Dennis Tuuri

# Reformation Covenant Church Sermon Transcript
## Pastor Dennis Tuuri

As we turn to Luke’s account from his gospel for our consideration of Palm Sunday last week, today we return to Luke’s gospel for his narrative of the wonderful events that we celebrate this day. Scripture reading is from Luke 24:1-12. If you have the text handout, you can read along with that. If you don’t, I’d encourage you to get one as the sermon starts. It will be helpful to you to have the text in front of you laid out in the particular way that I’ll be discussing it.

Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Luke 24:1-12.

Now on the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they and certain other women with them came to the tomb bringing the spices which they had prepared. But they found the stone rolled away from the tomb. Then they went in and did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. And it happened as they were greatly perplexed about this that behold two men stood by them in shining garments.

Then as they were afraid and bowed their faces to the earth, they said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen. Remember how he spoke to you when he was still in Galilee, saying, ‘The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and the third day rise again.’ And they remembered his words. Then they returned from the tomb and told all these things to the 11.

And to all the rest. It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles. And their words seemed to them like idle tales, and they did not believe them. But Peter arose and ran to the tomb. And stooping down, he saw the linen clothes lying by themselves, and he departed, marveling to himself at what had happened.

Let’s pray.

Lord God, we marvel at the events of that morning. We know we cannot plumb the depths of the wonderful way that you move to transform the world and all of creation in that historical event that we celebrate this day. Bless us, Lord God, however, by your Holy Spirit, with a small glimpse into some of these details recorded for us in your holy word. Help us to remember the words of this text as we move into this week and so interpret the events of our lives according to your word which shall never fail and shall always come to pass.

Bless us Lord God with this great gift. Transform us by your spirit and word. In Jesus name we ask it. Amen. Amen.

Please be seated.

I should mention that what I’ve done at the bottom of the handout—if you don’t have one, now would be a good time to get one—I’ve expanded out one of the sections at the bottom. I could have put that in the text of the handout, but I thought that might make it a little more confusing.

And we’ll get to that in just a couple of minutes. Our plan today is to go over the details of the text before us, briefly kind of noting some of the beautiful imagery and concentric nature of this text and the beautiful way it’s written to convey to us very important truths I think, and then we’ll go back over it a little more slowly and try to make some application.

First we should say that this text comes to us in the same week that Newsweek had a front page article on the end of Christian America. And I was reminded of the front page of the New York Times when I was a kid saying God was dead—or rather declaring what Nietzsche had said, God is dead.

And of course, if you think about that a little bit, any god that can die perpetually and be gone should be dead. The God that Nietzsche was talking about was not the God of the scriptures. And we want false gods to die and go away. We serve a risen Lord who died but was raised from the dead. And we serve a risen Lord of all the earth.

If by the end of Christian America, we mean a particular political construction and political activism marked by as much conservatism as it was by biblical theology, good riddance. If we mean by Christian America the influence of Jesus Christ in America, well, then we have a much broader expansive way to think of this.

This isn’t Christian America. This is a Christian world. And America is Christian and shall become increasingly Christian. But the gospel is unusual. It doesn’t penetrate the way we think it would. It doesn’t work out. The resurrectionist stories are all rather similar in that they’re perplexing. Jesus, you know, appears here, there, and it’s different than what you think it would be. Clearly, everybody’s surprised.

And that’s what the future is. God’s work in a country, in a nation, in the world is surprising to us. And when we think it’s only going to be one way and one particular manifestation, God will do new things. And that’s what he’s doing. This is consistent with the gospel narrative.

What we have in the resurrection is the beginning of the new creation. We have the new world, the new heavens, the new earth initiated, inaugurated by this event. This event is the center of history. It is the definitive transformation through the removal of sin of the world but also through the transformation of the world.

Remember we should know so well in this church that taking care of sin is a very small part—an important part, but it’s a relatively small part—in terms of what all Jesus Christ has done. Remember that the sin offering precedes the transformation, ascension offering, the tribute offering, bringing in the produce of the world in a transformed state, and the peace offering.

Jesus Christ died for sinners. That’s at the heart of today’s text as we’ll see. But that death also was much more than that. It didn’t just take care of your sins. It brought you in a transformed state into the new creation.

So, have no fears. Don’t let these newspaper, newsletter, or Newsweek articles concern you. If Christian America, whatever that definition is, is dead—and how would anyone know, frankly—but if it is dead, it’s because God is going to do a resurrection thing.

And in that resurrection thing, it’s going to be much more marvelous than it was before.

We see in the gospel account today a particular emphasis. There are four gospels. There are four perspectives on what happened that morning. And that fact in and of itself should not be blown by lightly. There is unity and diversity in the resurrection accounts the same way there is unity and diversity in the context of the manifestation of Christ’s work in the country.

So these events are not untrue. These events are true historical accounts, but they’re told from different perspectives and they stress particularly different things. We’re going to talk today about Luke’s particular narrative. We’re going to stick to it, but recognize there is some commonality even as there are differences of the four gospel accounts.

One of the most significant commonalities is the discovery of the empty tomb by the women. That’s common to all of the gospel accounts and we’ll talk about the implications of that. It’s also interesting to me to note that there is no record of the resurrection itself, right? There’s no account of him actually rising. There’s a record of people discovering the evidence of his resurrection. And I think that’s significant too in terms of telling us these are stories that we can enter into.

We discover things about Jesus through these resurrection accounts and about the world in which we live. And in a way, we’re sort of with those women. We’re with Peter a little perplexed, you know, in our particular day and time. And God is going to encourage us as these women move through and Peter moved through unbelief and doubt into certitude in these gospel accounts.

In Luke’s gospel in chapter 24, there’s four separate events that are described, but each of them sort of begin with people, or rather the first three of four—the first three of the four—begin with people that aren’t really quite sure of what’s happening. Jesus appears to them in various ways either directly or through representatives—angels or women or whatever—and they come to a place of commissioning. And so in Luke’s gospel there’s this kind of four-fold nature of concentric circles in a way almost of the story building and building into a crescendo, but it kind of starts here and we’re going to look at this particular account of the resurrection in Luke’s gospel.

Now if you have your handout look at it for a couple of minutes. I’m going to talk briefly about why I’ve structured it the way I have and then we’ll go back over it and bring out a few details. Thank you. Please forgive my scratchy voice.

Now on the handout I’ve put out the first verse, or the first section of the verse now, on the first day of the week, separately. So this is a common thing that’s happening. We’re told this is the first day of the week. Now in the Greek, the word week is Sabbath or Sabbaths. So this was the way they would say first day of the week—is the first of the Sabbath. The first of the Sabbath, the Sabbath refers to the whole week of seven days. But if we do a literal translation of that, this becomes the first of the Sabbaths. And I think that kind of wording is deliberate.

In one of the other gospel accounts, it’s very explicit. At the end of the Sabbath, at the beginning of the new day, there’s the introductory phrase here wants us to see that there’s a movement that’s happened from the old world into a brand new world. And so the Christian Lord’s day is indeed the first of the Sabbaths as well. They’re connected to what happened on the Lord’s day in the past, but they’re also transformative. The whole world has moved ahead.

So the whole of the old world has been transformed and matured through what has happened in the context of the death and resurrection of our savior. So it’s the first day of the week and at the center of this narrative you’ll see that at least I think at the center of it talks about the third day. And so there’s this movement—first day, third day—and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ accomplishing a whole new reality. It’s the third day but it’s also the first day and we celebrate those things every Lord’s day.

Now it’s very early in the morning. So this is a time marker for us, right? So it’s the first day of the week, it’s early in the morning, and he’s going to describe what happened. And as he goes on in Luke 24 past what we’re going to look at, he says a whole lot of things that happened on that day. He doesn’t talk about what happened early in the morning. Then he talks about later in the morning as two disciples are walking on the road to Emmaus and something happens there with Jesus. And then we read later in the evening about the end of the Sabbath day as well and then Jesus blessing them at Bethany. So Luke kind of describes all of this.

He’s opening up the entire narrative. So there’s a structure—there’s kind of a big structure in all of chapter 24. And what we’re looking at here is the first narrative and this narrative is marked off as being at the first, or rather in the morning. They all happened the first day of the week but this happens early in the morning. And then the next sentence is also introductory. I think they and certain other women with them came to the tomb bringing the spices which they had prepared.

At the end of chapter 23 we see these same women at the tomb. They’re looking and seeing where Jesus is buried because they want to come back with spices to prepare the body. So this is a connective introductory comment into the narrative connecting it back to verse 23. And so what’s happening here is tied in a literary fashion to of course his death previous to this and these women’s work that was going on beginning at the cross.

So those are introductory comments and then the text itself tells us what happens.

Verse 2: But they found the stone rolled away from the tomb. Then they went in and did not find the body of the Lord Jesus Christ. And it happens that they were greatly perplexed about this.

So they get to the tomb and the best laid plans of mice and men, you know, often go astray. And they’ve got great plans and God brings them to a dead end of those plans. What they wanted to do doesn’t happen. So that’s interesting and significant. I’ll mention that again in a couple of minutes. But this, I think, matches up with the concluding portion of the outline where Peter saw the linen clothes lying by themselves.

So we have the women at the tomb and there’s no Jesus. And then we have Peter at the tomb and there’s no Jesus. Now the evidence for him is linen clothes by themselves. The evidence for the women is the simple statement that his body’s not there. But they’re connected. You see, they’re really connecting up with one another and saying the same kind of thing. And what happens to the women happens to Peter. They’re perplexed about what’s going on. The absence of the body brings them perplexity. That at the end of the narrative in a mirror fashion, Peter’s entrance into the tomb and seeing just an enclosed space—no body in other words—leaves him marveling at what had happened. They’re both affected. They’re both perplexed. They’re both surprised.

That’s important to remember. Very significantly, the text immediately, the way it’s drawn out for us, connects the women with Peter. This is a big deal and we’ll see that this big deal proceeds in the context of the narrative and I want to make some application from that but I don’t want to make the application without showing you the connection. So you see the connection hopefully.

So there’s definite literary connections at the beginning and end. And the purpose is to draw our attention to a commonality between the women and Peter as representative of all the apostles and disciples.

Now the next section I think is that behold—as they’re being perplexed by this. So they’re perplexed not by the angels, but by the missing body, just as Peter is. They see two men stood by them in shining garments.

Then as they were afraid and bowed their heads to the earth, their faces to the earth, something happens. So, they go in and now they’re perplexed and now two angels show up in shining garments. This is the same word Luke has used for lightning earlier in the gospel. And some translations deal with this as flashing garments. They pick up the nature of not just brightness, but a flashing. So, I don’t know, maybe those tennis shoes that we have that flash as you walk. And my granddaughter Charlotte has a little glove that I guess lights up when you catch a ball or something. This idea of flashing appearance maybe isn’t such a bad thing. It’s heavenly garb.

And so they’re kind of, you know, bowled over by the appearance of these two men. And they in response to this bow down to the ground. They fall down. They bow. They humble themselves. So the women are humbled enough to where they’re actually down on the ground.

Well, what happens to Peter is similar to this in the corresponding section in verse 11.

Their words seemed to them like idle tales. They didn’t believe them. But Peter arose and ran to the tomb and stooping down he saw things. Okay.

So the women are astonished by what these angels are saying. The angels are there and they report to the disciples this idle tale. Now again the Greek term here means kind of what happens when you’re in a high fever state and you sort of see things that aren’t really there. That’s the idea here. It’s almost a medical term. And we’ve got Luke, a physician, using this medical term. So, it’s like a fever hallucination kind of thing. And so, it isn’t really the words that is the feverish hallucination. I don’t think it’s that these women are recounting that they saw these two angels in shining flashing garments.

So, the connecting up again happens. The women see these men in flashing garments, but they report it to the disciples and they just think it’s stupid. Their response is unbelief. And their response is this is just an idle tale. But notice that also connects up the women stooping down or bowing down to the ground in front of the angels and Peter’s entrance into the tomb is accomplished stooping down.

Now you say, “Well, it’s just what he had to do. He had to bend over to look inside.” Well, no. That may or may not be true, but it’s recorded here in scripture. And it’s recorded in such a way as to mirror the humility, the fearfulness, the dependency that happens to the women. And so the same thing happens to Peter.

So this is again the connection between the women and Peter is seen as a connection that as they move toward mission they do so through a humbled way. And we’ll talk about that in a couple of minutes as well.

Making application.

All right. The angels then say to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here but is risen.”

It’s wonderful. I love that. Why do you seek the living among the dead? I thought about a title from today’s sermon could be looking for love in all the wrong places. That song was immortalized by that cousin of Jimmy Swaggart. No. not Jerry Lee Lewis, the other cousin of Jimmy Swaggart, Mickey Gilly, in that movie with John Travolta, looking for love in all the wrong places.

Well, why are you looking for the living among the dead? That’s what they’re doing. And I’m going to make application of that in a couple of minutes, but it’s a wonderful phrase to consider the rest of your lives. Why are you looking for the living among the dead? That’s what we tend to do, I think. That’s what these women did. That’s what we tend to do.

And the angels tell them, “He’s not here. He’s been raised.” Now, it says he’s risen in this translation, but I think that maybe a better translation is that he’s been raised. So, it’s not some kind of impersonal recitation of fact. The fact is the Father has raised the Son. Now, Jesus says he’s going to raise his body as well. So, I don’t want to get into a big discussion about who’s doing the raising, but clearly the raising of the Lord Jesus Christ by the Father is a significant aspect of what Resurrection Sunday is all about.

It’s the Father’s affirmation that everything worked, that it was all good, that Jesus is the victor. The resurrection is demonstration of his justification, that he is the ruler of all men and nations, that he was sinless, all that stuff. So, the Father’s raising the Son is an important aspect. And I think that’s kind of to be a bit more accurate than the King James translation or the New King James is that.

So they give him this message. They say something to these women and the message is that he’s been resurrected. Now if you look down at verse 9, verses 9 and 10, I think you have a parallel there as well.

Then they returned from the tomb. This is the women. They told all these things to the 11. So the angel tells things to the women. He’s been raised. And the women then tell things to the 11. The angel is on a mission from God. Okay? And the women are on a mission from God. And the mission is a proclamation.

So while we’ve seen the women connected up with Peter and the apostles, now we see the women as emissaries doing the same thing the angels did. They’re bringing this heavenly message of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and they’re bringing it now to the apostles. So this is helpful to understand what’s happening.

And then we’re given an actual description of the names of the women involved here. Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles.

Now, if you drop down lower on the page, you’ll see that I think there’s a little mini chiasm there as well. And I want to look at it for just a minute. And no, I don’t want to look at it because my daughter’s name is at the center of it. Well, that happens to be true, but that’s not what I want to look at it for.

Let’s look at it. So, down at the bottom of your handout, it says at the top, they returned from the tomb, told all these things to the 11. And then you’ll see at the end of verse 10, it says they told these things to the apostles. Clearly, there’s a little thing there that God wants us to notice in the text—a matching.

This is its own little deal here that we’re supposed to meditate a little bit upon. So, they tell things to the 11, they tell things to the apostles and to all the rest. So, there’s a group of disciples with the 11. So the women, their mission is not just to go tell the apostles something, or rather the disciples something. They’re actually telling the apostles what to believe and do, right? That’s very significant.

We’ll make application in a couple of minutes. But in addition to the 11 of the apostles, there’s the rest of them. Well, then they name the women and they say that there are other women with them also. Now, this is a different rest of them, right? But it’s still a rest of them. So you’ve got the 11 with their disciples and you have these three named women and their rest of them, their group, their community.

Right? So it’s interesting again because once more the text is drawing this connection up between these women and Peter, these women and the apostles, okay, and these women and the disciples. So it’s really drawing attention to that.

And then we have three named women. Two of them are Marys. And when we see that, we look right at the center and that’s Joanna. Now Joanna means Yahweh as a gracious giver. And he’s giving us this wonderful, beautiful account of this wonderful, inestimable gift of the resurrection of the world and its transformation. And he’s doing it in a very nice, wonderful, gracious kind of way. God is a gracious giver. And he gives us these structures that again drive home in spades the connection between these women and the apostles and these named women specifically and the apostles and the rest of the women with them—unnamed women with the rest of the disciples.

So we’ve got women and followers and disciples and their—or apostles rather—and the disciples. Now we’ve got the women doing the work of the angel. They’re saying things to these people. And so all these connections are supposed to roll up in our head as we meditate upon this beautiful story.

So but not to miss the basic point. The basic point is there is this connection between them telling things to the 11 in the same way things were told to them. So we’re being drawn into this center and now we have a very clear and obvious center of the narrative before us.

We’ve got remembering for and aft, right? So in the D section, the angels tell them remember how he spoke to you when he was still in Galilee. So you’re supposed to remember that he actually used words in communicating with you. Remember that the angel says remember he spoke to you. How did he speak to you? Well, he spoke to you in words. So, remember how he spoke to you.

And then in verse 8 that connects up with that, they remembered his words. They remembered that he spoke to them, that he spoke to them by words. So, they’re being called to remember and they remember.

And that brings us to the center.

And it tells us now what Jesus told them.

Verse 7: The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and the third day be raised again.

So, we have this third day transformation of the whole world through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Now sinfulness is described here. It has to be delivered into the hands of sinful men. Clearly the gospel message of the resurrection is being articulated a little bit at the center of this narrative and we must attend to it. It is the message.

It is the message that as we come to this place, as we come in the morning to meet with Jesus, as we come to this place, the message given to us through Jesus through his messengers that we give to one another is the death of Jesus Christ for sin has resulted in his resurrection.

So our sins have been dealt with definitively on the cross. The gospel message that Jesus died for sinners is here. But it’s accompanied by a statement of his crucifixion and then his resurrection on the third day.

While it’s not the focus of my sermon this morning, remember what I said at the beginning of the sermon. Jesus does not—the Easter message is not just sins are forgiven. I don’t believe it is. It’s more than that. It’s that the new world has come. You haven’t just been forgiven so that you can be sort of a neutral slate or just, you know, okay, you’ve been transformed.

The whole Levitical system, the whole Old Testament, the creation week itself shows us there is this thing that some people have referred to as good death, transformation through suffering and beauty comes out of it. The world darkens down, rises up in a more beautiful estate. Mankind will darken down not just because of sin. He will mature through the trials and troubles.

What’s Easter about? Easter is about hope. And what’s this story about? This story is about hope. Not just the hope that your sins were forgiven. The hope that through the trials, tribulations, sufferings, eventually your physical death, God is doing a transformative work in your life. That the end of the story, as the preacher tells us in Ecclesiastes, is much better than the beginning.

That the end of the story of your suffering, your trial, your difficulties, your suffering with Christ, we could say, results in resurrection, hope, and life.

Look at the suffering going on in this text. Lots of it here. It’s not over. Suffering hasn’t been done away with, but it’s a suffering now for kind of ignorance sort of stuff. They don’t know what they’re doing. The women think they’re doing this great job and it turns out it’s a complete waste of time. What they were intending at least. Now, it’s not because they got to the tomb, but not for what they wanted to do.

Peter, well, he’s already blown it big time. He’s kind of a hero in this story. But even here, he’s with those disciples that don’t believe the word of the women. They’re not portrayed in such a great way. They’re struggling. There’s darkness. They think that evil has conquered the world. They think that Christian America has come to an end and the Christian endeavor has come to an end. That’s the way we feel.

They knew better. Christ had taught them better. But that’s the sort of encounters we have.

And what God wants us to understand is you think, well, I’ve been forgiven of my sins. So what is it? Well, what this is about is preparing you for maturation, increased ministry. These women and Peter are brought through transformation of their doubt to a place of commitment and doing things for Jesus.

If there’s nothing else that this text is all about, it’s about hope that while we might be put to death by we may be delivered in the hands of sinful men, we are sometimes. While we may feel like we’re being crucified and some of these men will actually be crucified. That the other side of that is the third day he’s raised up and he transforms the world and God is affecting our transformation through all the sufferings in our lives.

Now they could, you know, well, how could that be? I don’t understand how my suffering this last week fits into that. Well, they didn’t understand it either. That’s the beautiful thing. God does stuff at night. They get there in the morning. Did the resurrection happen at dawn? I don’t think so. I mean, it happened at night. And that’s kind of what the Bible says. The Bible says God moves at night.

They get out there, you know, Sennacherib’s outside the wall and they’re going to be killed and everything. And Hezekiah prays in the temple and they get up in the morning and they’re all dead and gone. That’s what these women—they get up early in the morning and the battle’s been won.

While we struggle in our darkness, our despair, our difficulties, our suffering, this text tells us that God is at work in the nighttime bringing about the death of our enemies and the delivery of our deliverance. And those enemies include ourselves. Can include, you know, people that aren’t really sinful or evil, but just people that don’t quite get it.

The women kept telling the apostles—that’s the tense that’s used here. They didn’t give up. And so we don’t give up in the midst of sufferings. We may lose hope, but if you remember what Jesus is telling us here, we’re maintaining hope and we keep doing the right stuff. And sometimes we just sit there passively as Jesus did at least originally before he’s raised up waiting for the resurrection.

If the Father’s raising him up, there’s some time frame between his death and that happening. We have a weekend to meditate on these things. I do every year.

Well, that’s the state we are in frequently. We’re in the midst of darkness. The text tells us God’s at work.

All right. So, so that’s kind of how the narrative of the text moves along. Let’s go back and make a few points of application from the text now specifically.

And as I said, first of all, this narrative tells us that something has happened and that what has happened wasn’t witnessed, but there has been this nighttime deliverance evidence in daytime. And so the text at the very beginning of it, if we understand and think about it a little bit, you know, what it’s telling us, it’s early in the morning that they see the results of what God has done.

Hope for us is knowing that God is working in darkness, right? The morning will come. We’ll see the results at some point in time, but we don’t see it while it’s going on. It’s dark. Passover happens at night, midnight, right? Lots of that stuff in the Old Testament. God works at night and they get up and see what he did. Just like the creation week, right? So, it’s so important to hold on to.

We have times of darkness, struggle, suffering, and we have to know God is at work. We don’t see that work. We’ll see the results of that work. A lot of times the women will come to experience what that meant, the implications of it. But that’s the way we’re going. That’s the way we are as we move through our sufferings with an awful lot of them.

You get to the morning when the suffering has ended and the transformation has happened. And you look back and you say, “It was good that I was afflicted. It was a good thing.” Without that kind of good death—not just you know being suffering for sin but good transformative death and suffering—you don’t get to be a stronger, better emissary missionary of the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s what happened to these women.

They went through darkness.

Now, another element, and I talked on this already. The women come there with a job. We got stuff we’re doing, and these women are pious. They’re good women. They want to minister to the Lord Jesus Christ, but their mission is dead in the water. They hit the wall. There’s nobody to anoint. I know God’s doing something else, but think of what they think. We’re doing something for Jesus. We’re bringing the spices. There’s no body.

Now, that’s okay, too. We have that same thing, don’t we? We drill dry wells sometimes. We do work and no oil, no water comes out of it. We hit a dead end. Or at least it appears to us. This text is an encouragement to us and a recognition and a humbling of us that sometimes we think we know just what we’re doing and God brings us to the end of ourselves that he might give us something better to do.

They thought that it was the death of Christian America. What’s the—you know, we look at the stone being rolled away from the tomb as we read about in the earlier gospel account, and we delight in that. Jesus didn’t have to roll away the stone did he? Why did the stone roll away? It was for our sake altogether, for our sake, right. He had no problem walking out of there without the stone totally in place. Am I right?

And the gospel accounts make it clear that in his resurrection body, he can go through walls. He can go through caves. The stone wasn’t rolled away so that he could escape. The stone was rolled away so that we would experience the resurrection. So we know he’s not there.

But that’s not the way they saw it. When they get there in the morning, the stone’s rolled away and they think somebody took the body. They see a conspiracy at work. That’s what they’re prone to see. And that’s the way we are. We see the events around us. And a lot of times we attribute those events to conspirators, to opponents, to enemies, and God is at work.

The conspirators made it so that they can’t carry out their Christian task of anointing the body. But surprise, surprise, they’ve got a wonderful task that they could never imagine. They get to go tell apostles what to believe and do.

Women’s a big part of this text. But so that’s a true statement and there’s lots of implications for that we’ll talk about in a minute. But don’t miss the fact that it’s not because these women are more spiritual or more discerning or better. The parallels that parallel them to the apostles and to Peter and the disciples show that they were just as dumb. I mean that’s an overstatement. I don’t mean to poke fun at Peter and the women, but it does, right?

They’re not smarter. They’re not more discerning and that’s why God puts them to the head of the line in terms of mission that resurrection morning. So God chooses who he’s going to choose for his particular purposes. And we don’t have to know why he chose women really, but we have to know he chose them, right?

And he—we have to know that when we think our ministry and task is not producing fruit, well, yeah, God closes doors. That’s a simple way to say it. He closed the door for the women here and then he does something wonderful to them. He makes them an emissary. He gives them the very first mission in the new world isn’t given to disciples men, not given to apostles or even disciples. It’s given to women.

And at least one of those women is not have any kind of great standing. Mary Magdalene was, you know, saved from a lot of trouble and all that stuff. Joanna we don’t really know much about. She was the wife of a steward of Herod, but we don’t really know much about her. So women that we that aren’t big names, okay, in the band of followers of Jesus, are the ones that God decides to give the very first mission of the new creation to.

Now, if you’re a woman, you should feel enabled and empowered by that truth. Absolutely. But don’t get prideful because they don’t get it because they’re smart and they don’t get it because they’re in a good state of mind. God does preparatory work for them, doesn’t he?

What does he do before he commissions the women? He frightens them. He knocks them down. He makes them bow at his feet of the angels. This happens to us, too. Bad things happen. It frightens us. We don’t know what’s going on. We’re perplexed. We’re frightened of whatever it might be.

And we in text tells us that is preparation for ministry. He’s preparing the women to do it. If they’re not humble, if they’re just working around their own sort of way, they’re likely to tell the apostles once and then go away and that’s the end of it. But they’ve been humbled. They know they’ve got to do this, fulfill this mission, and they’ve got to keep working at it until it’s done. Okay?

So, God prepares us for mission in the new world. We’re looking at how the new world works here, right?

Now, I think that it is absolutely definite, unmistakable that things are different in the new creation. Okay? We’re a church known for a lot of emphasis of continuity of the covenants. That’s good. That’s proper because dispensationalists just only use a third of their Bibles, which is ridiculous. As we’ll see in a minute, it’s counterproductive. But listen, there’s another ditch in that road, and that’s to miss the transformation that happened, right?

And the transformation that happened has something to do with women in ministry. That’s a corollary of what’s being taught us here. When Paul will say later that there’s no Jew or Gentile, male or female, we say, “Well, yeah, just, you know, we’re all one and we’re all people, right?” But understand that in the Old Testament, there was Jew and Gentile, right? There was Jew and Gentile. God set it up that way. It was a bipolar Old Testament—two sets of things going on with the Jews and the Gentiles. And so when we read then that’s his explanation of also no men and no women, I think you have to read some sort of change of state and relationship going on here.

Oh, I know you’re worried now. Don’t get worried. Paul gives us lots of instruction about what that doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean we should have women preachers or elders or deacons. But why does he give us that instruction? He gives us that because that’s what we’re tempted to believe, I think, given the rest of what we know about the new creation. Okay?

So, you know, there’s ditches on either side here. And to just pick up male female models from the Old Testament without realizing the transformative work that’s going on in men and women’s lives, both of them in the New Testament. See, this is a mistake. It’s a mistake. And we fall into it all the time.

First Sunday we’ve ever done this. Women greeters, women ushers this morning. Why haven’t we done that? I don’t know. My fault, probably. But we’re not thinking in terms of what the resurrection tells us about the new world. How could we have you come to the tomb, so to speak, the place of the living Christ now, and not have some women involved in greeting you this morning when we have Joanna, Mary Magdalene, and Mary, the mother of James, greeting us in the text?

How could we do that? That’d be real bad.

So, something has happened here. But the women are prepared for this service through humility, through being humbled, bowing down.

The women are looking for love in the wrong place, right? They’re looking for Jesus in the wrong place. We do that a lot, right? We look for Jesus in the places of the dead.

Now, I’m going to say something about the importance of study in a couple of minutes, but look, Jesus is not a philosophy. To look for Jesus through study and philosophy is to look for the living among the dead. Okay? He’s not a philosophy. Jesus is the risen savior. He’s a person. Ministry is incarnational.

Now, it has philosophies that emanate from it. It has understandings of the world. Theology is very important. You know that we’ve stressed that at this church. But understand that we’re, you know, if there’s any ditch we’re close to weaving into here, it’s for if we’re if we’re tempted to fall off the horse in one particular direction, it’s through somehow thinking that Jesus is a philosophy.

You know, there was that old book that conservatives loved and quite good—ideas have consequences—and we like that book. It’s good. Good thing and it’s true—ideas have consequences. But see ultimately we don’t have principles or ideas. We have a truthgiver and truth that comes from the person of the Lord Jesus Christ and his word.

So we would search for love in the wrong place. Search—you know, who are you looking for? We’re looking for Jesus. But where are you looking for him is the second question of the gospels. You know, the first the disciples come to Jesus. Who are you looking for? We’re looking for Jesus. Well, that’s good. We’re all looking for Jesus here.

But now this morning, God wants us to think, where are we looking for him? And he wants to remind us that Jesus is not dead. Jesus is a great example pattern for our lives. And so people teach this. Oh, the resurrection is somewhat unimportant. We have this great figure. We have a record of his life. And if we just follow his example, that’s all we need. That’s looking for the living among the dead.

Jesus is not a dead historical example. We don’t seek moralism. We seek Christianity. We seek the outliving of the life of Christ in the power of the spirit, a live person.

A commentator I read said that when he was a kid, they had like a—they were supposed to learn how to write and at the top of this slate there were these beautiful letters in bold relief. I think it kind of stuck out and they were supposed to, you know, write them. And he said they were dead in the water if all they did was to try to write out the letters. They were discouraged. They were at despair.

But then the teacher would come and she would take them and she would help them trace through first the letters at the top of the page. A living hand would help them to understand what that message was. And that’s the way they taught writing. A living hand guiding another living hand.

Now, I’m not making a pedagogical comment here about writing. I don’t know how that works. I don’t know if it works better or worse, but as an illustration, it’s right on target.

We must live in the context of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the third person of God who comes to us to minister the living Christ to us. We shouldn’t seek for Christ in the wrong place—for the living among the dead. We’re tempted to do that.

On the other hand, what does he do to help prepare the women for ministry? The angel helps them to remember the words of Jesus. Okay, so now some of you are saying, “Ah, it’s not right. I don’t got to study that Bible. I don’t got to go to Sunday school. No, it’s not important—is live the spirit-filled life.”

Well, that’s in opposition to what the text says too because the women will find the living Jesus as they meditate on his written word or his spoken word rather, which is now written for us. Right at the very center is the message, what he the words he spoke to them, and around it are the little things saying remember and they remembered. And that’s what drives the whole narrative—is remembering the words of Christ.

Now look, you can’t remember what Jesus said if you don’t read it. You can’t take the scriptures and understand and interpret the events of your lives if you don’t know them. That’s what they’re being called to do. You’re confused about the world. You think that we have the death of Christian America or God is dead or whatever it is. You think this, that, and the other thing. But the angel says, interpret the circumstances, the narrative of your life by remembering the words of Jesus.

Oh, that’s right. That’s what he meant. He had to be delivered into the hands of sinful men, crucified, and raised up. They interpret it.

Paul does the same thing, right, with terms of baptism. They remembered, oh yeah, that baptism thing of the Holy Spirit. That’s what we’re supposed to do. We’re supposed to reflect on a world that seems dark and mysterious and perplexing and defeating to us. And we’re supposed to remember the words of Christ.

It is found in all 66 books of the Bible and interpret events based on that memory. And we cannot do it if somehow we think that seeking Jesus just means an emotional subjective personal relationship with him. That is as much looking for the living among the dead as going to a dead study without prayer going on, without a dependence upon the Holy Spirit to take that word and enliven your understanding. They’re both opposite ends of the same truth—or the same error—which is looking for the living among the dead.

Jesus lives by means of his word and his spirit. His spirit works—you know, his spirit doesn’t come to move us subjectively. He does, don’t get me wrong, but the core of the spirit’s work—Jesus told us—it was to bring you the things of me. The spirit speaks primarily in terms of what he does by taking his word. The spirit teaches by means of his word. And that’s just what happens here.

They’re focused at the center of the narrative, as are we, to that word. And that word is one of historical reality. It’s not philosophy. It’s historical reality that empowers an optimistic philosophy or view of the future. Okay? But it’s historical reality.

And then as I said, as we move through this application of the text, the women then understanding that they don’t know what’s going on, understanding they’ve had failed ministry, understanding that they’re sort of dense about what’s happened here, understanding that they’ve forgotten the very words of Jesus that he told them, right, understanding their mission hasn’t been accomplished and then being frightened to death and falling down on the ground. Now they’re ready. Now they’re ready for mission and they’re raised up and they’re empowered.

And as I said earlier, the astonishing thing here is that the first mission of proclamation of the gospel is not given to Peter and it’s not given to the 11, the apostles, and it’s not given to male disciples. It’s given to women. That’s significant as I said. Paul helps us so we don’t go off the rails in the other ditch now, but something very transformative has happened here and women are empowered at the beginning of this—of the new world.

Women are empowered. They’re not in par because they’re smarter or more sensitive or any of that stuff. Now, the text has gone out of its way to show us they were as mixed up as the disciples. There’s drawn a parallel. Women are part of the ministry of Christ. But the parallel also works the other way.

Women are as dumb as the disciples were who didn’t believe their word. Okay? And the women, you know, get a supernatural revelation through an angel. You can make a case that maybe they needed that. I don’t know. But the point is they’re not being put forward because of their abilities, their natural abilities, their natural privilege.

Now, this is really significant. And here’s something else that’s significant. These women don’t go off and do their own thing. They don’t start the church of the Holy Sisters. They’re not Joanites, right? They go to the apostles and the apostles say, “Stupid women, go away.” And they don’t stop. They keep telling them. And even then, they’re disbelieved. But even then, the text seems to have no hint that they’re going to walk away from Peter or walk away from the 12 or walk away from the disciples.

They stick with the program.

So, these women are submissive to the leadership that God has established even while they’re bringing instruction and what to believe and what to do to those people. I see what to do because the other gospel narratives, in Matthew for instance, he tells the women to tell the apostles, “Go meet me in Galilee at this mountain.” He tells them to tell the apostles what to do. And here he tells them what to think. Jesus is raised.

So all that’s there, but the other side of it is they’re hanging with the program. They’re not getting bad attitudes toward men in general or a stupid leadership, are they? No. They’re hanging with the program. This is the sort of men and women that change the future. This is the sort of men and women that the text wants us to remember.

We got a tiny little thing here going on with a couple of people and women at that. Remember in Matthew—so those of you who have heard me talk about Matthew—in Matthew, the way the narrative is written is the women are in contrast with the soldiers of Caesar, the powerful mighty soldiers. And the question is, who carries the future? Weak women carried the future, not the powerful, mighty armies of Caesar.

We’re worried about Christian America because the president doesn’t listen to Christians. What? We don’t know what Resurrection Sunday is all about in that case. The gospel is going to transform this world. Don’t worry about that. That’s going to happen. And it’s going to happen as we’re faithful to remember the words of Christ, to understand our situation, to apply it, and as we’re humble.

The women have to be humble enough to continue to submit to the kind of leadership that doesn’t work very well at this point. That’s dysfunctional. And on the other hand of it, the apostles have to eventually get to the point where they’re humbled enough to receive instruction from women.

Now, that sets up the pattern of the community of Jesus Christ. And now listen, you know that the Bible tells you, you know, listen to your wife, like Abraham was supposed to listen to his wife. You know that. So, you can sort of put this into that category. That’s right. My wife has some good ideas, too. We’re not talking about your family. We’re not talking about your wives. We’re talking about the church. We’re talking about men and women. We’re talking about male leadership and males in the church receiving instruction and mission statement through the mouth of women. Okay.

I don’t know, you know, some of these conservative movements associated with people like us when they want to somehow think that women can’t talk to men or can’t accomplish things or should only report to their husbands and nobody else. I don’t know. The whole thing just seems very odd to me and it seems very anti-resurrection. So I’m probably going to get myself in trouble if I say much more than that, but I think it’s a very important point for us and it’s a point that we have not—I have not—communicated well enough in this congregation.

We have people come to this church and they walk away saying, “Oh, the women can’t do anything here.” Now, we know they can. We know that pretty much the only thing they probably can’t do is be an officer. But that’s not what we’re communicating.

Got male greeters. Why? Well, this morning we did. We’re not going to have them anymore. We’re going to have male greeters, of course, but we’re going to have some women. We’re going to jump over that way now. So, we’re going to have women greeters. We’ve got women playing music up here. There’s nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with during prelude, you know, a woman with a wonderful voice gets up and sings to us. There’s nothing wrong with that.

Nothing wrong with we could apply this beyond women. Nothing wrong with the boys choir getting up there and kind of speaking the message of gospel to us and we receiving it even though they’re little boys. Nothing wrong with before the worship starts, you know, having, you know, different sort of music. Nothing wrong with that. Everything good about that. It shows that we understand, you know, what the Christian faith is all about as we try to root out stuff that we’re not trying to say.

We’re not trying to say the only good music was by Goudimel. We’re not trying to say that only men can do stuff in the church. But somehow, see, we end up communicating these sorts of messages and we don’t want to do that. We want to transform it somehow.

We’ve tried to move beyond the practice in terms of distribution of the elements. Maybe we’ll move beyond it some more. Nothing wrong with your wife coming up. Nothing wrong with a daughter coming up or your son coming up to bring the elements back to your family or the group that are with you. You see, we—in fact this text tells us that, you know, that’s the sort of thing we probably will see happen in the new creation.

It happens here. Women, women greeters, women with ministry, women speaking, functional inferior speaking—then just women. This means the disciples will be used by God to tell the apostles a thing or two, right? And that mean that changes both people. That means the officers must always be open to hearing the living Jesus speaking through his spirit by means of another member of the body of Christ. Even though that member may be not an officer and maybe a woman or whatever it is, it means the officers have to hear that stuff.

And you know, it means that the parishioners have to speak that stuff with confidence. And that depends a lot on the atmospherics that we provide here. But that’s what you should do. You should feel compelled to speak. Now, remember, you know, it’s it’s about remembering the word of Christ and analyzing things that way and all that stuff, but this tells us how the new creation works.

Notice also in this text—okay, a little long. Let’s wrap it up. It’s interesting that these women are named as they complete their mission in the text, right? In the middle of their mission, they’re bringing stuff to the tomb and stuff. No names. When they move to accomplishing their mission. That’s when they have names.

It’s interesting because in Luke’s gospel, they’re named at the beginning as well. Earlier in Luke’s gospel, Joanna and other women, Susanna and Mary is named as the women that follow Jesus and begin to minister to him. So, at the beginning of their ministry, they’re named by name. And here, as they complete their mission to go and talk to the apostles, they’re named.

Who are you? What’s your name? What your identity and the text I think is pointing us to the fact that our identity is found in our mission for Jesus. As we’ve sought out the living Christ and listened to his word and been empowered by his spirit, we find out who we are. That’s who we are. So name is given to us in the context of fulfillment of mission and mission—and as I said—humility.

You know, Peter the—the text finishes with Peter. So we have women that is unexpected and Peter’s a little unexpected here too actually, right? I mean if you remember the narratives, he’s denied the savior three times. What would you do? You failed so bad in ministry. Everybody knows it. Jesus knows it. You were a complete failure in your ministry. You actually denied Jesus. And you denied him three times having been forewarned that you’re going to be tempted to do that very thing.

But there he is. He hangs with the program. He stays in touch. He’s got to feel bad. He’s got to feel horrible. And now, you know, the great one is being instructed by women. Oh, that’s a test of Peter. But he comes through the test with flying colors.

He’s like us because he knows that the gospel at the end of the day, he realizes that Resurrection Sunday is if it’s about anything, it’s about hope. Hope for people that fail. Hope for people that are looked down upon or not believed by other people. Hope for people who haven’t quite figured out what they’re supposed to be doing and are off trying to anoint a body that isn’t even there. Hope for people that struggle in various forms of darkness, oppression, physical difficulties. Whatever it is, God says, “There’s hope.

Peter, you denied me three times. There will be hope. There will be another morning that’ll come that won’t show your sin and your betrayal. Another morning will come when you will, no doubt humbled—that’s the only way God uses us is when we’re humbled. No doubt humbled tremendously—Peter will still run to that tomb because he loves his savior. He’ll go looking for Jesus and he’ll find Jesus. That we’re not told of that encounter in any detail.

We’re told is that by the time the Emmaus disciples come back, the report is Peter has received a visitation by Jesus. We don’t know what it was, but what we know is that as Jesus stayed with the program, humbled, broken, but still staying with the program of trying to find and serve Jesus, it happens. It happens.

Resurrection Sunday is about wonderful new ways that the world works. Beautiful imagery of what happens in the new world. Wonderful things going on just in ineffable truths. And it’s also a—Resurrection Sunday is about God working in the midst of darkness, whatever form that darkness takes, to bring about the new creation.

Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you not as we ought but as we’re able. And we thank you that this is acceptable through the person and work of our risen savior. We thank you for him. We thank you for your holy spirit that ministers him to us. We thank you for this wonderfully encouraging account. May we be faithful to know the word of our savior, to look for the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, to speak forth an interpretation of the events of our world based upon his word, and to take hope and to serve one another humbly in the body of Christ. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen. Amen.