But! (Easter)

Today we're going to talk about three ways that the little word "but" carries the gospel of Easter. I'm going to need your help a little bit with audience participation today. So, when I do this and point to you, you are going to say "but." All right? Are you ready? Let's practice. Oh, that was wonderful. Let's do it one more time just so you have it down. Good, good, this is going to go well. All right, so the "buts" of Easter.

When you look at the Gospel of Luke, which we just read a few moments ago, you're going to notice that it is filled with "buts." In fact, if you get bored, go through your bulletin and circle all the "buts" that you see in that gospel reading. In fact, it even starts with the word... nice job! It's all about disrupting our expectations. And so Luke starts that on the first day of the week, at early dawn, the women went to the tomb. The women were taking spices that they had prepared. They were going to the tomb to continue to prepare the body of Jesus. It was a funeral errand; they expected to find a dead body of Jesus. They get to the tomb, and while the women expect to find the stone over the tomb, it's rolled away, and they expect to find the body of Jesus. What do they find? They find the stone rolled away and the tomb empty. And then they look around them and they see behind them, and there are angels. And the angels ask the women, "Why are you looking for the living among the dead? Christ is not here, alleluia! Christ is risen, hallelujah!"

I think we can pause here and think about ourselves a little bit. We expect that death always wins, don't we? I mean, death is just a part of life, it's what's normal to us. I always remind people at funerals, death is not natural, and they look at me funny, but it's true. We were not made to die; Jesus, God made us to live forever. But death certainly is normal, isn't it? In fact, it doesn't only end our stories; so often, death is our story. We see death all around us, and it takes our loved ones, and it takes our friends, it takes people in the world. And death has these tendrils, doesn't it, that extend into our lives? And we get sick, and we have aches and pains, and we have loneliness, and death tries to isolate us and choke us out of our life. Death seems to always win. Our stories are filled with death, and they finally end with death. And so, just like the women on Easter morning, they only expect death, and so do we. Nice job!

God disrupts our expectations. God intervenes with Easter, and Christ rises from the dead so that death is not the end of our story, so that death does not define our story. In fact, you heard these words from 1 Corinthians 15 just a few moments ago: "For as by one 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." 1 Friends, Easter means that the resurrection is not just the epilogue to our story; Easter means that we have a whole new prologue to our story. We have a whole new story that we are looking forward to. You and I will get to live forever. This is like just the title and the cover and the copyright page; we've got a whole story left. That's Easter. Christ is just the first fruits of what is to come, and you and I will follow because Easter rewrites our story of death.  

So the story continues right on that Easter morning. The women hear the good news from the angels. They hear that Christ is risen from the dead. And so what do the women do? They run back because they are going to be the first ones who get to tell of the Easter resurrection gospel. They're the, you could say it this way, they're like the first Christians. They're the first ones who knew about the resurrection of Jesus, and they get to go tell people. And so they run back because they get to tell the twelve apostles, and they expect that when they get there, they're going to share the good news, and they're going to be met with faith and joy and celebration, and maybe a really nice Easter lunch, right? Maybe you got the ham all prepared. It says, "These words of the women seemed to them, the apostles, to be an idle tale." Now, that's a really polite way of saying nonsense. The apostles thought that they were hallucinating, that they were full of it. You ever said like, "Yeah, right"? Can you give me like a really good "Yeah, right"? Oh, oh, sorry, say "Yeah, right." You guys are really like too good.

To the apostles, it didn't make sense. It didn't compute with their expectations. This idea of somebody rising from the dead, they were not expecting that. They did not know that. I mean, you and I as Christians, of course, we celebrate Easter because Jesus is risen from the dead, but that had never happened before. They were not expecting somebody to come back from the dead. It just wasn't part of the way that life worked. It didn't make sense, it didn't compute. It was too disruptive to the way that they thought to even be counted as real. And even if it did happen, the stakes would be too high. What would that mean? What would that mean for them? What would that mean about the world? What would it mean about their life? What would it mean about Jesus? Of course, they thought they were hallucinating; they couldn't make sense of it.

You know, just pausing in that story, I think that if we look at us, maybe we have sometimes the opposite problem, where the Easter resurrection just seems kind of normal, doesn't it? We're used to it. Oh yeah, we know the story. Yeah, Jesus died on the cross, and he rose from the dead, and it's great. We love Easter. We love the ham and all the cookies and candy and all the Easter eggs, and it's great, right? And maybe it just seems a little too normal, too familiar. And maybe, if sometimes we're honest, or at least to our world, it almost seems too powerful. And maybe unlike the disciples who thought the stakes would be too high if Jesus had in fact risen from the dead, for us, maybe the stakes are too low. We don't really see the impact. How does that affect me? Because I have to go to work tomorrow, right? What does it mean for tomorrow that Jesus rose from the dead? I think often our faith we consider to be just myth or moralism or maybe metaphor. Oh yeah, it's kind of nice that Jesus rose from the dead, and we kind of get to rise from the dead in our everyday life too. And maybe even worse, yeah, that's a nice Sunday idea, right? Jesus is a nice guy, and this whole resurrection thing, that just sounds so nice.

Friends, the stakes are high. For them, for the disciples, it might have been too big to believe. For us, it might be too little to matter. But friends, if Jesus is risen, that means the stakes are high, and this Easter thing can't just not matter. And so for the disciples who heard the first good news on Easter, it was too much to believe. There you go! All right, alleluia, Christ is risen! Hallelujah! And if he is not risen, then all Jesus is is a nice guy. And if Jesus is not risen, then sin and death, they still reign over us, and we certainly are not people of hope. And if Jesus is not risen, then you are a fool for being here this morning. There's no point. If Jesus is not risen, then we can all go home; we all get our Sunday mornings back. Friends, Jesus's resurrection means everything. Easter didn't just matter for Jesus; Easter matters also for you and for me. It matters for us.

What did the angels tell the women? That this is all going according to plan. If Jesus died on the cross, then you should have expected he would rise from the dead. Why? Because he said so. In fact, he said, "It is necessary, it is necessary that Jesus would die and rise." Then the angel said, "The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise." Friends, the reason why the resurrection matters, why you carry this into your Monday when you go to work at 9:00 a.m. tomorrow, the reason why it matters for your life is that Jesus is Lord. If he is dead, then he is certainly not Lord, but because Jesus is risen, you know that he is Lord, and because Jesus is risen, you know that his word is trustworthy. You can lean and depend on his word. Because Jesus is risen, you know that the cross worked; you know that you are forgiven of every single one of your sins. Because Jesus is risen, you know that your death will be undone. Because Jesus is risen, nothing matters more.

So the disciples didn't believe; the disciples are just thinking that the women are hallucinating, it's an idle tale. Peter ran to the tomb, and he saw the linen cloths by themselves, and he went home marveling at what had happened. I think this is incredible because Peter had not yet seen the risen Jesus. All he saw was an empty tomb, and all he saw was the stone rolled away, and all he saw were the linen cloths folded up by themselves lying there. Now Peter would get to see the risen Jesus later that day, but he is already marveling at what he saw because he sees evidence that the resurrection happened. He doesn't have the full story yet, but he sees the evidence. So, on the one hand, our faith is based on history; it's based on the fact that it is proven that Jesus actually did in his body rise from the dead, and then he walked around on the earth for 40 days after that. Jesus didn't just die and go to heaven; he walked around for 40 days, and he appeared to over 500 witnesses. Over 500 people saw the risen Jesus. So unless you believe in mass hallucinations, they saw the same Jesus with the same body that was nailed to the cross with the same holes in his hands, risen from the dead as if it never happened. Our faith is based on evidence and eyewitness testimony. So that's on the one hand.

On the other hand, Peter marvels on account of Jesus's word because Peter heard not just one time, not just two times, but three times that Jesus would die and rise again, and he heard that from Jesus's own lips. And so when Peter sees evidence of the resurrection, even before meeting the risen Jesus, the word is starting to work. Friends, Jesus wants you to believe in the resurrection, and he wants you to look at all the evidence for the resurrection, why it actually really did in real history happen. And Jesus wants you to look at the evidence, but he wants you to believe in the resurrection on the basis of his word. Why? And don't get me wrong, it's important to look at the evidence and know that our faith is a historical faith, but why does Jesus want you to believe on the basis of his word? Because his word gives more evidence than just the resurrection on Easter. Because Jesus's word connects the dots. Jesus's word connects the dots, and it tells you what the stakes are if he did and did not rise from the dead. It tells you what the impact on you is if he did and did not rise from the dead. It tells you what your hope is if he actually really did rise from the dead. Our faith isn't just that Jesus rose from the dead; it's that it matters to us, and you only understand why it matters if you believe the word of Jesus.

And that's why Peter starts to marvel because if Jesus really is risen from the dead, it's not just that he gets his friend back, it's that he has a Lord. It's that he knows that he is forgiven. It's because he knows that he has hope that he also will defeat death. Friends, Peter starts to get it, and he goes home from the empty tomb that morning believing that something new is up. Have you ever been somebody who thought that something was up? Maybe you're a parent, you're a mom, and you know something is up. You get it. Peter believes something new is up, something new is happening.

Friends, at the beginning of the service, we read from Isaiah chapter 65, right? It said, "For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, for the young man shall die 100 years old, and the sinner 100 years old shall be accursed." What Isaiah is getting at is that you and I are looking forward to this day when Jesus will come back, and he will remake everything. Everything will be new, a new heaven and a new earth come together as one. We like to call this the new creation. And our life will be so wonderful there, and eternal life will be so long that there won't be any death. Now, Isaiah, the way he describes it, is he says that the young man shall die 100 years old. Now there won't be death there, but he's saying that the young people, the babies, will be like 100 years old, and people consider it a curse if you were to die at 100. That's how long our lives will be. And so we look forward to that day when everything is made new.

It's already here. That's what Peter was suspecting; he knew something was up, that something new was happening. And what Jesus did is that he brought that early. The future is now, and Easter, the resurrection of Jesus, is just the first installment. The new heavens and the new earth are already upon us. The new creation has already started in Jesus. And dear Christian, dear friends, you get the benefits of that. You get the word of Jesus who not only tells you about Jesus but also tells you what Jesus thinks about you: that he calls you his own, that before God you have no sin, you have nothing to be ashamed of, that you have a new life. And that's something that you can take into your Monday. You also know that you have hope, that your eternal life has already started. You're not waiting for it to start; you're not even waiting for God to tell you if you'll go to heaven or not. You already know. And that's why it's already started for you, dear Christian friends.

Jesus gives you the benefits of his cross and resurrection in your baptism. You have been made a citizen of that world to come, the new heaven and the new earth. And by the way, if you're not baptized or your kid's not baptized, please come and talk to me after the service because I'd love to make that happen for you. And in this wonderful meal that we get to celebrate, Jesus gives us his true, actual body and blood, the same body and blood that was on the cross and the same body and blood that rose again from the dead, the same body and blood that walked out of the tomb. You get to feast on that. It's like the vitamin of eternal life; you get to chew on forgiveness. Friends, the resurrection, the new heavens and the new earth, the new creation has started already, right now, and you get to benefit in it. Friends, "but" is a beautiful word because that little word carries the whole gospel. They thought the story ended in death; Easter rewrites the story. They thought the resurrection was nonsense; Jesus really did rise from the dead, and it's all going according to plan. And friends, you and I may not have yet seen Jesus with our own eyes, his word gives us faith and his word gives us resurrection life right now. Jesus was dead; he is risen, alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! Amen.