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Everywhere--Graves Empty. Hallelujah!

Today is not just about what happened 2000 years ago! Today is about what is happening today in your lives...your New lives...your eternal lives!!! Everywhere Graves Empty!

"Christ, our Paschal Lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore, celebrate the Festival....with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth." [epistle]

Let us keep the Festival. The Feast of Pascha (passover). Today's reality is that the destroyer has passed us by. Death has not stopped at the threshold of our souls, our spirits. The Blood of Jesus has saved us! The most damage it can do is to mar up our bodies--and that only temporary. Christ's BODY arose.... and that makes all the difference. The night of wailing has come to an end. You are wakened to the bright new sun--the only begotten Son. Only the Easter Light banishes darkness. "When I awake, I am still with Thee. Hallelujah." The stench of rotting death has been dispersed by the wind of the Spirit. The victory aroma of God's Sacrifice has now mingled with the incense of Easter Lillies--new Life! We begin our Feast of Redemption this blessed morning by feasting on His inspired Words.

Two central ideas of this morning's Easter Gospel are #1) Jesus' own resurrection! You have to believe it! Jesus is Risen! Or, in the words of Saint Job: "I KNOW mv Redeemer Lives..." The perfect obedience of Jesus in keeping the Law (and in giving you the credit) had to be completed. Jesus did! The death of God on the Tree of the Cross had to be completed to pay for your trespasses. Jesus was that Lamb of God! It is finished! But even though the crucifixion forgave you all your sins.......total remission without Rebirth, without Life... would only mean that in the end there would be for you annihilation rather than hell. The sacrifice was acceptable to the Father but there was more. As Luther reminds us in the Catechism, "where there is forgiveness of sins, there is also Life and Salvation." By raising Himself from the dead, Our Lord is prooving, is showing to His hand-picked witnesses, that the Atonement worked! That the Fast is ended! That He is, Who He said He was: the Great "I AM." That Jesus is Lord; GOD. He is to be trusted, to be believed in, that all His words are worth believing.... His words which Job, and Paul, and Mark wrote out with their own hands. Which brings us to our second central point #2) Jesus is here! Now! Still Alive. Still enfleshed & incarnate. Still giving and serving.

If He's not here now, FOR YOU! Then what good did it do you, that He came to Life again two millenia ago? If He's not here now, FOR YOU, with His Resurrected BODY, then how do you really know you'll ever have a resurrected body at the end of time? By Him being here!.. .He brings to you the "payoff;" the fruit of His victory--the pledge of His Word--to be eaten and drunk! This is the FEAST of your Redemption after all..... not the science lecture of your redemption!

Saint Mark's brief, terse, account of this cosmic altering event is to the point. "The Sabbath was over" Indeed. No more "rest" in the earth for the Christ. His work is over; His rest is over too. He sanctified (made holy) the tombs for all of you. He has forever hallowed the caskets and the ground into which believers are temporarily laid. Jesus Himself, His Body and Blood is now the Sabbath! We don't worship on the Sabbath, Saturday, we Worship on His Day of Victory. Death is evil. The word evil spelled backwards is Live. The Christ has reversed the curse of Adam. He Lives!. Everywhere... Graves empty!

Three faithful women witness to the empty tomb! Three witnesses (Magadalene, Mary and Salome) bespeaking the unsearchable love of the Holy Trinity itelf.

The ladies came in obedience and love--wonderful virtues to possess (talked about incessantly by Reformed and Romanist in our own day)... but they came not in faith. They proceeded to the grave thinking it was a grave. They brought sweet spices to annoint a dead body. It would be the Gospel which would give them a sweet balm to take back with them. For now, Christ's LIVE Body makes other dead bodies alive everlasting... by annointing them with Water and The Word in the Sacrament of Holy Baptism.

You're here today, Sunday, the first day of the week because that's when IT HAPPENED... The trio of women arrived at the grave early on the 8th day (ie: the day after the sabbath, the 7th). This 8th day, Sunday, is also the first day of the week... it symbolizes the eternal 8th day of our life in heaven. That's a life you have, all the beginnings of, right now.......because you believe that JESUS IS HERE right now, FOR YOU.

What do they encounter? It's all or nothing you know. Life and resurrection are like pregnancy... you either are or you are not. You are either dead or you are alive. It's either stone & sepluchre or SALVATION!

Death is vanquished. Death has been swallowed up in victory. The hill-side hole gives way to the liberating expanse of the Lord's restored kingdom of light and life.

The three know this because the stone had been rolled away. Christ has rolled that huge crushing, suffocating, blocking stone off of you! The imposing, imprisoning twin tablets of the deadly and killing LAW has been ripped off satan's prison house and flung aside (much like Samson tearing off the gates of the heathen philistine garrison village).

The "young man" (the angel) sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment...he points to your new status--the status of the believing thief on the cross, the one also on the Lord's right side--for you are seated at the right hand of Jesus to recieve His blessings and His gifts. You will be placed on His right side at the final judgment, a token of His own special status of reigning with the Father at God's own Right Hand. You are blessed white sheep clothed in the long white garment, the wedding garment of your big brother Jesus.

You believe it! You believe that His life, His law keeping, His Passion and Death on Calvary, His quickening on Easter morn all happened! You believe it as fact, as history, as real. But not because you saw it; not because you saw & heard the angel, but because these witnesses, the women, the apostles, the evangelist St. Mark have confessed this Easter Creed. He was crucified, but HE IS RISEN is the Gospel message of the angel. "But go your way..." he tells the women Fellow saints, go your way! Go as freed prisoners, exit into the fresh bright garden of His church. The three were told to "tell His disciples and Peter..." That's a like description of your life. You tell, tell, tell. Yours is not the responsiblity of converting, of making; yours is the joy of telling good news!

"He goeth before you into Galilee (ie: He goes to your homes, your country, the place where you gather, the places where He taught and healed--He goes to you) there you shall see Him." Galilee not the Temple is where He is to be seen, to be received. Today, April 11,2004, is that day! Today is Galilee .... The Church, The Altar, The Font, The Pulpit is Galilee! I mean right here, right now, this is where you shall see Him.

So let us keep the Festival--the Feast. Remembering is Good. Keeping the Fesitval is even better. To hear the good news while eating the Good News is the best. Every day of your lives you are to celebrate Easter because Christ is our Paschal Lamb always and without interruption.

Daily kill the old adam by contrition and repentence; "purge out therefore the old leaven...the leaven of malice and wickedness..." Daily eat the True Paschal Lamb by Faith. Daily rise to a new life by His power... "the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth" When you eat His Body and drink His Blood, you don't just remember Easter and Christ... you share in Easter and Christ. The Word of Life; the Water of Life; the Medicine of Immortality.

What does Easter mean for you? It means what it meant for Martha of Bethany when Jesus met her on His way to the tomb where Lazarus had been laid: "I am the resurrection and the Life; he who believes in Me, though he dies, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die." Everywhere graves empty!

What does Easter mean for you? It means what it meant for the Apostle Paul, who when near his own execution could write: "For me to live is Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the Life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself for me." Everywhere graves empty!

In Jesus... .you are both Lambs and Victors, for Christ Himself was both Lamb and Conqueror! You share His crown of Victory and so you are also destined to fight the good fight!

Easter is as alive for you as your very Baptisms. "Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death? Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism into death; that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of The Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life." [Rom 6.3-4]

Many preachers strive, unnecessarily so, to make their sermons "relevant," applicable, filled with some real-hands-on illustrations. All they need to do is to Preach Easter. He is Risen. He is here: FOR YOU. Your sins are forgiven. Death is Abolished. "You shall not die, but live and declare the works of the Lord." You want some hands-on application? Come to the altar for real Passover Feast. "Christ our Paschal Lamb has been sacrificed, let us therefore celebrate the Festival..." Look for the Resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Eat, Drink.......... Everywhere Graves Empty. Hallelujah!