Easter Day – Matthew 27:62 – 28:15
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
Today is the high festival of the Resurrection of Our Lord. To be sure, Easter is but one day in the church year. But it is the day that gives meaning to every other day.
If the resurrection of Jesus had not taken place, nothing else would matter. And because the resurrection of Jesus did take place, everything else makes sense.
And so, every Sunday is a little Easter. And every commemoration of a martyr, who died without fear, is yet another testimony to the power of Easter.
We know now why the babe was born in Bethlehem. And we know that the sacrifice that was offered on the cross of Golgotha accomplished its purpose of atoning for the sins of the world, and for our sins.
Jesus lives. And because he lives, we, too, live. We live even now with a deeper joy, and with a more certain hope. And we shall live forever, with him, in his eternal kingdom.
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
We are very familiar with the fact that on the first Easter morning, a group of women were at the tomb of Jesus, where they had an encounter with an angel. These women then had an encounter with Jesus himself, who spoke with them, and who gave them a message to bring to his disciples. Today’s Gospel from St. Matthew reminded us of these things.
This is indeed a remarkable story. But you know, certain aspects of this story are even more remarkable than you may realize.
In the first-century Jewish culture, the testimony of women was generally disregarded as untrustworthy. According to the norms of that society, you would not entrust to women the task of conveying important information about an important event. Such a task would be given only to men.
First-century Jewish culture considered women in general to be inferior to men, and to be weak-minded and unreliable. Also in other ways, women were often not treated with respect.
Men would not speak with women to whom they were not related in public. Rabbis would not give religious instruction to women.
But Jesus violated those morès, and broke those rules. He did speak with the woman at the well – much to the astonishment of his disciples. He did give religious instruction to Mary of Bethany – much to the annoyance of her sister Martha. And now, after his resurrection, he entrusts this task to “Mary Magdalene and the other Mary”:
“Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me.”
The angel who had spoken with them previously, likewise had not conformed himself to the prejudices of first-century Palestine. He had said:
“Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead, and behold, he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him.”
Some of the restrictions that were placed on women in the first century were not, of course, based on the sinful human bigotries of those times, but were instead based on God’s Word. So, while Jesus did not agree with the idea that women should not be given religious instruction, he did agree that the instructors are to be men – in keeping with the order of creation.
Therefore the apostles whom he appointed, and whom he trained to be the first pastors and missionaries of the Christian church, were all men. And this was by design, and not by happenstance.
Still, while Jesus did not put women in positions of spiritual authority over men, he did treat them with dignity and respect, and as equal members of the human family who were loved and redeemed by God just as much as men were. To Jesus they were different from men – because they were created by God to be different – but they were not inferior to men.
And it was to women – to faithful, devoted women – that Jesus gave the privilege of being the first people to see him alive after his resurrection, and of being the first people to share with others the wonderful and saving truth of his victory over death and sin.
It does not surprise us, though – given what we know about the attitudes of first-century Jewish men toward women – that when Mary Magdalene and the others told these things to the apostles, “their words seemed to them like idle tales, and they did not believe them” – as St. Luke reports it.
These women were indeed at the tomb on that first Easter morning. But they were not the only people who were there, and who had an encounter with an angel on that morning.
St. Matthew tells us that after the body of Jesus had been placed in the tomb, the chief priests and the Pharisees asked Pilate to post a guard there, “lest his disciples go and steal him away and tell the people, ‘He has risen from the dead.’”
Pilate granted their request, and soldiers was posted there. But then, as we already heard in today’s Gospel,
“there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came 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.”
These Roman soldiers, with reputations as really tough guys – strong and reliable – were so frightened by the appearance of the angel, that they fainted.
Now, the women were also frightened. But they were not so frightened that they passed out from fear. They were therefore able to listen to what the angel had to say to them.
These men, though – these hard and sturdy men – became like dead men. As Roman pagans, they were already spiritually dead. And now it was as if they were physically dead, too.
Because of their unconscious condition, they were unable to hear anything that the angel might have wanted to tell them. And they also lied – to themselves and to others – about what little they did know regarding the events of that morning. St. Matthew tells us that
“some of the guard went into the city and told the chief priests all that had taken place. And…they gave a sufficient sum of money to the soldiers and said, ‘Tell people, “His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.” And if this comes to the governor’s ears, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.’ So they took the money and did as they were directed.”
In their hardness of heart and spiritual blindness, the soldiers did not truly understand what had happened to them, or what it meant. But at the very least they knew that this story was not true.
Yet they were willing to sear their consciences by telling this story. And because they were men, they were largely believed. Matthew goes on to tell us that “this story has been spread among the Jews to this day.” And this was in spite of the contradictions that were inherent in their story – because if they were asleep, how would they know that the body was stolen, or who stole it?
But people do often believe a lie, even when they know deep down that what they are believing is a lie, because they can’t deal with accepting a truth that will expose their flaws and failures, and dismantle everything that their life has been built on.
We live in an era of much division and social conflict, in a nation and in a world that are permeated by seething tensions and dangerous instabilities.
And with the skeptical postmodern way of thinking that has permeated the world – and us – we are so often crippled by an unwillingness to believe anything that contradicts the particular narrative we have embraced – that is, the “big story” that seems to us to make the best sense of everything, whether or not we’re sure that this story is actually true.
So, people tend to believe things that reinforce the opinions to which they already hold, and refuse to believe things that would challenge the opinions to which they already hold. We are often more concerned with who is saying something, and with whether or not that person is “one of us,” than with the objective validity of what is being said.
For us – unlike people in the first century – this does not usually break down to a willingness to believe what a man says, and an unwillingness to believe what a woman says. It tends to divide along political lines. And therefore everything is politicized.
There is often little effort to “drill down,” in an attempt to find out what the objective facts of any particular issue really are. We just take note of who is telling us something, and decide on that basis alone whether or not we will believe what we are being told.
But insofar as we are members of the Christian church – who have a timeless message to bring to all nations; and who know that our ultimate citizenship is in heaven and not on earth – we absolutely must stay above the rancor and the anger that surround us in this world.
In regard to the faith that has once and for all time been delivered to the saints, our love for God and his Word, and our love for the world of humanity for which Jesus died and rose again, must always govern what we believe and what we say.
The objective truth of Christ’s death and of what that death means for us, and the objective truth of Christ’s victory over death and of what that victory means for us, need to be accepted as true, even if these divine truths challenge what we have been comfortable with in the past.
And so today, we will believe the women who tell us that Jesus is risen from the dead. We will believe them, not because of who they are, but because what they are telling us is true.
We will believe anyone whom the Lord sends to announce to us that Christ’s sacrifice for our sins has been accepted by God; that our sins are therefore forgiven through Christ; and that Christ is alive, and will be alive forevermore, never to die again.
And of course, it is not only the testimony of the women on which we can base our certainty that these things are true, and that we now are truly saved from sin and death because of what Jesus has done for us. In his First Epistle to the Corinthians, St. Paul lists many other people who saw and touched the living Christ after his resurrection.
He gives the names of many of them, so that people in the first century could have tracked these people down and checked out this story. Some people probably did that, because they were in effect being invited by St. Paul to do that. So, the apostle writes
“that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve. After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep. After that He was seen by James, then by all the apostles. Then last of all He was seen by me also.”
The resurrection of Jesus is presented here as an historical event that could be verified, in the normal way that other historical events are verified: by asking the eyewitnesses what happened, and by comparing their accounts to see if they match. By every normal standard of historical truth, the resurrection is historically true.
But even this is not the only reason why we believe in the resurrection of God’s Son, and in the forgiveness, life, and salvation that God gives us in and through the resurrection of his Son.
The resurrection of Jesus was and is a supernatural event, which set in motion a supernatural salvation for humanity; and which we accept as true also for supernatural reasons. St. Paul writes in his Epistle to the Romans that
“as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs – heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together.”
As the Easter gospel is proclaimed to us, the Holy Spirit also bears witness with our spirit that this gospel is true, and that Jesus has indeed opened for us the pathway to eternal life through his victory over death.
As the words of absolution are spoken to us in the name of Christ, telling us that our sins are forgiven, the Holy Spirit bears witness with our spirit that the living Christ is himself speaking those words, and that he is indeed forgiving our sins.
As the Words of Institution in the Lord’s Supper are repeated by the command of the Lord, the Holy Spirit bears witness with our spirit that it is actually Jesus who is blessing the bread and wine through the lips of his called servant, and that Jesus is once again inviting us to eat and to drink, and in faith to receive him and all the saving gifts that he has placed into this sacrament for his people.
And don’t be confused by Paul’s statement that “as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God” – which might be taken to mean that only men are invited to receive God’s Spirit, and adoption as God’s children. What Paul is actually doing, is turning the inheritance laws of the first century on their head!
As we might expect, in the first century, only a man’s sons would be his legal heirs. A man’s daughters would be understood to be partakers of their husbands’ legacies, from their husbands’ fathers. With respect to earthly goods and property, women were not heirs in their own right.
But in the spiritual kingdom that Jesus has established, women are heirs of salvation in their own right. They are, as it were, sons of God, together with the men who believe.
And in the kingdom of our risen Lord, who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, other inequalities of this fallen world are also broken down, and are transcended by the one baptism that all God’s children share in common. That’s why Paul says in his Epistle to the Galatians that
“you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
So, from the perspective of what Jesus’ resurrection has set in motion for his church, it does not surprise us in the least that on the first Easter, Jesus commissioned women to tell his male disciples of his resurrection.
As the history of the church unfolded into the great commission that Jesus gave to his disciples, to preach the gospel to all creatures, people from the social underclass have often told those who were economically free and prosperous that Jesus rose from the dead to set them free from the fear of death.
And over many centuries, Gentile Christians have borne witness to their Jewish friends of the forgiveness, life, and salvation that the true Messiah of the Jewish people, and of the world, offers to them.
Those uniquenesses among men and women that are built into the way that God created them, and that are based on the order of creation that God established for human relationships in this world before sin entered this world, are not undone by Christ.
But the sinful bigotries and prejudices, and the cruelties that this sinful world has inflicted on people of both sexes, and on all ethnicities and social classes, are undone in Christ’s kingdom: in the living faith into which all of us have been baptized, and in the healing love of God that “has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us” – to quote again from the Epistle to the Romans.
So, whether you are a man or a woman, a boy or a girl, the wonderful message of the resurrection is for you to believe – today and every day. Because Jesus lives, you too, who believe in him, will live forever.
And whether you are a man or a woman, a boy or a girl, the wonderful message of the resurrection is for you to share with others – today and every day. Through you, the living Savior reaches out to those who are weak and fearful, and to those who are still lost and in the dark, with the light of his redeeming and forgiving grace.
Through his church, and through the confession of faith of all its members, the living Savior reaches out to a world that is filled with hatred and despair, with the message of love and hope that the women on the first Easter were sent to proclaim:
“Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He…has risen, as he said. …go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead.” Amen.
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!