He is Not Here-Promise fulfilled

 

Sermon Matthew 28:1-10 April 9, 2023 Easter Sunday 1 Corinthians 15:1-5 NMPC & FMPC Monica Gould

He is Not Here-Promise fulfilled

There is no greater joy in our faith and for our church than the celebration of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ!

Today we celebrate the fulfillment of all the promises that we have been taught. Today we rejoice in the truth that Christ is risen indeed! Today is the day many sing the song Because He Lives-The words offer the hope we all experience on this day when we realize the power of God’s love for us. We know that because he lives, we can face tomorrow. Because he lives, all fear is gone. Because he lives, I know he holds the future, and life is worth the living just because he lives.

As I shared with the children, we receive signs all around us of the promise of new life. In the egg is the new life of a chick (and candy), in the seed a flower, and in the cocoon, a butterfly. Today we are reminded to look around us for the signs of new life. 

What signs do we need to believe the miracle of the resurrection of Jesus Christ?

In the gospel of Matthew, the women arrived at the tomb.  It took a great earthquake to stun the guards and witness the appearance of the angels. These angels rolled away the stone and then sat upon it. I find the angel sitting on the stone rolled away as God’s humor. All obstacles were in place to prevent human interference with the body of Jesus. Then the power of God was at work. Look, He is not here. The angel told the Marys. Jesus has been raised. He then invited them inside the tomb to see that Jesus was not there.  It is the miracle of God at work.

All generations are to know there is nothing on earth that can stop what God ordains.

It is the greatest of all miracles. God raised his only Son from the dead so that the world would have life. The angel told them to go ahead to Galilee and Jesus would meet them there. On the way Jesus walked alongside them and said ‘Greetings’ which literally means, “Hi”. The women realized it was really him and they grabbed his feet. They paid homage to the Lord who was physically alive. Touching his feet showed that he was in bodily form, not a ghost or a spirit. We have been taught to believe this.

On Easter every year we come face to face with this truth and have the opportunity to accept it all over again.

We offer ourselves to him in the realization that the promise of his love lives within us. In dying, God was making sure there was a rising. Jesus went down to the dead to make sure we also may rise to new life.

The caterpillar crawls into the tomb like form called the chrysalis. It is transformed to the beauty of new life as a butterfly. So, God grants us this sign to help us understand the transformation we receive when we turn our lives over to him.

Paul spoke to the Corinthian church regarding the power of the resurrection. He said, 15:1-5: Now I want you to understand, brothers and sisters, the good news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand,  through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you—unless you have come to believe in vain.  For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures and that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures. The power of the resurrection is alive in us to successfully live our lives to serve him in the world today.

I digress for a moment to talk about the other part of Easter that we all love.

The egg hunt.

The egg has been an important part of the Easter story and proclamation of the resurrection for centuries.

It is time we, as the church, take the egg hunt back from the secular world.

There is no greater sign than the miracle of the egg bringing new life.

There is no greater miracle than when the egg opened is full of surprises.

We hunt eggs because as followers of Jesus we know that finding them reminds us of the promise of God of new life through the resurrection.

This story of signs of promises is so important for the church to continue to provide for generations to come.

Let’s make sure our kids, no matter how old, will always have the opportunity to experience an egg hunt.

Matthew’s account of the resurrection is full of miracle signs. It is on purpose to make sure that we continue to look for the signs of God among us.

Perhaps this Easter, that is all we need.

We may struggle with the practical possibility of the resurrection, but today, this Easter, this year, we can take strength in the signs that lead us to the power of the miracle.

May faith find its way in you today.

A final note important to Matthew’s account is that Jesus went ahead to Galilee to let us know that faith does not stop at the discovery of the resurrection.

There is more to our faith in Jesus Christ than this. God came to earth in the person of Jesus Christ to reconcile us to Himself. Through Jesus we are able to be one with the Father. God who went before the Israelite people leading them out of the land of Egypt and into the Promised Land, continues to go before us in the person of Jesus Christ.

Our life is filled with the daily sanctification of his presence through the Holy Spirit.

There are times when we are distracted from our focus on Christ. I know that we have all been faced with emergencies that call us to deal quickly and make decisions. We have probably also all felt the pressure of too many things to do in too short a time. It is at these times that the knowledge of Jesus going ahead of us is so important.

If we can trust that the path before us has been prepared by him then when we are caused to think quickly we can be assured of his guidance. His path is straight and right and as the psalmist says he puts us on the right path.

He is there to give instruction, to give comfort, to alleviate our fears, and to fill us with joy.

Rejoice, the Lord is Risen.

The Lord goes before us.

Believe the signs.

Trust in him.

Enter into his arms of love now and forevermore.

Amen.

 

Resources: Carolyn C. Brown Sharing the Easter Faith with Children; NIB Matthew; Feasting on the Word year A; Working Preacher Greg Carey Professor of NT at Lancaster Theological Seminary.

 

All rights reserved. Copyright Reverend Monica Gould 2023.

Touch Me Not

Sermon John 20:1-18 (KJV) April 12, 2020 Easter in COVID19 Naomi Makemie & Francis Makemie Presbyterian Churches

Touch Me Not

There you are out there somewhere.

I cannot see you.

I cannot touch you.

But there you are out there.

I know its true.

You are beyond my ability to see, to hear, to touch and yet I know you are there watching and I am comforted by this truth.

This reality of your presence even in the emptiness of this space is what we believe week after week.

Yes, I’m talking about our resurrected Lord.

You thought I was talking about you?

Well, that’s true too.

I miss you. I miss our face to face time. It's not easy to be at virtual church. 

But, I’m grateful you are here with me today, with each other today.

Today of all days we are in awe of the truth Jesus spoke to Mary at the tomb-‘touch me not’ (KJV translation) ; for I have not yet ascended to the Father, but go tell that I am ascending to my Father, your Father, my God, your God.’ In this moment we witness the reality of our entrance into the kingdom of God. Jesus is including all who hear the invitation that his Father is also our Father, his God is our God.

I don’t think we’ve ever been aware of the power of touch in our lives until we’ve been told we cannot touch. We’ve been aware of our noses itching, our eyes burning, and our ears tickling. We’ve been trying to deal with them without using our fingers to scratch, rub, or wipe our facial parts.

We are told not to touch our loved ones.

Do not hug them.

Do not kiss them.

Do not come near them.

Stay six feet away from everyone.

How hard this has been for us all. The ones we love most are protected best by our absence. It is contrary to our understanding of love. It is a paradox. It is impossible to comprehend.

Perhaps that’s why John’s gospel account of the resurrection is so poignant this year. Mary arrives alone in the morning. She discovers the stone rolled away. And without even researching further she runs away to tell Peter and John. She reaches the conclusion by the evidence of the stone rolled away that the body of Jesus has been stolen.

She had witnessed his death at the crucifixion.

She witnessed his burial in the tomb as she wrapped his body and anointed it with spices.

She witnessed the stone rolled in place.

The only conclusion when she witnessed it moved was that someone had moved the body of Jesus. Her grief of his death was now deepened even further with this loss of his body.

She cannot be contained in her despair.

Sometimes we witness just one thing. And with that one piece of evidence make all kinds of conclusions without even a moments hesitation. We run to tell everyone what we think and we all get spun up. We begin to tell a story that’s not quite the truth. We end up creating a narrative that suits our account without ever finding out more.

Our deepest longings, our greatest desires are what turn us back.

They are what cause us to enter into spaces and places we might not have dared before.

Peter and the beloved disciple run straight into the tomb and discover the grave clothes and the veil of Jesus. They remembered what Jesus had said in that moment. Their hearts were stirred by the memory.

We have all entered the Easter story somewhere along the way.

The Easter story started at the beginning.

In the beginning was the Word.

The Word was with God.

The Word was God.

Our beginnings were with God at our birth,

at our baptism,

at our growing,

our awakening to the world.

Where in our story do we encounter the resurrected Jesus?

Where does the Easter story become our story?

At the beginning of the gospel (John 1:38) Jesus asks the disciples, ‘Who are you looking for?’ ‘Who are we looking for?’

Mary is so filled with grief as she looks in the tomb that she isn’t even awestruck by angels.

She is on the hunt for the body of her Lord.

She turns around and Jesus is standing there right in front her.

Jesus is there for her.

Jesus is fully present with her.

Jesus is alive and well and in her space.

And she doesn’t recognize him.

She is blinded by her despair; she cannot see the one she longs for.

Are we filled with grief and despair?

Are we unable to see Jesus standing there with us, in front of us, in our space?

Are we blinded by our grief, by our pain, by our expectation, by our longings that we cannot recognize our Lord fully present with us?

Friends, he is there.

He is here.

He’s asking us the same question he ask Mary? Who are you looking for?

And then in the same moment he calls Mary by name. He calls us by our name.

In that moment through the mist of our tears, we hear his voice.

We hear the familiar sound of love.

We hear the truth, the reality of being raised up,

lifted up from death to new life.

We can all jump for joy with her as she discovers the truth that her Lord is alive! He is risen indeed! And in her excitement she, like any of us would do, wants to go running and give him the biggest embrace, the hug larger than life-squish the stuffings out of him kind of hug.

I think that’s the hug we are all imaging that we can give each other when this isolation is over.

But, Jesus tells her, ‘touch me not’. Which the Greek word Hapto means don’t hold on to me. Don’t hang on, cling, or squish. It has the larger meaning of ‘do not manipulate, manage, or own, possess, or control.’ She cannot hold on to the Jesus of her making.

We too, can no longer hold on to the Jesus of our making.

He is here for us. He is right in front of us. He is with us. He is calling our name.

Let us let go of our hold on him and the way things ought to be and open up to the glory of the Resurrection. The joy is here friends let’s believe.

Because he lives. Let’s go announcing, “We have seen the Lord!” Amen!

Sermon by Reverend Monica Gould
Resources: Encounters with Jesus, Frances Taylor Gench