Easter 2006
“An Invitation to Live”
Matthew 27:57-28:15
Cynthia O’Brien
Matthew 27:57 – 28:10
MT 27:57 As evening approached, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who had himself become a disciple of Jesus. 58 Going to Pilate, he asked for Jesus' body, and Pilate ordered that it be given to him. 59 Joseph took the body, wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, 60 and placed it in his own new tomb that he had cut out of the rock. He rolled a big stone in front of the entrance to the tomb and went away. 61 Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were sitting there opposite the tomb.
MT 27:62 The next day, the one after Preparation Day, the chief priests and the Pharisees went to Pilate. 63 "Sir," they said, "we remember that while he was still alive that deceiver said, `After three days I will rise again.' 64 So give the order for the tomb to be made secure until the third day. Otherwise, his disciples may come and steal the body and tell the people that he has been raised from the dead. This last deception will be worse than the first."
MT 27:65 "Take a guard," Pilate answered. "Go, make the tomb as secure as you know how." 66 So they went and made the tomb secure by putting a seal on the stone and posting the guard.
MT 28:1 After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.
MT 28:2 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. 3 His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. 4 The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.
MT 28:5 The angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. 6 He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. 7 Then go quickly and tell his disciples: `He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into
MT 28:8 So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. 9 Suddenly Jesus met them. "Greetings," he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. 10 Then Jesus said to them, "Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to
MT 28:11 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. 12 When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, 13 telling them, "You are to say, `His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.' 14 If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble." 15 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.
If you’re going to be a spiritual person, if you are going to seek after the divine, sooner or later you are going to have to talk about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
That’s what we are talking about today:
- What have people said about the resurrection?
- What is the truth about the resurrection?
- What does the resurrection mean for our life and our future?
I. WHAT HAVE PEOPLE SAID ABOUT THE RESURRECTION?
AND WHAT IS THE TRUTH?
Last Sunday, we read the story of the trial of Jesus, how the chief priests and other Jewish leaders conspired to force Pilate, the governor, to have Jesus executed. If you have seen a movie about Jesus like The Passion of the Christ, you can even picture it. Now, as we just read in the Scripture, even after Jesus has been killed, those same chief priests and Jewish leaders go back to Pilate and say, “Look, this imposter said that he would die and after three days be raised, so you’d better put some extra security on the tomb, just in case those pesky disciples try to deceive us.”
They were worried about Jesus being raised, or about someone claiming he would be raised. They did not like him and did not want him to turn out to be their Messiah. No matter what miracles they saw him do, no matter what wisdom he spoke to them, they would not believe him.
According to Matthew, the first witnesses of the empty tomb are the women and the Roman guards. The angel tells the women to run and tell the disciples. But the security guards run to the priests who hired them and say, There was a violent earthquake,
a fierce heavenly creature came down from the sky to the tomb. It rolled back the stone and sat on it. It looked like lightening. We were terrifie. It said that Jesus had risen and that he was going to
The guards have no reason to lie. They are obviously telling the truth. At this point, those chief priests and Pharisees should say, “Oh, my God, it’s all true! Jesus – the Christ! How could we have not seen it? They should fall to their knees, rend their clothing and beg God for mercy. Instead, they cover it up and pretend it didn’t happen. They pay the soldiers to spread a rumor that the disciples stole the body.
It must have been a huge sum of money for these guards to lie, after having seen such a terrifying supernatural event.
Some people today don’t want to accept Jesus’ resurrection. They wonder if the guards’ story might be true. Hey, maybe the disciples did steal the body so they could pretend he had been raised from the dead.
Could that have happened? Not likely. Think about it. There’s no way those guards would be asleep if they valued their lives. The disciples were in no shape to steal the body and create an elaborate scam – they were no longer a strong group. They were discouraged and depressed. Their real life teacher, their friend, their Lord, was dead, and so was their faith.
And even if they could have done something like that, it wouldn’t last. No one lays down his life for a fabrication. Surely at least one of them, about to be put to death, would have confessed – “No! We made it all up!” But not one of them recanted.
If anyone lied, it was those chief priests and Pharisees.
What else do people say about the resurrection? Both the Bible and historians of the day say that the risen Christ appeared to his disciples, but some people want to explain it away. They say, “Maybe the disciples were just seeing things. The disciples must have wanted to see Jesus so much that they actually thought they did, but they were just hallucinating.”
That doesn’t make any sense either. Jesus appeared to 10 disciples without Thomas, then later to 11 disciples with Thomas, then to other people, then to hundreds. Soon after that, the Apostle Paul wrote: “The people who saw Jesus are alive – you can ask them yourself!” A single person might have a hallucination, but not several groups of people.
Some people say Jesus didn’t really die in the first place, that he was just in a swoon and then magically revived, got himself out of the grave wrappings, moved the stone himself and took off. Consider all the people who handled Jesus’ body: flogging him, pounding nails through his hands and feet, hanging him on a cross until he suffocated, piercing his side with a spear so that blood and water flowed out, bringing the body down from the cross, wrapping it in grave clothes and laying it in a tomb. Not one of them saw any signs of life. It was as horrible as they say. He really did suffer a terrible death.
Since we can’t explain away the Resurrection, let’s consider the good that has come of it, which is as good an evidence for its truth as any. The disciples, terrorized, cowardly, dejected, in just a few weeks time are preaching the message of a risen Christ in the middle of cities. Peter, who at the time of Jesus’ arrest was so afraid that he kept swearing up and down that he didn’t know Jesus, now stands in the middle of Athens, unafraid, preaching the good news.
Could these men and women have turned their lives around if they were mounting a deception? Would each one of them have died a martyr’s death if it were a scam? Each one of them was a new person. They were filled with joy and courage. They didn’t care what would happen to them. They had no government protection for the first 300 years of Christianity. And yet something made it so worthwhile that they followed Jesus, even to the death.
Why weren’t they afraid to die? Because Jesus had told them about eternal life, and they believed him. Jesus said, “Do not be troubled, do not be afraid. I go to prepare a place for you, and I will come again for you, so that you will be where I am.” They were not afraid to die physically because they knew they would live eternally.
III. WHAT DOES THE RESURRECTION MEAN FOR OUR LIFE AND OUR FUTURE?
If you believe that Jesus died and rose from the dead, if you believe that Jesus was a wise teacher, then you can trust the things he said about himself, about heaven, about eternal life. Christians from the earliest days to today share a common vision of the day when, as the Scripture says, “The trumpet shall sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.” We look forward to the day when we will trade the troubles of this world for the
Have you thought about these things before? Many people just don’t think about it. Perhaps you’d like to believe, but you haven’t given faith a chance. Maybe you just haven’t had time. But when you take a moment and slow down and think, you realize that it bothers you that you have not resolved this for yourself. It’s as if there is a stone in front of your heart and you can’t pry it loose to see if there’s something good behind it.
Or maybe you do believe, and you have even had a deeply spiritual experience of God, but you’re facing tremendous pressure, like the soldiers did, to deny what you have experienced.
At school, maybe you have restrictions on you regarding talking about Jesus in the classroom.
At work, maybe the boss wants you to take some shortcuts that may not technically be illegal, but you know they’re not ethical, yet you don’t know how to challenge it.
At poker night, the guy in the baseball cap gave you grief when you mentioned God, so you dropped the subject, even though the other three guys were interested in what you had to say.
You may be wrestling with this, but you don’t have to keep it to yourself. People want to know about God. As a culture, we are generally more interested in spiritual things than we were even five or ten years ago.
Like Amy. She wanted to help her mother, who is single, meet some people and maybe even meet a nice older single man. So Amy got her mother to go to an Alpha Course, which is a 10-week course on Christianity that we offer here at the church. Amy was not really into God and did not plan to attend the course, but she went the first time with her mom.
She said, “The last thing I expected was to be intellectually stimulated at the first talk.”
The topic was, “Who is Jesus?”
Amy, a Ph.D. in physical chemistry, started paying attention. “I had never really thought about the person of Jesus beyond Christmas and Easter. I was used to dealing with facts [in my work], but when it came to Jesus I realized that I had made a lot of assumptions. Over the course of the 10 weeks, I began to think more about my faith. Every talk I went to, I realized I couldn’t reject it until I knew what I was rejecting. Overall, my biggest revelation was that I needed to actively examine my spiritual faith, for my life to have meaning.”
Easter at Your Door
by Macrina Wiederkehr
When dawn stands still with wonder
when birds jubilate in the trees
when buds hurry into blossoms
and grass starts wearing green
I always know that Easter wants to come again.
But deeper yet and richer still
When Jesus, imprisoned in me,
asks me to roll away the stone
that locks him in
then Easter wants to come again.
So, let it come
It’s one dawn past rising time
and Resurrection is the wildest news
that’s ever touched
this crazy, mixed-up world.
It says, yes!
when everything else says, no!
It says, up!
when everything else says, down!
It says, live!
when everything else says, die!
Easter’s standing at your door again,
so don’t you see that stone has got to go?
that stone of fear
of selfishness and pride
of greed and blindness
and all the other stones we use
to keep Jesus in the tomb.
So here’s to rolling stones away
to give our Lord the chance He needs
to rise and touch
a troubled, lonely world.
Some call it Resurrection.
It’s wild with wonder,
It’s beautiful and real
Intent on throwing life around
it touches and it heals!
Yes, Easter, you can come.
I will be an angel of life.
I’ll roll the stone away
and set you free.
1 comment:
Awesome Easter Party Invitation . I can use them for my Easter party. Thanks for sharing.
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