Jesus Met Them

Jesus Met Them

Matthew 27: 57 - 66

Matthew 28: 1 – 10

Easter Sunday

April 20, 2025

It has been a long week, hasn’t it? Sunday started with such anticipation. Jesus had come to Jerusalem. Even though He had told the disciples differently, the crowds surrounding the road from Bethany, over the Mount of Olives and into Jerusalem – these crowds thought maybe, just maybe, the long-awaited conquering Messiah had arrived. 

They shouted, they waved palm branches, they had their own religious officials as well as the Roman Guard poised and ready to quickly stamp out any insurrection as Jesus entered Jerusalem. I wonder what Jesus was thinking as he listened to the shouts of welcome, all the while knowing that He would hear very different shouts just a few days later.

A temple was cleansed. Lessons were taught. Judas struck a deal and the disciples – with Jesus – gathered for a one final meal. Betrayal, arrest, trials, flogging – it all went downhill from there, didn’t it? 

Friday morning dawns, Jesus is marched through the streets carrying at least part of his cross to Calvary. There, the guards throw lots for his robe. He is nailed – through each wrist and his ankles – to the cross and is lifted into place. Jesus, flogged, bloody, beaten and exhausted is now crucified. 

I say that so casually, but there was nothing casual about crucifixion. It was a horrible way to die. Hours of fighting to breathe, the mechanism of crucifixion was one of death by suffocation. After six hours – an earthquake, the curtain in the Holy of Holies is torn, Jesus cries out, “It is finished.”

And so it was. The body of Jesus is hastily prepared and laid in a tomb. Evening and the Sabbath was coming so they didn’t have time for the ceremonial washings and anointing that usually accompanied the death of a loved one. The rock sealing the tomb is rolled into place and everyone goes home wondering about what just happened. 

It all started out so well and ended so badly. The Saturday of Holy Week, is that seemingly unending wait between despair and new hope. 

Saturday, the disciples and other followers languished in grief and confusion as their very reason for being, the embodiment of all of their hopes and dreams for the future had hung, and died, on the Cross. 

But a new world rises with the dawn on Sunday. 

With that new dawn comes a new entry. Last Sunday the human Jesus, the sacrificial lamb had entered Jerusalem. This Sunday, this first day of the week, this Easter day the resurrected Christ – the One who took on our sin, the One who died on our behalf, the one who laid in the Tomb while we despaired, THIS brilliant, resurrected, transformed, victorious Jesus has come back. Jesus has once again entered into the human world, not with angels, shepherds, and a manger but this time as the conqueror of sin and the pathway to new life.

The text from Matthew tells us that the women – those courageous, faithful women, unafraid to be affiliated with the crucified Jesus - got up early, before dawn, still in despair, in darkness – and came to the Tomb. 

First, they are visited by angels saying, “Do not be afraid.” Just like the angels said to Mary, to Joseph, to the shepherds in the fields the night Jesus was born, “Do not be afraid.” Jesus is alive. Jesus has risen. Go quickly and tell the others – the others who still languish in the darkness, in the hopelessness of Saturday – go and tell them that Jesus is alive. 

As if an angel whose appearance resembled lightning and whose clothing was an impossibly bright white wasn’t enough; as their despair had turned to hopefulness, Jesus meets them, greets them, and turns their hope gained from the Angel into resurrection reality.

Friends, is not much of life like Holy Week? We enter with great enthusiasm. 

We enter, sometimes with misplaced intentions, sometimes trying to force history by the strength of our own resolve. And when our best laid plans crumble under the weight of their own pretensions, we too find ourselves in that dark place of despair waiting for something, waiting for anything, waiting for some reason for hope.

Dear Ones – and never have you felt more dear to me than you do on this day – 

dear ones, Jesus the Christ stands ready to transform our despair into newly found hope. Jesus stands ready to demonstrate for you that while our self-centered dreams and aspirations may crumble and die, the resurrected Jesus is ready to breath new life, new hope, new possibilities into our souls. 

This is Easter – God’s definitive demonstration of His power over darkness, brokenness, despair, and sin. This is Easter, and while our pretensions to self-sufficiency and eternal self-determination may die on the cross of pride and ego; God raises us to new life, to new possibilities, to new power, to even eternal glory. 

This is Easter, and Jesus goes before us – not unto Galilee but into our future. So go forth in that resurrection power. Go forth – strengthened and fortified by God’s grace and mercy. Go forth, as God’s redeemed. Go forth, not as people languishing in Saturday darkness, but as people who have been brought into his glorious light!

Life will never be the same again. Christ has risen. He has risen indeed! Life – even in this broken world – is filled with new possibilities in Jesus Christ, the Risen One. Amen.