Beyond The Cross: The Empty Tomb Matthew 28:1-10 (Easter Worship Celebration)
How many of you received
an Easter Basket this morning? If not
this morning, how many of you have ever received an Easter Basket? How many of you like getting or giving Easter
Baskets or other “Easter gifts”? I can
hear some of your thoughts now, “Is the preacher really talking about Easter
Baskets in our Easter morning sermon?”
The answer to that question is, “Yes I am.” I will admit though, that there is a great
deal of disagreement between Christians as to the appropriateness of Easter gifts. Some see Easter gifts, Easter egg hunts, and
the sort as simply harmless fun for the children. Others see the giving of Easter gifts and the
emphasis on bunnies, chicks, and flowers as participating in the pagan rituals
of fertility seeking to ensure that the pagan gods will give blessings upon
spring plantings and new life. Some of
those same arguments are made about Christmas and its celebration with trees
and stockings and Santa. What we often
forget, though, is that while Christmas and Easter are Christian
celebrations—their dating, Christmas on December 25th and Easter, on
its ever-changing date based on the first new moon after the spring equinox,
were both attempts of the church to Christianize pagan celebrations already in
existence. The church, in what some see
as wisdom, though others would criticize, saw celebrations already taking place
at those times and decided to co-op them and suggest a different reason to
celebrate…a true reason to celebrate…the birth of our Savior and, later, His Resurrection. Are Easter Baskets and gifts acceptable for
Christians? Well, in a sense, they are
just as acceptable as Christmas gifts if they are offered not in celebration of
a bunny but in celebration and in honor of the Lamb—the greatest gift ever given
by the giver of every true and perfect gift.[i]
God has always given good
and perfect gifts. The previous six
weeks we have been considering the gifts of God we find at the cross: the spit,
the nails, the crown of thorns, the sign, the path, Simon’s shoulder, the
thieves’ crosses, the tunic, the torn flesh, the wine soaked sponge, the hyssop
branch, the blood and water, and the cross itself. Yet, God’s gifts in Jesus didn’t begin at the
cross…they began at the manger. The gift
of the manger…the gift of the birth of Jesus…is God saying, “I have come to
live among you. I have come to dwell
with you. You are not alone.” And, just as God’s gifts in Jesus didn’t
begin at the cross, they didn’t end at the cross as well. To truly see all of God’s gifts, we have to
move beyond the cross to the empty tomb we celebrate today.
Early in Matthew, in the
second chapter, in fact, we see the wise men bring the perfect three gifts of
gold, frankincense, and myrrh—marking Jesus as King, Priest, and Martyr. In the empty tomb, we see God completing his
perfect trinity of gifts marking Jesus as Emmanuel, Savior, and the Firstborn
from the Dead[ii],
the Resurrected One.
Any one of these gifts
without the other would be meaningless.
Without the gift of the manger, there would be no Jesus to endure the
cross and come from the tomb. Without
the gift of the cross, we would still be enslaved to sin, forever marked by our
inability to escape its grasp, and we would have had a teacher, who went push
came to shove, abandoned what he had taught.
Last year at Christmas we
had a set of wrapped gifts in the middle of the floor. We took turns opening that set of gifts. The first thing that was opened was a set of
game controllers. We were like, “Okay,
but they won’t work on our Wii.” Then
Joshua opened another package and it was filled with Disney Infinity figures
and games. He was confused. Pretty nice gifts, but we had no way to use
them. Nice on their own, but at this
point they were pretty much useless. It
was only when the third gift was open that it revealed the WiiU game system
that made the first two gifts meaningful and useful.
So it is with God’s
gifts. It is the final gift…the gift of
the empty tomb…that gives significance to the other gifts. Without the empty tomb Jesus is nothing more
than a baby who was born, grew into a man, lived, and was put to death for
taking a stand against the hypocrisy of the religious elite. Without the empty tomb, Jesus was nothing
more than a martyr who died for what he believed in, but whose promises of life
everlasting were but hollow noise.
Without the empty tomb, as Paul would put it, we are wasting our time
here:
Now I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good
news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you
stand, through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the
message that I proclaimed to you—unless you have come to believe in vain. For I
handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that
Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures…Now if Christ is
proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no
resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ
has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation
has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. We are even found to be
misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ—whom he
did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are
not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised,
your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have
died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we
are of all people most to be pitied.[iii]
However, Paul says, we
have not wasted our time, for “in fact Christ has been raised from the dead,
the first fruits of those who have died.”[iv] It is with this final gift that everything
else makes sense. It is with this final
gift that we finally come to understand the significance of the manger…that
Jesus was not just another baby born to an unwed mother in a small rural
town. It is in this final gift that we
understand the significance of the cross…that we are freed from our sins and
can now truly live. It is in this final
gift that all of what Jesus has done and said has been validated by the God who
sent Him to save us. It is in the gift
of the empty tomb that brings us to celebrate today and gives reason why some
exchange Christmas gifts…it is the gift of the empty tomb that gives reason to
why some will give Easter baskets…for after all, today is not about the bunny…
it is about the Lamb…the Lamb that was slain…and the Lamb that now lives
forevermore.
In the Name of the Father
and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Comments
Post a Comment