Sermon for the Resurrection of our Lord
Newborn Babies and Dry Land
Theme: God's spectacular miracles serve to remind us of His mundane, daily
miracles.
Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!) Grace, mercy
and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! Amen. In
today's Gospel, three women went to the tomb where Jesus' body had been
placed, intending to anoint the body for burial. You already know what they
found:
They saw that the stone had been rolled back. and entering the tomb, they
saw a young man sitting on the right side. And he said to them, "Do not be
alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; He is
not here."
Dear Christian friends,
When God created the heavens and the earth, He "separated the
waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the
expanse" (Genesis 1:7). This means that the dry land on which we live is
sandwiched between two layers of water. What prevents these two layers of
water from falling together and destroying us all? The Word of God prevents
it: God said, "Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters and let it
separate the waters from the waters" (Genesis 1:6). With these Words, our
God would have us believe that dry land is a daily miracle. The Word God
spoke at the dawn of creation remains continually powerful today, as
powerful as when the Word first was spoken. Yet God's daily miracle of dry
land goes totally unnoticed, and very few people receive this daily gift of
dry land with thanksgiving.
Again: childbirth is by no means an infrequent occurrence among
us. People everywhere have babies all the time. But we should not think
that our ordinary way of giving birth takes place without the Word. For when
God once said (Genesis 1:28): "Be fruitful," that Word is effective to this
day and preserves nature in a miraculous way [even now]. But how few there
are who believe this or are aware of it! (Luther, AE 4, 4).
We humans regularly conceive and give birth, thinking that conception and
birth are something that we produce and we control. Most people think of
children as the product of their parents' desires and actions. Very few
recognize that every child born to us is the result of God's Word and
promise from centuries ago: "Be fruitful" (Genesis 1:28).
Newborn babies and dry land: these are only two of the many
miracles that God's Word regularly produces among us and that regularly go
unnoticed by many. Things that happen every day do not seem stupendous.
Things that happen every day do not seem to be all that miraculous. Things
that happen every day seem like everyday occurrences.
Every once in a while our loving heavenly Father decides to do
something big; something spectacular; something that gets peoples'
attention.
· For example, in the days of Noah, "God remembered Noah and all the
beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. And God made a
wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided" (Genesis 8:1). When that
miracle happened, every living person on the planet rejoiced and thanked God
to see dry ground. Our God's everyday miracle of dry land moved to the
front-and-center of peoples' thinking in those soggy days after the Great
Flood.
· It is the same way with childbirth. Abraham's wife Sarah was well
beyond her childbearing years when "the LORD visited Sarah . and Sarah
conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age. Abraham called the name of
his son. Isaac" (Genesis 21:1, 3). "We can correctly state about the birth
of a human being that it is just as miraculous today as was the birth of
Isaac" (Luther, AE 4,4). But not every birth gets our attention. We need
Isaac's spectacular birth-and we need John the Baptist's equally spectacular
birth (Luke 1)-in order to remind us that every birth of every child is
spectacular and amazing and a true miracle produced by the Word and promise
of God.
Very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they [the
women] went to the tomb. They saw that the stone had been rolled back. and
entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side. And he
said to them, "Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was
crucified. He is not here."
Christ is risen! (He is risen, indeed!) Alleluia! I do not need
to convince you that this is a spectacular, stupendous miracle that our God
has accomplished by the power of His Word. A dead man has become alive.
Tattered wounds have turned to mere scars. Empty lungs have re-inflated with
"the breath of life, and the Man became a living being [again]" (Genesis
2:7, NIV). "God has highly exalted Him" (Philippians 2:9). "God raised Him
up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for Him to be
held by it" (Acts 2:24). "They put Him to death by hanging Him on a tree,
but God raised Him on the third day and made Him to appear" (Acts 10:39-40).
We can hardly count the many personal benefits you receive from
God through this resurrection of His Son from the dead:
1. Chief among the profit that you receive from Christ's
resurrection is the certainty of your forgiveness. Jesus was "delivered up
for our trespasses and raised for our justification" (Romans 4:25). Because
of His suffering and death on the cross, you now are fully forgiven every
sin. By raising Jesus from the dead, God proclaims this forgiveness to you.
That is to say, Christ's resurrection marks the beginning of a new life for
you and for me in which there is no condemnation, no judgment, no guilt and
no sin.
2. You also profit from Christ's resurrection because this great
Easter miracle promises you your own resurrection from the dead. Jesus
promises you, "Because I live, you also will live" (14:19). Jesus declares
to you, "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in Me, though
he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in Me shall
never die" (John 11:25-26).
3. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!
According to His great mercy, He has caused us to be born again to a living
hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead" (1 Peter 1:3).
That is to say, your faith and trust in Jesus is itself a miracle produced
by the Word of God, a miracle God has personally performed for you, a
miracle that is tied to Easter Sunday and "the resurrection of Jesus Christ
from the dead." Stated another way, we need the spectacular miracle of our
Lord's resurrection as a way of putting us in mind of the daily miracle God
mercifully provides for you and for me by the power of His Word. What I mean
is this:
· Dry land is a daily miracle that God performs through the power of
His Word. Because this miracle is so common and so regular, we easily loose
sight of the miracle and stop taking notice. So God performs great and
spectacular miracles to draw our attention back again. The commonplace
miracle of dry land did not seem so commonplace and mundane in the days
after the Flood.
· Childbirth is a repeated miracle that God continually performs in
our midst by the power of His Word and promise, "Be fruitful and multiply
and fill the earth" (Genesis 1:28). Because children are a commonly present
among us, "few are aware. of the miracle of birth" (Luther, AE 4, 6). So God
performs great and spectacular miracles such as the birth of Isaac and of
John the Baptist, so that we may have our attention drawn back again to the
miracle that God performs in every conception and every birth.
In the same way, you believe in Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins. Your
faith, like dry land and like childbirth, is nothing short of a daily gift
from the heavenly Father who loves you. Your faith itself is a true dying to
sin and rising to life again by the abiding power of God's Word, in which
the old Adam in us should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned and
die with all sins and evil desires, and a new man should daily emerge and
arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever" (Small
Catechism, Baptism IV).
In short, your faith is a miracle from your God.
But faith in Jesus rarely feels like a miracle. Very often faith
does not feel like new life and it does not feel like resurrection from the
dead. God daily renews His gift of faith through the miracle of His Word,
but things that happen every day do not seem to be all that miraculous.
Things that happen every day do not seem stupendous. Things that happen
every day seem like everyday occurrences.
Every once in a while our loving heavenly Father decides to do
something big; something spectacular; something that gets peoples'
attention. Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!) Dear Christian
friends, look at your own daily life through the example of this
resurrection from the dead. That which God has done for His Son, He does
also for you on a daily basis: through the power of His Word, your heavenly
Father performs for you a daily miracle of resurrection to new life, by
which you continue to believe in Jesus.
God said. "Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together
into one place, and let the dry land appear" (Genesis 1:9). Not a moment
passes by in your day that does not claim full dependence upon these Words.
God said, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth" (Genesis
1:28). Not one single child has entered this world apart from the power of
these Words.
Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed!) Alleluia! In this
resurrection, Jesus "was declared to be the Son of God in power" (Romans
1:4). Not one person believes in Jesus apart from this powerful and
miraculous proclamation of God's Word. Apart from the daily power and
miracle of the Words of God, no one rises and no one lives. But Christ is
risen! (He is risen indeed!) Alleluia! There you have also the daily miracle
of your faith.
The peace of God which passes all understanding guard your
hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Amen.
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