Easter Dawn – 1 Corinthians 5:6b-8
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
For the nation of Israel, their ancestors’ miraculous deliverance from slavery in Egypt – crystalized especially in the events surrounding the first Passover – was a fundamental component of their identity as a people.
If anyone would ever wonder if the ten plagues, the parting of the sea, or the other Exodus miracles had actually happened, the Israelites would respond that their very existence as a nation was the primary proof that God had in fact established them as a nation.
Without the Exodus, there would be no nation. But since there was in fact a nation, that which had made them to be a nation must be true.
Throughout the history of God’s Old Testament people, Psalmists and Prophets often referred back to these events. And God himself often reminded the nation of these events, when the Israelites veered off from the pathway that God had set them on, or when they forgot who they were, and who their God was.
Psalm 78 is a good example of this. The Psalmist declares:
“I will utter dark sayings from of old, things that we have heard and known, that our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children, but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might, and the wonders that he has done.”
“He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers to teach to their children, that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children, so that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments…”
“In the sight of their fathers he performed wonders in the land of Egypt… He divided the sea and let them pass through it, and made the waters stand like a heap. In the daytime he led them with a cloud, and all the night with a fiery light. He split rocks in the wilderness and gave them drink abundantly as from the deep. He made streams come out of the rock and caused waters to flow down like rivers.”
It is not a coincidence that the death and resurrection of Jesus took place in conjunction with the Passover – which was, as we know, a central component of the Exodus story.
Jesus was deliberately making a connection between the old covenant – which had brought about Israel’s liberation from earthly slavery – and the new covenant that he was now establishing.
This new covenant would bring, not bodily liberation from human injustice, but the liberation of souls from the power of sin, death, and the devil. And this new covenant would not apply only to one nation.
It would reach into the hearts of individuals in all the nations of men; and would make them to be a new creation, and a new redeemed humanity, in Christ and in his grace.
Our Lord’s death on the cross was an atoning sacrifice for all human sin. Our Lord’s resurrection testified to his Father’s acceptance of this sacrifice, and to the reconciliation between God and man – in Christ – that has now been established, and that is now offered to all in the gospel.
Of course, God, in his love for fallen humanity, wanted to be reconciled, even as he wanted his wayward creatures to be healed and restored. The death and resurrection of Jesus was the unfolding of God’s plan to break down the barriers that our sin had erected between us and him, and in his Son to reach out to us and bring us back into his fatherly embrace.
St. John writes in his First Epistle:
“In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
And in a sermon that St. Peter preached in the Book of Acts, the apostle declares:
“We are witnesses of all that [Jesus] did both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. 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 the people, but to us who had been chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.”
“And he commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead. To him all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”
In the same way as the Exodus and the Passover were the cause and foundation of the existence of the nation of Israel, so too is the resurrection of Christ the cause and the foundation of the existence of the Christian church.
The claim that Jesus rose from the dead on the third day into a glorified immortality, and that this resurrection confirms the truthfulness of everything he had said about himself, is admittedly difficult for people to believe. We don’t expect people to believe in this miracle, apart from a further miracle in their hearts: as God’s Spirit creates faith within them through the testimony of the apostles.
But this testimony of the apostles is eyewitness testimony. These men recounted what they had seen, heard, and touched, with their own eyes, ears, and hands.
The apostles were just as a surprised by Jesus’ resurrection as we would have been under the same circumstances. But the resurrection was real nevertheless.
It set in motion the ministries of those twelve men – now including Matthias as the successor of Judas. It set in motion the spreading of the church of Jesus Christ wherever they went.
All twelve of them saw him, talked with him, and ate with him – after he had died and been buried. And they never recanted or changed their story, even when they were facing persecution and painful deaths because of what they were preaching.
There are very few events in human history that are this well-attested. The German theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg once said:
“The evidence for Jesus’ resurrection is so strong that nobody would question it except for two things: First, it is a very unusual event. And second, if you believe it happened, you have to change the way you live.”
Yet many do question it: not because the apostles’ testimony is unreliable, by any reasonable historical standard; but because people are afraid of what might happen if they admit that it is true.
They are afraid of what will happen to their sense of independence and autonomy, if they accept the claims of the apostles – and the claims of Jesus – that they belong to Christ, and need Christ.
And so various far-fetched theories are concocted, as to where the resurrection story supposedly came from, and how it was invented by the later generations of the church. But what is missed, is that there would be no church, if there had been no resurrection.
The church did not create the story of the resurrection of Jesus. The story – and the reality – of the resurrection of Jesus, created the church!
The very existence of the Christian church as a phenomenon of human history, is the primary evidence for the historical truth of what we are proclaiming today. This is what the church has always proclaimed to guilty sinners, who are in need of forgiveness; and to mortals afraid of death, who are in need of an eternal hope.
The church of Jesus Christ exists to bear witness to its founder’s victory over the grave for us. And it was his victory over the grave for us which brought the church into existence.
Consider also that inside the living fellowship of God’s people that is the church, we who are alive today know people, who knew people, who knew people – and so on going back, with overlapping connections and relationships that span the centuries – all the way to the apostles, and ultimately to Jesus.
As living members of the living body of Christ, we can truthfully say that the apostles’ story is our story. The gospel of Christ crucified and risen from the dead is our spiritual family’s timeless legacy.
The gospel of Christ crucified and risen from the dead is the enduring heritage of the new holy nation to which we belong. And the gospel of Christ crucified and risen from the dead is true, and real.
Jesus’ resurrection is our Passover, and our Exodus. As an objective fact of human history, his resurrection changed the course of human history. And as the power and fruit of Christ’s victory come to us now in his Word and sacraments, his resurrection changes us.
In the spirit of Psalm 78, each of us can therefore proclaim a message like this, to our fellow Christians, and to the world:
I will utter light-filled sayings from of old, things that we have heard and known, that our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from our children, but will tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might, and the wonders that he has done.
He established a testimony in his church, and appointed a gospel to be proclaimed to all creatures, which he commanded the apostles to bring to all nations: so that all generations of humanity might know this testimony, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell it to their children, so that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but put their trust in him.
In the sight of the holy apostles the Lord performed extraordinary wonders in this world. Jesus rose from the dead, appeared bodily to his disciples, and ate and drank with them. He sent them forth to make disciples of all nations, by baptism and teaching. He commissioned them to preach repentance and the forgiveness of sins to all peoples.
Jesus promised that he will send his Spirit to dwell in us, and to bear his fruit through us. He promised that he will be with us always, even to the end of the age. And he promised that at the end of the age he will return visibly to judge the living and the dead, and that his kingdom will have no end.
In the words of St. Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians, I can declare to you, with absolute certainty, that
“Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” Amen.
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!