Unusual Times

April 12, 2020 – Easter Sunday

Hope Lutheran Church

Pastor Mary Erickson

Colossians 3:1-4; Matthew 28:1-10

Unusual Times

Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.

Well, friends, we find ourselves in very unusual times! Typically, on Easter Sunday we have our largest crowds gathering here at Hope. The ushers take pains to seat people. They scope out where there are open seats. They ask families to scooch down a bit to accommodate more worshippers. But this morning, our sanctuary stands completely empty.

This morning there are no girls in pretty, pastel Easter dresses. More likely, many people are clad in pajamas or sweatpants!

Normally we come together for Easter. Family members who live far away return home to join in celebration. Big ham dinners are planned. There are Easter Egg Hunts and a baseball game to watch in the afternoon. But today, families are separated. We’re all staying in our homes. If we come together, it’s virtually, and thank heavens for that!

It’s an unusual time. But you know what? So was that first Easter! That morning was anything but typical.

Some women had set off in the very early morning light to come to Jesus’ tomb. He had been laid in there so very rapidly on Friday. The whole situation tanked so quickly, they were probably still trying to take it all in. On Thursday, he had been alive and well. Then that evening he was arrested. By the next day, he was tried, condemned, crucified and buried. Bam! Then it was the Sabbath. The whole thing was surreal.

So they headed to the tomb to absorb what had happened. To mourn. They expected to sit beside his closed tomb. They would touch the stone rolled in front of it. They would weep and comfort each other.

They expected to find the surroundings just like they were when they’d left on Friday. Jesus’ dead body would be inside the tomb, wrapped up in his shroud. The heavy stone would be in place, covering the entrance. And the Roman sentries would be standing guard to make sure no monkey business went on with Jesus’ followers.

But there was nothing usual when they arrived there. The earth shook, a brilliant angel appeared and rolled the stone away. The guards fainted away like dead men. And inside the tomb, no Jesus! The tomb was empty!

The empty tomb. It’s the prime symbol of Jesus’ resurrection. He’s simply not there! Emptiness, the lack of something – that’s our sign!

The tomb is empty. It couldn’t hold Jesus. The shroud that had been wrapped around him now lay in a discarded pile. There was nothing there to wrap around! The tomb couldn’t hold him. Jesus had risen from the dead. He broke free from the confines of his grave.

That morning, the women found the stone rolled away from the front of Jesus’ grave. The rays of the early morning light pierced into the darkness of the tomb’s gaping emptiness.

This was not at all a normal morning! It was most unusual.

Friends, that’s the point of Easter morning. We have entered into a changed reality. Life as we have known it has forever changed. On that morning, with the opening of Jesus’ tomb, we entered a new normal.

Before, we expected death. Death was the end game. No matter how your life played out, for better or for worse, the ending was always the same: death.

Jesus had died. He was taken down from his cross. His lifeless body was wrapped in its shroud and laid in a nearby tomb. His body should have stayed there. It should have moldered and slowly been eaten away.

But Easter morning ushered in the new normal. With his resurrection, we have entered into Christ’s new era. And this changes everything.

As we approach this Easter Sunday, some of you may have suffered a death in your family during this past year. You’ve been to the grave yourself, just like Mary and her friends. And you’ve shed tears just like they did. You mark this Easter Sunday with the memory of the grave fresh on your heart.

But know this, Christ has defeated death! In breaking free from his own grave, he has forever altered the power of death! He’s opened up a new future. Death no longer has the final word. Jesus Christ has risen from the dead!

During this unusual Easter, we feel sorrow that we can’t come together to rejoice in Jesus’ victory over death. But maybe we’ll discover something in these unusual times about Easter that we wouldn’t otherwise have noticed.

While we’ve been sheltering at home, we’ve been getting in touch with just how fragile and precious life is. We’ve come to realize what we can and cannot control. It’s been a time to strip away the false assumptions we insulate our day-to-day life with.