Sermon Prepared for Messiah Lutheran Church

Easter, 9:00 a.m. service – 4/15/01

by Gregory S. Kaurin

Associate Pastor for Spiritual Care and Development

 

Text: Luke 24:1-12

 

On the Third Day Everything Changes

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On the Third Day everything changes.  I got a kick out of the “Family Circus” comic strip this past Friday.  Here, we see Dolly explaining Good Friday to Jeffy and little P.J.  She says, “Today is Good Friday, tomorrow is Better Saturday, and the next day is Best Sunday!”

This Third Day, this Best Sunday, has come around 1,971 times!  There have been 1,971 years of Easter celebration (give or take a year) after that first “Most-Bestest” Sunday when Jesus rose from the dead. 

 

Because of that Sunday, that Third Day, everything changes.  Jesus’ death and resurrection forever 1. changed the world, 2. it changed God, and 3. it changes us.

 

I.                                Jesus’ death and resurrection changed the world.

 

In Jesus’ time the “weekend” was just that; it was the last day of the week, Saturday.  Sunday was just the first day of the week: back to work, back to the grind.  They had to do all the chores and cleaning, and all the dishes that had been piling up since Friday night!

Saturday, Sabbath, was a time of resting and worship, but things had already started to change when Jesus died that Friday afternoon.  In Jewish timing, the day began at sundown.  Their Saturday, or Sabbath, began on what we’d call Friday night, about six p.m.  Jesus had died at three in the afternoon.  That left them just three hours to request the body, take him down, find a tomb, quickly wrap him in linens and seal the tomb.  The women had begun to prepare spices and ointments for a proper burial, but they ran out of time.  The sun had set.

That night and all through the next day, instead of a day of rest and worship, it became a day of waiting, of unfinished work, unsettled grief, confusion and disappointment.  They had to set it all aside and wait until the first day of the week.

But at the earliest dawn (what the Bible literally calls “deepest dawn”) the women came to the tomb with the spices they had prepared…and found it open!  They didn’t know it yet, but sometime earlier—at that time when the birds just begin to get incredibly noisy, but it’s still dark—their world had changed.

 

Sunday had become much more than just the first day of the week.  Genesis says that God began his workweek of Creation on the first day.  But now it had come full circle.  The Day that creation had been waiting for had come.  Sunday became a day that connected Creation to Re-Creation, that connected Creation to Salvation.  Sunday, the first day of the week, the Third Day after Jesus’ death, became a day beyond the week.  Some have called Sunday the eternal “Eighth Day,” a day that rises above the seven-day week.  It was the first day of eternal salvation for all God’s people!

The earliest Church called it the “Lord’s Day.”  Most of them still worshipped with their fellow Jews on Sabbath.  But, for them, Sabbath meant something entirely different.  Now, Sabbath was a day of waiting and anticipation for the Best Day, the Lord’s Day, Sunday—the Day that Life rose from the Dead! 

And on that Day, God proved that the true Lord of Death is the One who can put an end to Death.  If I could, I would go into all the cemeteries and chisel out any periods that I might find.  God has removed all periods from Life.  When Jesus rose from the dead, the period that might come at the end of our life was changed into a comma.  Our stories go on!

 

I know that, in some ways, we still live in that time of waiting, and that sometimes in life we experience the darkness of Friday.  But, the truth is, we are actually at that moment of “deepest dawn.”  With the women, we stand here sometimes confused, or hopeful.  Sometimes we are positively sure and excited as we stand outside the open tomb, because we realize that, I. our world has changed…

 

…in part because:

II.                              God has changed!

 

Or, I should say, God has changed the way we look at him.  In Jesus, God gave us a human face.  We saw his hands, heard his words and watched his actions.  God stood among us—not only over and above us, untouchable. 

And the tomb was empty.  But what was very important (as Pastor Joe preached earlier this morning) is that this empty tomb was just a shadow, a reflection, of what had really happened.  It was empty because Jesus’ human body was raised and taken up into the image and person of God, forever!  This was not just a spiritual resurrection, but whole body! 

When Jesus presented himself to the apostles and to Thomas, he showed his hands, feet and side with all the wounds still there.  The wounds of Christ will forever be found in God!  God knows and understands.  In Jesus, God wept, he laughed with his friends, he loved and he lost loved ones. 

He died a real death…and rose again from it!  On the Third Day, God was forever changed because he showed that our humanity was forever imprinted in his hands.  You and I are forever imprinted (or as Pastor Steve preached several weeks ago: we are forever marked or tattooed) in the palms of God’s hands!  For that reason, Sunday the Third Day has forever II. changed God and…

 

III.                has forever changed us, too!

 

On Friday, Jesus said, “Father, forgive them.”  On Saturday, we waited, doubtful, trying to trust, to remember and believe.  We became afraid.  Some of us had little hope.  Others, guilty and ashamed, gave up in despair.  That was Saturday.

Then, on the Third Day, Easter exclaimed, “See, my children, I forgive even this!  You have my Son’s Life!”  Christ’s resurrection assures us that we, too, will arise to eternal Life with Christ.

 

The Third Day also says something about the way we live now.  If we live without responding to our new life, as if that sacrifice meant nothing or changes nothing about us, then it is rejecting Christ no less than those who abandoned him to the cross.  It is giving into the despair of the second day, giving up no less than Judas. 

Some have said that Judas's greatest mistake was—not that he betrayed Jesus—but that he gave into despair.  If only he had waited to see what God could do with humanity's greatest tragedy!

If we, instead, will wait for and listen to the message of the Third Day, then we learn that we have Christ's purpose. We have a name and a value to grow into.  We gather as a body each week to learn how the Third Day changes lives, how it changes each of our lives.  We read scripture.  We pray each day.  We apply Christ and Christianity from the Third Day to every day of our lives.

The Third Day is a day that needs to transform the way that you and I live, what we say, and how we work.  You are not just like everyone else.  You are claimed by God and saved by Jesus Christ.  You are a Christian!  We, you and I, have a calling to follow.  When someone is hungry, we feed them, and when lonely, we stand by them.  If they are sick with guilt, or if they are people that we would rather not touch, we touch anyway.  If they are wandering around without aim or purpose in their Good Fridays, or waiting around in their Saturdays for …something or someone, then you and I are called to invite them, and help them to discover Sunday, the Lord’s Day.

 

There were changes on the Third Day--changes in God and in us.  But these changes were God's purpose from the beginning.  God has never been neutral in life and death, but has always been on the side of life against death.

It's as though God has been saying from the beginning, "I created each of you, gave you life, a family, a church.  I even came to you in person, as a child.  I lived with you, suffered with you, felt abandoned and alone with you, so that you could know the height and breadth and depth of my love.  And I love you so much," God says, "that you might beat and kill my Son.  But I will lift and raise him up on the Third Day to show you that I still love you and call you mine.  And I will let nothing and no one prevent my love from claiming you." 

On the Third Day, God insists that Christ's Life is ours.  On the Third Day, Christ rose again!

 

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