Easter Day

The Chief Priests: A Lie Spread, the Truth Victorius

Matthew 28:11-15

The chief priests confront us with the one teaching that truly defines a Christian: What do you believe about the resurrection of Jesus, the Christ?  What one believes about the events of the first Easter is the test of faith.

3.

Paul seems to sum it all up: “And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. . . .  And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins” (1 Cor 15:14, 17).

Good Friday alone does not save.  The debt for sin was paid, but there was no victory.  It looks as though death still won.  What does the resurrection show?  It shows that God the Father accepted the life of Jesus for our sins. Without the resurrection, this Jesus was swallowed up by death, just like all the rest of humanity from the beginning of time.  Without the resurrection, believers who have already died will still be dead, just as we will be.  Without the resurrection, this world and our Christian life are without meaning.  Once you take eternity out of the picture, what point is there to this world at all? What difference does it make whether you are a saint or just plain evil, if there is no moral reckoning beyond this life? If this world is all there is, then we’d better say what the other children of this world say: “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.”  Right?  The resurrection is what gives all of life its meaning.  Without it, life is empty, hopeless, and pointless.

You can’t have it both ways: either Jesus rose from the dead, or he did not.  The various attempts to ride the fence—Jesus rose in spirit rather than body, and the variations on that theme—don’t deal with us as physical creatures and leave us unsatisfied.

2.

Nothing in this world’s past or present is of more importance, interest, or controversy than the Easter event.  Critics of Christianity have repeatedly attempted to discredit the resurrection. They have done so to protect their position, to deal with their fear of God, and to undermine the confidence of believers.

The lie of the chief priests in our text, which they told to protect their position, is only the first of many to cast doubt on the resurrection at the first Easter.  It is called the “stolen-body” theory: the disciples removed Jesus’ body so that they could hatch the myth of a risen Christ.

Other theories range from the crude to the elaborate.  They include theories about an angry gardener who wanted to keep people out of the garden and moved the body to an unmarked grave, the wrong tomb, the idea that Jesus did not really die on the cross, and that the whole thing was a hallucination. One of the most outlandish is that Jesus had a twin brother who remained in seclusion until Jesus’ death on the cross. Then he emerged, giving the impression of resurrection.

The danger of a lie is not that it will destroy the truth, but that the lie makes us uncertain and undermines our belief in the truth.  A lie told a million times will be believed as if it were the truth.

The various lies about the resurrection have one important point in common: they all set down as fact that the tomb was empty!  Strange! Would it not have been a much more effective attack against Christianity to prove that Jesus' body was never missing, but that it lay in Josephs’ sepulcher all the while?  Astonishingly, this argument has not been used, and for good reason: there is compelling evidence, outside the Gospel accounts, that Jesus’ tomb was indeed empty on Easter morning.

Let’s grant the argument of his enemies.  If Christ didn’t rise, suppose the disciples stole the body: where is he buried?  And you have another problem when you deny the resurrection.  Remember what the disciples did on Good Friday?  They talked tough before, but when the time came they all ran away in fear. If Christ didn’t rise, and the disciples all got together and decided to lie about it, what changed those eleven men into courageous witnesses of the resurrected Christ?  Would you be willing to die for a lie?  Beecause history suggests that all the disciples except one were martyred.  Do you see where this is going?  Something changed those people.  We know, of course, that the resurrection is the truth, but it would have been an awfully obvious lie.  If Jesus didn’t rise, and the disciples stole his body and hid it someplace, then they had to be pretty crazy to die for a lie that size.  They must have thought it would get them something, fame, power, anything.  But it didn’t.  It led directly to their own deaths.  Instead, Scripture says, “Take God’s Word for it,” and the reality is so obvious.  It transformed the lives of those men completely. The reality of the resurrection and the pouring out of the Spirit has changed us too.

The circumstantial evidence for the empty tomb is overpowering.  It deals with the question “Where did Christianity first begin?”  To this, the answer must be “Only one spot on earth: the city of Jerusalem.”  But this is the very last place it could have started if Jesus’ tomb had remained occupied, since anyone producing his body would have snuffed out the flame of an infant Christianity preaching his resurrection.  What happened in Jerusalem seven weeks after the first Easter could have taken place only if Jesus’ body were somehow missing from the tomb Joseph of Arimathea.  For otherwise, the temple establishment, in its confrontation with the apostles, would simply have ended the movement by making a brief trip over to the sepulcher and revealing its contents. They did not do this, however, because they knew the tomb was empty.  Their official explanation for it—that the disciples had stolen the body—was not just a lie, but also an admission that the tomb was indeed vacant.

1.

The chief priests spread a lie, but the truth of the resurrection cannot remain hidden!  Jesus Christ is alive!  We have a living Lord.  And because Christ lives, we can look with confidence to the future. Because he is risen, we have a future and a hope.  Because of Christ, there is meaning to our work and our lives.  We can face each day with the reality that we are not alone and never will be again.  All our days are changed.  All our feelings rest on the foundation of joy in the forgiveness of our sins.  All our behavior is motivated because he “was raised for our justification” (Rom 4:25).  Therefore,

We Live in the Reality of Easter as God’s People.

We worship him.  We are not afraid to say that we believe in the living Lord. Luther reminds us of Jesus’ ultimate goal in his explanation of the Creed, he “has redeemed me, a lost and condemned person, purchased and won me from all sins, from death and from the power of the devil; not with gold or silver, but with his holy, precious blood and with his innocent suffering and death.“  This is the life of Christ up through Good Friday.  This is the payment for my sins.  This is my redemption.  This is my salvation here and now.

But Jesus isn’t finished yet.  “That I may be his own and live under him in his kingdom and serve him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, just as he is risen from the dead, lives and reigns to all eternity.  This is most certainly true.”  God promised that the Son of David would reign on his throne forever. The resurrection ensures that Christ will do just that.  He doesn’t reign over an empty kingdom, but one filled with everyone who has been joined to his life.  We confess in the Creed as well, that we believe in the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.  To which Luther says, “On the Last Day he will raise me and all the dead, and give eternal life to me and all believers in Christ.  This is most certainly true.”   (Apostles’ Creed, Third Article).  We stand on the faith given to us, by which we are saved.  We give thanks for the resurrection, for our freedom from death and for the life he gives us in his kingdom, where he lives and reigns to all eternity.