Our Sermons

Bible Passage: Luke 24:1-12
Pastor: Pastor Schlicht
Sermon Date:  April 17, 2022

Can you picture that first Easter morning? Jesus’ followers were up early getting ready for the celebration. They set up tables outside the tomb and prepared food and wine. They had harps and lyres tuned and then the countdown began: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Jesus rolled back the stone and they all cheered! They cut the cake and began to celebrate the very first Easter … Just in case you were sleeping during the gospel reading, that’s not what happened. No, Luke’s account of that first Easter morning begins with Jesus’ closest followers hiding in fear and a few women on their way to his tomb, not to celebrate a resurrection, but to embalm a dead body. Even when they find the stone rolled away, they don’t assume he’s risen from the dead, the empty tomb creates confusion, not clarity.

The claim that Jesus rose from the dead seems far-fetched to many people today, especially with how advanced our society is and all that we know about death. “Maybe people could believe in a resurrection 2000 years ago, but today we understand biology.” I can understand the skepticism. Belief in the resurrection hasn’t always been easy or simple for me. However, let’s not be so naive or so arrogant to think that people didn’t understand how death worked 2000 years ago. They saw a whole lot more of it than we do, up close and personal. When your loved one died, there weren’t funeral homes with morticians and makeup. You took care of the body yourself. That’s why the women went to the tomb. They went with spices to cover up the smell of a rotting corpse because they fully expected Jesus to be dead and to remain dead. In fact, it takes angels dressed like lightning to jog their memories about Jesus’ promise that he would rise on the third day. The women then bring the message to the disciples, who heard Jesus speak to them multiple times about his resurrection, and they respond like the harshest Bible skeptics, calling the women’s words “nonsense” (24:11). The word they used is the root of our word, “delirious.” It’s used to describe something utterly unbelievable, even insane. It’s not a good look for the disciples but at least it’s honest.

That’s what I love about Luke’s Easter account. All four gospels record the doubt, wonder, and fear of the disciples, but Luke is, perhaps, the most honest. There is no hint of embellishment, no attempt to save face, no embarrassing detail is omitted. In fact, the people involved, the same people who controlled the narrative as the resurrection news spread, are really described as unbelievers that morning. They aren’t peddlers or conspirators. They aren’t people who invented a resurrection or made themselves out to be heroes of faith. They’re lIke us, reasonable people who understand the reality of death. Even when Peter sees the grave cloths within the tomb, knowing that if the body was stolen the robbers would not have gone through the trouble of unwrapping the corpse, he doesn’t jump for joy, he walks away in amazement, wondering what could have happened.

Many people wonder what happened that morning, today as well. Some theorize that the disciples must have stolen the body, but that’s probably the least likely possibility. I mean they were hiding that morning for fear of the jewish leaders! You know when we think about crucifixion, we think Hollywood, we think of elegant crucifixes. But we’ve never smelt it, we’ve never seen what a body looks like after it’s hung outside days after day. These disciples had grown up seeing men crucified, they watched Jesus’ crucifixion, and they knew that if they came for his body they would be arrested and probably crucified as well. To steal the body in order to perpetuate the lie of a resurrection, was too dangerous and pointless! If they weren’t willing to die for Jesus while he was alive, they weren’t about to risk their lives now that he was dead. 

No, that morning,  all you have are 11 cowardly disciples locked away in hiding and some sad women hoping to pay their respects to a dead body. But you know what you don’t have? You don’t have anyone who expected a resurrection! Nobody was there for the countdown. Because when people die, they stay dead, right? People understood that 2000 years ago just as well as we do today. Even those who were Jesus’ own followers didn’t believe in his resurrection! 

Could that be a temptation for Jesus’ followers today as well? Have you ever heard that question whispered in your own heart, “Is this really possible?” If you’ve ever doubted the resurrection, you wouldn’t be the first. But that doesn’t change what happened on that first Easter morning and why we are here today.

You see, when Jesus died, what we see is that his movement died with him. Exactly as you’d expect. And yet…here we are, 2000 years later, and there are people on every continent and nearly every country—over 2 billion people—celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ this morning. How did that happen? Why is it that there were a half-dozen other wannabe messiahs and you can’t name a single one of them? Why is it that there were many famous ancient teachers with pithy sayings but we don’t worship their name? My friends, we are not here today because someone stole a body, we aren’t here because Jesus’ merely fainted on the cross, or had a twin, or any other faulty theory that you could drive a truck through. We’re here because of the great hole ripped right through human history the exact size and shape of a real resurrection!

Those very same men who scattered, who wouldn’t even show up for Jesus’ burial, in just a few days found confidence to walk back into Jerusalem and told the very people who put Jesus on trial that God raised him from the dead. Why? Because Jesus walked out of the tomb and appeared to them and more than 500 of his followers between his resurrection and ascension. The book of Acts tells us how thousands of people in the city of Jerusalem within  weeks of the resurrection, repented and believed in Jesus. It’s just incredible when you think about it, the Christian church went from a few cowards huddling in a locked room to wrapping its arms around the known world only after the death of its founder. The emergence of the Christian church under brutal Roman persecution is a testament in and of itself to the validity of the resurrection claims. All except one of Jesus’ disciples were put to death for this claim. What can I say, except that liars make for lousy martyrs. 

Then try to explain the monumental shift away from the Jewish Sabbath to Sunday as the day of worship, which can be traced back to Jerusalem around the time of Jesus’ resurrection. Next, try explaining the stunning about-face turn in the life of an ingenious man named Paul, who once was bent on killing Christians. He had every conceivable motivation to expose Christianity as a hoax and the zeal and intellect to do so if he could have. But he saw the risen Christ on the road to Damascus and became a missionary who wrote half of the New Testament! Or try to explain how James, the brother of Jesus, became a leader within the early church. I mean, what would you have to do to convince your own brother that you are the Son of God? Probably nothing short of rising from the dead! Right? And finally, if there is a God who created us, recognized by the inherent design of our universe, the existence of life and matter, the phenomenon of consciousness and conscience, etc., isn’t it only consistent to believe that the author of all life might specialize in resurrection? I mean, really what is more miraculous: the fact that your heart is beating or the fact that Jesus rose from the dead? If God gives life, if he exists, then everything is a miracle. It would be foolish not to consider the resurrection seriously.

However, ultimately, our belief in the resurrection, as well-founded historically as it may be, as logically defensible from a philosophical point of view as it may be, despite the arguments and evidence we may find convincing, ultimately faith is not a product of reason, but trust in the Word of God. Ultimately, it is the truth itself, as the Scripture brings it to us and the Spirit works through the Word, that is the real reason we believe. 

Think about the way the first Easter accounts back that up. Jesus appears to two disciples on the road to Emmaus, but he purposely hides himself from their recognition until what? Until he explains to them from the Scriptures why the Messiah had to die and rise from the dead. Only then does he reveal himself. Or think about him standing in front of Thomas with his nail-scarred hands outstretched. What did he say, “Blessed are those who have empirical evidence?” No, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” Or, specifically, think about what the angels said to the women in that empty tomb. They didn’t say, “Jesus is risen, go find him!” They said,  “Remember how he told you while he was still in Galilee that the Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again?” Remember how he told you…This is precisely where we are today. We have the word of the resurrection. We do not have angels, or the risen Christ standing in front of us. We don’t have an empty tomb, but we are called just as those women were, to remember Jesus’ words and trust them.

There’s a song on the Christian radio which is quite popular these days and I always struggle when I hear it. It isn’t that the song is bad, the music is actually really catchy which makes the lyrics more frustrating. It’s called “Too Good to Not Believe” by Cody Carnes. Here are some of the lyrics: “Oh, the miracles we’ll see, You’re too good to not believe. After everything I’ve seen…Oh, how my eyes have seen it, oh-oh …And I’ve seen cancer disappear…I’ve seen metal plates dissolve. Don’t you tell me He can’t do it…” I won’t tell you God can’t do it, I believe he could. But what I will do is question the emphasis on seeing when Jesus himself wants us to focus on his words. The fact is that Jesus wants us to believe even when the cancer stays. He wants us to believe even when the metal plates don’t dissolve and do what the doctors designed them to do. He wants us to trust his promises, even after everything we haven’t seen. “Remember how he told you…” That is the essence of faith. 

My friends, in the end Jesus rose from the dead even when his followers didn’t believe it, and his resurrection is still true even through times of doubt in your life as well. Even at times when it doesn’t seem possible that God is at work or in control, trust his Word. Even when you can’t imagine being forgiven and pure in his sight, trust his Word. Luke’s account of the resurrection shows us humanity in all its shame and fragility, in all of its slowness to believe and its desperate reliance on its own comprehension. We can relate with that all too well. But we also see the even greater truth of God’s earnest love for us, a love that will go to any lengths—through death itself—in order to bring us life. Yes, death is real, but in Christ, life gets the last word. As he said, “Because I live, you also shall live.” Remember how he told you. Amen.