Some of the most impressive and impressive structures on earth are tombs or contain tombs: the pyramids of Egypt or Mexico, India’s Taj Mahal, the Arc de Triumph in Paris, London’s Westminster Abbey, just to name a few, but they are all over shadowed by one tomb that no one can say for certain where exactly it is. It is a rock hewn sepulcher, just outside Jerusalem owned by a member of the Jewish Aristocracy. I contained the body of another man, however, a rabbi from Galilee on a Friday, but it was found empty the following Sunday, and the world has not been the same since.

Those other famous tombs for all their tons of limestone, granite, or marble are merely mute testimonies to the power of death over fallen mankind. When graverobbers or archeologists first opened the pyramids, they found only the bodies of dead Pharaohs, but when the women in today’s Gospel came to anoint the body of their slain Lord, they found the stone rolled away and an empty tomb because Jesus had triumphed over death, the greatest of all victories had been won, and believers have been celebrating it ever since, including us here today.

But this wonderful celebration, this glad triumph has a very sad, uncertain prelude, since the joy of Easter, has its roots in the sorrow of Good Friday. So one could say that there were two missions that first Easter morning, one was a mission frustrated, the other a mission accomplished.

Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus had given the body of their friend a hasty burial late Friday afternoon, in keeping with the Jewish law that they must not work on the Sabbath and the women in our text, wanted to improve upon it. Now that the Sabbath was over, they bought the needed funerary spices and made their way sadly to the sepulcher. All of these women were Galilean followers of Jesus who had supported his ministry in the North country, and had followed him to Jerusalem.

One of the women, Mary Magdalene, came from the costal town of Magdala and the westernmost bulge of the sea of Galilee, a place so notorious that it had besmirched her reputation, probably unjustifiably. We know only that Jesus had healed her of some serious illness, and she became one of his most devoted followers after that. Another was Joanna, a woman with important political connections, since her husband Chuza was the chief steward of Herod Antipas, who tried to get Jesus to perform a miracle for him on Good Friday. The third mentioned is Mary, the mother of James the less--one of the disciples- they along with a sad company of other women who had followed Jesus made their way uncertainly to the tomb.

These ladies had a substantial problem on their hands, which discussed on the way. “who will roll away the stone for us from the door of the tomb?” one of them asks according to St. Mark’s Gospel. The round disk of rock which rolled along an inclined channel to shut off the tomb was very large according to two of the gospels. Some estimate that it could had weighed anywhere from 500 to 1000lbs. Another problem they apparently hadn’t know of or anticipated was that there was a Roman seal placed upon the grave by Pilate, the breaking of which was a capital offence, that coupled with the fact that the whole area was under heavy military guard, would have made it impossible for them to have gotten anywhere near the grave. Had nothing else happened that day, they would have simply been turned away. And we never would have heard of that curious prophet from Nazareth instead we would be probably be celebrating a fertility festival in the honor of the pagan goddess Eostre or Ostara, the Anglo-Saxon goddess of the dawn.

But something did happen, God intervened momentously. The earth shook, the massive stone was easily rolled to one side by angelic hands, the guards trembled and then fled as fast as their legs could carry them, and by the time the women arrived they could walk right in. And there they met two angels asking, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified and on the third day rise?”

Their mission had wonderfully failed, they went to a tomb to anoint a body and there was no body there. So with the most contrary emotions, fear and joy, they went to tell the 11 disciples the marvelous thing they had witnessed. And incredibly amid all the joy, the text closes on rather a sour note. Verse 11: “But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense.”

It seems that the women failed again. But we know that such was not the case for the disciples later witnessed for themselves our risen Lord, and yet there is a very important message here and that is many times things might seem like a failure to us. We look at the world around us for validation and we find none. In fact if we are honest we must admit that to the world the message of Easter, the message of the resurrection is a lot of nonsense.

You see, people haven’t changed a lot in two millennia, many still let the Easter story end for them on a sour note of disbelief. They let the rest of the Easter story, the women’s and the disciples later meetings with their risen Lord fall by the wayside or they pass them off as mere legend or hallucination or even more ridiculously as some remarkable medical comeback by a man who was not killed but only badly wounded, like some badly written script for a soap opera.

Unbelief never changes, there are many who were eyewitnesses of the miracles Jesus did and still did not believe, likewise even though we have eyewitness accounts of the resurrection, people who later went to their deaths for the truth of this the greatest of all miracles and still they do not believe. The text that comes to mind is the end of Jesus account of Lazarus and the rich man in chapter 16 of Luke’s gospel. The rich man beckons Abraham from hell: “send Lazarus to my father’s house for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.” Abraham replied, “They have Moses and the prophets, let them listen to them.” “No father Abraham,” he said “but if someone from the dead goes to them they will repent.” Abraham replied “If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”

There is no greater tragedy that for a person to hear the truth of the Gospel and not believe it. It is the ultimate failed mission.

But let us now turn to the mission that did not fail. As our Gospel points out earlier in Galilee Jesus had spelled out the purpose of his ministry on earth and its culmination that he “would be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and on the third day rise.” The resurrection became the divine seal of approval on Jesus great mission of salvation for us. He accomplished all he set out to do, by atoning for all of our sins on the cross thereby defeating the power of the devil and death for all time. His resurrection proves this victory and now we know that because Jesus rose, so can and will we and those we love. St. Paul expresses this so beautifully in 1 Thes. 4:14:

Since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring (to life) with him those who have fallen asleep (meaning of course those who have died not those who have fallen asleep in church as some of you now are.)

My friends everyone, everyone, who has ever lived --in their heart of hearts-would like to believe that this is true. Who could contemplate their own demise without shuddering if the grave is indeed the end of everything. If it is then life has no meaning or purpose. Our existence would be little better that a leaf on a tree, which is green growing and attractive during the summer, but yellows fades and shrivels into nothing come winter.

The Gospel -the good news- no, the great news is that Jesus Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. It is the heart of what we preach here each and every Sunday. And believing in it is life. And not only is it proclaimed here in God’s Word, but it is proclaimed in every history found to date--even sources hostile to Christianity--that the tomb was empty that first Easter morning and that no body was ever found.

In my reading on this subject, I’ve found the most amazing thing. Do you know that nearly every one who has seriously set about disproving the resurrection has become a Christian. Frank Morrison was an atheist and quite proud of the fact. He went to Palestine with the aim of researching the resurrection story to disprove it, he wanted to topple Christianity. He searched for any chink of evidence that would refute it, for any collateral explanations to account for the claims of the first Easter Sunday Morning. But the more he examined the evidence, the more impressive he found it, and the more tired he grew of his naturalistic reasoning. Ultimately he shed his skepticism and became a Christian and wrote of his experience in his book, Who Moved the Stone. One of the greatest apologists of our time, Josh McDowell, Who wrote, Evidence that Demands a Verdict, did much the same thing.

What a joy it is to live in the certainty of the empty tomb and a risen Lord. How could life be any better than to live in the knowledge that Jesus has accomplished his mission to save us. He has done it all perfectly for us and now gives it to us as a free gift so that we may accomplish ours, which is to live and reign with him forever. He is risen, He is risen indeed. Halleluia! Amen.