The Sure Foundation

[Below you'll find live stream video of today's worship services with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. You'll also see the text of the message shared. The traditional service was a wild, but satisfying ride, including a baptism!]

Matthew 21:33-46

Over the past few Sundays, we’ve listened in on Jesus’ confrontation with “the chief priests and the elders.” Today, identified as “the chief priests and the Pharisees,” that confrontation continues in our Gospel lesson. These leaders of God’s people are offended by Jesus, claiming Jesus has no authority to forgive sin, perform miracles, or claim to be the King of the world.

This morning, Jesus tells another parable, a story, the beginning of which would have been familiar to everyone around Him. You can see similar stories told by the prophet in Isaiah 5 and by Asaph, a musician in the court of King David, in Psalm 80.

In all three stories, we’re told how God graciously planted His people in Israel the land He promised to them. And in all three cases, something goes terribly wrong.

According to Isaiah, when God turned to the vineyard Israel, He “looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit.” (Isaiah 5:2) In other words, God saw an Israel that had turned its back on God to worship false idols, the gods of other peoples. For its idolatry and all the sins that flowed from it, God allowed His people to be conquered and turned out of their land.

Asaph sees a nation that has turned away from God, relying instead on false idols, self-sufficiency, and military and economic power. For, this Psalm 80 says God will break “down [Jerusalem’s] walls so that all who pass by pick its grapes” and, referring to enemy peoples around ancient Israel, says that “boars from the forest ravage it, and insects from the fields feed on it.” (Psalm 80:13)

In these two passages from the Old Testament, God was reminding His people that salvation and oneness with God were not the product of their behavior, goodness, or strength. They were saved solely by God Who gives forgiveness and new life as a gift to be received by faith alone.

This is why the Old Testament says of Abraham, not yet renamed by God, “Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.” (Genesis 15:6)

When God saved Israel and planted it in the world, just as when God saved you and me in Holy Baptism and gave us faith in Christ through the Word and sustained that faith in the sacrament of Holy Communion, it wasn’t because the ones saved were, in themselves or by their actions, holy and righteous, it’s because the God Who saves us from sin, death, and futility is holy and righteous. It’s because God gives His holiness and righteousness to sinners by grace through the faith in Him that His Holy Spirit creates in us.

In speaking to the religious leaders of first-century Judea, Jesus creates a different twist to the ancient story of God’s people.

In Jesus’ telling, the “landowner,” clearly God, rents out to farmers, clearly Israel, a vineyard, which He prepared and protected, then went elsewhere. When harvest time came, the landowner expected to receive fruits from his land and investment, just as God expects to see the fruit of His righteousness and His forgiveness manifested in our lives.

But, as you know, the landowner sent many different people to collect what the farmers owed and each of his servants were beaten, killed, or stoned, just like the prophets God sent to His people Israel to call them back to saving faith.

Finally, the landowner decides to send his son to collect the harvest. “They will respect my son,” he reasons. (Matthew 21:37)

You know what happens.

The farmers think that if they kill off the son of the landowner, clearly representing Jesus, they will be free of the owner; they will, to speak clearly what Jesus means here, be their own gods, free of the authority of almighty God.

And that friends, is the goal of all human-centered religion: to be the makers of our own righteousness, to be gods ourselves, without accountability to God.

Humanly-centered religion, whether secular or clothed in the pretense of piety, says with the poet, “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.”

And it always leads to death and damnation for one simple reason: One day, we will all stand before the God we meet in Christ for judgment.

Those who try to claim a place in eternity because they think they’ve been good people or because their grandfather was involved in mission work or they gave money to the church, will stand naked in their sin and be sent to hell.

Those who can say with the saints, the forgiven sinners who trust in the God revealed in Jesus, “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness,” will be welcomed to live eternally with God.

Matthew says the religious elites realize Jesus had told this parable about them, secure in their self-generated goodness and unrepentant rule-keeping as well as their descendance from Abraham.

When Jesus asks them what the landowner will do to those who killed the landowner’s son, just as they will soon join the Gentiles in killing God the Son, they say, “He will bring those wretches to a wretched end…and he will rent the vineyard to other tenants, who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time.” (Matthew 21:41)

Antisemitic people over the ages have used these words to say that Gentile Christians have superseded Jews as God’s people. But this is not what Jesus says. It’s what the Jewish chief priests and elders say.

Trust, faith, in the Messiah and Lord pointed to by the entire Old Testament and revealed in Jesus of Nazareth, brings salvation to Jews and Gentiles like. The apostle Paul, himself a Jew, says “it is not the children by physical descent who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise [that is, the promise of justification by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone] who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring.” (Romans 9:8)

Jesus says that the landowner–God Himself–responds to those, both Jew and Gentile whose sin put His Son on the cross to die, very differently. He shows them this through Psalm 118: “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes…” (Matthew 21:42)

There are those who try to commend themselves to God for their own effort, supposed goodness, and ingenuity. Like us, such people have an inborn penchant to turning from God and doing things their own way. They turn a deaf ear to Jesus’ call to repent and believe in Him for forgiveness and life with God that never ends. Whether in this life or, absent repentance and faith, in eternity, the self-reliant will be smashed by Jesus Christ, true God and true man, who bears the full weight of a holy and mighty God.

But there are those who, like you here this morning, have heard the Gospel Word about Jesus and believe that Jesus is the cornerstone for everlasting life with God.

You know that you can build your life on Him.

You know Jesus’ promise about Himself: “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life…” and so, He has become the foundation for all your hopes. Jesus has become the One Who tells you that because He died on the cross for you, all Your sins are forgiven. (John 3:36)

Jesus has become the One Who assures you that He is always with you. (Matthew 28:20)

Jesus has become the One Who tells you as He told the grieving Martha: “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die…” (John 11:25-26)

In Jesus, you and I see THE foundation of our eternal help “and it is marvelous in our eyes.”

Keep your eyes on Jesus, friends.

He brings forgiveness to sinners, hope to the repentant, life to the dead and the dying and He will never let you down.

Amen

For Grieving Believers: Two Promises from Jesus

[This message was shared during the funeral of a Living Water Lutheran Church saint yesterday morning.]

Romans 8:35, 37-39

In the Name of God the Father, and God the Son, Jesus, and God the Holy Spirit. Amen

Lou, you should know that you, your daughters and sons-in-law, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, are in the prayers of many people today. Donna was a person cherished by many, not least by those of her Living Water Lutheran Church family, along with many from Epiphany.

Donna was a special person, devoted to her husband and family, committed to helping others, as she did for years through the Gabbards’ involvement in Aid Association for Lutherans.

I always found Donna to be a kind and considerate person, quick to smile and quick to laugh, and always available to participate or help. Donna will be missed!

Lou, I want you to know, how inspiring you have been for your family and others, as you have cared for Donna these past few years By the power of the Holy Spirit, you have faithfully kept your vows to God and to Donna, loving and serving Donna in a trying season. I know you have been assisted in doing this by your family and that you’re grateful for them and their help. But believe me, they’re grateful for the love you gave to Donna every day of your married life!

At the start of a beautiful section of First Thessalonians, the apostle Paul writes, “Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope…” (1 Thessalonians 4:13) 

Paul wrote to the Christians in first-century Thessalonica, a city on the Aegean Sea, who, thinking that Jesus should have returned by then, had become concerned about the fate of fellow Christians who had already died. Paul wanted to reassure them that the Savior Who had died for the world’s sins and had risen to open up eternity to all who believe in Him, was good for His promises to come back to the world to judge the living and the dead and to usher His kingdom fully into being. 

He also wanted them to know that those who died trusting in Jesus Christ as their Lord and God were, even then, in God’s care. 

No one who trusts in Jesus is ever lost to God! 

Paul wanted to underscore the promise that Jesus had made to us all in a conversation with Martha, the grieving sister of His friend Lazarus: “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.” (John 11:25-26) This is the promise to which Lou referred during one of my visits to hospice last week when I asked him how he was doing. Of Donna, he said, “I’m glad she’s a Christian!”

Christians, like others, of course, grieve the loss of loved ones, even of those who have trusted in Jesus Christ. 

It would be unnatural for us not to grieve those we have loved and who have loved us. 

It would be strange not to grieve for a mother who has nurtured her children, a friend who has shared life’s burdens, and a fellow disciple who believed in Jesus. 

We feel grief for those we love even when we know their passing brings them relief from this world’s pain and brings us an end to our agonies for them. 

But, as Paul says, the Christian need not grieve like those who don’t believe in Jesus. Those without faith, Paul says, are people “who have no hope.”

The Christian has an eternity of hope! We know that Jesus Christ, Who died for our sins and sent His Holy Spirit to witness for the Gospel in the Word and the Sacraments to give us saving faith in Jesus, will welcome believers in Him into His loving arms when we pass from this life! 

We know too, that we will be reunited with all the saints, like Donna, who have trusted in Christ in this life. What a reunion that will be, living in the presence of God: tears dried, bodies made new and whole, death eternally destroyed!

Until that happy day, we will, in this world, have grief. We will have challenges and setbacks. 

But, even now, the joy of heaven invades the lives of those who take Jesus at His Word when He invites us to daily take up our crosses, that is, repent for sin, and follow Him, meaning trust in Him. 

Jesus has told His Church and all who are part of it, “...I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20) 

God inspired the apostle Paul to talk about this too, as He does in our second lesson for this morning. “I am convinced,” Paul writes, “that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39) 

Nothing can separate believers from Jesus!

So, once more today, Lou and family, the crucified and risen Jesus gives you two incredible and undeserved promises, the power and credibility of which are certified by His death and His resurrection.

First, He promises that death is not the final word over the lives of those who, like Donna, believe in Jesus Christ. Jesus, Who triumphed over sin and death, including your sin and my sin, your death, and my death, can be trusted when He tells us, “For God so loved the world [God so loved Donna and you and me] that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16) 

The Scriptures, both the Old and New Testaments, tell us repeatedly that, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” (Romans 10:17) Saved by grace through faith from sin, death, and futility! Jesus is the certain sign that we can bet our entire lives on that incredible promise!

Second, Jesus promises to be with us in this life, no matter what. This promise too is given in both Testaments. In Deuteronomy and Hebrews, God’s promise is shouted forth: “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” (Hebrews 13:5; Deuteronomy 31:6) Again, the Savior Who bore our death on the cross and Who gives His righteousness to all who repent and believe, tells us that we can trust this promise for our daily lives, even today, even in the midst of grief.

Last week at the hospice facility, we read Psalm 46, the words of which inspired the lyrics of Martin Luther’s best-loved hymn, A Mighty Fortress is Our God. It begins: “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.” Then, God breaks in to say, “Be still, and know that I am God…” (Psalm 46:10)

These words are for you, Lou, and for your family. 

Even in your grief, you can rest easy, you can be still, in the strong arms of the God you know in Jesus. You can be still, knowing that He is God and, because of the Word-borne, Holy Spirit-given faith in Jesus that was Donna’s and is yours, you can know for a certainty that God has Donna and you and all who believe, in His strong, loving hands, now and forever. Amen

 

Life for the Journey

[Below you'll find the live stream video of this past week's Maundy Thursday service with the people ad friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, and the text of the message.]



Luke 22:7-20

On Maundy Thursday, we remember two things about the meal Jesus shared with the twelve apostles on the Thursday before His crucifixion.

First, we remember the new commandment, or, as in the Latin from which the word Maundy comes, a new mandatum, a new mandate, that Jesus gives to His Church on Thursday of the first Holy Week. Jesus commands, mandates us to love each other with the same self-sacrifice with which He has loved us. If that commandment doesn’t alarm us and drive us to repent for our sin, asking God to love others through us, we’re living in a state of denial. That’s because none of us can fulfill this commandment in our own power or goodness. We need Jesus, remembering that He tells us the total truth when He says, “apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5)

The second thing we remember on Maundy Thursday, the topic that will occupy us this evening, is Jesus’ institution of the sacrament of Holy Communion.

Holy Baptism, of course, is the sacrament by which Jesus gives us new life, Holy Communion is the sacrament by which Jesus sustains us in our life with Him. After Jesus was baptized at the Jordan River, He was led by the Spirit to face temptations in the wilderness. After you and I are baptized, until we die and are called from the dead by Jesus to live with Him in a sinless eternity, we still live in this world, wrestling with the temptations and tests thrown at us by the devil, the world, and our own sinful selves. The Gospel of Matthew tells us that after Jesus was in the wilderness for forty days, God sent angels to minister to, to take care of, Jesus. (Matthew 4:11) In Holy Communion, Jesus ministers to you and me directly and personally. He gives us His own sinless, eternally triumphant self. “This is my body given for you…,” He says. And, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.” (Luke 22:19-20)

Our Gospel lesson for tonight begins with Jesus sending two of His disciples–Peter and John–into Jerusalem to make preparations so that He could celebrate the Passover Seder with His disciples. In sending Peter and John, we see that Jesus is bringing both the fulfillment of the old covenant and instituting the new covenant. Under the old covenant, the one between God and His people, the Jews, it was customary for two men from a family to go to the outer courts of the temple in Jerusalem so that the Passover lamb their families would eat during the Seder dinner could be slaughtered. They would then take the slaughtered lamb back to the homes or inns in which the meal would take place. But, in a break from tradition, Peter and John weren’t sent to do this on behalf of their biological families. Jesus would have this meal with His new family, the family of God called together by His Gospel Word, the Church. You’ll remember Jesus once said, “My mother and brothers are those who hear God’s word and put it into practice.” (Luke 8:21) Here are Peter and John putting Jesus’ Word into practice, preparing to celebrate a meal that encompasses not just one’s relatives, but all people who believe in Jesus.

Passover was the central festival of the Jewish calendar. It memorialized that moment when God’s people, then enslaved in Egypt, were set free and sent off to the land God promised them. Before the first Passover, God instructed His people to prepare for the tenth and final plague God brought on Egypt. The angel of death would take the life of the firstborn in every home and barnyard in Egypt unless the blood of a sacrificed lamb was smeared on the doorposts of those places. Blood is the means by which oxygen, the breath of God, gives life to every human being and every vertebrate animal. Blood is the means by which carbon dioxide, the toxic gas produced by respiration, is taken out of the tissues of the body. Blood then is life. When Cain killed his brother Abel in the Old Testament book of Genesis, his blood–his taken life–cried out to God. At the first Passover, the blood of the lambs, whose death was for the people who trusted in God, barred death access to the lives of the firstborn.

Another festival of the Jewish year was Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. On this day, a perfectly unblemished lamb was sacrificed at the temple. The lamb bore the sins of God’s people from the previous year. After it was sacrificed, the priest would sprinkle the people with the blood of this perfect lamb. By this means, the people were covered with life from God and the toxic impurity of their sin was removed from them. The problem was that under the old covenant, the effects of the sacrifice lasted, at the most, only a year. And so year after year, God’s guilt-plagued people were called to offer yet another lamb, to be covered once again by its blood. Even at that, people would often offer sin sacrifices throughout the year.

Friends, we too, would be plagued by sin and uncertainty about our standing with God were it not for one thing: Jesus has instituted a new covenant in which we can rest. John the Baptist talked about this new covenant when, pointing to Jesus, He said, ““Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29) The sin of the world, of the whole world, of every time and every place, including our sin, yours and mine.

Under the old covenant, priests daily, made sacrifices of lambs, doves, and grain to first, purify themselves of their own sin before they then offered sacrifices of people who came to the temple laden with guilt. Nothing but these constant sacrifices could assure people their sins were forgiven or carry them from death to life. But, referring to Jesus as our great high priest, the book of Hebrews tells us, “Unlike the other high priests, [Jesus] does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people. [Sinless Himself] He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself.” (Hebrews 7:27)

In Holy Communion, we don’t sacrifice Jesus on the cross again. That’s bad theology, intimating that what Jesus did on the cross wasn’t good enough. Controlling the timetable and circumstances ordained by God, Jesus offered the sacrifice of His innocent body and blood on the cross once and for all. This is why when biblically heedless people ask you when you were saved, you can confidently answer, “On a hill outside Jerusalem two thousand years ago.” Jesus has already done everything necessary for your sins to be forgiven by God and for you to have life with God. As I’ve said before: When Jesus said before dying on the cross, “It is finished,” He meant it! The apostle Paul wasn’t lying when He said, “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Romans 10:9) We become Christians not because we’ve made a decision for God, but because God made a decision for us. He decided to die for us! “While we were still sinners,” the Bible says, “Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8) So, friends, in Jesus Christ, our sins are already forgiven. The only question is, do we believe in Him?

This is where Holy Communion comes in. While our salvation has already been accomplished and God’s decision for us is unchangeable, even when the Holy Spirit’s Word has convinced us to believe in Jesus, we can get wobbly in our walk with God. The devil, the world, and our sinful selves constantly press us toward unbelief. They lie to us, telling us we’re not good enough, that Jesus didn’t really die and rise, that we’re too bad and the world is too bad for the good news of new and everlasting life with God through faith in Jesus to be true. On top of that, life can batter us with setbacks, tragedies, and difficulties. “Pastor, I believe in Jesus,” someone told me recently, “but my life is so hard right now.” Holy Communion happens when the word of Jesus, along with Jesus’ promises to us, meets the bread and the wine and Jesus tells us, “This is My body and This is My blood. What I accomplished at the cross and tomb was for you. Your sins are forgiven. My good news is for you. I will never leave you nor forsake you. (Hebrews 13:5) Though your sins are like scarlet, I make your life as white as snow (Isaiah 1:18). As far as the east is from the west, so far have I removed your sin from you. (Psalm 103:12) I am with you always, to the close of the age. (Matthew 28:20) All who believe in Me will not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)”

Friends, life in this world is hard. But we are blessed that during our journey through this life, Jesus gives us Himself, body and blood, in, with, and under the bread and the wine, and fills those who receive Him in faith with life that never ends. Amen

Easter: Fear, Joy, and One Consoling Truth

Below is today's Easter Sunday online worship service from Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. Lower on the page is the manuscript for today's message. God bless you!



Matthew 28:1-10
For several years after I came to faith in Jesus Christ, the people of our home church had been telling me they thought God was calling me to be a pastor. Both Ann and I were resistant to the notion. 

Highly resistant. 

We were both deeply involved with our church. 

We both wanted to honor the God revealed in Jesus. 

But neither one of us saw me as a pastor, especially after I’d gotten a job that I thought would be a stepping stone to the political career I’d always wanted to pursue, working for the State House of Representatives in Columbus.

Eventually, though, the call of God to pastoral ministry became irresistible to me. 

I applied to seminary. On the day I was admitted, while retaining my full-time position, I took a part-time job in the office supplies department of a local Sears store. 

During my first night there, a woman purchased a file cabinet. As I rolled the cabinet with a two-wheel dolley to her car, she asked me about myself. I told her about my wife, my full-time job, my call to start seminary in a few months. 

After I’d loaded her car, she held out two-dollars to me. “Oh, ma’am,” I said. “We’re not allowed to take tips. This is just part of the job.” “I don’t care,” she told me. “You’re going to need every penny you can get and I want to support you in following God’s call.” 

I thanked her and rushed back through the sales floor where I worked into the stockroom. I was shaking, tears in my eyes. I felt as though God, through that woman, had reached out to me and said, “You didn’t imagine this call. It didn’t just come from the people with whom you go to church. It came from Me.” 

It was a moment of fear at the enormity, power, and reach of this living God we know in Jesus, a kind of terror in knowing that the Creator of the universe was intervening in my life. Who was I? How could I, a sinner, possibly survive being in the sight of God Almighty? 

It was also a moment of joy at the thought that this same God cares to reach us, love us, and affirm us even in retail parking lots and stockrooms. 

All I could think, as I excitedly paced amid the shelves of boxes, shaking, was to pray, “Thank You, Lord. Thank You. Thank You.”

In our gospel lesson for this Easter Sunday morning, Matthew’s stark yet theologically fraught account of Jesus’ resurrection, we’re told that after Mary Magdalene and another Mary left Jesus’ empty tomb, where an angel told them that Jesus was raised from the dead: “the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples…” (Matthew 28:8) 

Let’s be clear about why the women were afraid. 

They weren’t afraid of the things of this world. 

They weren’t afraid of men or nature.

They weren’t afraid of hostile soldiers or empires. 

Nor were they afraid of the ills of this world, like suffering, disease, plague, or death. 

They had seen first-hand just a few moments before that nothing--not men, soldiers, nature, disease, or death--can stand up before God. 

They were afraid of this good news, the Easter news, the greatness of God, and the privilege of being the first people to preach the Easter message to the world.

Matthew tells us that the women had gone to “look at the tomb” (Matthew 28:1). In the Greek in which Matthew originally wrote his gospel, the word he uses which is here translated as “to look,” is θεωρῆσαι (theoresai). It’s where we get our word, theory. 

When we’re confronted with tragedy, things we can’t comprehend, we want to have a theory of the case. 

That’s why some people ignore facts and are open to concocting or believing crazy conspiracy theories, as is happening today with the coronavirus pandemic. They want to make sense of an often senseless world. 

Grieved, their hopes that Jesus had been the Messiah, God the Son, seemingly dashed, the women go to the tomb to look, to theorize: Why did Jesus die? What will they do now? Jesus’ death makes no sense to them.

Then it happens. 

Verse 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. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men. The angel said to the women, ‘Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples: “He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.” Now I have told you.’” (Matthew 28:2-7) 

An earthquake, in this case, a convulsion of the cosmos as God intervenes to save the human race--to save you and me--from sin, from death, from futility, from separation from God--occurs on this first Easter Sunday just as one had occurred on Good Friday when Jesus drew the final breath of His earthly human life. 

On Good Friday, Matthew tells us, the earth shook, rocks split, and tombs broke open, allowing those who had trusted in the God Who had come into this world in Jesus, to walk free of death. 

When the earth quaked again on Easter Sunday morning, the women no longer needed a theory about why Jesus died. 

They knew why. 

Heaven revealed it to them, just as God reveals His truth to anyone humble enough and desperate enough to hear it. 

An angelic being, His appearance beaming with the brightness of God in His heaven, told them that Jesus was alive. 

He had died to save us. 

He died to be raised by the Father so that all who repent for their sin and trust in Jesus to save them, who become His disciples, will have the same resurrection victory gained by Jesus on the first Easter Sunday!

Jesus had earlier told the disciples that after He had died and risen, He would meet them back in Galilee. “After I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee,” He had told them. (Matthew 26:32) The angel now gives the two women at the tomb their mission; they are to go quickly and tell the eleven remaining apostles so that they could make their rendezvous with the resurrected Jesus. 

Without seeing the risen Jesus, the women believed that He had risen and they run off to do as the angel says, “afraid yet full of joy,” just as I felt in the office supplies stock room at Sears, just as I have felt countless times since: 

• when I’ve heard God’s Word, 
• when I’ve received the Sacrament, 
• when I’ve sat with faithful fellow believers in prayer and fellowship. 

Anyone to whom God has brought the gift of faith in Jesus knows what it means to be in the presence of Jesus, the crucified and risen God, and to be both afraid and full of joy. 

You know that You’re not worthy of the sacrifice of love Jesus made for you on the cross. You know your sin. 

But You know that His death and His empty tomb testify that, no matter your sin, God thinks that you are of infinite worth and value. 

That’s why Jesus died and rose for you. 

You know that by God’s grace through faith in Jesus, You are right with God for all eternity!

Soon after encountering the angel at the tomb, the faith of the women in Jesus and His resurrection is rewarded. Jesus meets them. “Greetings!” He says and the women, clasp His feet, offering Jesus the worship He deserves as God. 

Jesus tells them, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.” (Matthew 28:10)

Friends, on this Easter Sunday, 2020, when our world is reeling under the weight of a lethal disease that threatens all of us, the resurrected Jesus speaks these same words and others to us now: “Do not be afraid. I am with you always until the end of the age. I am going ahead of you to a place I am preparing for you for all eternity. There you will see me. There, your fears will be forever erased and your faith in Me will be forever rewarded. Go tell the world and make disciples!” 

Easter blows away all puny human theories about God, life, and death and replaces them with one, powerful, consoling truth: “Jesus is risen; risen indeed!” 

That’s news of joy worth sharing! 

Amen and amen!

[See here for information on the icon shown above.]