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Today's reading is from the Gospel according to Matthew, chapter 28, verses 1 through 20.
After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary
went to look at the tomb.
There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and going
to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it.
His appearance was like lightning and his clothes were white as snow.
The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.
The angel said to the women, do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus who
was crucified.
He is not here.
He has risen, just as he said.
Come and see the place where he lay.
Then go quickly and tell his disciples, he has risen from the dead and is going ahead of
you into Galilee.
There you will see him.
Now I have told you.
So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid, yet filled with joy, and ran to tell the disciples.
Suddenly Jesus met them.
Greetings, he said.
They came to him, clasped his feet, and worshipped him.
Then Jesus said to them, do not be afraid.
Go and tell my brothers and go to Galilee where they will see me.
While the women were on their way, some of the guards went into the city and reported to the chief priests
everything that had happened.
When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money,
telling them, you are to say, his disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.
If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep out of trouble.
So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed.
And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day.
Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go.
When they saw him, they worshipped him, but some doubted.
Then Jesus came to them and said,
All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.
And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.
This is the gospel of the Lord.
Thank you, Lord Christ.
Good morning, Christ Church, and happy Easter.
I'm going to do the hardest thing that I have to do all day today,
which is to take a picture of you right now,
so that I can remember you.
Now, some of you have your Presbyterian face,
but I want you to act like you're happy that it's Easter Sunday.
So, all right, that's great.
That'll be something I can draw on through the rest of this year.
So, we've already heard this ancient Easter greeting in Greek.
It's Christos Sonesti, Alithos Sonesti, which means Christ has risen.
He's risen indeed.
But what we haven't done yet is what many churches call the great noise.
And that is when churches get together,
people would bring pots and pans and horns and tambourines.
And we don't have those today, but you can maybe pull out your keys.
You can use your hands to clap, or you can bang on your pews.
And in a moment, I'm going to say Christ has risen.
You'll say he's risen indeed.
And we're going to practice this ancient Christian practice called the great noise.
You ready?
Christ has risen.
He has risen indeed.
He is risen indeed.
All right, now don't get too excited.
Some of you are here, and you're like, okay, Christians are weird.
And you're right.
But why are we so excited?
We have people here every Sunday who are exploring Christianity.
For some of us, Easter's a day where we come to church with our family
because it's the thing to do, trying to make our mom happy or whatnot.
Some of us, we used to be a part of church,
or maybe we identified as a Christian at some point in the past.
And for some of us today, this may be your first time in a church.
Wherever you're coming from, we're so glad that you're here.
And maybe you're asking the question,
what actually happened on that first Easter Sunday morning?
And I want to acknowledge up front that this is just an odd and outlandish thing,
unimagined and unheard of, really.
And it's so unlikely, so improbable that it's astonishing
this story was ever even told in the first place,
that one person in the middle of history, in the middle of the night,
walked out of his grave alive with an indestructible body that would never die again.
And that's crazy. That's crazy.
But what I want to help you to do today is to examine the historical record,
to take a deeper look at this event that energizes the irrepressible enthusiasm of the church
and the unshakable joy of Christians.
And we're looking at that today in the Gospel of Matthew.
We've been here since Christmas Eve,
and we've now reached the climax.
And Matthew recounts for us what happened after Jesus died on the cross on Good Friday.
And what he tells us is this.
He says,
Jesus' resurrection leads to joy, worship, mission, and grace.
That Jesus' resurrection leads to joy, worship, mission, and grace.
I want to talk first about Jesus' resurrection,
and then try to apply the meaning of that resurrection,
the significance for our lives.
But Jesus' resurrection, first of all, verse 1,
says that after the Sabbath at dawn on the first day of the week,
Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.
And these women were not outside the tomb,
counting down 10, 9, 8, 7, cue the sunrise, 6, 5, 4, cue the hallelujah chorus, 3.
No, they weren't doing that at all.
They were not saying,
I'm so excited to see a resurrection today.
And isn't Easter brunch going to be so delicious later on?
No.
What were they expecting?
They were expecting Jesus to do what deceased people do,
and that is to be dead.
The gospel of Mark, the gospel of Luke,
tells us that these women brought spices to embalm the corpse of Jesus
because they knew what we know, that dead people stay dead.
Well, what happens while they're on the way to this tomb?
We're told in verse 2 that there was a violent earthquake,
for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven,
and going to the tomb, rolled back the stone, and sat on it.
What in the world?
Well, in the Old Testament, when God was on the move to save people,
the earth would tremble.
You see this in the Exodus and at Mount Sinai,
where God's giving the moral law.
He's giving the first parts of his Bible, the mountain shakes,
and something like that's going on here.
Reality is shifting, and so people feel some shaking.
And what's up with this angel?
Well, I understand that people are skeptical of these spiritual, non-human beings,
and we don't really have time today to talk about the metaphysics
of these heavenly warrior messengers.
But I will just say this.
If angels do exist,
and if God in this moment is putting the universe back on its axis
and saving the human race from certain ruin,
wouldn't we expect God to get at least a few of these angels involved in the process,
involved in these great nerve centers and turning points of history,
like God becoming a human being,
and this human being being raised from the dead by God.
I think that's what's happening here.
And Matthew 27 tells us that there's this great stone over the tomb,
and the seal of the Roman Empire has been put on that stone,
and a Roman guard, a large Roman guard,
has been put there to ensure that no one comes to steal the body.
And these women come to the tomb.
They don't have any idea, really,
how they're going to get into the tomb to embalm this corpse.
They just come out of love and loyalty to Jesus to try.
And the text tells us that the Lord God rolled the stone away.
Why?
Why did he do that?
Well, it wasn't to let Jesus out.
Right?
It's not like Jesus was inside the tomb banging and saying,
hey, somebody come let me out,
because the Gospels tell us in other places that Jesus' glorified body was so amazing,
it could walk through locked doors,
that he has this new spiritualized physicality.
Jesus can just appear wherever he wants to appear.
So the stone is not removed to let Jesus out.
The stone is removed to let the eyewitnesses in
so that they can see that God has emptied this tomb.
And this angel, in a dramatic fashion,
sits on the stone to let us know that the grave has been conquered by Jesus
and that our enemy, Death, has been defeated by Jesus.
And look at what it says in verse 3.
His appearance, the appearance of this angel was like lightning,
and his clothes were white as snow.
The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.
And this is incredible because these are Roman soldiers who've seen it all.
They're hardened men.
They are fearless people,
and yet they encounter the power of the Lord God Almighty,
and it completely wrecks them and undoes them.
And, you know, you sort of have to ask,
like, why doesn't that happen to the women?
Well, these are fierce women.
They've been with Jesus for three years.
They've been exposed.
They've developed some capacity.
They're incredibly courageous and brave women.
And what does God say to them?
What's his word of divine revelation to these disciples and then to us?
It says in verse 5 that the angel said to the women,
Do not be afraid,
for I know that you're looking for Jesus who was crucified.
He is not here.
He has risen, just as he said.
Come and see the place where he lay.
Then go quickly and tell his disciples he has risen from the dead
and is going ahead of you into Galilee.
There you will see him.
Now, I have to kind of pause here
because our culture says that miracles and things like resurrection
are not scientifically possible.
But we also say that these biblical documents are not historically reliable.
And the common line of thinking is this,
that, you know, many people believe that Jesus was a good man,
he was a teacher of love,
and that he died.
And later on, people began to develop higher and higher views of Jesus,
that Jesus was maybe divine,
that he was perhaps the son of God.
And they invented this story of the resurrection.
And centuries went by.
They wrote these stories down.
And the results are these gospels,
these pious legends that we should not trust.
But I want to point you to a few clues
that this gospel, these gospels are reliable history
and not merely legend.
One of the major clues is that all four gospels,
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
the first eyewitnesses of Jesus' resurrection were women.
And you may know that in the first century,
women had low status.
They were not full citizens.
Their testimony was not admissible in a court of law.
So if you're making up this kind of story,
you're doing a really bad job.
Like, why would you put them in the story?
You'd have a very high incentive not to even mention women
and just jump straight to the men,
Peter, Andrew, James, John.
Make them your witnesses.
But Matthew names these women,
Mary Magdalene and the other Mary
who we learned in the previous chapters,
Mary, the mother of James and Joseph.
And why does he name these women?
Well, Matthew is writing 30 years after the resurrection
within the lifetime of these eyewitnesses.
And he's basically saying,
look, these are well-known, respected members of the church,
and you can go talk to them,
and you can go cross-examine them,
and ask them what they saw at that tomb.
The Apostle Paul is doing something very similar.
He's writing 20 years after the resurrection.
And he gives us a whole list of witnesses,
people who saw the risen Jesus in 1 Corinthians 15.
And he says,
at one point there were 500 people all at the same time
who saw Jesus.
Most of them are still alive.
And again, you have access to them.
You can go, and you can talk to them
and figure it out for yourself.
So what if this is not a legend?
What if this is established fact and reliable history?
Well, then that means that God's word
to these female disciples and to us is simply this.
In verse 7,
he has been raised from the dead.
That Jesus' corpse is not here
because he's no longer a corpse.
He's gone into death,
and he's come out the other side somehow alive.
You know, that God, in some mysterious way,
has raised Jesus from death into a new life
that's incorruptible and indestructible.
And I want to mention here
that this does not erase what happened on Good Friday.
Far from it.
This does not render the death of Jesus meaningless,
but rather it shows us how meaningful his death actually was.
In verse 5, they hear these words,
I know you're looking for Jesus who was crucified.
And Jesus will be eternally known as Christ crucified.
The other gospels tell us that Jesus' glorified body still bears the marks of his crucifixion.
And this means for us that the resurrection means that Jesus...
This is not a reversal of Jesus' defeat.
The resurrection is the proclamation of his victory on Good Friday.
The resurrection tells us that Jesus' death on the cross was not a defeat,
but that it was, in fact, God's victory over sin and the wages of sin, which is death.
This news that's being announced here at this empty tomb,
that quote-unquote,
Jesus who was crucified has been raised from the dead,
means that his Good Friday sacrifice for us was sufficient.
And that his substitution of himself in our place to atone for our sins was effective.
And the resurrection confirms to them, these women,
and it confirms to us that the finished work of salvation,
wrought by Jesus Christ on his cross,
has been accepted and approved by God.
Now, if you're here exploring Christianity,
I want to ask you,
have you considered that this same Jesus who was crucified,
this same Jesus who prayed from his cross,
Father, forgive them?
The same Jesus who cried out at the very end,
it is finished, the work of salvation is finished.
This Jesus who went through such bitter agony,
did it all out of love for you.
And have you considered that God raised him from the dead for your sake,
so that your sins might be wiped away,
and that you too might share in his victory in his life?
Friends, this crucified yet resurrected Jesus is alive.
He's here with us even now,
through his scriptures, through his sacraments,
through his spirit,
and he's inviting you today.
He wants to welcome you today into his kingdom,
if you would just simply not lean on your own understanding,
but acknowledge him as the one who has been raised from the dead.
And perhaps you're here,
and you're just beginning this process of exploring Christianity today,
and I want to extend to you the same invitation that these women received in verse 6,
where it says,
come and see,
come and observe,
come and open-mindedly research,
and investigate,
and examine all the evidence.
And I invite you to take two practical steps today.
The first is that we have a lovely new website,
and if you go on our website,
you'll scroll down,
and you'll see questions welcomed.
And if you click on questions,
you'll see a whole list of some resources
that address some very common doubts,
and very common concerns for people who are exploring Christianity.
I invite you to look at those,
and maybe explore one of those.
The second thing I want to invite you to do
is come to our Ask Me Anything lunch next Sunday with myself and Pastor Andrew.
It's a free lunch for people who just have questions about Jesus,
and about the Gospels.
But I hope that today,
I've at least demonstrated to you
that it's not possible for these eyewitness accounts to be legends.
And as Sherlock Holmes once said,
when you have eliminated the impossible,
whatever remains, however improbable,
must be the truth.
C.S. Lewis, who was an Oxford professor
and described himself as one of the most reluctant converts in all of England,
he said,
however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem,
I have to accept the view that he, Jesus, was and is God.
And that's what the resurrection's all about.
Jesus' resurrection from the dead leads to joy,
leads to worship, leads to mission, and it leads to grace.
I want to press out some of the implications of the resurrection for a minute
and apply it to our lives.
Jesus' resurrection leads to joy, worship, mission, and grace.
Look at verse 8.
It says,
The word in that text in Greek is they had a mega joy, mega gladness.
Being reunited with those we love is one of the happiest experiences on the earth.
When we see that familiar face and we hear that reassuring voice
and we feel that comforting embrace,
imagine what it would be like to be reunited with someone you never thought you'd see again.
Somebody you thought you'd lost forever.
They didn't just change jobs.
They didn't just move away.
But somebody you thought you would never, ever see again.
Some of us today, we think about family we've lost.
We think about friends that we've lost.
And it's devastating to think that they're gone.
However hard we try,
no medical, no industrial advance can stop death from winning.
It's going to happen to you.
It's going to happen to me.
Our bodies are going to fall apart.
It's the destiny of every person we love.
And yet this tells us that there's one man in history
who demonstrated absolute power and authority over death.
And that, if it's true, leads to mega joy.
These women had not yet met the resurrected Jesus.
That's going to happen in a minute.
But the very news of a possible reunion with Jesus
fills them with a mixture of fear and joy.
Fear because they're real people like us
and it'd be strange
if they weren't trembling with some awe in this moment.
But joy because if their lives are somehow reunited
to the life of this conquering Christ,
then how can they not gratefully and joyfully participate
in his victory over death?
And so their hearts are filled with gladness
and the delight of the living God himself.
And friends, do you know what this means for us?
If Jesus is alive,
if death has been defeated,
if the uncreated energies of God
have been unleashed in the resurrected Jesus,
then our circumstances,
no matter how difficult,
can be transcended by this unshakable
and unflappable joy of the Lord.
And that does not deny our tragedies.
That does not erase our pain or our sadness.
It just says that we can have joy
even within these experiences.
Some of us in this church have been studying Philippians,
which is an epistle in the New Testament
written from a prison cell.
The Apostle Paul is chained to a Roman guard.
He's being treated as a criminal.
And you can imagine the conditions of an ancient prison cell.
But this is called his letter of joy.
It's the happiest epistle he wrote.
And he says there, he says,
rejoice in the Lord.
And I'll say it again,
rejoice always.
What's happening with this man?
The joy of the resurrected Jesus
is filling his prison cell.
The joy of the resurrected Lord
is filling all of his pain.
And friends, the joy of the Lord
can fill your sorrow too.
The joy of the Lord can be your strength.
The joy of the Lord
can point you to that future joy.
When all of us are going to be raised up
and we're going to be reunited with this one
we thought we'd never see again,
it's just a matter of time, my friends.
Jesus' resurrection leads to joy.
But Jesus' resurrection also leads to worship.
It leads to worship.
Look at verse 9.
It says that suddenly Jesus met them.
And you've got to watch out now
because Jesus is out there.
He's loose.
Suddenly he'll come and meet you.
Suddenly he came and met them
and greetings he said.
They came to him, clasped his feet
and worshipped him.
Can you imagine Jesus coming up to you
and saying,
Shalom.
Morning.
And what do they do?
They fall down before him.
They grab his nail-scarred feet
and they worship him.
And you say,
well of course they did.
They're gullible.
They're primitive,
pre-scientific,
supernaturalistic people
who are prone to be duped
by a quote-unquote miracle.
But I have to remind you today
that these are Jews.
These are Jews
and Jews in the first century
believed in a general resurrection
to come at the end of time.
But absolutely no Jew
but Jesus in the first century
believed that one individual
in the middle of history
would rise up from the dead.
Jews also were the last people
on the planet to believe
that a human being could be divine.
And a human being is somebody
who should be worshipped.
This was just impossible.
It was blasphemy
in their worldview.
But look at verse 16.
Then the eleven disciples came
to Galilee
to the mountain
where Jesus had told them to go.
And when they saw him
they worshipped him
but some doubted.
Again, if you're making up this story
why would you write that in?
This is just bad storytelling.
To say that the founders
of the church
were full of skepticism.
Well how strong
would the evidence
have had to have been
to blow away
all their doubts
and their skepticism.
It must have been
incredibly strong
for them to develop
a whole new worldview
overnight.
And this tells us
that these women
and these men
when they encountered Jesus
it says they proskuneoed.
And I had to look up
that word this week
and here's what it means.
It says proskuneo means
to fall on your knees
put your forehead
on the ground
and express reverence
before a person
of superior rank.
Now how does that
definition of worship
compare with our
definition of worship?
If you're a Christian
have you bowed yourself
down in reverence
and adoration
at the feet
of the resurrected Jesus
today?
It's what these women
and these men do
instinctively
in the presence
of this living Lord.
He doesn't command
them to do it
they just know
it's the natural
and right
and good thing
to do.
When you're in the
presence of this
death-defeating
life-giving
Jesus
you just fall down.
And if you're
a disciple of Jesus
I want to encourage
you to make this
a daily habit
in your life.
When you wake up
in the morning
when you go
to bed at night
when you gather
to pray
with your family
or friends
fall on your knees
put your forehead
on the ground
and express reverence
before this person
of superior rank
because
he's alive
and he's worthy
of our worship.
Amen?
The resurrection
Jesus' resurrection
leads to joy
it leads to worship
it also leads
to mission.
Two times
in verses 7 and 10
these women hear
this message
go and tell
and next week
Andrew's going to
unpack the great
commission
at the end
of this text
in verses 18 to 20
but they're given
a mission
aren't they?
Your eyes
have seen
the empty tomb
your ears
have heard
the word
of God
the word
of this gospel
your hands
have touched
the resurrected
body
of Jesus
you've done
your investigation
you've done
careful observation
you've applied
rigorous criticism
you've gathered
up this empirical
data
and now
what do you do
when you have
the data
scientists
you publish
the data
you go and
report the data
that you've
discovered
and who are they
sent to reach
well they're not
sent to reach
the ends of the
earth
not yet
Jesus says
I'm sending you
out to my
disciples
because if the
church doesn't
believe in the
resurrection
how will the
rest of the
world believe
in the
resurrection
and so
they're to go
and tell
that he
Jesus
has been
raised from
the dead
and these
wonderful
beautiful women
they go
and evangelize
the apostles
and why
does Jesus
tell these
apostles to
come meet
him in
Galilee
because Galilee
is Gentile
territory
Galilee is
the place
that it all
began but
it's the place
where they're
going to take
this news
of the
resurrected
Jesus west
to Italy
and east
to India
and south
to Ethiopia
and north
to the
peoples
of Eurasia
you can read
the acts
of the
apostles
the letters
in the
new testament
early
Christian
history
and you
can read
about these
men and
women who
endured
great
persecution
they endured
beatings
they endured
executions
to go out
and share
this incredible
news
would they
have done
that
if this
tomb
were empty
would they
have risked
their lives
if Jesus
were not
alive
why
in the
world
would you
go out
and live
these kind
of lives
of courage
and compassion
and sacrifice
and to die
for a fantasy
for a fraud
no threat
no torture
could cause
these women
and these men
to deny
what they had
seen
with their
eyes
and for them
because they
had seen
it
death no
longer had
any
power
over them
whatsoever
I love
this text
from Michael
Green
he wrote
a book
called
evangelism
through the
local
church
he says
the church
armed
with such
an improbable
claim
and beginning
from a
handful
of uneducated
fishermen
and tax
gatherers
swept across
the whole
known world
in the first
the next
300 years
it's a perfectly
amazing story
of peaceful
revolution
that no
parallel
that has no
parallel
in the history
of the world
it came about
because Christians
were able to say
to inquire
Jesus
did not only
die for you
he is alive
you can meet
him and discover
for yourself
the reality
that we're
talking about
they did
and joined
the church
and the church
born from that
Easter grave
spread
everywhere
and I pray
it will keep
spreading
in Berkeley
and Oakland
and throughout
the San Francisco
Bay Area
through us
the resurrection
of Jesus
leads to
joy
it leads
to worship
it leads
to mission
and the last
thing I want
to say
is that it
leads to grace
it leads
to grace
Jesus says
in verse 10
do not be afraid
go and tell
my brothers
to go to
Galilee
there they
will see
me
the one
that they
thought
was lost
to them
the one
they thought
they'd never
see again
is waiting
for them
in Galilee
the place
where they
first met
him
the place
where everything
started
he says
go to
Galilee
and there
you will
see me
but friends
it's not
only the
disciples
who will
see
the risen
Jesus
you will
see him
too
you're going
to see
him too
the apostle
Paul says
in Acts
chapter 17
he's preaching
to Athens
the intellectual
center of the
Roman Empire
and he says
in Acts
17
31
for God
has set
a day
when he
will judge
the world
with justice
by the man
he has
appointed
he has
given proof
of this
to everyone
by raising
him
from the
dead
in other
words
there will
be a day
of judgment
for all
of us
the resurrected
Jesus
guarantees
that one
day we
too
will be
raised
physically
and
when we're
raised up
from the
dead
Jesus
is going
to be
our judge
on that
day
and the
only question
is are we
ready to
meet him
are you
ready
to meet
him
and you know
who was not
ready to meet
the resurrected
Jesus
these disciples
who disowned
him
these disciples
who abandoned
Jesus in his
hour of greatest
need
these were
big time
screw ups
you think
you're a
screw up
these guys
were big time
screw ups
spectacular
failures
but what does
Jesus say
he says
go tell
my brothers
and isn't that
a beautiful
detail
that having
died to pay
for sin
and having
risen from
death
to prove
that sin
was truly
paid for
Jesus
wants these
disciples to
know that by
the grace
of God
they can be
his brothers
if only they
would trust
in Jesus
then all of
their sin
all their
denials
all their
abandonment
all of their
betrayals
every failure
to love
God as they
should would
be fully
and finally
forgiven
and friends
that could be
the case
for you
and me
that by
grace
we can be
reunited with
Jesus as
his brothers
and as
his sisters
don't you
want to know
this Jesus
that's gone
ahead and is
waiting for
you
don't you
want to know
that familiar
face
that reassuring
voice
that comforting
embrace
Christ
church
Jesus
is risen
from the
dead
he's
launched
a new
creation
where all
is forgiven
all is
remade
all is
reborn
and so I
invite you
let's join
in his
project
let's be
a resurrection
people
let's be a
joyful people
of life
in a world
that's still
in death
let's be a
worshiping
people that
celebrate
God's
victory over
death
let's be a
missionary people
to this world
that Jesus
loves so much
he gave his
life
and let's
commit ourselves
today to
follow this
Jesus who
gives grace
to the
undeserving
people like
you
and undeserving
people like
me
who he wants
to know
as brothers
and as
sisters
in the name
of the Father
Son and Holy
Spirit
Amen