IN NOMINE JESU JESUS, THE ONE WHOM YOU SEEK, HAS BEEN RAISED! Christ is Risen! Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ Hear again the Word of God for this Festival of our Lord s Resurrection: Then he says to them, All of you must not continue to be amazed. Jesus, Whom you seek, the Nazarene, the One having been crucified: He has been raised. He does not remain here. Behold the place where they laid Him. 1 there a picture of today s Gospels revelation. Today, it has been placed between Stations eight and nine to reveal that Jesus, Whose lifeless body had been taken from That is the angelic message of the Easter proclamation. Christ is risen, and He is not in the tomb! That is the Word of God we have received. It has been handed down faithfully through eye-witness testimony, guarded and preserved by the Holy Spirit. The Word of Christ Jesus resurrection and victory over death continues to be proclaimed that it would be believed by Faith. The Faith that believes the Word of Christ s resurrection comes as a gift of God. It is all God s work for those who cannot in themselves come to faith (which is everyone). That means it is a Word for all people for all time. To lead us to understand and confess that reality afresh, the gift that moves us, you, to believe that Christ was crucified, died, was buried and rose again came to us this year, as in the past few years, through our proclamation of a lot of the Word of God. Some of us have had our memories refreshed through hearing of Christ s Passion each day this past week. We daily heard the reading of the Good News of Christ throughout Holy Week. Then, from the public proclamation of 1 Mark 16:6
God s Word our sermons have pointed our hearers to the Stations of the Cross that are hung on our Nave walls. We did that because we love you and wanted you who were here to be reminded that, by His holy cross, Jesus has redeemed the world. Today you are encouraged to look up from the Stations of the Cross to the southeasternmost window. There you will behold in the hanging the cross and laid in the tomb, has been raised from the dead. That which is depicted there in color began to be proclaimed among us in the muted darkness of last night s Service of Light and Readings. That is because, in His bodily resurrection, Jesus descended into the realm of the dead. To help us understand that, the truly Evangelical confessions teach this about Christ s descent into hell:we simply believe that after the burial the entire person, God and man, descended into hell, conquered the devil, destroyed hell s power, and took from the devil all his might. 2 If you forget that, look to the ancient creed and behold the location of the place where you confess, He descended into hell. You will find it is just before the words, the third day He rose again from the dead. As He did that, we are led to understand that He led the faithful captives of the Old Covenant age into the heavenly realms. 3 What joy there must have been in the place of shadows that day! Consider what Adam and Eve s bliss would have been as Jesus reached out to them and called them into the everlasting light of the Presence of God. Think about what your joy will be on the Last Day, when with the trumpet sound and a shout, you faithful believers will be raised to dwell in perfection in the Presence of the Lord! From last night s first declaration of the resurrection of our Lord, the proclamation of Christ s having been raised from the dead and His empty tomb 2 Tappert, T. G. (Ed.). (1959). The Book of Concord the confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. (p. 610). Philadelphia: Mühlenberg Press. 3 c.f. Psalm 68:18; Isaiah 42:6-7; Zechariah 9:11; Matthew 27:52-53; Ephesians 4:8-10. 2
continued very clearly and completely in this morning s Matins service. Those present in that service heard of eye-witness reports that proclaimed much more than an empty tomb. In their ears was declared the reality that Jesus was beheld, and clung to, by a bewildered witness; 4 that death was defeated, and that we too shall rise again! Following that, the Resurrection our Lord proclamation continues in this Divine Service. All of this is being done in order to publicly declare that the Lord Jesus, Who came and died in the flesh, has been bodily raised from the dead. He will never die again. That then leads us to clearly declare the theme of this Resurrection Divine Service: Jesus, the One Whom you seek, has been raised! Mark s Gospel text, which ended abruptly today, is also read in preparation for the Church s public proclamation of Gospel readings that were chosen long ago for Resurrection Sunday evening through Wednesday. Twelve Easter s ago, I noted that we might recover those readings in the Lord s services in Catalina. Well, we have been able to make half of them available to you this evening and this coming Wednesday. Maybe, in another dozen years or so, we can recover the other half! In the meantime, you are free to read them in your home devotional time. There you will hear the events that follow this morning s reading from the shorter ending to Mark s Gospel: Then, going out they fled from the tomb, for they had trembling and bewilderment. And to no one nothing they said: for they feared! 5 If St. Mark s shorter-ending was all we ever had of Jesus resurrection accounts, the Church would likely still be wondering what these words fully meant: 4 John 20:16-18 5 Mark 16:8 3
Jesus, Whom you seek, the Nazarene, the One having been crucified: He has been raised. He does not remain here. Behold the place where they laid Him. 6 After all, today s Gospel record concludes by telling us the women experienced quaking and uncertainty. If the women who first witnessed the empty tomb of Joseph of Arimathea had continued to say nothing to anyone, we might even have come to believe the myths the unbelievers began to spread concerning Jesus that very Resurrection day. That is, that someone had stolen Jesus body! 7 Yet, we have multiple eyewitness texts that testify that the Scriptures that prophesied the resurrection the dead were fulfilled in Jesus. You heard one of those prophecies from the Book of Job during this Lord s service. He still says that which you sang: I know that My Redeemer lives! In the text, that is followed by this promise: One coming after me will arise upon the dust. 8 Remember, God had created the first man from the dust (same word in the Hebrew is used in Job and Genesis) 9. When man had fallen into sin, God had told him that to the dust he would return (again, the same Hebrew word is used) 10. While God s creation of man from dust of the earth was read into waiting ears again last evening, the resurrection from the dust was most clearly foretold here on Ash Wednesday, as we said, From the dust you have come. To the dust you will return. From the dust you will rise again! This is the day we get to proclaim that Jesus has raised our flesh from the dust of the earth, never to die again! That is great news for Him, but what does it do for you? 6 Mark 16:6. 7 Matthew 28:11-15. 8 Job 19:25b. 9 Genesis 2:7 10 Genesis 3:19 4
Our Epistle reading for the day gives us a strong clue when it says, Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed. 11 In the Old Covenant era, the Passover Lamb s blood was used to mark the doorposts and lintels of the Israelite s houses. This was done at God s command that the Angel of Death might have passed over them, thus sparing their lives. Since Christ Jesus has been, from the time of His resurrection and ascension, called the Passover Lamb, and He is eternal, His blood covers over those who are washed in it His blood spares them, you, from everlasting death. By what means can you say that you were washed in the blood of the Lamb? 12 First, in Holy Baptism, where you died with Christ and rose to new life in Him. 13 Second, in Holy Absolution, where you are returned to your baptism daily. 14 Third, in the Sacrament of the Altar, where those who confess rightly Christ s Real Presence and their common fellowship in the true confession of the Faith, eat and drink in, with, and under the elements of bread and wine, Christ s true Body and Blood. 15 Through such divinely chosen means of grace, God continues to bathe you in the blood of the Perfect and Final Passover Lamb, Jesus. You can know that now, for you may hear all the Scriptures that were inspired and recorded after that morning when the women saw the empty tomb. You have so much more to hear than they did that day. The Holy Spirit wills to use that Word in you in order to sustain you in the Faith and uphold your belief in the risen Lord Jesus Who was born in the flesh, 11 I Corinthians 5:7b. 12 I Peter 2:24; Revelation 1:5; 7:14. 13 Romans 6:4 14 John 20:22-23 and Titus 3:5-8 15 Acts 2:42; Romans 4:23-25; 16:17; I Corinthians 10:16-17, 21-22; 11:23-29; Ephesians 4:1-4. 5
died in the flesh, rose in the flesh, and will come again in the flesh. Jesus, the One Whom you seek, has been raised! As indicated earlier, those first eyewitnesses did not have all of that Word on that first resurrection morning. What they had is that which they beheld. Our text declares what they saw and heard when it says: Then, having gone in into the tomb, they saw (a) young man sitting on the right, having been wrapped about (in a) white robe; and they were amazed. 16 Remember what the Gospel informs us about what those women that early morning had expected. They had anticipated a sealed tomb, with a very heavy stone that had covered its entrance. They were not even sure how they could open the tomb by themselves. Consider how they had spent the greater part of the parts of the two days beforehand. They had witnessed the One they considered their Rabbi and Teacher crucified unto death. Some of them had seen His Body hastily buried in a new tomb. They would likely have known that guards had been posted to keep anyone from stealing the Body of their Lord. They had surely heard that the tomb had been marked with a seal that was not to be broken. They had celebrated the Jewish Passover in grief. And, that morning, they had come to pay final respects and honor the mortal remains of the dead Jesus. But, then, nothing was at it should have been. The tomb was open. The guards were not present. The Body of Jesus was gone, and from their perspective there was a brilliantly clad messenger sitting on the right of where Jesus bruised, bloodied, battered, linen-wrapped and aloe-soaked dead body should have been! 16 Mark 16:5 6
Imagine what you might think should you someday return to a loved one s grave site to find the crypt open. How might you be further aghast at beholding a casket laying open with no body in it? What horror would you likely experience? This is what the text of our Gospel reading informs us that those women were experiencing. Even so, they beheld a brilliantly clad messenger there who had a Word of God for them, and for you. He said, All of you must not continue to be amazed. Jesus, Whom you seek, the Nazarene, the One having been crucified: He has been raised. He does not remain here. Behold the place where they laid Him. 17 He is here today, in Word and Sacraments. Behold Him in His gifts! The peace which passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Resurrection Hauptgottesdienst (LSB One-year series) Job 19:23-27; I Corinthians 5:6-8; Mark 16:1-8 April 21, 2019 Pastor Michael A. Morehouse BBA, MDiv, DMin Soli Deo Gloria 17 Mark 16: 6 7