Christ is Risen…He is Risen Indeed! Alleluia! Our beautiful reading from the Gospel according to St. Mark announces that very fact. The fact that drives our hymns today and the celebrations that we have every time we gather on Sundays for Divine Service every week as every Sunday becomes an Easter celebration. Let us also hasten to the tomb of Jesus Christ and meditate on this reality of Christ’s resurrection as it happened outside Jerusalem so many years ago.

The sun had just risen on that first day of the week, the same day we call Sunday. Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome had seen where the body of Jesus had been laid. They knew that Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus had taken and wrapped the body already anointing it with myrrh and aloes and laid him in a tomb. The death of Jesus was a shock to them, and the burial to them done, had been done in haste and grief, and so they had not been able to wish their Lord and teacher farewell. They were not able to grieve over Him as they wished for the sake of the sun setting on the Sabbath, and so they wanted to take one last look at His body, give one last token of love and respect as they said goodbye. Therefore the faithful women had brought spices to anoint Jesus the Christ and hastened to the tomb. But as they travelled they remembered that “wait! a great stone had been rolled in front of the entrance, how would we three women move such a heavy and large object? Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?”

A great obstacle between them and their beloved master remained, an obstacle that represented the great divide between life and death, between this world and the afterlife. An obstacle that might keep them from fulfilling their last task of grief and love.

But as they drew near, they looked up to where the tomb was and saw… the very large stone had already been rolled back. Could it be that someone had already arrived to do the same labor that they had planned? They entered the tomb and there was an unfamiliar young man dressed in white. This young man was an angel, a messenger from God, sent to deliver His message. Imagine their shock, alarm, and fright. Their nerves were no doubt already thin as rice paper with all the terrible shocking events of the last 3 days, but now what could the rolled away stone, the young man in white by the entrance mean?

The angel as angels often have to do, immediately offered comfort and reassurance. “Do not be alarmed!” without further words he delivered to them the message that had been given to him. “You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that He is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as He told you.”

They came to anoint the Christ with burial ointments, but the Christ which you may recall means anointed one, the Christ had already been anointed, anointed to defeat death by His own death, and to show that trampling under His foot of death by rising again from it, thereby showing that death is not the victor, that the cross of Jesus Christ and His death paid the blood price of ransom for sin which is the strength of death. That the wrath of God upon sin had been satisfied upon the flesh of Jesus Christ and now faithful people young and old do not have to be afraid.

Who will roll away the stone for us? For those of us who have had to say good bye to loved ones who have died according to the flesh, for those for whom death draws near, for those who live in fear of the reality of death of the flesh, we feel this separation between death and life that remains. The stone of death may still feel like a major obstacle as we feel the unnatural rending of life and spirit from body and blood. Recall that God did not create Adam and Eve for death but for life. Who will roll that great stone of death away?

Dear Friends, Christ has rolled away that great stone of death away not yet in completion but already in part. He has overcome death and the grave. The stone of the tomb was nothing to Him. The rolling back of the stone was not so that Jesus and His body could escape or be released from the tomb, it was rolled back to show that Jesus had already arisen, He had already left. His body was showing the power that it had had all along as Jesus was true God as well as true man, but no longer was it subject to suffering, to humility, to death. Jesus Christ was subject to those things to endure in His flesh the things which we endure in part and deserve in full. Now Jesus who was crucified has risen. He has destroyed the barrier between death and life. He has become the greater stone which crushed the lesser stone. He has become the death of death our foe in His resurrection from death.

He has already anointed us for eternal life as He has called us forth from our living tomb of sinful unbelieving lives when He called us by His name into His name in baptism. “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God.

In this way Jesus has already removed the barrier, He has removed the barrier between you and God by taking your sin upon Himself and washing you in His blood. He has reconciled you to the Father, He has given you His Holy Spirit to repent and believe. He has anointed you with the oil of gladness, hope, and joy in Jesus Christ’s name. Death will now pass you over, that is why in the Greek language this festival is still called the Pascha, the Passover. Through Christ’s death and resurrection death will pass us by. Does this mean that we will not die according to the body? No, but it means that Death no longer holds any permanent power. Our bodies have been redeemed. It is not just our spirit or our souls that have been redeemed. It is our bodies, these flesh and blood temples God saw value in their creation, in their redemption through faith and baptism, He sustains them throughout this life, prepares them for the life that is to come in His Word and In His Sacrament of the Altar where we already see Jesus with our own eyes as He comes with His true presence of body and blood in the bread and the wine.

As the faithful women were told that they would see Jesus with their own eyes, so will we in fullness at the last day. Death will be swallowed up once and for all, and tears will be wiped away. As Job said around 4000 years ago, we also have this sure promise today:
“For I know that my Redeemer lives,
    and at the last he will stand upon the earth.
 And after my skin has been thus destroyed,
    yet in my flesh I shall see God,
 whom I shall see for myself,
    and my eyes shall behold, and not another.”
At the last day in the twinkling of an eye at the cry of the angels and the trumpet blast, Jesus shall return and all eyes shall see Him as He is, the perfect true Son of God, the redeemer of the world and especially of those who believe. Then all the tombs shall be opened and He shall call forth His people and they shall rise with their bodies which will be then given life and transformed according to Jesus Christ’s Glorious body and we shall live with Him forever. Christ is Risen…He is Risen Indeed! Alleluia! Amen!

Pr. Aaron Kangas