Christ is risen! He is risen indeed, alleluia!
“We do not know where they have laid him!” This is the lament of Mary Magdalene in our Gospel text from St. John. Her concern for where Jesus was laid is repeated three times!! She had gone with the other women to the tomb of Jesus while it was still dark. With sad and heavy hearts they made their way through the dark. On their way to the tomb of their beloved teacher. On their way to pay their last respects and anoint the body in their own way. In the Gospel of St. Mark we are told that the women wondered how they would move the large stone in front of the tomb, they heard an earthquake, the stone was rolled back and there was no body. Mary wasted no time. She went from grief to alarm, to panic. She ran to Simon Peter and John and cried out “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him!” The Jewish leaders had been afraid someone would come and take the body of Jesus and then lie that He had been raised, but here Mary is upset because those same people had treated Jesus so shamefully in life, perhaps they had taken his body to destroy it as one last mockery, as one last trick to abuse and malign Jesus one last time. Perhaps that was what she was afraid of. Maybe she was upset because she merely wanted to say good bye one last time and now she couldn’t.
Mary returned to the garden, looked into the tomb, again no body, but now she saw two angels. They asked her a question, “Why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?”
This is the equivalent of asking a relative or great friend of the deceased at a funeral, why are you here? Why are you weeping? Almost nobody ever asks that. The reasons are obvious. Death is grief worthy. Death is unnatural. Death is the tearing and separation from body and life in the person who dies, and it is also the tearing of the bond from person to person: from the person who died from those who are called survivors. Death is tragic and it is because of sin, which is not obeying God’s Law, that Death came into the world as a penalty for disobedience and unbelief. That is why you and I and all humanity will go through the Death of the body, because of our sin.
But that is also why Jesus came as true God and true Man. That is why He obeyed the Law, because no human born of natural means could. That is also why He was crucified. To take the penalty that we deserved, the penalty of eternal damnation. Jesus became the Passover Lamb, the perfect sacrifice to pay for the sins of the world. That is what Good Friday was all about: Jesus the perfect Lamb of God allowing Himself to be punished, to receive in Himself the chastisement of God’s righteous wrath that we deserved. That is why He was treated shamefully, rejected, humiliated, scorned, mocked, beaten, and crucified, not because there were a lot of bad, unjust, cruel people in Jerusalem, but for the sake of all the bad people who have been born throughout time, meaning all people. So that by His stripes, through His death, death and sin would lose its power. So that all of God’s promises of mercies would be fulfilled in Himself in His own death on the cross.
So where was Jesus that morning? The stone had been rolled back, not so that Jesus could escape or that He could be taken, but to show that He was already gone, the tomb was already empty. Jesus had already risen, He had already descended to Hell to preach the News of His triumph at the cross. The cross is the place of triumph. The empty tomb proclaims that what Jesus accomplished on the cross was acceptable. That Jesus took with Himself the sins of the world, but because He was innocent of those sins, He was now raised. Nobody had taken Jesus’ body, that morning. After His Sabbath rest on Saturday, He who laid down His own life, took that same life up again after 3 days.
Mary in her grief sought the Lord frantically searching the tomb and the garden in hopeless frustration. In that hopeless frustration and grief, she even overlooked Him, she had forgotten His words of promise and prophecy, of what He came to do. Only when Jesus called her name, did she recognize Him, that He had found her. He brought her the Good News of victorious death and resurrection. That He had laid down His own life for her life, for her forgiveness. That death is now swallowed up in Victory.
Where is Jesus now? He who was crucified and risen has ascended to the Father, this is true. He has promised to return at the Last Day to judge the living and the dead. Do we need to search Him out and find Him in ourselves, in our emotions, in our deeds of obedience, in cryptic prophecies? No the Lord continues to be where He has promised to be. He comes and sound the trumpet of His victorious death and resurrection in His Word proclaimed in His preaching, in the witness of His people, in the true teaching of His Word. In Baptism He continues to snatch victory from the jaws of death by taking those dead in their sins and unbelief and washing them through water and His Word, old sinful selves drowned in the sea like pharaoh and his armies, crucifying them and their sins, burying them in the tomb so that we exit the fount of baptism with the same resurrection victory of Jesus Christ. This gift is yours and saves you through faith as Jesus calls you by name and you respond by confessing the truth of His name in the creeds, the liturgy, in your life, and in holding fast to all His teachings in His Scriptures.
Now to strengthen you and prepare you for your eternity, behold, the gifts of Jesus laying before you, where Jesus the triumphant and victorious chooses to appear to His people gathered in His name. He comes again in bread and wine, to give the blessings of His victory, under the linen cloths. He who was slain, now lives and reigns in the simple means of bread and wine. Here He gives eternal life in His crucified and risen body and blood to sustain His people in this life, to give us joy in the midst of grief, sin, and sorrow. Where is He? Where is His body? It is Here. It is here where He said it would be. In the Lord’s supper, and in Him as the head we are joined as one body with the communion of saints. We know that He is here, because He said He would be there.
Jesus Christ is risen! The night of sin is ended! His light of salvation, His plan of mercy bursts through the darkness so we may believe! Now through Him, death is but temporary, our enemies silenced. We no longer grieve like those without hope. Why do you weep? Our Jesus is alive! We have seen Him, here! He gives you forgiveness, life, and salvation. And on the last day, He shall find you and all believers wherever they are laid and rest. He shall call them forth and this mortal shall put on immortality. Because our Redeemer Lives, we too shall live! Christ Is Risen (He is risen indeed) Alleluia!
Pr. Aaron Kangas
