Word of Salvation – Vol. 21 No. 23 – March 1975
Easter
Sermon by Rev. C. W. Oppelaar, Th.Grad. on Luke 24:4a
Scripture reading: Luke 24:1-9
Psalter Hymnal: Opening hymn 356:1,2,3.;
After Nicene Creed 358:1,2,3,4,5;
After collection 361:1,2,3,4;
After prayer,
After sermon 360:1,2,3;
Doxology 310:1,2
“And it happened that while they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood near them in dazzling apparel.”
Beloved Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ,
You cannot celebrate when you are perplexed, uncertain, in doubt, muddled up, and confused.
Now, this is the strange thing, that Easter is a feast with a lot of perplexed people. Easter is the most important of all Christian feast-days. At least that is how it is in the New Testament. The Apostles often speak about the birth of Jesus, and about His death, His ascension and the out-pouring of the Holy Spirit.
BUT MOST OF ALL THEY SPEAK ABOUT THE RESURRECTION. What happened then… that is the most wonderful Feast. It is remarkable that exactly on Easter we meet so many perplexed people!
At Christmas too! Mary was perplexed when Gabriel in Nazareth came to tell her that she was to have a Baby.
And also on the Feast of Pentecost we read that when the people in Jerusalem heard the disciples speak, they were bewildered. All the great deeds of God make a person feel bewildered. But on Easter-morning it is very special, all that uncertainty. That you do not know what to think about it, or what to do about it.
For instance… where are the men on that first day of the week? The women are still doing something at least, but the men you hardly see. Where are they? Peter, John and all the others? Did they after the Sabbath take up their normal job again? Did they go fishing?
No, they sit at home, together, and do not know what to do. You can see that with those two travellers to Emmaus. They walk around with sombre faces. They say: “We don’t know, anymore. We don’t understand. We were so happy with Jesus – and now He is dead! Already three days!
And you can see it with Thomas: he too does not know anymore.
Yes, that perplexity on Easter morning is almost the same as desperation. With the women it is not much different. They cling to the fact that they must do something. In such circumstances that is still the best. And so they go to the tomb but with the same sombre thoughts, which the men have. They do not expect a resurrection. They seek a dead Jesus. THAT HE COULD BE ALIVE AGAIN, DOES NOT AT ALL ENTER INTO THEIR MINDS.
But what they see in the Garden of Joseph of Arimathea, when they arrive there, upsets them even more. First they notice that the stone has been rolled away.
How unusual, an open grave!!
And that a tomb, which was supposed to have been sealed and guarded! What does this mean?
And when they enter the tomb, then the Body of the Lord Jesus is gone! ANOTHER FRIGHT!!
Who has done that! A friend or an enemy? And so they are totally, greatly perplexed (the word has been translated in many ways).
This is certain: they did not know anymore. They were at their wits’ end. And to make sure about this frame of mind, we notice that their seeing of angels did not straight away change things either. No, when they return to the city they are still scared and not so very positive. And their message to the Apostles is not able to convince these men, they think that it is all women’s talk and nonsense.
The travellers to Emmaus, that afternoon are still full of doubt!
And Thomas one week later is still full of doubt! Easter-Feast looks like a Feast of a lot of people, who don’t know the way anymore! Anyhow, not a very good atmosphere for a Feast!
Congregation, how AMAZING THAT THEN, ON THAT DAY, IT BECAME A WONDERFUL FEAST! And yes, amazing, that also FOR US this can become a real Feast! Because we are in the same boat. We too are puzzled! Even about what those women saw.
Matthew and Mark say: they have seen one angel! And Luke, who after all made a thorough study of the facts, and John, who was also there, say that the women have seen two angels. Of course, all that can be explained and does not at all mean, necessarily, that here we have a contradiction. But anyhow, there are always questions which remain. And in our modern days the number of questions has rather become bigger than smaller. In the olden days they did not find it so strange, when people saw angels, and when they heard angels talk. Bu today, many people, and also many young people have so many questions that they are really perplexed.
Anyhow, what are angels? Why do we see no angels anymore? Are they perhaps products of the human brain? And of man’s pious phantasy? Did they really exist outside the thoughts and imagination of those nervous women? Our times are miserably full of uncertainties.
The good old days in which the believers – and the unbelievers, too – so easily said: “We know!” This is how it is!”
For many those times are gone! Scientifically we live amongst more puzzles than ever. Technology, almost perplexed, asks: “How do we have to go on?” And also amongst many disciples of the Lord Jesus today there is more uncertainty than 50 years ago!! And yet, you must not think that all this is only characteristic of our modern times. Our text can tell us differently about that. The whole Bible can show us where all that doubt and not knowing the way comes from.
Since Adam and Eve lost paradise – that paradise with its wonderful quiet certainty – well, since they lost that, this is how they lived: we do not know the way to the Tree of Life anymore.
We do not know the way anymore amongst the thorns and the pain of human life. In fact, there is no way anymore! What is the worst, there is no way anymore out of the misery of a life without God, which we human beings have wanted for ourselves. There is no way out of the constant stream of stupidities and mistakes, of guilty shortcomings and crimes. There is no way out of sickness and death.
What now has Easter been able to change in all that? And what kind of a real Feast shall Easter 1975 be able to become for us, congregation? Well, in our text it says: it happened. “It happened that while they were perplexed about this, behold…!”
THERE YOU HAVE IT.
The only reason why it can be a real Easter! While the people are in doubt and hesitate and are extremely down and sad, the Lord God makes sure that something happened!! And that is the glory of Easter – that God has made sure about that Feast, He has taken care of that one, great, overwhelming fact.
THAT JESUS HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE.
And that puts an end to all human desperation and perplexity. You see, those two words “it happened” are very important. These two words are real Bible words – it came to pass!
He who knows the language of the Old Testament a little bit, remembers that these words come back again and again. It happened. Behold, it came to pass. It came to pass that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus. It came to pass that He blessed them. It came to pass that He departed from them.
And so it goes, from the one fact of salvation to the other. That is the God of the Old Testament, the God Who is not a God of stagnation, or of vicious circles like the gods of the heathen, but Who is the Living God of History: the God Who promises and Who does, the God Who makes things happen: the God Who as He moves on, makes history.
And that is the beauty of Easter. The contrast of perplexed, bewildered and confused people and the acting God!! Nowhere is that contrast so complete as at Easter.
At Christmas God still uses people for His work:
A mother, giving birth to a Child;
A man, giving the Child a Name.
On Good Friday – terrible enough –
there are a lot of people, who make things happen.
On Ascension day again big new tasks for the people:
Go ye….. proclaim…… baptize…… teach…!
But nothing is so totally and exclusively God’s fact, God’s act, as the Easter-happening. Here God has no use for co-workers. Cannot even use spectators, onlookers. Here, very early on Sunday morning God has acted on His own. Without people!
Now God does the most central deed which He will do in all of history. God says: SINGLE HANDED I WILL RAISE MY SON FROM THE DEAD.
With My deed I will show that indeed it is all finished. That all the debt has been paid. And so the Lord takes the light-switch of the world and He switches it from darkness to light, from death to life.
The Lord so opens again the way to the Tree of Life, and the road to Eternal Life: behind Jesus we can, go to Heaven.
On Easter morning all closed roads and boarded up gates and doors are broken open!! For people who did not see a way out anymore! And it happened whilst they were perplexed! Oh, you cannot stop meditating on this majestic deed of the Lord. In their bewilderment people were fumbling around with spice. Do you know what those spices were for? To preserve a dead body. What a poor business, to try to push death back, just a little bit!!
Like in Egypt, where they mummified corpses. And like they embalmed Lenin’s body. But with one mighty act God pushes all these spices and that perplexity aside. And the Lord snatches the dead Jesus out of the abode of the dead and robs death of its prey. He conquers that death in which we would have had to suffer eternally!!
And it happened…!
Praise the Lord. Through Jesus Christ.
He makes the history of a perfect reconciliation and total salvation. Also for us, confused and uncertain people, it becomes a wonderful Feast now. Not a Feast on which people are glorified, but a Soli-Deo-Gloria-Feast.
A Feast for you and me. Through the faithfulness, patience and grace of God. Mary Magdalene, Peter and Thomas, the one a bit earlier and the other a bit later, but all begin to praise the Lord. Rabboeni. My Lord and my God!
The Lord is truly risen!!
And as a last eye witness there is Paul on the road to Damascus: “Death where is your sting? Thanks be to God Who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
And there I hear a voice from a distant past, the voice of old Job on his ash-heap. “I know that my Redeemer liveth.”
And also the voice of Adam when he says: “Woman, you are Eve, the mother of the Living.” And it becomes one huge jubilation of the Old Church and the New:
“Hallelujah, praise be to the Lamb, Who was slain and He lives!”
And in that jubilation all uncertainty and bewilderment disappears. We can still ask: How many women were there? And how many angels? And what are angels?
But what do these questions matter in the light of such a tremendous answer?
How it actually happened? That becomes totally unimportant against the background of this tremendous fact: GOD HAS RAISED JESUS FROM THE DEAD.
We have a living Lord Jesus Christ.
Let it be a tremendous Feast today: FOR JESUS IS TRULY RISEN.
Amen.