He Is Here

Text: Matthew 28:1-10

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed. Alleluia!

          To have proclaimed that just a couple of days ago would have been unthinkable. As we gathered for Maundy Thursday we remembered our Lord’s institution of the Sacrament of the Altar and left in silence after hearing Psalm 22 sung. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And then on Friday, we heard the Passion of our Lord read from the Gospel of Matthew as the Light of the World receded into the darkness of death. We again left in silence after hearing that Joseph of Arimathea had been granted the body of Jesus, “laid it in his own new tomb, which he had cut in the rock. And he rolled a great stone to the entrance of the tomb and went away.”

After all that, the shouts of Easter morning, Christ is risen! He is risen indeed. Alleluia! seem like a far cry from the reality of what has occurred this week. But also, not that far from the shouts of “Hosanna to the Son of David” that we proclaimed just a week ago on Palm Sunday. Holy week takes us on a roller coaster ride of emotions and seeming contradictions. Jesus is the King, riding into Jerusalem on a donkey one day receiving the praise of His followers, and the next having them turn on Him in the most brutal way. He’s the Savior and yet those He came to save have Him crucified like a common criminal. Jesus loves in the greatest of ways and receives hatred and scorn in return. All this shows us that God can take what might seem like weakness, and betrayal, and defeat, and even death and

JESUS CAN QUICKLY TURN IT ALL INTO REJOICING.

          And it’s not just the general turn of the tides from Good Friday to Easter morning that we celebrate today. It’s the specifics that we heard from our Gospel reading where Matthew relays to us the events of that glorious day when “toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb.” There are seeming contradictions throughout this account. “Do not be afraid”…and yet the guards trembled. “He is not here”…and yet He’s there. The women come in sorrow…and leave in “great joy.” We’ll explore each of these this morning as we hear about the resurrection of our Lord and what it says about how we’re to live as witnesses to that resurrection.

“And behold there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. And for fear of him the guards trembled and became like dead men.” A sight like that would strike fear in the heart of even the bravest of men. And it had the intended effect of rendering the guards powerless to get in the way of what God was doing for those women that morning. “But the angel said to the women, ‘Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified.’” That’s exactly why they’re there. Looking for the One they loved. The One who they hoped to honor in death by anointing His body with spices. To complete the burial rites that had been postponed due to the Sabbath.

And fear would be a completely understandable emotion when they encounter not the body of Jesus, but an angel and a bunch of incapacitated guards. Fear is an understandable emotion in many instances we face as well. In the early part of World War II, there was a Navy submarine stuck at the bottom of the harbor in New York City. There was no electricity and the oxygen was quickly running out. In one last attempt to rescue the crew, the Navy sent a ship equipped with divers to the spot on the surface, directly above the submarine. A Navy diver went over the side of the ship to the dangerous depths in one last rescue attempt. The trapped sailors heard the metal boots of the diver land on the surface of the sub, and they moved to where they thought the rescuer would be. In the darkness they tapped in Morse code, “Is there any hope?” The diver on the outside, recognizing the message, signaled by tapping on the exterior of the sub, “Yes, there is hope.”

This is the picture of our situation as we worship this Easter morning. We’re trapped in a terrible situation. We look around and it would be very easy to find ourselves hopeless. The world in which we live is plagued with all sorts of difficulty. Not the least of which is our own sin. In fact, sin is the cause of all our difficulties. And so, we’re desperate for that message from outside ourselves to offer hope. And a way out. Because the more we try to rescue ourselves the more we’ll fall into that state of fear and hopelessness. And in the midst of all that, God breaks into our lives and offers us that promise. Yes, there is hope. Hope for a renewed relationship with Him. Hope for a better life here and now. And most especially, hope for an eternity spent with the One who not only was raised from the grave Himself, but who also offers that same hope of resurrection to life eternal to all who trust and believe in Him.

The women at the tomb that Easter morning could have succumbed to fear, but they left with hope. You too, probably came this morning with some fear of something. And I pray that one thing you take away with you today is the hope that you have because you know the risen Lord and what He has done for you.

“He is not here, for he has risen, as he said.” Like a two-year-old who wakes up from their nap to be told that mom isn’t home, the disciples must have at first not totally understood what these words meant. Of course mom is here. She’s always here. And then they’ll run through the house looking in every nook and cranny until they’re convinced that mom’s not actually there. As if to anticipate the women’s need to verify this information, the angel says, “Come, see the place where he lay.” Or more accurately, the place where he used to lay. Because He’s not there anymore. And at first, to these women, this is the worst news there could possibly be. Just as that two-year-old probably has all the worst case scenarios running through their head about what happened to mom, the women must have gone immediately to the tomb and frantically searched for Jesus, who they knew should have been there. But He wasn’t.

What they didn’t yet know is that the fact that He wasn’t there as they thought He would be actually meant that He was there in a way they could never have imagined. Even though He told them exactly what was going to happen. Jesus might not appear in your life exactly as you’d like Him to. He might not show up in the way that you think you need Him at the time you think He should be there. But He’s there. In ways that you couldn’t possibly imagine. In your fear, He’ll be there to give you peace. In your hopelessness, He offers hope. In your sin, He provides a way out. He’s done it already today as He spoke the words of forgiveness to you. And He’ll do it again as He offers to you His body and blood in, with, and under the bread and wine. He’ll give you the things that you may not even know that you need, at the times you may not even know that you need them.

And then in receiving these things you’ll hear Him say to you exactly what He wants you to do with these gifts that He gives. To the women, this message came through the angel when he said, “Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dear, and behold, he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him.”

The women come in sorrow with a mission to grieve the loss of their friend and teacher by caring for His body…and “they departed quickly from the tomb with fear” yes, but also with “great joy.” They came in sorrow…and departed in “great joy.” I don’t know what sorrow or sadness you bring with you this morning, but I know that we all have some. My prayer is that even in that sadness and sorrow, you would leave here today in “great joy.” The joy of knowing that we might not find in this life everything that we expect or hope for, but that Jesus has something even more incredible in store for us.

That’s the amazing thing about Holy Week. From the joy of the triumphal entry to the sorrow of the passion and back to the rejoicing of Easter Sunday, the whole thing mirrors our lives. And it reminds us that our Lord, through all that He endured for us will bring us from fear to hope, and from sorrow to joy. And that even though there are times when we might feel like “He is not here” we can be assured that He is here. In ways that we couldn’t even imagine. Through His Word. In His Sacraments. And He just might even use you to show others that He is here. Just as He used those women to deliver the message on Easter morning to the disciples. So, I pray that the rejoicing of this morning here in this sanctuary will spill out into the streets, and into your places of work and school. And that the hope of Jesus’ resurrection is yours today and every day. Because His resurrection is the assurance that you too will one day be raised from the dead to everlasting life. So rejoice and be glad, for

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed. Alleluia!

Amen.

The peace of God which surpasses all understanding guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.