Preaching text: Matthew 28:1-10
Ten years ago, a deranged young man took two handguns and entered into West AJ dorm at Virginia Tech. There he shot and killed two students. An hour or so later, he entered Norris Hall, one of the academic buildings on the opposite side of campus from AJ and began a killing spree that killed 31 other people, including himself. Virginia Tech is my alma mater. It was my home for five years of my life. And what that psychopath did left a scar on all of us Hokies.
Death is all around us.
The news is full of it. We dropped the MOAB this week, the “Massive Ordnance Air Blast” bomb or as the soldiers like to call it the “Mother of all bombs.” We fired missiles into Syria last week. All because the Syrian tyrant gassed his own people, providing echoes of the nightmare of the Holocaust 65 years ago (as our Press Secretary rather awkwardly helped remind us.)
Death is all around us.
I even watched a video of a little girl in Arizona, prancing about the lobby of a hair salon when two bullets from a drive-by shooting whizzed past her. One to the left of her head, the other to the right, both missing by mere inches. A four year old girl nearly murdered by two criminals who were trying to shoot the tattoo parlor next door and missed.
Death is all around us.
And to this world of Death, we speak this day a word of hope. Three words really: Christ is risen!
CHRIST IS RISEN!
Sometimes we find ourselves choking out those words in the midst of tears of sorrow or trembling of fear. Because death is all around us. Its power seems undeniable, invincible, unstoppable. But it is not so. Christ has proven that. He’s shown us who is the true power of this reality. That death has no hold upon our God. The same God who created us. The same God who daily in every way he can tells us that he loves us. The same God who sent Jesus Christ into this world to show us what that love looks like. The same God who in Christ died on that cross for our sake. The same God who in Christ walked out of that empty tomb on this morning so many centuries ago.
Christ is Risen!
The women who went to the tomb that morning were not expecting anything unusual. Jesus was dead. Pilate had posted guards to keep anyone from stealing the body, no doubt adding an element of intimidation to what would otherwise be a routine funerary rite of bringing spices and ointments for the body. Death was very present in that moment, from the weapons on the hips of the soldiers to the silence of that tomb to the soft weeping of the women as they journeyed to it.
Death was all around them.
And yet into this moment of death came a miracle. The stone rolled away. The angels appeared. The soldiers were stuck catatonic. And those angels brought a message. “Do not fear. He is risen.”
Do not fear. Christ is risen.
Astonished, the women begin to hurriedly return to the others of their company. To Peter and James and John and the rest of the eleven. On the road, they encounter Jesus himself. Shocked to see him alive, the women are beside themselves. They fall before him and Jesus speaks.
“Do not fear. I am risen.”
Earlier this week, I was meeting with my colleagues and discussing how we were going to preach today. I shared with them the mirthful phrase that I’ve said to all of you on numerous occasions, that the Bible can be summed up by God telling us “Chill, I got this.” And while that phrase may make you smile a bit at its humor, it’s true. It’s true because it is essentially a paraphrase of “Do not fear. Christ is risen!”
Scholars have long argued that the two most important words in all of the Bible: Μὴ φοβου or “fear not.” That phrase appears twice in our Gospel text alone and roughly 110 other times in the Scriptures. But how can we? Death is all around us. Yes, but Christ is risen. Do not fear.
There it is, folks. The whole width and breadth of the Scriptures. The entirety of God’s plan for his people in a handful of words. It’s the whole reason for the Old Covenant, the promise made to Abraham that from him would come a blessing for all people. That blessing is Christ, God incarnate, born of a virgin, lived, taught, went to the cross, died, and then rose again for the sake of you, me, and the whole world. Yes, the world is full of death. But Christ IS risen. The plan has come to fruition. All is as it should be and all will be set right.
Death is all around us. But Christ is risen! Do not fear. Amen.
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