Easter Sunday

He is risen! He is risen, indeed! Alleluia. We come to the end of our Holy Week remembrance with the joy of celebrating our Lord Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. The tomb is empty and we rejoice. On Palm Sunday we observed Christ riding in to Jerusalem for his final week. On Maundy Thursday we observed the instituting of the Lord’s Supper as Jesus celebrated Passover with His disciples. On Good Friday our service got progressively darker as we remembered Jesus suffering and dying on a cross for us. We waited patiently Saturday as our Lord was in the grave but today we rejoice because He has passed from death to life – He has risen indeed!

In your bulletins is a half sheet with a butterfly on it. We will come back to this in a few minutes to see how the butterfly can be a great image of the resurrection.

The Gospel lesson for today shows the women coming to the tomb. On their minds were “earthly things: How would they roll the stone away? What condition the body would be in? What or who would they find in the garden? I am sure the fact that Jesus was not in the tomb had not even entered their minds. But that is what they found, an empty tomb. Well, not exactly empty. There was an angel there who said, “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go; tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.” (Mark 16:6-7, ESV) [1] The women went from worrying about earthly matters to seeing the eternal plan of God unfolding.

The story that catches my attention is the one about the two disciples heading up to Emmaus after the Passover celebration. They had witnessed the death of Jesus on the cross at the hands of the Jewish leaders and Roman authorities. They probably feared for their lives and now they were hearing rumors about an empty tomb. While on their trip they a joined by a third man who questions their down cast nature. They were shocked that this man had not heard about what had happened in Jerusalem. Then the man started to teach them about God’s working in the history of Israel from the past to the teachings of Jesus. They still didn’t know what was going on but they wanted to hear more so when the reached Emmaus they invited the man to stay and have dinner with them. At the table the man broke bread and immediately the two disciples see that it was Jesus! That is how God works with us this day. In His word God reveals Himself to us and his love and compassion for us. In His word we see Jesus.

Jesus is coming to us today as we rejoice in His resurrection, His overcoming death for us. The symbol of the butterfly has often been used as a symbol of the resurrection. Now I tried looking up butterfly in Scripture and the best I could come up with was the “moth” that destroys earthly goods. While the butterfly may not be scriptural it is a good illustration of both Christ’s life and ours in Christ. One the next page is an illustration of a butterfly. I like this one because of what is contained in the picture. In the middle you can see a cross and in the wings you can see faces of people. Now, I want you to write a few words around this butterfly. By the left wing write “Old”, by the right wing “New”, below the butterfly “Death” and above write “Life.”

[2]

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” (2 Corinthians 5:17, ESV) [3] This verse sums up what the resurrection of Jesus means. We have been transformed by Jesus, the old has passed the new has come. Jesus has passed through death to life so that we too can have life with Him.

Jesus life is like the cycle of a butterfly. Philippians 2 says that Jesus humbled himself and became a man. He but aside being God and took on our lowly flesh and blood to be one of us. That is like a caterpillar. Often the caterpillar is a despised insect whose only task seems to be to eat and destroy plants. Jesus became a “caterpillar” like us, for us. Isaiah says that the messiah would be a person we “esteemed not” and even considered to be “ugly”. But Jesus did this for us; He became a man to live the perfect life we could not. And Jesus went to the cross to take on all our “ugly,” and despised sins. He was killed and entered the tomb.

The tomb is like the cocoon. Through His death Jesus was being transformed in to the glorious risen Savior. He entered the cocoon of death to rise victoriously as a beautiful butterfly. What was despised now has become the glory of the Father in heaven. What was once dead is now alive. From a caterpillar to cocoon to butterfly, from man to death to resurrection.

Our life takes the same path too. In our sin we are no better than an ugly caterpillar. Our sin is the “Old” you wrote by the butterfly. And you can fill in what is “old” on your life; sin, sickness, pain, suffering, grief, heartache… But Christ has opened to us the path to what is “New.” What is “new” in Christ? Forgiveness, new life, salvation, eternal life, a new creation… Through Christ we can put of the “old” and be made “new.”

In our baptism we enter into the cocoon. We are now in this state of struggle. We know that we are forgiven and free from the power of sin death and the devil. But we are not in heaven yet. We have not been resurrected to our glorious bodies which await us when we pass through death into eternal life.

A boy was in a science class that was studying the life cycle of a butterfly. The caterpillar has gone into its cocoon and now the class waited to see the butterfly come out. The boy was impatient with the process and one day he saw a crack in the cocoon. He decided that he was going to help the butterfly come out of the cocoon. He took a small knife and started to carefully cut away the cocoon. Slowly the boy revealed more and more of the inside of the cocoon. But to his horror, instead of a beautiful butterfly, he saw only an ugly, shriveled, insect. You see a caterpillar needs to struggle to get out of the cocoon to give strength to it’s wings and allow it to develop into the gorgeous butterfly. The boy thought he was helping but by removing the struggle he destroyed the butterfly.

In this world we will still face the struggles of life. They are to make us stronger if we look to God for strength. God doesn’t remove us from this world once we have been baptized. He knows that the trials of life, the struggle against sin, the facing of problems with God’s guidance can only make us stronger. God is shaping and molding us in our cocoons of life. We may struggle now, but we know the outcome. We know that because Jesus died and rose again we who are united with Him will die and rise again. We have the victory. We have hope. That is Easter, celebrating the victory won for us in Christ Jesus.

He is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia!

Amen

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[1] The Holy Bible : English standard version. 2001 (electronic ed.). Wheaton: Good News Publishers.

[2] Used with permission from the Youth Ministry Office of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.

[3] The Holy Bible : English standard version. 2001 (electronic ed.). Wheaton: Good News Publishers.