Easter – 1 April 2018 – Year B

Grace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen

The text for this meditation is written in the 20^th Chapter of the Gospel according to St John: Verses 1 – 18:

Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. ² So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” ³ So Peter went out with the other disciple, and they were going toward the tomb. ⁴ Both of them were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. ⁵ And stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he did not go in. ⁶ Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen cloths lying there, ⁷ and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen cloths but folded up in a place by itself. ⁸ Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; ⁹ for as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead. ¹⁰ Then the disciples went back to their homes. 

¹¹ But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb. ¹² And she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. ¹³ They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” ¹⁴ Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus. ¹⁵ Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?  Whom are you seeking?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” ¹⁶ Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means Teacher). ¹⁷ Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ ” ¹⁸ Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”—and that he had said these things to her.

O day of dread, my Lord is dead.

The words of this mournful rhyme describe the mood on that first Good Friday.  At that time only Christ’s enemies thought it was good.  The people who loved Jesus were devastated.  Their Lord was dead, murdered on a cross.  Their hopes, their dreams died with Him.  They had believed He was the Messiah, the one who would save Israel, but now He was dead.

To make matters worse, they didn’t even have time to give the Lord’s body a proper burial.  They barely had time to take His body off the cross and carry it to a nearby tomb.  They wrapped it in linen and prepared it the best they could in the time they had.  They barely had time to seal the tomb with a stone when the Sabbath was upon them, a day when even the work of preparing a body for burial was forbidden.  The remainder of the preparations had to wait until the Sabbath was over.

       Before the sun rose on that first day after the Sabbath, Mary Magdalene was already on her way to the tomb to finish this last labour of love and say her last good-byes to her Lord.  We can only imagine the thoughts of grief and hopelessness that were going through her mind as she made the trip out to the tomb.  We can only imagine the total helplessness and frustration that overcame her as she came to the tomb and saw that the stone was no longer covering the entrance and it quickly became obvious that the body was gone.

Mary ran to Simon Peter and John for help.  “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”  She told them.  Peter and John immediately left for the tomb and conducted an investigation.  Mary followed along.  Eventually, Peter and John finished their investigation and went home leaving Mary alone at the tomb with her grief.

      The loneliness and helplessness of the whole affair overwhelmed Mary.  She stood at the entrance to the tomb and wailed in her grief.  As she cried, she looked into the tomb and saw two angels sitting there.  Mary’s mind was so clouded by grief that she didn’t even realise what they were.  They asked her, “Woman, why are you weeping?”  Her answer shows that her mind was focused on the missing body of her late rabbi.  “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”

Then she turned and saw the risen Lord standing before her.  Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?”  She was so focused on finding a dead body that she didn’t recognise the object of her search as He stood before her.  She thought He was the gardener and that He might know what had happened to the body.  “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”  She begged.

      Then the saviour called her by name, “Mary!”  The clouds lifted from her mind.  The light shone in.  All sorrow melted away.  Triumph replaced tragedy.  Tears of joy replaced tears of despair.  Mary’s confession only needed one word, “Rabboni!” (Teacher)!

Mary must have wrapped her arms around Jesus in her joy for Jesus said, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father…” It was as if Jesus said, “You can let go of me now, I am not going anywhere just yet”.

      Then Jesus gave a mission to Mary, “…go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”  As Mary greets the disciples with the Good News that Jesus lives, today’s Gospel comes to an end.

      I can understand Mary.  When I see most of you in this place you’re dressed for church.  Then when I walk about town and some of you are in your work clothes or dressed more casually and I hear a voice “Hey Merv, aren’t you talking to me?’”  I’ll do a double take and look past the work clothes or the shorts and thongs etc. and cap, and the light will dawn and I’ll know who it is. (I’m sure that if Carol and I turned up for church on my motorcycle and walked in with leather vests, boots and gloves you would be doing a double take as well).

      Mary had gone through the intense emotional pressure of watching someone she loved die on a cross.  Then a few days later she endured the mystery of a missing body.  Given how easy it is for any of us to miss someone’s identity under ordinary circumstances, I have no problem believing that Mary didn’t know the Lord in her extremely stressful circumstances.  After all, as far as Mary was concerned, Jesus was dead!

      Mary can be forgiven, but you know, it is now nearly two thousand years since Jesus rose from the dead and we still don’t know Him.  Although every human being is born with a need for God, no human being has ever found Him.  We don’t recognise Him when we see Him.  Just as Mary didn’t recognise Jesus because she was searching for a dead body, so we too don’t recognise Jesus because we too are searching for something that is dead.  We keep looking for the hope provided by a god that matches our expectations.

      Of course the Devil and the World are more than happy to suggest any number of designer gods to match what we’re looking for.  And if the first one doesn’t work, there will be another one along next month as one religious fad fades into the next.  After all there are plenty more gods where the first one came from.  Mankind has dreamt up millions of them over the centuries.

      Mankind has found false gods in star, stone, and tree.  As Isaiah says, ^{[Isaiah 44:14-17]} “[A man] cuts down [a cedar], or … a cypress tree or an oak … Half of it he burns in the fire. Over the half he eats meat; he roasts it and is satisfied. Also he warms himself and says, "Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire!"  ¹⁷ And the rest of it he makes into a god, his idol, and falls down to it and worships it. He prays to it and says, "Deliver me, for you are my god!"  Even if we do not worship trees, stones, or stars, the gods we so often seek are just as dead.  We search for false gods in our own comforts and pleasures.  We seek security, reputation, and power.  We even seek to worship the false gods of revenge and restitution.                   There is no end to our search for god because the god we search for isn’t real.

      This desperate search for god dominates us so much that we, like Mary, look right at our Saviour and do not know Him.  We think we know what we want in a god and Jesus just doesn’t fit our expectations.  We, like Mary, are looking for a dead body, not a living saviour.  We are looking for a dead body not realising that we ourselves are dead in our own sins.  Our search is hopeless and doomed because we are the ones who are lost and need finding.

      How thankful we can be that our salvation does not depend on our search.  Instead, the living, risen Saviour finds us.  He lifts the fog of sin from our mind.  He gives us the light of grace.  He shares our sorrows and despair and ultimately replaces them with triumph and joy.  He rescues us and adopts us into His family.  He calls us by name just as He called Mary by name.

      Who is this Saviour who calls us by name?  He is Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the Son of Man.  He is the one who left His eternal throne in heaven and took on human flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary.  He is the one who placed Himself under the law and kept it perfectly in our place.  He is the one who traded places with us as the object of God’s wrath and died for us on the cross.  He is the one who rose from the dead in triumph and is alive forevermore.  He is the Saviour who called Mary by name and He is the Saviour who calls each of us by name.

      How does our Saviour call us?  Mary heard her name directly from the lips of the Saviour.  How do we who live some two thousand years later hear the voice of our risen Lord and Saviour?  For most of us that saving voice first called us by name in Baptism.  In the water combined with God’s Word, God calls us by name even as He also puts His name on us. 

      God continues to call us by name as He leads us through this life.  As we heard the readings from the Word of God a few minutes ago, God called us by name.  As you listen to this sermon, God is able to use even my frail words to call us by name.  We hear Him call through the words of the liturgy in Divine Service for they are taken from the Bible.  We hear Him call in Bible study.  We hear Him call when we read and meditate on His word in our own private devotions.  We receive His call and physical presence as He comes to us in His own body and blood in the bread and wine that has been consecrated by His own words.

      What does it mean that Jesus calls us by name?  It means that all the blessings of Christ’s resurrection belong to us.  It means that the righteousness He earned with His holy life is ours.  The punishment for our sins has been paid on the cross.  When Christ calls us by name, He promises to remain with us in this life and sustain us in our time of death.         When that day of death comes He will call us by name to live forever with Him.  Finally, we have His promise: “Because I live, you also will live.”  On the last day our graves will be as empty as his tomb for our bodies will be like His and we shall see Him as He is.  As St. Paul wrote in His first letter to the Corinthians.

^{[1 Corinthians 15:51-57]}  Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, ⁵² in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. ⁵³ For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. ⁵⁴ When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:

“Death is swallowed up in victory.”
⁵⁵ “O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?”

⁵⁶ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. ⁵⁷ But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.    

HE IS RISEN !! – HE IS RISEN INDEED!!  - Amen.

The peace and love of our Great Triune God that is beyond all human understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen

Good Friday – 30 March 2018 – Year B

Grace to you and peace from God our father and our Lord and saviour Jesus Christ. Amen

The text for this meditation is written in the Gospel according to St John Chapter 18: Verse 1 – Chapter 19: Verse 42.

The only innocent Man is put on trial today.  Even the godless heathen, Pilate, knows what a sham this trial is.  Christ, meek and mild, is accused of being a violent insurrectionist against Rome.  His peaceful demeanour and gentle answers make His innocence obvious to Pilate.  The Roman governor can find no fault at all in Him.

Yet Pilate, the coward, cannot stand against the people, so he sentences the innocent Man to crucifixion, and participates in the death of God's own Son.

Christ could have cleared Himself at any time.  He could have given wise answers, as He had answered the Jewish leaders so many times before when they tested Him.  He could have confounded them with His words until they were compelled to set Him free again.

But He did not defend Himself.  He was silent when He could have gone free.  He did not open His mouth to save His own life.

Christ was so perfectly innocent that the Jewish leaders had to resort to a night trial, which was illegal under their own codes of law.  The witnesses could only bring false testimonies against Christ.  Their words were so obviously lies that they could not even agree with one another.  Even that illegal, kangaroo court could not condemn Christ based on those trumped-up charges.

In the end, the Jews condemn Him for the truth: because He claimed to be the Son of God.  Pilate's charge is that Jesus claimed to be the King of the Jews.  Christ was both of those things, the Son and the King.  So He dies for the truth.  As Christ said, "If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil."  No one could show anything Christ had said that was false.  His was the only pure tongue to ever speak, upon which the poison of lies and false witness never was.  He who is the Truth is destroyed for truth.

We humans are so twisted and false that we must destroy the only absolutely innocent Man to ever stand trial.  We must slander and accuse falsely.  We must destroy with our tongues, and we must destroy what is pure.  So Christ was destroyed by us.

At the trials, Pilate was the representative of all us Gentiles, and Caiaphas the representative of all Jews.  Even if that were not true, it was our sins that accused Him and drove Him to crucifixion.  Every hateful lie and word of slander from our lips struck Him more painfully than the soldiers' fists.  Our tongues lashed Him more than any whip could.

It was we who deserve the blows and the scourging.  We fully deserved every thorn that pierced His innocent brow.  Our sins crushed Him down on the Cross into death.  But it was our death He died.  We should have been there, nailed to the wood, gasping our last air under the Father's condemnation.

But it was Him, not us.

"My Kingdom is not of this world," He tells Pilate.  He brings no worldly peace and love.  He establishes no millennial utopia.  His Kingdom is not even visible to worldly eyes.  Eyes of flesh cannot see the boundaries between His Kingdom and the kingdoms of flesh.  The world sees suffering and pain, and no glorious kingdom.  Yet Christ's Kingdom is there, nonetheless.  His people are persecuted as He is persecuted.  They are killed off in the midst of injustice.  The wicked world seems to triumph over them all the time.

Yet He must always conquer, and His Kingdom with Him.  For His Kingdom is founded upon the Word that endures forever.  As He says to Pilate, "Everyone who is of the Truth hears My voice."  The world cannot overcome Christ and His Word.  So the world cannot overcome those who belong to His Kingdom.

So the one and only innocent Man is declared guilty by Caiaphas and Pilate.  But we are declared innocent by the Father in heaven, a far better verdict.  The Son of God willingly lays down His life, and we become innocent like Him, cleansed by His life-blood.  The Truth dies, nailed to the Cross, and we live.  The Word of God incarnate says, "Father, forgive them," and we are forgiven.  The sun is swallowed by the darkness of the Father's rejection of His own Son.  So we become sons of God, never rejected.

Upon Christ's brow is a crown of thorns.  What more glorious crown could He wear?  He has come to reverse the curse of thorns, the curse laid upon all the earth.  When Adam and Eve sinned, God said, "Cursed is the ground for your sake; in sorrow you will eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it will bring forth to you."  Christ is crowned with the curse.  He embraces the corruption that has infected all that He created in the beginning.  Because He is crowned with the curse, He is making all things new, until a new creation shall appear, the home of righteousness, where thorns are no longer found.

So the curse is removed by the innocent death.  The Tree of the Cross overcomes the Tree that condemned us in Eden. The fruit of the that life-giving Tree is given and shed for us.  The fruit is the Body and Blood of Christ, which give everlasting life.  We eat and drink of this fruit and are invited back into Paradise, where death is reversed into life, and sin is erased forever by the perfect innocence of Christ.

What a bitter – sweet privilege to stand at the foot of the cross this Good Friday and look up at our Lord and Saviour on His throne of agonising glory. This is the ultimate gift of grace to you, to me, to the whole world. This amazing grace that is beyond all human understanding is the “solar gratia” – the “Grace Alone” which signifies that God forgives and saves us not because of who we are or what we do, but because of His abundant love acted out in the passion of Christ. Amen