The Easter sermon preached in the North Peace parish 2024.


You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. -Mark 16:6

Everything Christians believe rests on our faith that Jesus, fully the Son of God, fully the promised King of David’s line, in human flesh suffered, was slain, and rose again from the dead. This is the mighty victory and joy we have gathered here to revel in today.

We can trust our hope to be true. For forty days he was among them. Cleopas’s wife saw Jesus die. Cleopas walked with a stranger along the Emmaus road and shared his grief of Jesus’s death. The stranger opened the scriptures to prove that the Messiah who was promised must suffer and die for the sins of God’s people and as the stranger spoke Cleopas’s heart burned within him. As evening came the stranger broke bread, poured the wine, and gave thanks and all who were with Cleopas recognized that it was Jesus. In the garden angels appeared to Mary Magdalene saying that Jesus was not there but that he was risen from the dead, and Jesus appeared later to her and to Peter and John. In the upper room Jesus appeared to them and breathed upon them his peace. Thomas would not believe he protested until he put his fingers through the holes in Jesus’s hands and the wound in his side. Jesus appeared again in the upper room and Thomas believed. When the apostles returned to fishing the Risen Lord met them and told them again to cast the net on the other side, he cooked breakfast for them, and he reconciled with Peter who had denied him three times. He taught them how his death and resurrection was the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets for forty days and nights. And he told them to wait for power from on high that they may share the good news about the coming of the King in Jerusalem, in Samaria, and unto the ends of the earth. They would be given power to baptize those who would believe and make them disciples in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Jesus commanded. And he at last ascended into heaven. Trust friends that Jesus rose from the dead.

He did not appear as a ghost or a spirit. He ate, cooked, touched, breathed. He who had been crucified the lamb who was slain. In Jesus’s resurrection from the dead the curse of death was undone. Humanity had become victorious over the grave which is the curse of sin. Jesus was as the apostles would go on to tell us the first fruits of them that fall asleep. For just as in Adam’s sin all die, in Jesus’s righteous sacrifice all are made alive. You will be raised again from the dead, and if you are in Christ you will be raised to everlasting life in him and with him. Jesus wants his people to be sure that he rose again. May it be our comfort and joy.

What do we celebrate today? Paul in Colossians puts it this way: That God made those who believe alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. The accusations of the devil, the oppression of tyrants, the pomp of the world was all shown as empty when Christ left for them only an empty tomb.

St. Peter puts our joy another way: Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! Because in his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,  and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last days.

We have been hearing of tthe covenants through Lent. God promised Noah, that though our sin is utterly sinful and detestable to God he would never again flood the whole earth in his wrath to wipe it out. His wrath was satisfied in the perfect sacrifice of Jesus upon the cross instead. God promised Abraham that he would make of them a great nation set apart for him that he would be their God, that they would be his people who lived by faith and through them every family of the earth would be blessed. Here a Son of Abraham blesses every family of the earth in preparing a way of reconciliation with God for all people and commissions his apostles to gather a harvest of the faithful from every tribe and language and people and nation. God delivered Israel from slavery in Egypt and taught them his law to school them in his holiness. Moses told them they could not keep it but God would come among them after they failed and circumcise their hearts that they with the nations might praise the Lord. Jesus is God come among them, he perfectly kept the law. All of us are saved by works of righteousness, just not our works. In the resurrection a new birth is offered with circumcised hearts. When David said he would build God a house, God made a covenant with David and promised that a son of his would be called the Son of God, that he would suffer to atone for sin, but God would love him with an everlasting love and establish his throne forever.

Behold the King has come. Behold he has suffered to atone for our sins. See that God has been faithful to his promises and loved him with an everlasting love, a love that the raging of the nations and the grave could not sever, a love that causes the earth to shake and cough up her dead. He is not a fiction now he reigns, seated at the right hand of the Father, his work accomplished, he intercedes for Christians now and is bringing all his enemies under his feet even as we suffer for a little while.

So let us rejoice and be glad. Let us have a feast worthy of the name, Let us sing hymns and spiritual songs heartily to him who has made us able to praise him. Let us remember his sacrifice in bread and wine. Let us laugh and embrace and love our brothers and sisters who were lost but now are found. Let us not be dogs returning to our old vomit again, but ask for the Spirit’s power to cast off sin, the world, the flesh and the devil that we might be ready for the return of our King. Today is Easter, as every Sunday is a little Easter. Let us cry Allelujah, praise the Lord for he has paid our ransom, he has destroyed the shroud of sin and death under which we laid, he has opened the gates of heaven of those who would trust and follow him. Let us celebrate and feast heartily.

You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. -Mark 16:6