Easter Day Sermon

Upside Down yet Rightside Up:
Easter Day
by Rev. Lance Armstrong O’Donnell, Pastor
St. Philip Lutheran Church and School
Chicago, Illinois

Easter Festival Service
4 April, A.D. 2010
Job 19.23-27; 1 Cor 15.51-57; Jn 20.1-18 (trans. fr. Easter Dawn)

Introduction: Running To and From the Tomb

You may not have noticed that there’s a lot of running going on in the initial resurrection accounts:

• in Jn 20 (our Gospel this morning) Mary Magdalene runs to tell Peter and the others that the stone had been rolled away from the tomb;
• moments later Peter and John were running toward the tomb.

To most of us, I suspect, there is nothing exceptional about running. We see people running all the time: running down the street, running along Lakeshore Drive. And, for us, those who do run usually dress in attire that is both comfortable for running and says, “Have a look at my legs.” There is often nothing subtle or modest about it at all.

The world at the time of Jesus is a totally different world. People, generally, did not run. Certainly, highly respected people--or those associated with them--did not run.  For one, the typical attire of the age involved longer, flowing, open clothing. Modesty and dignity demanded that they not expose themselves by running. This standard, in fact, still holds in many a Middle Eastern village. Biblical commentator Ken Bailey, who grew up as a missionary kid in peasant Palestinian villages says, “An oriental nobleman with flowing robes never runs anywhere. To do so is humiliating.” (Kenneth E Bailey, “Poet and Peasant,” in Poet and Peasant and Through Peasant Eyes, Combined ed. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1976), 181.)  Second-century B.C. Jewish commentator Ben Sirach says, “A man’s manner of walking tells you what he is.” (Sir. 19:30) (Bailey, “Poet and Peasant,” 181.) And the Greek philosopher Aristotle is reported to have said, “Great men never run in public.’” (Bailey, “Poet and Peasant,” 181)

So, even though Jesus’ disciples are “common people,” and even though the Lord Jesus never seems to have demanded the trappings of His status as a respected teacher, the fact is that He was a respected teacher; as such, social standards dictated a certain demeanor among His disciples. Running in public, then, would have been among those often “unwritten rules” of social conduct.

I. Prodigal Parallels

Thus, that fact that Mary and Peter and John reportedly just flat out run in the face of the empty tomb is actually quite significant. Indeed, what is going on here among the disciples of Jesus has an important parallel to one of Jesus’ most famous parables, that of The Prodigal Son.

In The Parable of the Prodigal Son, as you may know, a respected nobleman has two sons. The younger son is an ungrateful scoundrel who signals that he’d just as soon have his father dead by asking for his inheritance in advance. The gracious and wise father, no doubt to the shock of the whole community, grants the prodigal son his wish, even though the father knows what will happen...

So it is that the prodigal son wastes his inheritance in a scandalous way and ends up penniless and destitute. In this state he finally realizes who he is and what a truly gracious man his father is. Confident in that grace the “prodigal son” repentantly return to the village.

Understand, now, that what the prodigal son did was an affront not just to father and his family but to the whole community. As such, he would have had to run a gauntlet of townspeople when he came back who might well have said, “You made your choice. Stay out!”

But Jesus illustrates the grace of God in this, that-as He says in the parable--when the father sees his prodigal son far off, defying all convention the father runs though to the outskirts of town--robes flowing--and before his son can say a word has wrapped his arms around him in welcome, weeping with joy that the son who was lost is found. It is in the midst of that embrace that the prodigal son utters his confession of repentance and faith, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.” He has given away his inheritance. All that the father has rightly belongs to the older son, but the father throws a lavish feast for the prodigal son, who is thus restored to the family and will now live thankfully in his father’s grace.

II. The Resurrection Welcome

Friends, for Mary Magdalene, and for us, the friendly words of Jesus--“Why are you weeping?” are like that that father’s embrace of his prodigal son. The Lord says through the prophet Isaiah, "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all." (Isaiah 53:6, ESV)

Yes, we all like sheep have gone astray. We are disrespectful to our parents, to our employees and employers, to our children. And we know in our hearts that God does not look on those sins lightly, that disrespect and dishonor of those in our love and care is, ultimately, disrespect for God. We are, each in our own way, like the prodigal son.

But the cross and resurrection of Jesus is about God, like the gracious father, running to us, scorning the shame, and lovingly embracing us, just as John--one of those runners to the the empty tomb--writes: “For God so loved the world--loved you--that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever should believe in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.” (Jn 3.16) God, again like the gracious father in the parable, took the shame of our prodigal sins upon himself in and through Christ, and His resurrection from the dead that we celebrate today, is like that father’s loving embrace. Yes, there will be some earthly consequences for our sins--like there would be for the prodigal son in the parable--but, because of Christ, we are restored to God and true life. The resurrection of Christ gives victory over sin and death--our great final enemies so that we may say, with Job:

"For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God," (Job 19:25-26, ESV)

Conclusion

Indeed, "The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." (1 Corinthians 15:56-57, ESV)

Christ is risen! [He is risen, indeed! Alleluia]