So, like I said, this is a busy week. And this blogpost will have a slightly different approach. I'm going out on a limb by saying that most preachers will spend more time on the Gospel lesson this Sunday than the others...just a shot in the dark, but hey, I'll live dangerously for a bit. With this in mind I'll be centering on the text from Matthew as well as making some observations about Easter as well as sharing some good quotes that could be useful. Enjoy!
Observations on Matthew 28:1-10:
- SECURITY BREACH! Chapter 27 ended with the religious leaders asking Pilate to put a guard on the tomb. His answer gives us a great image: "You have a guard of soldiers; go, make it as secure as you can." (27:65) This is exactly what they do: they make it as secure as they CAN. And their security proves to be completely ineffective against the power of God. Chairman Mao once said, "Power comes from the barrel of a gun" and most of the world acts as if that were the case. Want to keep something secure? Send in the guys with weapons. But swords and spears (or guns and bombs for that matter) are ineffective against God. What happens to the soldiers? They shake and become like dead men. (28:4) Want to see what the power of God, and the Lord of Life can do? Read these verses from Matthew 28. No spear, sword, or gun can compare. Easter shows us that God is on the loose and that the powers of this world can't contain the Resurrected Jesus.
- DON'T FORGET THE EARTHQUAKE: When my daughter first heard this story and able to understand it (she was about 2 and a half) she was fixated on the fact that there was an earthquake. She found this aspect of the story so important that she finds it necessary to remind me any time I don't include it in a telling of the Resurrection (during Children's Sermons for instance). Usually we forget to mention it or talk about it, but earthquakes have a way of getting our attention, whether you are 2 years old, or 82. Here's the point: who knows what part of the story might grab people? You could be concentrating on one aspect, and something else will speak to your listeners. Not much you can do to prepare for this, but just be aware!
- HE'S NOT HERE! During my year of internship I had the opportunity to preach at my congregation's Sunrise Service, which took place in the town's cemetary. I remember the police officer who patrolled the cemetary came over to join the service. It was a cold morning, with plenty of fog. Anyone there had to make considerable effort to be there. So, since I can be something of a smart alec, I started by saying, "I have some news for you: WE'RE IN THE WRONG PLACE! HE'S NOT HERE! HE'S RISEN!" I went on to talk about how you sometimes have to go to the wrong place to find your way to the right place. Think of the word's of the angel, "...I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples..." We can leave our Easter celebrations to tell everyone that he has been raised.
- LIKE YOU DO: When the women encounter Jesus, they do the only thing that is completely natural: they worship him. What else can you do? That's just the natural response. All of the theology would come later: the councils and wrangling about Jesus' nature and his connection with God the Father and all of that. Right now, when you encounter Jesus the natural thing is to worship him, even if they Nicene Creed hasn't been invented yet. And Jesus tells them to do two things: DO NOT BE AFRAID and GO. Those two commands are for us as well. When you encounter the Risen Jesus, fear is shown to not have the final word. We also have a mission and a purpose.
- REPAIRING THE BREACH: And what exactly are the women supposed to GO and do? Jesus says,"tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me." These are the "brothers" who had denied him, abandoned him and fallen asleep in the Garden. Jesus could have said, "Go and tell my brothers that they are fired." He didn't. He repairs the breach...that THEY had created. That's how Jesus works. He's calling his brothers back: he's calling YOU back.
Preaching on Easter:
- Get excited! Be happy! Show some JOY. This is a big and joyous day. There is a Youtube clip of a Norwegian explorer traveling through Antarctica named Aleksander Gamme. His expedition's goal is to hike to the South Pole AND back. In order to do this he leaves caches of food and equipment along the way, so that in his return he can pick them up and eat in order to survive. This video clip shows him on DAY 86 (no joke) reaching one of his caches. He's been traveling for so long that he can't remember what he packed in this particular cache. Wonder of wonders he discovers...Cheese Doodles. His reaction is PRICELESS. Can our reaction to the news of the resurrection be this overwhelming? You can watch the clip by clicking here, or here or by looking up "Basic needs-extreme happiness" on youtube. If you show this clip in worship, be WARNED, you'll want to cut it off before it's over because some of the other videos advertised will not be of the right variety for a worship service!
- While you are happy and joyous, don't forget that we are celebrating an empty TOMB for a reason. Jesus was DEAD and he died in a horrible and lonely way. The tomb is empty, but don't forget that there was a need for a tomb in the first place.
- Easter can bring visitors (or at least the C & E crowd) to worship like hardly any other service. The story of Christ's resurrection might seem very, very familiar to you, but it might not to all of your hearers. This might actually be NEW news, in addition to GOOD news. Be sure to tell the story and get in the details that might have been missed by the casual observer. If a person can be termed a "casual" observer, it means that they have missed something in the TRANSFORMATIVE and AMAZING story.
Good Quotes:
A Real Relationship:
"If Jesus really is risen, raised from the dead and living now with a spiritual body, then we can indeed have a relationship with a Jesus who is real, not just imaginary. We can come to know this Jesus and be challenged by him, We can grow to love this Jesus in ways that are both intimate and mature. And we can experience what it means to be in a reciprocal relationship with a spiritual being who loves us back-indeed who loved us first. (1 John 4:9)"
Mark Allan Powell, Loving Jesus, 29-30
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Jesus is an "Is" not a "Was":
"Imagine a Thomas Jefferson society composed of people enamored of that man and his ideas. They might gather weekly to discuss his writings and to talk about how his principles remain significant and relevant today. I could understand the appeal of such a group, regardless of whether I wanted to belong to that society myself. But suppose that this group decides Jefferson is still alive, that his 'spirit' is present at their meetings, that he is guiding them and helping them as they live out their lives in this world. If that were the case, I think I might conclude that these people had lost their grip on reality. But Christians claim something like that with regard to Jesus Christ. We believe that he is alive, risen from the dead, and that we are able to relate to him in ways that are not just symbolic or imaginary."
Mark Allan Powerll, Loving Jesus, 53.
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Messiahs in the First Century:
"In not one single case [of messianic movements in the first century] do we hear the slightest mentions of the disappointed followers claiming that their hero had been raised from the dead. They knew better. Resurrection was not a private event. Jewish revolutionaries whose leader had been executed by the authorities, and who managed to escape arrest themselves, had two options: give up the revolution or find another leader. Claiming that the original leader was alive again was simply not an option. Unless, of course, he was."
N.T. Wright Who Was Jesus, pg. 63.
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Preaching to Skeptics:
"Each year at Easter I get to preach on the Resurrection. In my sermon I always say to my skeptical, secular friends that, even if they can't believe in the resurrection, they should want it to be true. Most of them care deeply about justice for the poor, alleviating hunger and disease, and caring for the environment. Yet many of them believe that the material world was caused by accident and that the world and everything in it will eventually simply burn up in the death of the sun. They find it discouraging that so few people care about justice without realizing that their own worldview undermines any motivation to make the world a better place. Why sacrifice for the needs of others if in the end nothing we do will make any difference? If the resurrection of Jesus happened, that means there's infinite hope and reason to pour ourselves out for the needs of the world."
Timothy Keller, The Reason for God, 220. (His whole chapter on the resurrection is a good one).
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Experiencing the salvation of Easter (and Good Friday):
"What about the problem of death?...Imagine the experience of Jesus....He is seized and subjected to all that we are already familiar with, and breaths his last in the most excruciating pain, alone. What possible sense does this make? Is there a good God? If so, what is this God doing? This is death at its worst, death the end of everything. His life is simply wrested away from him, no hand lifted in his defense. But then he is raised from death, making some appearances to his friends and other chosen witnesses. Again God has broken through the darkness. The God who seems to be absent when tragedy befalls us and wipes us out, absent or at least powerless, is mysteriously present and powerful deep inside it all. God is present and at work, bring life out of death, good out of evil, and meaning out of absurdity. Even when death and absurdity seem most to be having their way, God is at work on our behalf prevailing against them. This is something terribly important to understand about God, and we experience it in the death and resurrection of Jesus.
This is the revelation that saves us, this experience of the kind of God we have. The twin evils of sin and death reach a climax in the tragic killing of Jesus, yet right here in his death and resurrection the presence and power of God are most powerfully felt. This experience saves us, because it entirely transforms our understanding and heals our hearts. No longer do we have to fear sin and death as we otherwise would, no longer do they darken the face of existence and drain our hearts of all energy. Christ is the light of the world, his Father the source of our hope."
Thomas N. Hart, To Know and Follow Jesus, pg. 14-15
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From a historian who has no personal reason to admit that the resurrection actually occurred:
"What the Gospels tell us happened after the Crucifixion was the ultimate good news: Jesus came back to human life after three days in the tomb. Somehow a criminal's death and defeat on the Cross, 'Good Friday', as Christians came to call it, were transformed by his followers into a triumph of life over death, and the Passion narratives ended with the story of Easter Resurrection. This Resurrection is not a matter which historians can authenticate; it is a different sort of truth, or statement about truth. It is the most troubling, difficult affirmation in Christianity, but over twenty centuries Christians have thought it central to their faith. Easter is the earliest Christian festival, and it was for its celebration that the Passion narratives were created by the first Christians.
Belief in the truth of the Resurrection Story and in Jesus' power to overcome death has made Christians act over twenty centuries in the most heroic, joyful, beautiful and terrible ways...Historians might take comfort from the fact that nowhere in the New Testament is there a description of the Resurrection: it was beyond the capacity or the intention of the writers to describe it, and all they described were its effects. The New Testament is thus a literature with a blank at its centre; yet this blank is also its intense focus. The beginning of the long Christian conversation lies in the chorus of assertions in the writings of the New Testament that after Jesus' death his tomb was found empty."
Diarmaid MacCulloch, Christianity: the First Three Thousand Years, pg. 93-94
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