Luke 24:1-12
The Resurrection of our Lord | 20 April 2025 | Luke 24:1-12 | David M. Wendel |
Luke 24:1-12 (English Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles)
But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. 2 And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3 but when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. 4 While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel. 5 And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? 6 He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you,while he was still in Galilee, 7 that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.” 8 And they remembered his words, 9 and returning from the tomb they told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest.10 Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles, 11 but these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. 12 But Peter rose and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; and he went home marveling at what had happened.
“Be Glad and Rejoice Forever!”
Some 700 years before Christ, the prophet Isaiah was speaking good news from the Lord God about what was to come, as we hear in our first reading! As the people of Israel yearned for renewal and restoration, the prophecies of Isaiah were thought, by them, to have culminated in the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the Temple, after years of exile. But Isaiah was not speaking about renewal and restoration for Israel only, but for all of humanity, as he spoke the word of the Lord God, promising that there would come a time when He, the Lord, would create new heavens and a new earth and the former things—humanity’s sin and brokenness, would not be remembered or come to mind. And what would that new creation be like? There would only be joy and gladness. There would be no weeping or distress. No more would there be the grief of babies who die too soon, or people who die before their time. People shall not labor in vain or bear children only to have them die in tragic circumstances—for all will be children of the blessed of the Lord, and their descendants after them. And get this—the Lord God will answer our prayers, even before we pray them; the wolf and the lamb will lie down together. In other words, no one will be at odds, we won’t hate each other or abuse each other or have enemies, as is the case today, with the wolf and the lamb! “So,” the Lord God says, through the prophet, “be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create; for behold, I create Jerusalem to be a joy, and her people to be a gladness.”
That—sounds almost too good to be true! For those of us who live in this world of suffering, pain, division and death, it’s hard to believe in this restoration and renewal, foretold through the prophet. And yet, not harder than believing in a resurrection. Not more difficult to believe, than that a man who was crucified, buried, in the tomb three days, could come back to life—and not just restored to earthly life for a time, but raised to live, forever. How are we to believe such a promise? How are we to grasp, honestly, that Jesus, who was crucified, is risen? It’s just not, believable.
The women went to the tomb on Sunday morning to properly anoint the body of Jesus, after the Sabbath had passed. And seeing the empty tomb and the two angels standing by, still the women were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground. They didn’t know what to think, and in the fullness of the biblical witness, we know that first, the empty tomb didn’t mean a resurrection, but a missing body—as if someone had taken Jesus’ body away for some nefarious purpose. But the angels say, “Remember how he told you,while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.” And they did remember Him saying that, so they ran and told the eleven and the others, but they didn’t believe the women, as it seemed to them “an idle tale.” Think about that. It seemed to the disciples an idle tale. It seemed to them a fairytale, a tall-tale, not believable. They didn’t believe the women. In spite of the women’s testimony; in spite of the empty tomb, they couldn’t believe that Jesus, who was dead, was risen from death. And to this day, there are those who deny the reality of the physical, bodily resurrection of Jesus.
From the enlightenment on, our human, rational, reasonable human minds have tried to explain away the literal, factual resurrection. When scholars tried to “de-mythologize” the Bible, they claimed that given we are now in what they called, “the scientific age,” the traditional understanding of Jesus’ physical resurrection, are obviously “outdated.” They asserted that there can be no contradiction of scientific realities, meaning there could be no literal, physical resurrection. A dead person, any dead person, cannot come back to life. So, they said, the biblical witness to Jesus’ resurrection must mean something spiritual, or symbolic or metaphorical, as in, the followers of Jesus kept Him alive, in their memory, in their conscious retelling of His teachings and His sayings and His love and His mercy. In this way, these scholars claimed, Jesus is alive again and lives in our hearts and minds, even as we keep our deceased loved ones alive, in our memory of them.
Luther spoke of such disbelief, even in the 1500’s, well before the enlightenment and rationalism, writing,
This article of the resurrection of our Lord, has suffered and still suffers the most opposition and is the most difficult to believe…because nothing so contradicts experience as this does. For our eyes see that all the world is swept away by death and dies. Emperors and kings, high and low, young and old, and in a word, all the children of men, one after the other are laid in the grave and buried. Hence it is difficult to believe that man, who dies and perishes, is to live again–that his body, reduced to dust and ashes in fire, water and soil, are to be gathered again–and that his soul is again to live in the same body in which it lived before, and that he is to have the same eyes, ears, hands and feet, except that the body, together with its members, is to have a different manner of existence. That,“ says Dr. Luther, „is difficult to believe.“ (What Luther Says; A Practical In-Home Anthology for the Active Christian, Concordia: St. Louis, 1959, p. 1217)
Are we so locked into, so bound in our thinking and believing, by science, rationalism and reason that we can’t believe in the resurrection? Are we so convinced that death is the end, that God’s power is limited, that God hasn’t created, angels and miracles, that God couldn’t become human in the first place and then be resurrected on the third day after death? How sad, tragic, really, if this is all there is, and we can’t foresee or believe in the new heavens and new earth that God promised, through Isaiah. How sad and tragic if this life is all there is. St. Paul says, “If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.”
“But,” Paul continues, “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.”
Pope Benedict XVI, one of the most faithful biblical scholars of our time, believed firmly in the actual, factual resurrection, as he said,
The Resurrection accounts certainly speak of something outside our world of experience. They speak of something new, something unprecedented—a new dimension of reality that is revealed. What already exists is not called into question. Rather we are told that there is a further dimension, beyond what was previously known. Does that contradict science? Can there really only ever be what there has always been? Can there not be something new? If there really is a God, is he not able to create a new dimension of human existence, a new dimension of reality altogether? Is not creation actually waiting for this last and highest, (what might be called), an evolutionary leap, for the union of the finite with the infinite, for the union of man and God, for the conquest of death? (Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth; Holy Week from the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection, pp. 272-277)
To believe in the resurrection as a factual reality, first one believes there really is a God, then one believes that this God is able to create a new dimension of human existence, a new reality altogether, in which Christ crucified, is alive, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, He is breaking into our world and our everyday lives, creating new heavens and a new earth. And not only off in the distant future, but now, as He is present in His powerful, life-changing Word, and as He is incarnate, enfleshed, physically, bodily, in the Sacrament of His Body and Blood, in His Holy Supper. So that as Christ was and is, both divine and human, He is now with us, “uniting the finite with the infinite; uniting man and God” that as Christ conquered death, as Christ was the first fruit of those who are resurrected, we too, will join Him in His resurrection, together with all who belong to Him, as death is destroyed once and for all, as in Christ, all shall be made alive!
So, today, this Easter Sunday, we do not hear the good news of the Resurrection as an idle tale. We do not dismiss the words of the angels because they don’t line up with our rational, reasonable mindset. We do pray, “Lord, we believe; help thou our unbelief!” Our prayer is, “Lord God, give us the vision to be able to wrap our minds around the new reality that you have created for us, revealed to us, in and through Christ’s death and resurrection.” We pray, “Lord, give us eyes of faith to see and to experience the new thing you are doing in each of our lives, as we now dwell in a new dimension, a spiritual dimension, full of life and hope and joy—forever—because–Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!”
In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
©David M. Wendel
Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church
Westerville, Ohio USA