Easter: Real Reason for Celebrating
Celebrating Easter for what it actually is brings the greatest joy imaginable
[This is an Easter sermon. Congregations without pastors, time-crunched pastors, Bible study leaders, and individuals may use it as you wish. Easter is this coming Sunday, April 20.]
It seems that much of the world celebrates Easter. Every year, stores ply their Easter food, Easter candies, Easter eggs, Easter cards, and even Easter wardrobes. None of this has much to do with Easter itself, of course.
In the meantime, in churches around the world, pastors and worship leaders tell their congregations, “Christ is risen!” and congregations respond, “He is risen, indeed!”
But I wonder if even we Christians have a clear handle on what it means to celebrate Easter for what it is.
Easter, along with Good Friday which precedes it, is the most important event in history. Do we celebrate it as though that were true?
In a sermon preached thirty-five years ago, the late Lutheran pastor and novelist, Bo Giertz, talked about three things that make a happy Easter, that is, an Easter in which we truly celebrate the day for the eternity-changing event it is.
I want to point to those three things as we consider today’s Gospel lesson in which Luke the evangelist tells us what happened on the first Easter, the day when Jesus Christ, truly God and truly human, rose from the dead.
The first element of celebrating Easter for what it truly is, Giertz says, is remembering again that Jesus rising from death was “unexpected and unbelievable.”
You and I may know–you and I may even be–people who have, medically speaking, been brought back from the dead. We’ve all thrilled at accounts of people’s NDEs, near-death experiences. But none of us know–and none of us are–people who, like Jesus, were dead and buried on a Friday, laid lifeless in a tomb on a Saturday, and raised to life again on a Sunday. It’s not within our normal experience.
When the women–Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and others–went to Jesus’ tomb early on Easter Sunday morning, they had no expectation of learning that Jesus had risen from the dead.
Jesus had said many times during His ministry that, as the Old Testament prophesied of God’s Messiah, He was going to die, then rise again. But it was hard for the first disciples to believe that such a thing could happen.
It’s harder still to believe that a person who dies and rises, sinless Himself, would do it not for Himself, but for others, you and me, and for every other sinful human being.
As the women gazed into the empty tomb on that first Easter Sunday, two men–angels, messengers of God–say, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: ‘The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified, and on the third day be raised again.’ ” (Luke 24:5-7)
It’s now, when the Word of God the Son, Jesus, is preached to them, that they remember and begin to have faith. (Luke 24:8) That’s the power of God’s Word. It can create faith where there has been unbelief.
We shouldn’t be hard on the women for not “getting it” at first, for needing to be reminded of Jesus’ promises.
We have the same problem.
We confess our faith in Jesus during worship on Sunday mornings and as soon as the service is ended, we’re accosted by our own sinful impulses, by temptation and adversity, and, worst of all by unbelief.
Martin Luther spoke for us all when he wrote, “We need to hear the Gospel every day because we forget it every day.”
And if it’s hard for believers like Mary Magdalene and you and me to remember that Jesus has risen from the dead for the whole cosmos, we should have compassion and patience for all the unbelievers in the world who find it hard to believe in Jesus conquering sin, death, and futility through His resurrection.
A few years ago, I read an interesting book, The Reason I Believe. It’s a book of Christian apologetics. Christian apologetics seeks to explain the empirical bases for believing in God and the crucified and risen Jesus, God the Son.
When I was an atheist, it was partly from reading or hearing Christian apologetics, as in Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis and Who Moved the Stone by Frank Morison, that my mind was opened to the possibility of faith in Christ. Christians need to know how to lovingly and respectfully respond to the skepticism and unbelief many feel about faith in Christ. But apologetics will not cause people to believe in Jesus.
A man I know used to say, “I accept the fact that Jesus rose from the dead. Why do I need to follow Him?”
It’s only the Word of God, shared with compassion, respect, and patience by many Christians, that will create faith in the risen Jesus Christ. That’s how I came to believe in Jesus and in Easter.
The Bible tells us that “faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ…” (Romans 10:17) It’s the Word about Jesus, and the Word alone, that creates faith in Christ and the outrageous good news that, “Jesus Christ is risen from the dead!” Christians need to learn to speak it to all the world.
The second element in celebrating Easter for what it is, Giertz says, is to remember that “the Resurrection is a fact, a unique fact.”
As to its facticity, we have more documentation of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, closer to the events themselves, than we do for many of the most prominent figures of ancient history.
And it isn't just ancient documentation that underscores the truth of Jesus' resurrection. Israeli theologian and historian Pinchas Lapide, an orthodox Jew, did not become a Christian and claimed that Jesus was only the Messiah for Gentiles, yet concluded, "I accept the resurrection of Easter Sunday not as an invention of the community of disciples, but as a historical event." Based on the facts and Jesus' track record, Lapide also concluded that Jesus would return to this world at the end of history.
Jesus' resurrection is also a unique fact. We may be inspired by the words and actions of human beings in history or by the beauty of the universe God created, but only Jesus, risen and living, can forgive our sins, cover us with His grace, make us new, and give us life with God to be enjoyed even now in this imperfect world and one day to be enjoyed in the perfect peace of eternity when we live in His direct presence.
Only Jesus can say, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.” (John 11:25-26)
The third thing that lets us truly celebrate Easter is that “Jesus’ resurrection has decisive consequences for us all.”
Jesus’ resurrection was the beginning of the transformation God is going to bring to all who belong to Him. Jesus’ Easter victory over sin and death–our sin and death–shows us that when He returns to this creation at the end of its life, the old heavens and the old earth will pass away and the new heavens and new earth will come into being. It will be a new creation that is free of sin, death, and futility.
The risen Jesus Himself shows us what this new creation will be like for those who believe in Him.
For the most part, on that first Easter, Jesus’ disciples failed to recognize Him in His risen form. He seemed like just another man. But He was different. Jesus was like Himself, but different, new. He still bore the scars of His crucifixion and, like any other human being when hungry, asked for something to eat. But He also walked past walls into locked rooms. He was unbound by space or time.
When Jesus raises believers in Him from the dead, we will no longer be bound by the constraints of this universe, nor by sin, death, or unbelief.
The Bible says that believers in Jesus already are children of God and that while “what we will be has not yet been made known…[we do] know that when Christ appears [that is, when He returns], we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” (1 John 3:2)
This is the greatest and most amazing consequence of Easter: Because Jesus died and rose for us, all who believe in Him, we will one day be like the risen Jesus.
Today, Jesus is with us through His Word, the Sacraments, and the Church. On the day when He returns to this world, He will call us from death and raise us to live in God’s presence in, as The Small Catechism puts it, “righteousness and purity forever.”
Friends, we can celebrate Easter with joy because, on Easter, God did something unexpected and, from a human perspective, unbelievable, the Resurrection of Jesus, in which we can only believe by the power of God’s Word.
We can also celebrate Easter with joy because Jesus’ resurrection is an accomplished fact, attested to by more than five hundred practical, hard-headed, less than perfect, self-centered people, Jesus’ first followers who, despite their imperfections, risked and, often, without anything to be gained in this world and much to be lost, gave their lives to pass on the good news that they had seen and witnessed, that Jesus Christ, truly God and truly human, actually died and actually rose from the dead to give forgiveness and eternity to all who believe in Him.
We can also celebrate Easter with joy because Easter has consequences for all who believe, consequences that will last for all eternity. Even as He faced the cross, Jesus could exalt over the eternal consequences of His crucifixion and resurrection for all who believe. As He told God the Father in prayer, “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand.” (John 10:28)
We have good reason to truly celebrate Easter, folks. Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Amen
Thank you! Great message. Happy Easter you too!