A WORD FOR TODAY, April 16, 2025
Peggy Hoppes
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Blessings. Peg
A WORD FOR TODAY, April 16, 2025
Lectionary Scriptures for April 20, 2025, Easter Sunday, the Resurrection of our Lord: Easter Sunrise: Job 19:23-27; Psalm 118:15-19; 1 Corinthians 15:51-57; John 20:1-18 or Easter Day: Isaiah 65:17-25; Psalm 16; 1 Corinthians 15:19-26; Luke 24:1-12
“For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.” 1 Corinthians 15:22, WEB
It is always strange to write about Easter on the Wednesday before Good Friday, especially since we’ve been following the footsteps of Jesus during His week of Passion. While Tuesday of Holy Week is the most written about day, the record is relatively silent about Wednesday. The leaders of Israel were meeting to plan how to deal with Jesus and Judas visited them to offer help. We don’t know what Jesus did. Jesus probably spent the day with the disciples in Bethany with Lazarus, Martha, Mary and other followers. He probably continued to teach the disciples, preparing them for what was to come. He likely spent much time in prayer. There is still much to happen: He will celebrate the Passover meal with them. He will be arrested, beaten, tried, and crucified. He will die. But today we’ll look ahead to the promise that is fulfilled with the raising of Jesus in just a few short days.
Six weeks ago, we buried the Alleluias as we considered our place in God’s Kingdom and our need for repentance. We have prepared for this week with fasting, prayer, and devotional practices. Are we ready for what is to come?
There are two separate lectionaries for Easter Sunday. The first is meant to be read early in the morning, at sunrise. Some churches hold special services away from their regular worship spaces, often partnering with other churches. We attended a beautiful sunrise service on a dew-covered hilltop when we lived in England. There is something sobering about greeting the day when it is still dark outside, as it might have been for the women who went to the tomb that first morning.
We go to church on Easter Sunday excited about the end of Lent, knowing the secret that Jesus has been raised, but those women had no idea. They were going to the tomb to do what they couldn’t do on Good Friday. They were there with arms filled with spices to properly prepare Jesus’ body. He was dead and they were mourning, the work they would do that first Easter morning was part of the process for grieving. Their eyes were probably red and puffy, they were tired from lack of sleep. They were angry at what happened to their Lord. It wasn’t a happy day. We forget that when we walk into a church building filled with the scent of lovely spring flowers and other Christians wearing beautiful new clothes. By the time we hear the lectionary for Easter Day, the somberness of Good Friday is long past for us. But it wasn’t for those women.
Hindsight is twenty/twenty vision.
We also know how the Old Testament scriptures and prophecies fit into God’s plan. So did the disciples, including the women who went to the tomb. They had followed Jesus for as much as three years, heard Him teach and expound on the scriptures. They heard His promise that He would die and rise again, but they didn’t understand what He was saying because it was beyond the reality of the world in which we live. Even though Jesus raised the widow of Nairn’s son, Jairus’ daughter, and Lazarus of Bethany, they couldn’t see how He would be raised after He died. They saw Him control nature, feed crowds, and heal many. They saw Him do the things only the Messiah would be able to do.
According to Rabbinical tradition, there were three miracles that could only be accomplished by the Messiah: healing a leper (Matthew 8:2-4, Mark 1:40-45 and Luke 5:12-16), healing a man born blind (John 9:1-41). The religious leaders investigated Jesus as soon as He accomplished the first of these miracles. There was a process to authenticate the identity of the Messiah, just like the Catholic Church goes through a series of steps to decide whether a person can be canonized as a Saint. The religious leaders were following Jesus, asking questions, investigating to find the truth, but they had their own understanding of what the Messiah should look like. Instead of looking for the truth, they tried everything to prove that He was not actually the Messiah. He didn’t fit their expectations, and though Jesus accomplished the very miracles that they claimed only the Messiah could do, they refused to believe.
Though the disciples, including the women, believed that Jesus was who He said He was, they still didn’t understand it from God’s point of view. The Messiah was never meant to be a warrior king who would take an earthly throne. The Messiah would be the Savior that fulfilled the promises of the Old Testament, the covenantal promises given to Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David. He was the fulfillment of the many Old Testament promises that pointed to a New Covenant.
The disciples, including the women who went to the tomb on that Easter Sunday, knew the words and hoped for their promise, but it wasn’t until after the Resurrection that they know it was true. In today’s Old Testament lessons, we see Job and Isaiah pointing to Jesus and His work on the cross. Job said, “But as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives. In the end, he will stand upon the earth.” Isaiah said, “For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former things will not be remembered, nor come into mind.” Jesus is our Redeemer. He is our Salvation. He gives us life. His New Covenant will bring new things to the world. It was planned; the promises were fulfilled on the cross and then in the empty tomb.
We will see in the texts for the next few weeks, during the forty days of Easter, that Jesus had to reteach everything He had taught them in the three years leading up to the cross. Even then, they needed Pentecost to bring it all together.
God created new heavens and a new earth through Jesus. This was as great an accomplishment as the first heavens and the first earth, also created through Jesus. The first creation was made out of chaos, out of nothing, out of darkness. With just a Word, the Logos which is Christ, God made everything good. The new creation is made out of the failures of God’s people. We were created and commanded to care for the earth, but we failed. We failed to care for all that was entrusted to us, especially our relationships. In our sin we broke the harmony between God and man and between one another and creation. Our sins, though against each other, hurt God even more because in our sin we were not living as He intended us to live.
But God’s love for His people is greater than our failure. He is faithful to His promises even when we are not. So, in response to our sin, He promised to make things new, a new creation that will lead to a new beginning for the world. This promise of new heavens and a new earth is a future promise, something that will come in the day God has promised. That day began with Jesus Christ, who lived and died for the sake of mankind. He restored the relationship of men and God, made it possible for men to restore their relationships with one another. Yet, the fulfillment of that day is not now; it will be some day. Though things began anew with the raising of Jesus, there is another day coming when we will see everything as it was meant to be.
Though Isaiah speaks of the heavens in the first verse of this passage, everything else is about the earth. The future promise is for today, also. The future fulfillment is the hope of today and in that hope, we can live in joy and peace. We aren't to see the Easter story as one that is still to be completed. God's salvation is now. In that salvation we live and breathe the Gospel in this world, offering hope and peace to those who are still lost in the darkness. The world is being recreated one heart at a time as we, God's people, share His love to the world. In our words and works, things are transformed, and people are changed. We can see a glimmer of what is to come when we will no longer labor in vain or be subjected to misfortune. How great a day it will be when the earth is new, when the wolf and the lamb, the lion and the ox shall share the bountiful gifts of God's abundance.
Easter is about life. Certainly, the raising of Jesus is about new life for Him, but it is also about new life for all of us. The empty tomb means that we will receive the eternal life that is promised by God to those who believe. In baptism we die with Christ, in faith we are raised again. Life is the end of all we face in Christ. That is completely upside down from what we experience in the world. No matter what we do, our flesh will perish and decay. Believing in Jesus will not keep us from dying. Our Christian lifestyle might extend our life a bit, because good and healthy living in body, mind, and spirit can keep death at bay, but not forever. We will die.
Churches often have cemeteries on their property so that the people are buried in hallowed ground. In places where the church buildings are hundreds of years old, the more prominent members of the congregations were often buried inside the church. There are often engravings on the stone floors marking the resting place of some wealthy landowner or exceptional member of the clergy. Churches like Westminster Abbey appear to be little more than huge, elaborate tombs. While the church is known for other things, like weddings and coronations of monarchs, funerals and even secular gatherings, most people visit the site to see the resting places of hundreds of famous people from poets to kings.
That is why we visited. I wanted to check out Poets Corner where there are monuments to people like Chaucer, Tennyson, Browning and Dickens. Some of the most amazing minds are remembered in that corner of the church. Though he is not buried in the church, there is even a memorial to William Shakespeare. I was also interested in the legacy of the Tudors, several of which are buried there. Fascinating stories about their life battles and death reunions make a visit to the church like watching a soap opera. The architecture, something that always fascinates me, is amazing and beautiful. It is worth a trip for anyone who visits London, England.
While it is a tourist site, it is a living church. People gather there each Sunday for worship, to hear God’s Word and to receive the sacraments. As a matter of fact, the church offers several worships every day, including weekdays at lunch, so that people visiting and working in the city can gather to worship the living God in the midst of the hustle and bustle of life. We happened to be visiting over lunch hour, and heard the worship announced over the loudspeaker that there would be a brief communion service. We asked one of the staff how to get to the service and he was so excited that we wanted to worship that he took us through red velvet ropes and against the flow of visitors so that we could be there in time.
I was disappointed when we arrived at the worship area to discover that there would only be a few dozen worshippers. There were easily a thousand people in that church that day, and in the midst of that chaos we few received the body and blood of Christ. I wondered, as I watched the visitors filing by, why they would spend so much time with the dead when they could be worshipping the living God. For them, Westminster Abbey was nothing more than a tomb.
Our world is truly upside down. After the resurrection, the women went to the tomb seeking Jesus’ body so they could finish the work of anointing Him for death. As they were there, two men in dazzling robes appeared asking them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” They did not yet know that Jesus had been raised, though He told them to expect it. They did not understand what He meant until later when He appeared before them alive. As Christ lives, so do we. But we see the world with a skewed point of view, seeking death instead of life. We would rather spend an hour looking at the tombs of famous people then worship the living God. This is true of our daily lives, also, as we chase after the things that will perish and decay when we can be worshipping the living God.
In the account from John for Easter Sunday, Mary Magdalene is found at the tomb alone. There is grief in her eyes; she’s been weeping, perhaps for days. It was still dark, so she probably had no sleep, anxious to stand vigil at the tomb as she waited for the other women. Instead of finding everything as it had been left on Friday, she found the stone had been rolled away. She didn’t look inside but ran to tell the disciples. “They’ve taken the Lord!” she exclaimed. Peter and John went to the garden toward the tomb. John reached it first and looked inside, seeing the linen clothes. Peter arrived and went inside, noticing not only the clothes from His body that were cast aside but also the one from His face which was neatly folded. They didn’t understand; they had not yet pieced together the promises of scripture that Jesus would rise from the dead. They left, sadder than before.
There is a story that in the days of Jesus, there was a Hebrew tradition that a servant would stand near the table when the master was eating, waiting for the time to clear the table. The servant knew that he should not touch the table until his master had finished eating. When the master was finished, he would rise from the table, wipe his fingers and mouth, clean his beard, wad up the napkin and toss it onto the table. Then the servant could do his work. A wadded-up napkin means, “I am finished.” However, if the master neatly folded the napkin and set it by his plate, that meant “I am coming back,” so the servant would wait patiently.
It is said that the neatly folded face cloth was Jesus’ way of saying “I am coming back.”
Peter and John left the garden, but Mary stayed by the empty tomb, weeping. She looked inside and saw two angels at the head and foot of where Jesus’ body had been laid. There significance of that scene is found in the atonement rituals of the Old Testament. Each year the High Priest scattered the blood of the Lamb on the mercy seat of God, which was the atonement cover of the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark had two angels, one at each end. It is as if Mary was peeking into the Holy of Holies, where the very presence of God dwelt among men. The stone where Jesus’ body was placed was the mercy seat of God. There we see that God’s forgiveness was complete and the promises of God were fulfilled.
The angels asked Mary why she was weeping, and she answered that they had taken Jesus away. She then turned and saw Jesus but did not recognize Him. We wonder how that could be. The disciples, including Mary, spent years with Jesus, and it had only been a few days. When we don’t see someone for a long time, it is easy to mistake them for someone else. Haven’t you ever been in a position where you see someone you think you should know, but can’t place them?
Mary didn’t expect to see Jesus standing in front of her. He was dead. There may have been something about His appearance that was different, although she recognized Him as soon as she said her name. Would we have known it was Jesus if we were there in that garden so early that first Easter morning? Probably not. Jesus appeared to others in the first days after the Resurrection and none of them knew it was Him. The disciples on the road to Emmaus didn’t know until He broke the bread. The disciples in the Upper Room didn’t know until they saw His wounds. They saw what they expected: a gardener, a fellow traveler, a spirit. They didn’t see Jesus until He revealed Himself to them.
It is easy for us to look back at those first disciples and think that they were foolish for missing it. Didn’t Jesus tell them this is how it had to be? How could they not realize that a little patience would prove Jesus’ words to be true? It is easy for us for two reasons: we know the rest of the story and we have the Holy Spirit to help us see. We would not have been any different if we had been there. We will experience the grief of Good Friday with the knowledge that it happened because of our own sin and for our sake, but we will do so with the knowledge that we’ll sing Hallelujah on Sunday.
Mary went back to the disciples and told them everything Jesus said to her. That dark, sad morning was beginning to look brighter.
We wake up to great excitement on Easter Sunday as we realize the fasting of Lent is over. We dress in our finest and go to a church that is filled with beautiful flowers and joyous music to worship God with praise and thanksgiving. We get to say “Alleluia” again. However, many people do not understand the significance of our Easter celebrations. They focus on the secular aspects like the baskets full of candy and brunch with family. I saw a report on a news show the other day which talked about the religious aspects of Holy Week, but every video clip showed children hunting for plastic Easter eggs and family gatherings. It isn’t like they could not have found any video that shows the Church at worship. Our city has many events, including multi-denominational gatherings and a Passion procession.
The world may see our faith, but they think our Alleluias are pitiable, they focus on the fun. Paul recognized that this was the way non-believers looked at the church. He even used the word “pitiable” in the passage from his first letter to the Corinthians. Why spend time in church when we can fill our plates so that they are overflowing with scrumptious brunch offerings? They think we should be pitied because we believe in Jesus of Nazareth. They think that we should be pitied because we believe in eternal life in heaven with our Lord Jesus Christ. They think that it does not take faith in God or Jesus to be good people, and non-Christians do many good deeds and live rightly in this world.
We are different. We believe in something more, something beyond this life. The people to whom Paul was writing lived in a pagan world, where dozens of gods were available for human consumption. There were massive temples in honor of those gods in every major city, where you could enjoy the physical pleasures of that religion: the food, the wine, and the prostitutes. Christianity has a different standard of moderation and of self-control. We are reminded that though our Lenten fast is over, we do not have to indulge but should consider how our practices have transformed our lives.
For many people, Christianity is to be pitied because they prefer to live for the satisfaction of their hedonistic desires, which the religions of Paul’s world satisfied. Unfortunately, many today have the same expectations, even some Christians. Faith, to them, is about feeling good, about self-satisfaction, to live their best life. And though the Christian response to God’s grace often brings about good feelings, satisfaction, and a transformation into something new and better, Christ never promised that our life with Him in this world would be easy. As a matter of fact, Christian faith is hard. The Christians in Paul’s day were persecuted because they did not live by the societal expectations. Even though they had faith, Christians got sick and died. Some Christians had wealth, but many were outcast and poor. Too many Christians suffered persecution from the secular world, even martyrdom for their faith. Christians truly are to be pitied if you expect faith to be rewarded in this life.
If there is no eternal life then we are indeed to be pitied, but we have a hope that goes beyond today. The non-Christian who pities a Christian sees no purpose of living beyond the here and now, they want an immediate reward. They can’t see the point. A person once told me that Jesus is dead, and that I should just get over it. But our hope and the foundation of our faith is that Jesus Christ was the first of many: He is the first born of the dead. He rose and through faith we will rise with Him. Christ lives and in Him we live also.
We wandered in the wilderness with Jesus for forty days during Lent, learning everything we need to know in a world full of chaos and confusion. Now we will spend forty days after Easter relearning everything we need to know, but there’s something different. We see that chaotic and confused world through a new perspective. During Lent we see the promise as they did in Jesus’ day, that the Messiah came to set us free from the world. During the Easter season we finally see that Jesus wasn’t an earthbound king we must follow, but that He is the Living God who redeems us and sets us free from sin and death. The Old Testament promises have new meaning, and we have a much different purpose. We are not called to simply follow Jesus, but we are sent out to be His people, to take the Gospel to the world.
Easter Sunday began dark with the disciples sad and fearful, but as Jesus appeared to them, they saw the truth: He is risen, He is risen indeed. Alleluia. It was just the beginning of something new, a life of sharing Jesus with the world.
The empty tomb of Easter does not mean that everything will go well. The empty tomb set the apostles on a road to persecution; most of them were martyred. The empty tomb is the guarantee that we will join our Lord Jesus in eternity. He was the first of many, raised to a new life to live forever in the new heavens and earth. We know our Redeemer lives, that Jesus is our Salvation. He makes us alive. Death no longer rules, and God is restoring the world as He always intended it to be. We can rest in the promise that we will dwell in the presence of our Father forever because Jesus made it so.
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