Forgiveness Through the Risen One
Listen here.
I love coming to church on Easter Sunday! The smell of the
flowers is always the first thing that grabs me. It smells a bit like … well,
if you will excuse me … it smells a bit like a funeral. And that’s appropriate
– because just a couple days ago we gathered in this same room and remembered
how Jesus died on the cross to pay for our sins, and now, today, we read that
Mary and Mary were going to see Jesus’ tomb. One of the other gospels lets us
know why they were going to the tomb – they were going to take care of Jesus
body. They were going to clean him and anoint his body to cover the smell of
decay for as long as possible.
These days funeral directors clean our dead loved ones’
bodies for us, but we still gather at graves and place sweet smelling flowers
in places of death. And make no mistake – this place we are in has everything
to do with death! Here we deal with the business of why we die … and when we go
about our business we take the message of this day – the day of resurrection –
and pour it into our grief and find hope and joy in Jesus’ resurrection.
And just as the earth shook when the angel of the Lord
rolled back the stone at the mouth of Jesus tomb, aftershocks of Jesus’
resurrection still shake our world – filling some with fear and dread, like the
guards at the tomb – and others with fear and great joy – for Jesus truly died
on the cross to pay for our sins, and he has paid the price for us so that by
faith in him we stand forgiven before God and he has really risen from the dead
and promises that all who believe in him will also rise like he did to live
forever in glory.
Yes, this place has everything to do with death because our
message and our hope is that Jesus died for us that our sins might be forgiven
and has defeated death for us by rising from the tomb – proving his authority
to give us forgiveness. ----
So the message we hear today from the angel and from Jesus
himself is, “Do not be afraid.” To be certain, the angel and Jesus said, “Do
not be afraid,” because the women were startled by their presence. But the
message rings true for us, too. “Do not be afraid.” … of death. Do not be
afraid of this world where our brothers and sisters in Christ die for the
faith, where missiles and bombs fall from the sky, where war lingers on and on.
Do not be afraid of what others will think of you for believing in Jesus and
for following God’s ways of truth, justice, and love. Do not be afraid of your
sin, your guilt, your mistakes, and the terrible choices you’ve made in your
past. Do not be afraid.
Why? Well, it’s not because these things aren’t frightful in
their own ways. There is much that we might find fearful in each of those
things. Yet, I worry a little that when I say why we need not be afraid you
might roll your eyes, or yawn, or shrug thinking, I’ve hear that before.
There is a story – a joke that circulates from time to time
around Easter of a man who did not come to church very often, but he came every
Easter Sunday with his family. He came up to the pastor after the service and said,
“Pastor, I’ve been coming to your Easter services here for more than ten years,
and I can’t believe that every year you talk about the exact same thing.” ----
The reason we need not be afraid is this good news that we
celebrate every Easter – every Sunday even! – that there is forgiveness of sins
through the risen one! And that’s the exact same thing we talk about all the
time. Even Peter in our first Scripture reading said to the people he was
speaking to, “…you yourselves know what happened…” You know that sin offensive
to God and is rebellion against him. You know that the wages of sin is death –
that the death, the violence, the oppression, the injustice, the illness and
pain of this life are cause by sin. And you know that, God so loved the world
he gave his only begotten Son to die as the sacrifice that atones for our sin.
He willingly died on the cross to redeem us and he rose from the dead proving
that the sacrifice was accepted and our sins are forgiven. Peter speaks of this
when he says, “To him all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes
in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”
Sin. Forgiveness. Sacrifices. Atonement. These are words
that don’t get a lot of use in our day. Yet we still lament the state of things
in our world. We still see the bad things that happen and recoil from them. And
we still gather in churches and grave yards perfumed and decorated with flowers
at the time of death. In other words, we still deal with the consequences of
sin in this world.
This morning, though, we see what God has done in response
to sin. He gave Jesus to be the sacrifice to atone for our sins – and in him we
have forgiveness so that God no longer sees our sin, but instead he sees his
beloved children when he looks at us. We have been raised from the death of sin
because Jesus took our place, and in his resurrection we have a new life. We have
a new spiritual life that fills us with hope in Christ as we live in this
world. And we have a new physical life – promised to us, that when we die we
will rise like Jesus did – and we will appear in glory with him. And for us
there is hope and life – because Jesus entered death for us and came out alive.
So we gather week upon week – and week upon week we are
reminded that we have forgiveness in the Risen One … and in the end, death does
not have the last world, but we will rise for Christ is risen! He is risen
indeed! Alleluia!
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