Awakened in Christ
The Resurrection of our Lord
Mark 16:1-8 / 5 April 2015 – Redeemer
It was a nightmare for those women on their way to the tomb. Jesus was dead. Jesus had come into their lives of despair and oppression and given them hope and lifted them up. He had forgiven their sins and salved their shame with His love and respect. There was something about Jesus unlike any other man. He was, they imagined, like Adam, before sin came into the world, perfect in His love, courageous in their defense, unashamed of their presence with Him. He touched lepers and visited with prostitutes – Mary Magdalene included. He sat with the drunks at the East Side bar and always stopped for the homeless guy with a sign. Never afraid, never lacking compassion, walking through the mess of this world unhindered by fear, uncowered by threats, unyielding when it came to the truth. He had these women as his disciples, unheard of for any respectable rabbi. It was almost as if He believed male and female were created in the image of God and that women needed His saving work as much as men.
So while He walked and worked and taught among them, these women held out hope. But now hope was gone because He was dead. The dream of really living had turned into the nightmare of dying, for not even Jesus, their Savior, their true man, had escaped.
It had been a restless Sabbath for the women, even though it was their day of rest. They had barely seen Jesus’ body put in the tomb before they had to make it quickly home. Then, at the first hint of light, on the day after the Sabbath (Sunday by our reckoning), they set out to deal with their nightmare by preparing His body for burial. Maybe it would give them closure.
What’s your nightmare? Each of you has one. Pain that doesn’t go away? A family torn apart by hurt or shame or sin? A terminal disease? Fear of suffering? No one to love you? Being used by someone who pretended to care for you? Behind it all is the fear that all of life is hopeless. That all of life is in the end one big cemetery. It all ends at Northstar or Calvary Hill or Trinity?
Do you know how it is when you’re deep in a nightmare and your alarm clock begins to go off? Somewhere, far off in the distance of your dream, this strange noise begins. It breaks through the darkness and pulls you out of whatever disaster you are in, until groggily you open your eyes and realize, thanks be to God, the nightmare wasn’t real, and then you smack the snooze button in the hope of catching that elusive 5 more minutes of sleep.
The women on their way to the tomb are about to be awakened from their greatest nightmare. They may have heard the earthquake that happened earlier and as they came to the tomb their eyes began to open. The massive stone, that had blocked the tomb, that had given them nightmares, that even troubled their conversation on the way, had been rolled away.
As the sun rose in the sky, the women went through the darkened doorway to the tomb. But it wasn’t dark inside. There was no death inside. There was no body to anoint. The only thing they found inside was life – a living being, a young man in white, an angel of God. The sound of life was creeping into their nightmare of death. They were about to be awakened to life.
“Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him.”
That sermon, first preached by a young man in white, still preached by God’s men today, is your wake-up call. Like those women it might be hard to believe — like waking up out of nightmare that seems so real and finally breathing a sigh of relief that it isn’t. It took the Marys and Salome some time to speak the words they had been given by angel. Mary Magdalene spoke as soon as she had laid her eyes on Jesus and grabbed hold of His very alive body.
It isn’t easy to wake up to faith in Jesus’ resurrection as the answer to your nightmares. Let’s face it, most of us like to imagine a god of our own design, a god after our own heart. We like to be spiritual, but not religious. A god I make up myself is a safe god. He doesn’t require me to go church. He doesn’t have any commandments that I don’t like. Our manufactured gods let us do what we want. Jesus, on the other hand is not a god you can control and He isn’t very practical. The resurrected Jesus calls on us to repent of our sins (that’s not very fun – you mean He actually wants me to resist sin and He gets to decide what is sin). It get’s worse. Jesus calls on us to believe in Him alone (which might mean putting the other loves of my life in their proper place.) And finally Jesus doesn’t appeal to Americans. He doesn’t have any big selling points for us consumers. What’s in it for us? “Whoever would come after me let him take up his cross and follow me.” Now there’s a marketing plan that will get people standing in line all night to buy some Jesus stock. Not.
We like to dream up our own gods, creating them to be practical and pleasing and safe. But none of your “homemade gods” will free you. Not one will take the hit for you. Not one will say, “Let me take the worst thing you have ever done or the worst thing you fear” and let me take it away.” But Jesus does all of that.
The Son of God, born of the Virgin Mary, was named Jesus, because He would save you from you sins. He came into this world to take the sins of the prostitute and the preacher. He came to suffer what the abuser and the alcoholic deserve. He came to take the place of every victim of every sin. Jesus Christ died for sinners and you qualify. On the cross He took your sin under His Father’s anger, into hell’s demands, down into death’s mouth. And with the shedding of His blood and the offering of His body and the giving up of His Spirit, He finished off your sin. “It is finished.” Done. Dead. Buried. Gone — or as we say in the church, “Forgiven.”
The womens nightmare ended in the cemetery. Let me tell you something about that word “cemetery.” It’s a Christian word (don’t tell the government – we might not be free to use that word anymore.) It comes from the Greek Word “coemeterium.” from which we get a couple of English words – dormitory and cemetery. You know what a dormitory is – that’s where college students go dormant for three or four hours a night and then awaken to get on with their studies. Cemetery means “resting place.” Christians established cemeteries based on the central belief of Christianity – Jesus Christ died for our sins and rose again for our justification. When your sin is forgiven (and it is – it is finished) death has lost its hold on you. Cemeteries are resting places for our bodies. Because of Jesus’ death on the cross, your nightmare of sin, and suffering, and shame, and hopelessness is over. Death isn’t the end for us. Because we are forgiven our bodies will rise to live forever. The cemetery is just a sleeping place for Christians.
Those women left the tomb still waking up to the truth that “Jesus isn’t here. He is risen as He said.” Jesus was that perfect man for them and for you. He also is true God, as He claimed. Not practical. Not controllable. Not marketable, but real and alive, the only true God. Jesus has been awakened from His death. He is risen. Now His Word calls you out of your nightmare into real life – the only life, life lived in the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Life in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Pr. Bruce Timm
4 April 2015 anno Domini