Easter

Please be seated. There was a song written in World War II, and it was sung by Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole and a whole lot of other people.

! And the name of the song was Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby. That's how they spoke where I grew up in eastern Adirondack Mountains.

I don't know how they speak where you're from, but we could take this and change it regarding Jesus. Is He is or is He ain't your Savior?

And today's the day to examine that. Easter sermons usually, eh, meh. And, you know, for preachers to preach on Resurrection Day, how do you do it?

I remember the first time I preached an Easter sermon. It was about 49 or 50 years ago. We were invited to go to a campground in Virginia, mostly RV and camping trailer people.

And so we and our two little kids went to the campground and camped out. On Saturday, I put up posters everywhere and talked to people, talked about the service the next morning.

And the next morning, Easter morning, there were like a hundred people that showed up with their little lawn chairs. What a time that was. And I remember the gospel that day was on Luke, where they entered into the tomb and the angel said, Why are you seeking the living among the dead?

Well, that was a long time ago when I preached that, but it's never left my mind. How often do I look for something living in the area of the dead?

But this is what they encountered on that first Easter morning. As you know, in the church year, we have a year, this is very romantic, year A, year B, and year C.

Isn't that romantic? And year A is Matthew-centered. And year B is Mark-centered. Next year, year C will be Luke-centered.

And then John is thrown in at various parts of those years. Today, being year B, we heard the deacons read Mark, the Mark passage on the resurrection.

So that's what we're going to look at today. And what page is that in your pew Bibles? 10-14?

So 10-14. We're going to just go through those eight verses. 10-14. So it says that, Mark writing, when the Sabbath was passed.

Okay, so to get the days right, days for the Hebrew mindset started at sunset. Okay, so Jesus was born, was killed on that Friday, which had started Thursday night, ended Friday evening.

Okay, then the Sabbath began on that, well, that Friday night, and it ended on Saturday night. When the Sabbath was over on Saturday night, the stores opened.

And so the three, Mary, Mary, the mother of Joseph, and Salome, the mother of James and John, they went to the store.

And they bought spices for burial. In those days, they spiced up a dead person to deal with the aroma. And so they were going to go.

So the next morning, they went to the store that Saturday night and bought what they needed. And they were planning on going to the tomb on Sunday morning to do the dressing of the body.

Okay, and verse 2, and very early on the first day of the week, so they got up really early when the sun had risen, and they went to the tomb.

Now, here's the problem. Those tombs in those days had a big stone that was rolled into the entrance so that wild animals couldn't get in and do damage to the body.

They hadn't thought about how they were going to move that stone. They were not strong enough to move the stone. Here come some lovely children. Are they going to filter in? Well, they were starting to come in.

Now they're going back out. Okay. So they said to one another, Who will roll the stone away for us at the entrance of the tomb?

Kind of important. They hadn't thought about that ahead of time. Here comes one, two, three, four, five. Great to see you all.

Here comes another one. Six, seven. Oh, and Joe too.

I suspect there are going to be two more. Okay, so. But here's the surprise in verse four.

Looking up. So they were walking with their eyes downcast the way women mostly did in those days. And looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back.

It was very large. So who rolled that stone back? An angel. That's kind of unusual, isn't it? So the angel rolled the stone back.

We learned that in one of the other gospels. And therefore, verse five, entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe.

And they were alarmed. So who?