Pastor
Steve Geiger Easter Sunday
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Luke
24:1-12
1
On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the
spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. 2 They found the stone rolled
away from the tomb, 3 but when they entered, they did not find the body of the
Lord Jesus. 4 While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes
that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. 5 In their fright the women
bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do
you look for the living among the dead? 6 He is not here; he has risen!
Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: 7 ‘The Son of
Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the
third day be raised again.’” 8 Then they remembered his words.
9
When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and
to all the others. 10 It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James,
and the others with them who told this to the apostles. 11 But they did not
believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense. 12 Peter,
however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen
lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened.
Remember
His Words Luke
24:1-12
1.
Death disorients
2.
Life restores calm
My
college German teacher was convinced.
Absolutely convinced. Absolutely
convinced that summer vacation was about the worst thing that could happen to a
language student.
Nine
months we’d spend learning vocabulary, grammar, reading skills. Then enemies would arrive: the enemies named
June, July, August. Students returned
to the classroom in the fall, and after the first quiz, the teacher would
repeat yet again that he was convinced that during the summer we had hidden
ourselves away in a closet, found a vacuum cleaner, put the hose to our ear,
and sucked from our brains every bit of German knowledge gained the previous
year.
Forgotten. Gone.
Memory loss. It has its
down-sides, in the study of a foreign language.
Memory
loss. Summer vacation is not its only
cause. Old age. Being too busy. Experiencing a disaster.
When
something goes wrong in life, we can live a sort of tunnel vision, focusing on
that and forgetting everything else.
Someone at school calls you a bad name.
You come home crying, sure that this is your end. Your life is ruined. Disaster . . . but you’ve forgotten all
those who love you; you forget everything else. A heart attack. The wife
of the victim, distraught and terrified.
Her husband on a hospital bed.
She, standing outside in the waiting room, wondering. For hours.
Forgetting . . . to eat.
A
death. The death of one they had
thought could beat anything. They had
known him to raise the dead, give sight to the blind, bring fish to a net, and calm
a storm. But for the last twenty-four
hours, the only pictures flashing through minds were of insults and hammer
blows, darkness and the eerie quiet of a life disappeared—a shell hanging from
a cross, a motionless rag; on nails, limp; lowered by two men . . . bendable,
wrapped, rushed, covered. They covered
his face. A stone. Death.
Death
disoriented a group of ladies. So that
when the night of Friday, and the daylight of Saturday, and the darkness of a
Sunday morning were now coming to an end, they did something that made no
sense. Spinning heads and traumatized
hearts came up with this idea, planned already in the hours after “It is
finished,” a plan of spices. They were
going to carry spices as the sun had barely greeted the Sunday sky . . . they
were going to carry spices to wrap up the body of an alive man. How were they going to catch him? How were they going to wrap him? Why spices for the living? How many of you would have a funeral
director drive his hearse to your home and fill with preservatives on a table
in a morgue your veins, when you’re still living?
Unthinkable. Unthinkable, the plan of these ladies.
But
we have sympathy for them, because we understand how death disorients. Memory loss.
Forgetting
to eat. Forgetting God’s promises.
Some
of you have stood at the tomb of one loved dearly. The sun may have shined.
Bitter winds may have blown. A
flower may have moved from casket cover to your lap, or dirt may have scattered
from between your fingers onto the casket.
Dust to dust. In a moment your
life feels finished. A voice, a laugh,
a life you so leaned on, is broken, no more.
Why? What next? Who will take care of me? Who will do the taxes? Who will sleep in her bed? Why should I go on living?
These
questions not strange, testing the minds even of me, of you. Questions, yet you wonder why such doubts
and fears come to mind at that moment, when God remains in heaven and our
Savior is with us always and the wages of my sin is death and the gift of God
is eternal life for me, but at that moment there seems nothing more natural
than terror and tears uncontrollable, groans and despair unstoppable.
Though
it takes not simply the greatest, the most painful, the loss of one loved,
death. Even smaller tastes of death disorient. Bring some strange memory loss, so that we
forget God’s words. War. Unfortunately in our society you can get two
very different pictures of what’s happening on other sides of our world. Sure, there’s military challenge, but many
see it as expected and under control.
Others present it as poorly planned and destined for failure. Here we are, listening. Tempted either to tremble, this the
beginning of the end. Or to get just so
frustrated, the true story not being told.
Either trouble far away or trouble within our own nation’s media
arms. Either way, why isn’t God making
it right? So the bad guys don’t get the
good press. So that justice prevails in
every respect. Fear. Frustration.
But
where is the calm? Perhaps a bit of
forgetting that conflict and bad guys, war and deceit are yet to come . . .
“wars and rumors of war, but see to it that you are not alarmed; such things
must happen . . . and then the end will come” (Matthew 24:6,14). Such calm from the mouth of Jesus, but in
this moment nothing seems more natural than trembling and concern.
Forgetfulness. We forget Jesus’ words. It takes not simply the greatest, most
painful loss, death. Perhaps family
troubles. Someone on the inside turns
against you. With such patient persistence
you have looked to love and care for someone dear. They reject your love.
More important, they are rejecting the truth of God’s word. No time.
No interest. No desire to bring
into the open the sin they are ashamed of.
So far it seems that they are winning.
You, the victim. You, one
losing. Tempted to give up. To say you don’t care. To wash your hands of the problem. Or to question whether honoring the Lord is
worth it for you either. Why not join
the family member who’s rebelling? God
isn’t doing anything for me anyway.
Family
troubles . . . but Jesus: “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn ‘a man against his
father, a daughter against her mother, . . . a man’s enemies will be the
members of his own household.’ Anyone
who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Matthew
10:35-36). Such awareness by Jesus that
when a member of the family doesn’t love Jesus, trouble will result, a
temptation for you to give up on Jesus too . . . such calm by one who knows,
helping you be prepared, knowing that you can trust him; yet in those moments
nothing seems more natural than anger and frustration and turning on the Lord
himself.
Forgetfulness. In troubles so quickly the mind does
forget. In national turmoil, family
turmoil, and in those personal turmoils too—poor health, job uncertainty,
school disappointment, relationship failure.
Troubles of every flavor, such good reason to worry and fear the future. Though again, the Lord Jesus: “In this world
you will have trouble. But take
heart! I have overcome the world,” yet
in such moments nothing seems more natural than nervousness and bitterness.
Forgetfulness. The ladies were carrying spices for a man
who was living, and not because he hadn’t died. It’s not that we don’t have personal turmoil, family trouble,
national challenge, and even death.
It’s just that all those reasons are not cause for worry or giving up, fear
or feeling alone . . . or walking to a tomb on the third day with hearts burdened
by sorry and arms weighed down by unnecessary sweet smells.
How
odd it must look to the Lord. When he’s
told us of the trouble and he’s told us of his victory yet still we walk
through life with hearts weighed heavy by spices for the dead. There is a part of God that would be fully
justified in leaving us in sorrow. No
angels had to show up. It’s not that he
hasn’t tried to bring the truth to our eyes.
Yet we close our eyes. Feel
right in forgetting, sorrowing. How
fair for God to stop talking, to stop showing himself as our Savior, to keep
the angels up in heaven and to think in his mind, “Should they seem not to
care, in their sorrow and sin I will leave them” . . . and with a tear in his
eye watch us blindly head for fires.
But
his love doesn’t seem to have such an end.
For the ladies. Even today. He keeps reminding us of the truth.
Ladies. The spices.
God sends angels. And how
patient. First, a gentle, round-about
spice question. “Why do you look for
the living among the dead?” Spices. And in their minds, “But we weren’t looking
for the living.” But they were. They just didn’t know it. Because they were looking for Jesus. He was alive!
So
much loved their God. But they had
forgotten something their God had said.
In
troubles, in death, in crisis, in struggle, you would so love to find your
God. Oh, you look. But are you looking for the dead when your
God is living? Are you assuming that
he’s losing when in fact he’s winning?
Are you assuming he’d be found in a tomb when in reality he’s ruling
over all, is with you, is in heaven?
If,
in the middle of challenge, you look for a loser, you will not find that. Isn’t that great! Isn’t it a good thing that those ladies never found exactly what
they were looking for. That there was
no place to use their spices. That
there is no purpose for your worries and your fears.
You’re
looking for God. But he’s not what you
think he is. He is not here. He has risen. Remember how he told you.
That in this world you will have trouble. Son will turn against father.
Wars and rumors of war. The
wages of sin is death.
But
“the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:23). “The end will come” (Matthew 24:14) “Whoever loses his life for my sake will
find it” (Matthew 10:37). “Take heart,
for I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).
And “the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be
crucified and on the third day be raised again” (Luke 24:7).
Then
they remembered.
Why
are we carrying these spices?
Why
are you carrying fear, of any sort? Why
hand fulls of guilt, of any sort?
Death, sin’s wages, has been suffered in your place. The Son of Man, made sin for you. In him, you are the righteousness of God (2
Corinthians 5:21). Perfect. Guaranteed. Raised to life.
Spices
on a day of resurrection? Drop them!
I
don’t know what they did with them. No
doubt they finally set them down. They
did remember.
His
words. Of suffering to be
expected. Of victory most certain.
What
joy. For your heart. For your heart in those moments of early
morning walks to tombs. Such moments
likely lie still in your future—troubles, family struggles, national turmoil,
even death.
But
as you walk, don’t look for the dead.
Imagine not that God has lost.
Carry not the heavy burden of spices for a corpse.
Walk
after tragedy expecting to find the living one . . . handed over and crucified,
but on the third day, resurrection. In
life troubles and sorrow, but on your third day, a victorious God who lives to
this day, who has promised you a most glorious end. Outside the grave of Lazarus, “He who lives and believes in me
will never die . . . I am the resurrection and your life” (John 11:25-26)
That’s
what he said.
This
Easter, no vacuum cleaner to the ear.
This
Easter, remember Jesus’ words.
Amen.