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April 20, 2003
Easter Sunday
Mark 16:1-8
Pastor Robert Raasch

Gather Around an Empty Grave

1. Come with Heavy Hearts
2. See with Believing Eyes
3. Go with Trembling Lips

This morning I'd like to take a little survey. How many of you have ever visited a cemetery? Raise your hand if you have walked or driven through a place like Riverside or Highland Memorial Park. Now, I want you to keep your hand up if you went to the cemetery for the expressed purpose of seeing a hole in the ground. I don't mean a hole with a casket positioned over it. I mean just the hole. Keep your hand up if you went to cemetery to see an empty grave.

Just as I expected. Unless you maybe work in a cemetery, you've probably never in your life gone to see a grave with nothing in it. In fact, I expect that if you saw a group of people gathered around an empty grave, you'd think, "What, are those people nuts? What is that all about?" And if those people were praying and singing around that empty grave, you'd maybe be thinking, "Let's get out of here. This is too weird for me!"

And yet, if you think about it, isn't that kind of what we're doing today? What is Easter Sunday? Isn't it a day when Christians like you and me gather together, and with the eyes of faith, look at an empty grave? I mean, there's no body here. There's no casket on display. All that we have to look at-all that Mary and the disciples had to look at-is an empty grave. But is that so bad? Let's not let the fact that the world may look at us a little funny keep us from doing what Christians have been doing for centuries. Today on this Easter Sunday morning, let's:

Gather Around an Empty Grave

And, just as God did for those first women on Easter morning, so God invites us to:

1. Come with Heavy Hearts
2. See with Believing Eyes
3. Go with Trembling Lips

Just for a moment, imagine that you are walking with those women as they headed out to the tomb on that first Easter morning. What are you feeling? What emotions are you experiencing? Certainly you're feeling sad, right? You're grieving the loss of someone near and dear to you. You've got that lump in your throat and heaviness in your heart.

Maybe you're in a bit of shock, having trouble comprehending what all has transpired in the last few days. I mean, less than a week ago, Jesus was riding into town on wave of euphoria. The next think you know, he's bloody, beaten and hanging on a Roman cross. And now he's dead and gone. No more chances to sit and talk with him, listen to him, pour out your heart to him. In fact, maybe you're feeling some pangs of regret, thinking about all the things you could have/should have done for Jesus. But now it's too late.

About all you can do now is try and give Jesus a decent burial. You had seen Joseph of Arimathea hastily pour the spices over Jesus' body as he wrapped it in burial linens. But you know that to properly prepare a body for burial, you need to take that "aromata", that sweet smelling ointment, and rub it into the skin. So that's what you're preparing to do, preparing to unwrap the cold cadaver of your Savior, to look at the gaping wounds in his hands and side, fully expecting to never see those lips move or eyes sparkle again. Is it any wonder that as you walk toward the tomb you're trudging with a heavy heart?

And yet, maybe those women aren't the only ones who ever experienced those kinds of emotions. Maybe some of us have come today with a heavy heart as well. Maybe you're thinking about a family member who is far away, maybe no longer alive. Maybe you or someone close to you is struggling with a medical problem, an illness of some kind. Maybe there's a surgery looming on the horizon. You're not quite sure how you're going to handle it. It's weighing heavy on your heart and mind.

Or maybe, like those women, you're feeling a bit distracted by all the things you have today, or this week. You're having trouble concentrating on why you're really here because your mind keeps going back to all the things you didn't get done yet. You think about the goals you set for yourself but didn't meet. The promises you made, but didn't keep. You think about the angry words you spoke and wish you could take back or the sullen attitude you displayed that stole a little joy from you or your family.

Let's face it, as long as we live as sinful people in a sinful world, there are going to be times when we come to church with a heavy heart. Times when we are grieving, times when we feel like failures, times when we are burdened by sin and guilt. The question is, do those feelings mean that we don't belong here? Do they disqualify us from gathering around the grave? No rather, they compel us to gather around the grave. For you see, the very invitation which the angel offered to those women with heavy hearts, he still offers to you and me today. God invites the women and us to:
II. See with Believing Eyes

Listen to the words of the angel: "You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him." The most important word there, in the Greek, is just one word "Agerthe." It means, "He has risen!" The angel is announcing that Jesus is not dead. He is alive. He has risen from the grave. And yet notice, that the angel does not ask the women to simply take his word for it. Instead, he points to the evidence. He says, "See with your own eyes. See the burial clothes lying there. See, the head cloth lying neatly to the side. See that the body is gone. Jesus of Nazareth has come back to life, just as he promised.

Do you realize what that meant for those women? It meant that their heartfelt hope that Jesus was the promised Messiah was not in vain. It meant that, in addition to all the other miracles he had performed, Jesus pulled off the most outstanding miracle of all. He had kept what was arguable his most extraordinary promise, "Destroy this temple and I will raise it again in three days"(John 2:19). Jesus' resurrection had given a whole new meaning to Jesus' words, "Because I live, you also will live."

My friends, you realize, that the angel's words were not just directed to these women. He's speaking to you and me as well. God is directing our eyes of faith to that empty tomb. He's saying, "Look and see what isn't there. Jesus' body is gone!" And by pointing to that empty grave, God was giving us something to believe in, something to build our faith on. Or to put it another way, God doesn't ask us to simply have blind faith, to believe "whatever", to have faith in some kind of mystical, indefinable force or feeling. No rather, God gives us something concrete to believe in. He steps into our world. He takes on human flesh and is born a real person in a real place at a real time. Jesus is put to death by a real Roman governor-you can read about him in secular record books-a governor who tried to keep Jesus in the tomb by posting a guard and putting his seal on the tomb.

But what did God do? Early on that Easter Sunday morning, God ripped open the tomb and posted his own angelic guard. And then he invited people to look inside. Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, Salome, Peter, John and anyone else who cared to look. They all saw exactly what the angel said was true. "He is not here. He has risen. See the place where they laid him."

And then God took all those eyewitness accounts and put them with together with all the other people who saw Jesus, people who touched him and ate with him-and in that corroborated eyewitness testimony, God have us something to believe in. The bottom line is this: Your faith, dear Christians, is not built on wishful thinking. It's built on fact-historical fact. Jesus tomb was empty because Jesus Christ rose from the dead!

So what does that mean for your life and mine? First of all, it means that you can be absolutely sure that the payment which Jesus made for your sins on Good Friday was in fact accepted by your Heavenly Father on Easter Sunday. Isn't that a relief? Think about it a minute. Have you ever gotten your bank statement or credit care bill in the mail and thought to yourself, "Oh man, I wonder if I had enough money in my account to cover all those checks I wrote. Did my payment get there in time, or am I going to get nailed with a whole bunch of finance charges?" You peek inside and…whew! All the checks cleared. Everything is paid in full. What a relief!

Friends, in effect, isn't that what Easter means? Easter means that the unbearable debt of our sins has been paid in full. You're free and clear! And yet, not only does Jesus' resurrection give us relief from the guilt of our past. It also gives us a hope for the future. Remember, Scripture says that Jesus is the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. That means that Jesus was simply the first of many who will be raised to life again. Or to put it another way, because Jesus' grave is empty today, so also will our graves be empty some day as well. And not just ours, but also the graves of all those who "have fallen asleep in him," as St. Paul puts it. Christ's resurrection makes the bodily resurrection of Christians a sure thing.

Now, in light of all the wonderful things that Christ's resurrection means for us and all believers, one would think that these women would walk away totally filled with joy, right? But that's not what happens, is it? Mark tells us, "Trembling and bewildered, the woman went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid."

Now, how do you explain that reaction? Well, one more time, put yourself in their position. Imagine that you are down at Wichmann's Funeral Home. The visitation time for your loved one begins at 4:00 p.m. But because you're part of the immediate family, you meet at 3:30 so that you have a chance to view the body before the rest of the guests arrive. You step into the little room where the casket is positioned and instead of a funeral director, there stands a man dressed in white and he points to an empty casket and says, "If you're looking for your loved one who died, he's not here. He has risen! See the place where he was laid."

Now, I don't care how tough you are, if that would actually happen to you, as it did to those women, you'd have more than just your lips trembling. Your knees would be knocking. Your heart would be pounding. And even though what you heard from that angel's lips was a wonderful message (the announcement that your loved one was alive again), still when you come out of that room, I'll bet your eyes would be this wide, and you would be, in the words of St. Mark, "Trembling and bewildered."

And yet, even though that would be a very natural reaction to what those women saw and heard, still what does the angel say to them? He says, "Go, tell his disciples and Peter." The angel expects these women to use those very lips that were trembling in fear to announce the news that Jesus of Nazareth was alive and was going on ahead of them. My friends, isn't the same thing true for you and me today? As we look at the empty grave through the eyes of faith, as we think about what Christ's resurrection mean for our lives today, the assurance that our sins are forgiven, the sure hope of the resurrection of our bodies, the fact that by faith we too are alive with Christ-well, who can keep that message to himself?

All around us there are people who are walking around with heavy hearts, people who are carrying the burden of their sins, people who have doubts and fears about the future, people whose lives are in a rut, people who are acting like God is dead. In fact, some times those people are you and me.

What's the cure for such a spiritual malady? God offers the cure right here-in an empty grave. You know, it's no coincidence that Mount Olive offers a worship service on a Sunday morning each week. Every Sunday is a mini re-celebration of that very first Easter. Every week is another chance for us to, in a sense, gather around an empty tomb, to offer our prayers and thanks to God, to allow God to feed our faith through word and sacrament, another chance to assure us that because he is alive, so by faith are we. God grant that our gathering around the empty grave today is but the first of many such gatherings in the weeks ahead, for the joy it brings to our hearts, and also for the purpose it gives to our lives, in the name of our resurrected Savior and Lord. Amen.