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Insight. It’s a highly praised
commodity among human beings. Girls want a guy who has insight,
knowing how to make her feel special. The public wants political
leadership with insight to chart our nation’s course through
troubled waters. Boardrooms gleefully shovel millions in executive
compensation to the sharp cookie who has the insight to turn the
business around or keep pushing for technological breakthroughs to
keep their company at the top of the global heap.
Insight…is highly overrated. It
comes only after long periods of forgetfulness, repeated bits of
information overlooked and days wasted chasing dead ends.
I don’t want people with insight. I
want people who remember.
And that’s what we find in our Easter
story for today. Luke tells us everybody was looking for the wrong
thing at the tomb of Jesus that Easter morning, because they had
forgotten. But when the angel spoke to the women, reminding them of
Jesus’ words,
Then They Remembered.
Tune out misconceptions (1-5,
9-12).
Tune in the Master’s words
(5-8).
Let’s just sort through the
misconceptions Luke reveals about Jesus’ followers on Easter Sunday
morning.
“On the first day of the week, very
early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and
went to the tomb (1)."
They are expecting to find a dead
Jesus. They have gone to the expense of bringing more spices to
conclude the burial of Jesus. You can’t blame them. They were
some of the last ones to see Jesus’ body. They had witnessed his
death on the cross, seeing Jesus’ body pierced with his spear,
seeing blood and water pouring out of Jesus’ dead body. They had
helped take Jesus’ body down from the cross. They had touched his
dead body while they were wrapping it in linen and packing the spices
around his body. They knew for a fact that Jesus was dead. They
just didn’t remember his words about coming back to life.
“They found the stone rolled away
from the tomb, but when they entered they did not find the body of
the Lord Jesus (2-3)."
The opened tomb should tell them
something had happened, but so tuned into their misconception that
Jesus was still dead, they go into the tomb expecting to still see
Jesus’ body. They didn’t see the body. It was nowhere in sight,
but something else was in sight.
“While they were wondering about
this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood
beside them. In their fright the women bowed down with their faces
to the ground (4-5)."
Angels appear. Now, if you saw a
vision of angels in the empty and opened tomb of Jesus, who over and
over again had predicted his death and resurrection, wouldn’t you
think God had the power to do pretty much what he wanted to do,
especially if he had promised he would do it? They don’t remember.
They are lost in their misconceptions. The appearance of angels
only frightens them.
But let’s not dwell on the women.
Misconception is an equal opportunity misleader. Look at the
disciples.
“When they came back from the tomb,
they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others. It
was Mary Madgalene, Joana, Mary the mother of James, and the others
with them who told this to the apostles. But they did not believe
the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense (9-11)."
These were trusted women, faithful
followers of Jesus, women who had earned a place in the circle of the
disciples. Hard-headed, clear-thinking, courageous to stand by Jesus
at the foot of the cross, these were not women who were lightweights.
But the disciples did not believe them. They knew Jesus was dead.
The message from the women contradicted what they absolutely,
positively knew, because they had forgotten Jesus’ words to them
about his death and resurrection. Nonsense. That’s all they could
come up with to brush off the report from the women. The stone
rolled away, the empty tomb, the appearance of angels, the message
from the angels. Nonsense.
There’s one final group we’ve got
to look at—the leadership of the disciples. “Peter, however, got
up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen
lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had
happened (12)."
Peter had to see for himself. Filled
with misconceptions, Peter has eyes, but he cannot see. He goes to
the tomb. It is as the women told him. Opened. Empty. He looks in
and something hits him that none of the others had noticed. The
burial clothes of Jesus were there, lying by themselves. Dead people
have burial clothes. Dead people are in closed tombs. None of this,
obviously, was the case. But Peter didn’t get it because he did
not remember Jesus’ words.
Certainly we could continue, debunking
critics of the resurrection who maintain the disciples wanted Jesus
alive so badly, they imagined his resurrection. Nothing could be
farther from the truth. They all expected Jesus to be dead, just as
surely as you and I, going the funeral of a loved one whose’ death
we witnessed, are expecting to see the body at the funeral home.
But let’s not turn Easter into a
holiday for scholars and religious squabbling. What’s the turning
point? When the women tuned in to the Master’s words.
“But the men (angels) said to them,
‘Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he
has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in
Galilee: “The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful
men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again."’ Then
they remembered his words (5-8)."
It wasn’t what they saw. It wasn’t
what the angels said. It was the Master’s words that made them
remember. Before the final journey to Jerusalem had started, almost
five months earlier, Jesus had laid out everything to his disciples.
Handed over. Crucified. On the third day rise again. As everything
up to this point had happened exactly as he said, why shouldn’t the
third day happen exactly as he said, as well? Jesus had come to
Jerusalem not to die, but to die in his battle with sin, death and
the devil and on the third day to victoriously rise to life again.
Then they remembered. Then it all came
back to them. Then they had insight into Jesus’ resurrection.
Insight because the words of Jesus shook them out of their
misconceptions.
Jesus is alive. The testimony of the
women, the message from the angels, the transcript of what Peter
found at the tomb, these all bear witness to the fact that Jesus was
no longer dead. The dead don’t move. The dead don’t open tombs.
The dead don’t ditch those loser funeral clothes. And angels
don’t lie. And the words and promises of Jesus do not disappoint.
Jesus is alive. That much is clear.
But we, some 2000 years later, can be just as forgetful, fumbling and
at a loss. What does it mean for us?
Because Jesus lives our sins are paid
for. God the Father received Jesus’ holy, precious life and his
innocent sufferings and death as the full payment for the sins of the
world. If Jesus had not made full payment, he would have remained in
the tomb, because he would have failed to fulfill God’s plan of
salvation, the very plan he came into this world to accomplish. But
by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus shows us sin is paid for and
there is no obstacle keeping us from heaven. Life after death, just
as Jesus experienced life after death, awaits us and this life after
death is an eternal life in heaven. At our funerals our friends and
family will not be saying good-bye to us forever, but only a “see
you later" good-bye.
Because Jesus lives he is who he says
he is. He is the Savior, the one sent by God to buy mankind back for
God. Anybody can make claims for themselves. Come to think of it,
every election cycle politicians make claims for themselves. Every
seven minutes or so, a product makes a claim for itself on the
television commercial. We only pay attention to those claims which
pan out. Jesus’ claims to be the Savior have panned out, because
he said he would rise from the dead on the third day, the day the
women and Peter found the tomb empty, the third day when the angels
told the women Jesus was alive, not dead.
Because Jesus lives, his Word calls us
to tune in to it. That’s the only place where we will find the
certainty in life that God wants us to find.
It is natural to want to believe what
your eyes and ears tell you. Everyone that we bury stays dead. No
one has come back to tell us what lies beyond. Even those with near
death experiences are just that—near death. There’s lots of
explanations besides a spiritual life after death to explain what
they have gone through—at least to a person who doesn’t tune in
to the Master’s words.
We had a member who worked for a very
prominent man. He made his money building weekly motels. Now he is
trying to build the first hotel in outer space and NASA is even
talking to him about building a protective environment for the base
they will eventually build on the moon, sort of like a Superdome over
a moon construction site. So the man is not a lightweight. The man
is not a flake, no matter what his critics might say.
He had a son who died tragically at the
prime of his life. So he gave UNLV a few million to endow a
department whose task was to find scientific proof for the existence
of life after death. I met one of the professors hired for that
position, an Irishman who was sending his child to our preschool.
They had changed the scope of their department to investigating
paranormal phenomenon, a sort of academic X-Files, because, as he
said, “the scientific evidence for life after death is pretty
sparse." It wasn’t too much later that the department (and the
directed endowment) was abandoned. I told our member, “Why don’t
you just tell your boss to come to church on Easter Sunday? That’s
the only proof we are ever going to have that there is life after
death."
But that’s the way it is! Everything
we see and hear, that can be argued away. Our daily experiences in
life say it cannot happen. We are filled with these misconceptions
that we take as Gospel truth. “This life is all there is. Once
you’re dead you’re dead." What would we expect from people who
carry around a sinful human nature? But when we go to the Master’s
words, what a difference takes place! These words have a power to
them that we cannot explain, the power of God for the salvation of
those who believe. The words of Jesus create a trust in our heart, a
conviction in our soul, a remembering that, “Yes, it has to be so,
for that is what Jesus has told me." These words even remove the
shame and guilt we might have felt for not believing what Jesus had
told us.
Because Jesus lives Easter is Easter.
We remember his words that this is exactly what he said would happen.
Yes, yes, I know, it is easy to remember after the fact and
especially after so many times hearing the same story, but that’s
the way we are. How many people haven’t we known who were
experiencing signs of congestive heart failure? Their past history
had taught them what to expect in a case of congestive heart failure,
but when it came upon them, they didn’t realize what it was. I am
told the same thing often happens to couples having their second or
third child. All their prenatal training goes out the window as they
fail to recognize the signs of imminent child birth. But we remember
this. We can’t remember our own cell number, but we remember this,
the words of Jesus that predicted his resurrection and proved his
claim as our Savior.
Then They Remembered.
Tune out misconceptions (1-5,
9-12).
Tune in the Master’s words
(5-8).
The women tried to convince the
disciples, but I guess everybody has to take a different road to come
to that insight that God is real, Jesus is my Savior, there is
forgiveness of sins and life eternal in heaven. Maybe you are not
going to believe it just because your mother says so. Maybe you are
not going to believe in it just because you heard a preacher say so.
But each of us who come to that conviction, whether sooner or later,
all come to that point because there is one thing driving us—the
words of Jesus, the Masters words, which we finally can’t ignore or
slander anymore, which we can forget no longer, but can only believe.
And remember for the rest of our lives. Rev. Don Pieper is a minister in the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod. He has devoted his life to sharing the Gospel of Christ to all of Gods people. For more information about the Green Valley Evangelical Lutheran Church visit us at www.gvelc.com or call 702-454-8979 .
Ask for Pastor Don or Pastor Matt.
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