their lives are empty. They try to fill their lives with people or toys but they don’t have the slightest idea what their purpose in life is. They don’t know God, nor why God put them here. Jesus tells us that God has given us a purpose… we are to learn to love God and serve him and one another.
Finally, Jesus has rescued us from the fear of death. The bible says: “Jesus has set free those who were slaves all their lives because of their fear of death.” Have you ever invited someone out to coffee and say… “Let’s talk about death?” It’s not a subject we want to talk about.
Yet death is a grim reality in every home. Each time we pick up a newspaper we read of famous personalities, acquaintances, neighbors, people we don’t know who have died. The word “death” brings fear to many people. We can talk about other people dying…but apply the words to ourselves….well that’s another story.
It is a word that strips the rich of millions and the poor of rags. It is a word that frustrates ambition and disappoints hope. It is easy to think of other people keeping their appointment with death but difficult for us to understand that we took will keep the appointment.
Pharaoh Shishak I, who is mentioned in the bible lived almost 3000 years ago in Egypt. His body is now a mummy, dried, and shriveled. He too kept an appointment with death. At Mount Vernon, in Virginia, overlooking the Potomac River is the tomb of George Washington, a great man who was “first in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countryman.” He was the father of the United States, and yet he kept the appointment.
Right now you can go to San Francisco and see what was once live human beings, now plasticzed. In Red Square, in Moscow, Russia, lies the body of Lenin. He too kept the appointment.
The bible tells us that by one man sin entered into the world, and death is the result of sin; so death passed to all human beings. All people are doomed to die, infants, teenagers, old people, moral people, religious people, everyone. However on earth, 2,000 years ago lived a Man who went about doing good. He healed the blind, enabled the deaf to hear, the lamb to walk and he raised people from death.
His name was Jesus. He was arrested, condemned to death. His followers watched him die on a Roman cross. He died on Friday. One of his followers took his body down and placed him in a grave. But this was not the end of the story. If it were… we would be hopeless, wanderers.
On the first day of the new week, Mary Magdalene, Mary the Mother of Jesus and Salome made their way to the tomb where the body of Jesus had been placed. “there was an earthquake; for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven and rolled away the stone…. His appearance was like lightning, white as snow. He spoke to the women… “I know you are looking for Jesus, he is not here, He has risen from the dead.”
For those who believe that Jesus rose from the dead…. He has promised eternal life in heaven. For the Christian, death is just a transfer. This is what Easter is all about. Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life and he who believes in me shall never die.”
You don’t have to understand it, you just have to accept it.
Charles Murray was preparing for the summer Olympics. He was a student at the University of Cincinnati. Because Charlie had n ever been in a religious family and never gone to church, when he met his first Christian and they started talking to him about how much God cared about him. He was skeptical, but interested. So over the semester, he talked to his Christian friend about God and his love. One night he decided to call his Christian friend up. He said, “Tell me again those verses in the bible that says God cares about me.” The verses were shared.
After he hung up he decided to go over to the school pool to do some practice diving. Because he was preparing for the Olympics, he had special privileges and he could use the pool even when it was closed. At the University of Cincinnati, it is an enclosed pool and of course the lights were off because it was closed. The pool had a glass ceiling and there was a full moon that gave some light.
He climbed to the top of the diving platform, turned around to do his first dive backwards and stretched out his arms. When he did that the moonlight coming through the ceiling showed his shadow on the wall and formed the shape of a cross. He looked at that and for the first time Charlie felt God’s love. He realized that Christ had died for him. He knew that God loved him. In that moment on the twenty plus feet diving platform, he sat down and opened his life to God.
He prayed. Jesus Christ, come into my life and make a difference…. He was setting there in the dark when, about five minutes later a janitor walked in and suddenly flipped on the light. It startled Charlie. He got up and as he looked down he saw that the pool had been emptied for repairs. He mattered to God. ( Rick Warren Easter 1999)
You matter to God. He loves you so much that Jesus came to die and rise from the grave so that you and I can be assured of peace with God in our hearts and an eternal home in heaven. He is risen!
