Christ ist erstanden!
Sunday, April 20, 2025
Hallelujia!
God Chooses Life
For Us All!
Luke 24:1ff
On the first day of the week, at early dawn, [the women] came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.
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Words of Grace for Today –
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Today with great joy we proclaim:
Christ is Risen! (He is risen indeed!) Christ is Risen! (He is risen indeed!) Christ is Risen! (He is risen indeed!)
What’s For Breakfast?
Winnie the Pooh and Piglet take an evening walk. For a long time they walk in silence. Silence like only best friends can share.
Finally Piglet breaks the silence and asks, ‘When you wake up in the morning, Pooh, what’s the first thing you say to yourself?’
Pooh answers quickly, ‘What’s for breakfast?’ and then asks. ‘And what do you say, Piglet?’
Piglet says, ‘I say, I wonder what exciting thing is going to happen today?’
Billy Strayhorn, Easter Heart Burn, www.Sermons.com adapted 2025
What wondrous things God has in store for us today, just as God had the most wondrous thing in store for the women that first Easter as they made their way to Jesus’ tomb with their spices.
As for the women that day and for Christians ever since, Easter morning is the most joyous time of all our lives! But this day’s joy cannot be truly appreciated, if we do not remember what has brought us to this day.
Easter Only After …
After Advent calls us to be alert, to wait for Jesus’ Christmas’ birth, long promised. After, in Epiphanies unending, God reveals Christ’ Light come to shine forever in our darkness. After Jesus draws us up to the mountaintop-wonder of his glory revealed, so astounding!
After all that and more in this year so far, we were marked with ashes. Ashes bring us back to the humble reality of who we are: sinful people needing to repent, to be saved … again and again. So Jesus calls us to repent, to turn to God.
Repentance though is a root problem, not a problem of what fruit we produce. It lies at the root of who we see ourselves to be. “I can” statements cannot form our repentance, such as “I have sinned God. I am sorry God. I can do better.” Repentance contains our “I can’t” and “God can” statements: “I have sinned, God. I am sorry, God. I’ve tried and tried and tried but I just don’t produce good fruit. I can’t do better.
I need your Vine dresser to work on the roots of my life. Turn me around to your will. Give me a new life, God. Give me your life. I can’t. You can.”
(Richard Jensen, Preaching Luke’s Gospel p. 147, via B. Stoffregen, “Gospel Notes, adapted 2001 & 2025)
No matter how hard we try, we cannot save ourselves. Only God can. So we turn to Jesus, who bends down to wash our feet at his last meal. And we protest like Peter that it should not be so. We try to protect Jesus, with swords, but Jesus tells us to put them away. We stand by, waiting, in grief, and, like Peter, we deny we know Jesus when others threaten us for being his followers, (or because we feel uncomfortable following such a demanding Saviour.) We watch as he is crucified, most torturous. Jesus is thirsty as one in three people on earth are today. He receives sour wine. Most receive nothing. And Jesus, the hope of all nations, of all generations, dies…
and is buried
in a new tomb
spices and linen covering his body.
It is the greatest victory for Evil, for Evil has wielded death against God’s own Son and won.
Our hope has died as well, for what hope can we possibly find? There is none. There is none. There is none … without Easter.
Jesus Gives Us The Badly Needed …
Early in the morning on that third day the women go to the tomb with spices for the body, but Jesus is not there. He has risen from the grave.
The story is more than one resurrection; for others, like Lazarus, have been resurrected before. With Jesus’ resurrection all evil, even death, is defeated, for all time. And with that defeat God promises us all resurrection to new life.
For Jesus’ story is not just standing at home plate and hitting a home run out of the stadium. It’s standing at the plate, in the bottom of the thirteenth inning, with a full count, down three runs, bases loaded, having been put up at the plate in desperation by the manager, after you are mostly recovered from a chemotherapy treatment three days ago and surgery on your left shoulder last month, at 65 years old. You will never be here again, ever, even if you beat cancer.
Then you hit a home run to the utter amazement and benefit of a home town desperate for a team that could finally win.
That’s Jesus, not only on the cross, but risen on Easter morning for us, giving us all a badly needed win over Evil and Death itself.
What appeared to be Evil’s greatest victory, using jealousy, ridicule, plotting, bribery, riotous crowds, false testimony, weak leaders, a false conviction, and that most terrible symbol of Rome’s power, the cross …
What appeared to be Evil’s victory over everything good, over all hope, over all love,
is denied!
Instead God works love in a most demonstrative way, and Jesus returns to teach, call, and send us, his disciples, out to share the Good News with the world.
But we’ve heard all that before, haven’t we?
More Precious Than A Sweet Orange
In East Germany in the early 1980s fresh fruits were so scarce that a simple orange was a very special Christmas gift. Imagine (if it could be found and then afforded) one simple and always imperfect orange was the most precious gift one could give … and so sweet to receive!
Jesus’ Easter story is more precious than any gifted orange, and still, like the bags of oranges now available to us in grocery stores, we take it for granted. Yet, as we hear the familiar story once again, it is God’s promise to each of us, that we too can live again. That promise is more precious for us today than that scarce and costly Christmas orange.
That promise is not just for 2000 years ago, nor only for all the sins of our past. It is a promise that we will never be separated from God’s love, not by any sin, not by the most powerful Evil, not even by death itself. And don’t we know there’s enough sin and evil and death going around still today!
This is the ‘home run’ we most need again today.
As Christ’s new creation forms around us and in us, we proclaim:
Christ is Risen!
He is Risen Indeed!
Amen
