These are the readings and sermons of St. John's Lutheran Church of Park Rapids, Minnesota.
They are offered so that the Word of God would shape and strengthen you to be what He calls you to be, salt and light.
You can find us at stjohnspr.org.
Now, on to the Word.
Our Old Testament reading today is actually recorded for us by the prophet Isaiah, the 55th chapter.
One of the promises that we heard during Lent about the gift of life and to come and buy without cost.
And also this wonderful promise that God's Word is effective, just like snow and rain.
Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters.
And he who has no money, come, buy and eat.
Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread and your labor for that which does not satisfy?
Listen diligently to me and eat what is good and delight yourselves in rich food.
Incline your ear and come to me here that your soul may live.
And I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, my sure love for David.
Behold, I made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander for the peoples.
Behold, you shall call a nation that you do not know.
And a nation that you did not know shall run to you because the Lord, your God, the Holy One of Israel, for He has glorified you.
Seek the Lord while He may be found.
Call upon Him while He is near.
Let the wicked forsake His way and the unrighteous man His thoughts.
Let Him return to the Lord that He may have compassion on Him and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
 the Scriptures,
that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.
Then He appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.
Then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles.
Last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared also to me, for I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.
But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain.
On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it is not I, but the grace of God that is within me.
Whether then it was I or they, so we preached, and so you believed.
This too is the Word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
invite the congregation to please stand for the reading of the Gospel.
Our Gospel is the Gospel of St. John, the twentieth chapter, but we're going to follow through on the entire story with Mary here.
So it'll be verses one through eighteen instead of one through nine.
Now on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early while it was still dark,
and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb.
So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them,
they have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.
So Peter went out with the other disciple, and they were going toward the tomb.
Both of them were running together, but the other disciple out ran Peter and reached the tomb first.
And stooping to look in, he saw the linen clothes lying there, but he did not go in.
Then Simon Peter came following him and went into the tomb. He saw the linen clothing lying there,
and the face cloth which had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen clothes, but folded up in a place by itself.
Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, I have seen the Lord,
When we give that response, why do we say he is risen indeed?
Well, indeed is from the Latin word for in truth.
And so we're saying yes to the truth of Scripture that he is risen.
Now God has led us, unlike the disciples, to understand the Scriptures.
And so in the epistle that was read, it said that Jesus was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.
And so we say he is risen indeed.
And there are other true things that are in accordance with the Scriptures,
because just before that sentence from that same epistle, it says,
delivered to you as of first importance, what I also received,
that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures.
And so if I say Christ was dead...
He was dead indeed.
And we could even add the Alleluia, because the death of Christ is something that we celebrate.
We call it Good Friday, solemn as it is, sad as it is.
it is a wonderful thing that Christ had to die so that we have the forgiveness of our sins.
don't think that one's going to catch on anytime soon.
But we can't celebrate the absolutely necessary resurrection of Jesus without celebrating the absolutely necessary death of our Lord as well.
And celebrate is the right word.
Easter is a celebration of life.
Good Friday is a celebration of death.
And the hymn, the death of Jesus Christ our Lord, we celebrate with one accord, states it correctly.
Good Friday was good indeed.
But all of this is so wonderfully different from what our head tells us that the disciples did not understand the Scripture on Easter morning.
Instead of understanding the Scripture that Jesus must rise from the dead,
they saw that the body was missing.
They were pretty slow to put all the clues together, but John saw and believed.
And so Jesus appears to Mary.
Today, I think he hit a home run.
He's got the disciples who saw and believed.
He's got Mary who heard and knew, and then he's got us in the middle there.
We're the ones who hear God's word.
And that word, like we heard in the Old Testament, doesn't come back to God without accomplishing what he wants, and that's that we believe.
And he's even got egg-shaped frames around the people.
All of that's going to figure in somehow in our theme.
Jesus speaks so that people hear and believe that he had to rise.
Without Christ as risen, he has risen indeed. Acclamation has been around for a long time in the church, not quite as long Lutheran churches, but a long, long time.
And the legend is that Mary Magdalene is the one who started the whole thing when she appeared before the emperor and said, Christ is risen.
Now, the emperor didn't respond automatically like you did.
He thought it was nonsense.
So according to the legend, when Mary Magdalene said, Christ is risen, he said, sure, just like that egg you're holding is going to turn red.
And then according to the legend, the egg that Mary was holding turned bright red, and that's why icons of Mary Magdalene show her holding a red egg, and that boys and girls is apparently why we die eggs on Easter.
Well, I don't always understand the legends.
don't understand why Mary would go to the emperor holding an egg, but it doesn't really cover that.
What matters is what Scripture says, and that the Holy Spirit gives us an understanding of the Scripture.
The disciples didn't understand from the Scripture that Jesus had to rise.
To be more precise, they didn't understand that Jesus had to both die and rise.
And in this case, Scripture certainly means the words that were written, the words of prophecy that had been written in the law and the prophets way, way back.
But it also includes the words and the promises that Jesus spoke directly to the disciples.
How much more word of God can you get when Jesus told them that he had to go and be crucified and killed and he had to rise on the third day.
But it wasn't just that the tomb was empty.

It says that that could be 20 billion.
Somebody else said 100 billion.
Will they also be empty one day?
Kind of boggles our mind.
But even more is the one tomb that troubles our mind.
That's my grave.
Will I someday slip out underneath those linen strips and take the grave cloth up and fold it up and walk out of my grave?
That's the resurrection that I'm interested in.
That's the resurrection that Scripture causes us to understand.
But do I always understand it?
Do I understand that I too must die?
Actually, I get that part.
But that I also must rise?
Can that be true?
Like the disciples, it doesn't seem possible.
And sometimes I don't understand from Scripture that I have to rise from the dead.
But yet one of the best Easter hymns of all, which is actually in the funeral section, says,
Jesus, my Redeemer lives, likewise I to life shall awaken.
some people think that Mary was also the sinful prostitute who washed Jesus' feet and wiped them with her hair.
But there's no evidence of that in Scripture.
The only reason that people thought that for hundreds of years was because that bad sermon was preached by Pope Leo I.
And it wasn't until 1969 that the church said, that really isn't true.
Don't believe that anymore.
Let's just think about what we do know.
Jesus freed her from seven demons.
Sometimes the Bible, a couple of times, tells us exactly how Jesus did this.
But most of the time it doesn't.
t just says that he went into the towns and villages, presumably Magdala,
and also freed people like Mary.
And in Mark we read that Jesus cleansed people from demons with a word.
A word.
So it's plausible that just that one word that was all,
took for Jesus to free Mary from demons could have been him calling her by name.
Maybe Jesus simply said, Mary, and she came forth and all the demons were left behind.
Now, I don't want this to be a sermon as bad as Leo's, where I make something up that,
don't think you're going to remember it for 1800 years though.
But it's possible that Jesus freed her just by speaking her name.
And maybe that's why when Jesus said, Mary, he recognized, she recognized him.
And from all of her sorrow, from all of her doubt, from all of her fears,
she was called and Mary was left.
When Jesus cleansed her of those demons, there was a new spirit in her,
that faithfulness that caused her to not only take care of him and the disciples,
but that faithfulness that caused her to be among the last to leave the cross on Good Friday
and among the first to arrive on Easter morning.
There's a more modern legend, a work of fiction, that tries to get us to believe that


We are risen.
We are risen indeed.
Hallelujah.
And the peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
Amen.