“Beyond
the Cross and Empty Tomb”
Mark
16:1-8
1
Corinthians 15:1-11
Easter
Sunday
Over the last six weeks, we have walked the journey of Lent. During our journey together we have taken some tough steps of faith, asked tough questions of ourselves, wrestled with our conflicting expectations on Palm and Passion Sunday, shared in Christ’s body and blood on Maundy Thursday, stood at the foot of the cross on Good Friday, joined together in prayer and vigil this morning, and now we once again come together in worship to celebrate the event that binds all of what we have done, and all of who we are, together. Our journey of Lent may now be complete, but today our journey of faith now begins anew.
For today we celebrate
an event so wonderful, so amazing, so incredible, that the actual moment of the
event itself still remains a mystery not intended for
human eyes. Today we celebrate the
resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, when God raised Jesus from the dead,
vindicated his life, his ministry and mission, and defeated death’s power
in one brilliant moment of divine glory.
But the resurrection is more than just about the empty
tomb, more than just about a miraculous and mysterious event long ago.
The resurrection is about the full
action and work of God in salvation history.
It is about God’s salvific work for the world
through the person of Jesus Christ. It
is the resurrection that stands as the linchpin that holds the past and the
future together giving focus and definition to not just all that God has done
in salvation history, but to the single most important event of that history –
the cross of Jesus Christ.
The glory of the resurrection
illuminates more than just Easter Sunday, it sheds light on all that Jesus
endured and all that we have gone through these last three days of Holy
Week. But, most importantly, it
illuminates the cross so that we can see the cross for what it truly is - the
single greatest act of divine love and grace and redemption. It is the resurrection which turns the cross
from being a tragic end of a great person, into the defining moment of
salvation history – the death of God’s Son for the forgiveness of sins. Without the resurrection, the cross is void
of its power. Without the resurrection,
the cross has no significance. It is the
resurrection then that defines for us the power of the cross, and in doing so
shatters all of our expectations about who God is and what God is doing in the
world.
When
Mary Magdelene and the other women went to the tomb,
they expected only one thing, to see Jesus dead. They were not going there to celebrate, but
to mourn. They were not going to see the
empty tomb, but to anoint Jesus’ body.
For them, the story of Jesus’ life and ministry had ended. Their beloved Jesus was gone for good. But, who could blame them. After all, they had witnessed Jesus death on
the cross. They knew that he had died,
really died.
But what they find at the tomb
startles and shocks them and shatters their expectations. They find the stone moved away from the
entrance of the tomb, Jesus is gone, and upon entering the tomb they suddenly
see a person sitting where Jesus was supposed to be, and he starts talking to
them. He tells them to not be afraid,
and announces to them that the crucified Jesus is now the risen Jesus, and that
they are to go and tell the others that Jesus has already left the tomb and has
gone to
The
women expected Jesus to be dead. They
expected Jesus to be gone for good. They
expected Jesus’ voice to remain silent forever.
But God has proven once and for all that God will not be limited or
contained by human expectations. No
longer would the cross be just another symbol of Roman power, through the
resurrection, the cross has been proven to be the symbol and act of God’s
power. Cross and Resurrection –
together they are the shining witness and testimony of God’s love for the
world, and the pinnacle events of God’s gracious, salvific
work for all of creation.
As Paul reminds us in his letter
to the Corinthians, his is the confession of the Christian faith and the
confession of all those faithful witnesses who have gone before us, those
faithful witnesses who have passed on to us from generation to generation that
Jesus died on the cross for the forgiveness of sins and three days later was
raised from the dead so that we may have life everlasting.
And so on this great day, we come
together to do more than just celebrate, we come to together to join our voices
to the chorus of voices of the great cloud of witnesses in every time and place
in the proclamation of the good news of the Gospel, that Jesus Christ died and
was raised, that he alone is the crucified and risen Lord of life. And that is quite a confession to make, a
radical confession about what we believe.
The cross and resurrection is the great reminder that Jesus is more than
just a historical figure of a bygone era, more than just a great person who did
great things, more than just a prophet who spoke about God’s kingdom, but that
this Jesus of Nazareth, is the Son of God, and that through his death and
resurrection, he is alive here and now, that he truly is the alpha and the
omega, the beginning and the end, our Lord and our God.
This radical confession means that
the cross and the resurrection are more than just about past events,
together they are a declaration about the present. If all they are for us is a reminder of past
events, then we will have missed a much deeper and fuller truth of the good
news of Jesus Christ, a much deeper and fuller truth of what it means to be
God’s people of faith, a much deeper and fuller truth of what it means to be
Christ’s disciples.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ
is the reminder to all who confess Jesus is the living Lord that the good news
of this event is more than just about the discovery of the empty tomb; it’s
about all that happened before and all that has happened since, it’s about the
on-going implications of the living Christ for our lives of faith.
If Easter Sunday, with out Good
Friday, is for us only an occasion to hear the story of the empty tomb and make
sure that we are okay for another year, then we will have missed the true
significance of what these two days, these two events, mean for those who believe. For it is through them that we are set free
to live in the new way of being and doing that is kingdom oriented and
God-centered, and it is through them that we are called to go and met Christ
where he is at work, to go and embody his teachings and commandments, and to go
and be his witnesses in the world. The
cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ may have been a moment in time, a moment
in human history, but the significance of them can never be confined to a single
point in history. Like an earthquake
that sends out seismic shock waves from the epicenter, the implications of
these two events continue to expand out in all directions.
If all we remember about the
resurrection is the story of the empty tomb, then we are no better off than the
women – still perplexed about what has happened, still wondering what happened
to Jesus’ body, still not sure if the empty tomb is good news or not. The empty tomb in and of itself is no proof
that Jesus was raised from the dead. It
is only when we remember the words of Jesus himself about his death and
resurrection does the empty tomb begin to have
meaning. Only when we remember the
message of the gospel of Jesus Christ that through his death is the forgiveness
of sins, and through is rising from the dead is the promise of eternal life,
does the fuller message of this day begin to take shape.
The empty tomb without the
remembrance of Jesus’ life and ministry, without the promise of God, without
the message of the good news of salvation in the cross attached to it, without
the encounter of the living Christ, is just that - an empty tomb. It is the encounter with the crucified and
risen Christ that would become the beginning point from which the disciples
would embark on their journey of faith in the world, the beginning point from
which Christ’s disciples would continue his ministry to all nations and all
people. And it is the same for us.
Like the women, we too are given
the message from the person in the tomb, we too are told to go, and tell Jesus’
disciples that Jesus the crucified one is not here, but that he is already
ahead of us in
Just as the resurrection of Jesus
Christ points us back to the cross and beyond the cross, so too does the cross
point us to forward to the tomb and beyond the tomb, to the one who died and
now lives, to the one who through his suffering made us whole and through his
rising gave us eternal hope, so that we may move beyond this moment in time in
order to be sent out this day and every day as his body in the world so that in
us and through us, we may bring light and hope to every land and race in Christ’s
name.
It is not from the empty tomb that the disciples learned what it meant to be disciples, it was from their encounter with the crucified and risen Christ. It was seeing him again in the streets of the city of Galilee, seeing him again from the mountain top as he gives them the great commission, seeing him again on the road to Emmaus, hearing his call to ministry and mission in the world, staying in fellowship with one another, working for justice and peace, loving one another as he loves us, and being one with each other as he and the Father are one.
Maybe the message of the resurrection is really a question for all
of us to answer. When you leave here
today, will you continue to keep in close proximity to the cross and empty
tomb, or will you allow yourselves to move beyond them in order to meet the
crucified and risen Christ where he is?
When you leave here today, will you put this day behind you as just
another day to remember what happened in history, or will you, like Jesus, bear
your own marks of death in baptism, in order to begin living in the new life
you have in him through his resurrection?
To move beyond the cross and empty
tomb is the only way to met the crucified and risen Christ, it is the only way
that we can respond to our call and be sent out as Christ’s loving servants and
faithful witnesses. To move beyond the
cross and tomb and to go and met Christ is to be for us the great reminder that
today is to be different from yesterday.
Come Monday morning we cannot be the same people we were Saturday
evening. To encounter the presence of
the crucified and risen Lord means that neither the cross nor the empty tomb
are to be the end of the story for us – together, they are to be our new beginning,
the new beginning of the always unfolding story of God’s salvation
history. Amen.