Trasformed at the Tomb

Jesu Juva

Matthew 28:1-10                                                 

April 5, 2026

The Resurrection of Our Lord-A

 Dear saints of our Savior~

        Alleluia!  Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

        That Easter greeting never gets old.  It’s one of my pleasures as a pastor to lead that refrain every Easter.  I’ve really missed those alleluias.  It’s like we’ve been holding in a big sneeze for six weeks.  Finally, today, we get to let loose, loud and proud.

        Jesus has done it.  He was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification (Rom. 4:25).  As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive (1 Cor. 15:22).  When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory (Col. 3:4).  What comfort this sweet sentence gives: I know that my Redeemer lives!

        But on a day dominated by joyful alleluias and resurrection celebration, it’s worth remembering that Easter begins in the cemetery—with a trip to the tomb.  Matthew tells us that two Marys made their way to the grave early that morning.

        Most of us have walked that road before.  We’ve made our way to the cemetery to lay to rest the earthly remains of our loved ones.  Dust to dust.  Ashes to ashes.  Those trips to the cemetery are always painful and profound.  Flowers and plastic green astroturf cannot hide the truth about life in this fallen world:  The wages of sin is death.  I remember being in the cemetery to bury my dad in 1986, the burial of my in-laws, and the burials of numerous saints of our Savior who now rest from their labors.  We remember them all with fondness.  But we always feel cheated by death.  The cemetery always screams:  You lose!

        That’s surely how it was for the women who went to the tomb of Jesus.  So many hopes and dreams were now dashed to pieces.  Jesus had cared deeply for these women.  He cared about that wreck of a woman—Mary Magdalene—cleaned her up and delivered her from misery.  Jesus had made these women precious with His love.  Their sin and guilt had melted away as Jesus accepted them and forgave them.  But now this Jesus was crucified, dead, and buried.

        But that trip to the tomb quickly took a turn that no one saw coming!  Behold, there was a great earthquake.  Now, we hear “earthquake” and immediate think of tectonic plates and fault lines.  But this Easter earthquake is not natural; it’s supernatural—just like the tremor on Good Friday had been.  These shakings and quakings were real.  Richter scales were rumbling.  These two quakes go together, but not as in shock and aftershock.  Calvary earthquake and Easter earthquake show us that the death of Jesus and the resurrection of Jesus are inseparably connected.  These events together form the divine hinge on which hangs all of human history.

        You’ve probably heard how geologists think they can still detect vibrations from when the universe was first created.  I don’t know about that.  I don’t know much about geology.  Theology is my forte.  But I think this old world might still shaking from that Easter earthquake.  I think there’s a divine fault line that runs from the tomb of Jesus, through time and space to every hallowed resting place on planet earth.  And I’m here to tell you it’s just a matter time before the “big one” hits, and the dead are raised, and the life of the world to come commences.

        In fact, if you look and listen through the eyes and ears of faith, there are Easter aftershocks that rattle beneath our feet—right here, on every first day of the week, when the risen Christ comes to wake up and raise up all who have been deadened by sin and guilt.  The ground beneath our feet is shaking and quaking in every splash of Holy Baptism.  Easter aftershocks reverberate here as the Words and wounds of the Risen Christ are preached and proclaimed—and as the Risen Christ descends from heaven to earth with His body and blood, for His saints who wait in expectation.

        That there might be no doubt about what’s going on, God sent an Easter angel to set the whole world straight.  But this is no ordinary angel.  As bright as lightning.  White as snow.  Strong enough to roll the stone away and sit on it.  Look at that angel!  Casually camped out on that stony slab of death.  That angel’s got attitude!

        And notice now who’s more dead than alive!  The elite guards that Pilate and the Chief Priests and Pharisees had assigned to keep that tomb sealed tighter than Fort Knox—those guards became like dead men!  They were so scared, they played “dead.”  The paralysis of rigor mortis took those soldiers completely out of commission. 

        See how people are transformed at the tomb of Jesus.  Those guards were at the tomb only because they were unlucky enough to be assigned to work the third shift that Saturday night.  They likely came to the tomb full of anger and unbelief.  They appear in the Easter account only from a sense of duty.  Yet they who were most alive become like dead men.  They became the corpses at the tomb.

        Beloved in the Lord, don’t become a corpse this Easter.  Don’t be deadened by unbelief.  Don’t come to this Easter out of a sense of duty or routine or tradition.  Don’t trust in your own strength or skill or dedication to duty.  Do that, and you’ll end up more dead than alive.  Try to do Easter on your terms, and sin will have its way with you.

        But step into the sparkling dawn of Easter like the women did.  Come to Easter with a heart of love for Jesus, who loved you first—and who gave Himself for you.  Come with faith—faith that Jesus can transform your tears and sorrow—faith that Jesus has made you precious by His love.  Come with open ears to hear and believe the news that has transformed this old world for good:  Be not afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified.  He is not here, for He has risen, as He said. 

        Death has done its damndest and failed.  Death has been defeated by Jesus.  The crucified corpse of Jesus went into the tomb.  But death could not hold Him. The  Lord’s tomb was temporary.  And so it will be with your tomb.  So, join the angel sitting on the stone.  Be not afraid.  Take a load off.  Sit a spell.  Rest and relax in the joy of Jesus’ resurrection.     

        That Easter angel reminds us that Jesus rose from the dead—Just as He said.  It’s a reminder to remember what everybody else seemed to forget:  Jesus predicted His resurrection—that He would rise again on the third day.  But nobody remembered those words—or worse, nobody believed them.

        We have the same problem.  We don’t remember the words of Jesus.  On our best days, we don’t give those words the attention and respect and reverence they deserve.  And on our worst days, we simply don’t believe what Jesus has promised.  Beloved in the Lord, your transformation at the tomb won’t be complete until you stake everything—on every Word—that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord.  Because let’s face it—if Jesus got His own resurrection right—if He is risen indeed, just as He said—then there’s nothing Jesus says that you can’t believe.  You can trust Him in your living and in your dying.

        With a mix of fear and joy the women take their leave of the angel, only to be met by Jesus Himself.  “Greetings,” says Jesus.  That sounds a bit stiff in English.  That’s because modern translations fail to capture the deeper meaning of what Jesus actually said.  A richer translation might be: Be ye glad, or, simply, Rejoice! 

        And so, my friends, on this Easter day, do what Jesus says:  Be ye glad!  Rejoice!  Go and tell!  For like those lowly women, the love of Jesus has made you precious.  In Jesus, your sin is paid for.  In Jesus, you will live forever.  At His greeting, the women bent their knees and knelt down in worship, and took a hold of Jesus.  That’s the same posture we assume as we worship Jesus at this altar, taking hold of His true body and blood, for the forgiveness of Jesus.  Like those women, you have been transformed.  Easter changes everything. 

        The Lamb who was slain has begun His reign.  Alleluia! Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

 

The Sun Also Rises

Jesu Juva

St. John 19:30                                                      

April 3, 2026

Good Friday                 

 Dear saints of our Savior~

        The day is almost over.  We have come to the setting of the sun, and we look to the evening light.  Many people enjoy these evening hours.  They find the setting sun to be inspiring—maybe even a little romantic.  The kaleidoscope of colors splashed across the sky brings out the artist in all of us.  At other times, though, the sunset simply signals that another day is done and completed—it is finished.  But most of the time, we pay no attention to this daily occurrence.  The sun sets.  The sun rises.  So what?  We’ve seen it thousands of times.

        But Adam had not seen it—not on his very first day of life in God’s good creation.  Can you imagine what it must have been like for the first man on the first day of his existence?  As Adam scampered through the garden of Eden, discovering all the marvels God had created, the glorious sun had warmed Adam’s skin and illuminated all the wonders of the sinless, sparkling world.

        But there’s some ancient speculation concerning Adam’s first sunset.  Adam didn’t ooh and ahh over that first setting of the sun.  He instead became overwhelmed with fear because he assumed that the beloved sun was going away for good.  To him, that virgin sunset was not poetic, pretty, or even routine; it was terrifying.  All through the black hours of that night Adam wept as if he had seen the sun lowered into a distant grave, never to rise again.  Only when the eastern sky began to blush with the first blue hues of dawn did Adam grasp what you and I have always known:  The sun also rises.

        Now, Adam’s first encounter with the darkness is simply the stuff of legend; but even this legend contains a kernel of truth about human loss.  For I suspect that many of us know the horror Adam felt at his first sunset.  You know what it’s like when your own “sun” vanishes, and your life descends into darkness.  When you stand in the cemetery to bury a loved one—when illness ravages your body or your mind—when you are mired in the shame, regret, and guilt of your own sordid sin.  In times like those, the light goes out and your life is swallowed by shadow.  And it seems like the darkness will never disperse.

        As you try and steer through those dark times, there is some comfort in the assurance that your “sun” will rise again—that it’s always darkest before the dawn—that loss and gain, like sunrise and sunset, are just a pattern for life in this world.  One season following another, laden with happiness and tears.

But when the sun disappears in your life, the very best comfort is found in remembering that day when the sun—the real sun—the star at the center of our universe—did, in fact, disappear:  Good Friday.  On this holy day, as Jesus hung from His cross, the sun failed.  The light went out.  Darkness covered the face of the earth in the middle of the afternoon (not unlike the plague of darkness that preceded Israel’s exodus from Egypt).  And this Tenebrae service—by design—calls to mind the darkness of those hours. 

Of course, the darkness is a minor detail of Good Friday. The darkness draws us into a deeper truth.  The darkness of Good Friday ultimately shows that you never dwell in the darkness alone.  There’s Someone by your side who has survived the deepest darkness.  Jesus was born into this world in the cold and in the dark, unwelcomed by the world He came to save.  He knelt in darkness on the night before His execution, wrestling with the thought of His impending death, feeling such weight and pressure that His sweat became as drops of blood.  He hung suspended in an unearthly darkness for three hours, impaled on a Roman tool of torture, forsaken by friends—and even by His Father—until He spoke His final word:  It is finished.

When you are surrounded by the darkness and shame of your sin, you need to know that Jesus has joined you in that darkness.  And, even better, Jesus has done something about it.  It is finished.  The darkness of our sin is banished.  With this final word Jesus announces the fulfillment of all that He was sent to do for us and for our salvation.  It is finished.  Completed.  Perfected.  Mission accomplished.  No loose ends for us to tie up, no missing pieces for us to puzzle over, nothing to be added, subtracted, multiplied or divided.  It is finished.  The redemption price is paid in full.  The world’s sin—including yours—is atoned for.  The Law of God has been fulfilled.  The wrath of God has been appeased.  There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Rom. 8:1).  It is finished.

As surely as this day will end and the sun will set, Jesus’ saving work on your behalf is done.  You can’t add to it by the good you do.  You can’t undo it by the evil you do.  You can only believe it . . . and receive it.  For it is finished.  Yes, Jesus is draped in darkness.  But this scene is not scary.  This is no cause for sadness.  This is love!  This is how we know what love is:  Jesus Christ laid down His life for us (1 John 3:16).  He is with you.  He is for you. 

In the darkness you are not alone.  Jesus is a God who knows darkness firsthand.  From the night of His birth until the day of His death, He felt its cold chill.  He is the One beside you during your lightless hours.  You may not always feel Him there.  There may even be times when you do not want Him there.  But there He is and there He will abide; for you are baptized—baptized into Christ—baptized into His death and resurrection.

When Jesus died His disciples must have felt like Adam at his first sunset.  They must have grieved and mourned in fear.  It must have terrified them that their Friend, who called Himself the Light of the World, was dead and gone, buried in the darkness of the tomb.  But the sun also rises. At sunrise on the third day broke the light of life.  The Son that died did also rise.  In Jesus, even the darkness of the grave is no more permanent than the darkness of this night.  The body that dies in Christ will also rise again.  Because Jesus’ saving work is finished, your life will never be finished.  You will live and reign with Him—in an eternal life with no more darkness, only light, only love, forevermore.  It is finished. 

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.