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SERMON 9: EASTER SUNDAY
The Power of the Easter Promise
Luke 24:1-12
Christ is risen!
[He is risen, indeed!]
Alleluia!
This morning I want to start by telling you about a commemorative plaque.
In 1972 a Swiss man named Dieter Meier took part in an expansive art project in Europe.
Dieter was a young, well-to-do man who dabbled in his own art projects, but aside from that he had little notoriety.
Not many in his hometown of Zurich knew his name and outside of that he was a complete nobody.
Nevertheless, he participated in this art project by going to the railway station in Kassel, Germany and installing a metal plaque which said, "On 23 March 1994, from 3 to 4 pm, Dieter Meier will stand on this plaque."
Perhaps not such a big deal.
After all, it was just a plaque in an art project.
Even the timeframe involved made the whole thing a bit absurd.
Adding to the unlikeliness of the whole thing was that seven years after this art project, Dieter met a man named Boris Blank who was starting a music band.
There were three to begin with, but soon it became just Dieter and Boris and their rather eccentric band, Yello.
Yello wasn't much to begin with either, but in the late '80s, a number of movies, such as "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," used Yello's song "Oh Yeah," on their soundtrack and suddenly Yello was being played everywhere.
They've stayed comfortably in their eccentric ways and so they are not so much a household name anymore, but Dieter and Boris are still very much active and producing new music to this day.
All of that is to say, after all of the business of life, after the fame and the music, the tours, and all the rest, the likelihood that Dieter would remember his promise wasn't looking good.
But that plaque still sat there and people came to wait and see, mostly out of curiosity than any real expectation.
But, contrary to speculation, promptly at 3pm, 22 years after the plaque had been installed, Dieter stood there and entertained the audience and the passengers with his trademark panache and bass vocals.
Our reading this morning from Luke 24 puts on display the power of a promise.
It's a promise that was good because of who made it.
It's a promise that was good, even though people forgot that the promise was made, even though when they did think about the promise,
some people just knew that the promise wasn't any good after all.
But the angel said to the group of at least five or six women that first Easter morning,
"Remember.
Remember how he spoke to you.
Remember what he said would happen.
Remember the promise."
And the promise came true in power back then, and that same promise is true also today.
Ponder this reading with me, and marvel at the power of the Easter promise.
We'll start with something obvious.
A promise is only as good, as powerful as the person
who makes it.
So, when we reflect on this reading, we can ask, "Who is the powerful person?
Who are the powerful people in this reading?"
I'll start by saying that it's not the holy angel, oddly enough.
Angels are powerful, I suppose, but he is just a messenger.
He does nothing but speak to the women (although he does terrify them, which is what holy angels do really well).
The promise's power doesn't come
from the angel.
Now here is another obvious thing to say, but this one is more important.
The powerful
people in this reading are not the women, and not the apostles and the others with them
on that first Easter.
What the reading shows us, in fact, is the weakness, and even more,
the impotence and complete inability and helplessness of the women and the men who
were there.
We won't point fingers or mock them, because none of us would have been any
different if we had been there.
But when you think about it, it's almost funny, in a way.
Luke writes that the women rested on the Sabbath, which is what they normally would do.
Oh, normally.
They thought that life was still going on the way it had gone on before.
They
rested on the Sabbath, and then they thought it was their turn to do the work.
In their minds,
nothing had changed since Friday afternoon.
In their minds, nothing had changed since evil
had done away with their teacher and master.
Nothing had changed-so they came to do
their duty for the corpse.
It's very beautiful in a way, and brave and loving.
But completely,
utterly wrong.
They didn't even know that he was the Lord.
But he was.
And so Luke writes
that they entered the tomb, but they didn't find the body of the Lord Jesus.
The angel's words to them shows how unaware and helpless and confused they were.
"Why are you seeking the living among the dead?"
They're in a place with tombs, and they are at one particular tomb.
And we all know-just as they did-how it works when people die by
crucifixion.
Governments are good at killing people; the Romans were very good at it.
What
sort of people do you find in tombs?
Dead people, and they think that Jesus is dead.
Do
these loving, confused, wrong-headed women have anything to do with the Easter promise?
Nothing at all.
In fact, they are living as if the promise had no power, as if the promise was
never even made.
The apostles come off worse, in a way.
The women tell them about the empty tomb, and what the angel told them, and about the promise.
But it doesn't do any good.
Luke writes
that the women's testimony "seemed to the apostle an idle tale."
And Peter even runs to the
tomb (and it's not very far-half a mile, maybe a mile or so).
And he sees that there is no
corpse there.
But all he can do is marvel as he goes home.
He doesn't get it-not yet.
Here's the point again.
The power of a promise does not reside in the people to whom the promise is made.
The power comes from the one who makes the promise.
In a beautiful
way, this Easter story shows us, actually shows us, that no one is saved because of their own
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