✠ One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you ✠
The Word of the Lord Endures Forever
Verbum Domini Manet in Aeternum
1. Corinthians 15,1-11 2316
Ostersonntag 034
Rupert, Founder of Salzburg, Apostle to the Bavarians in Regensburg, ✠ 710
27. März 2016
1. O Lord God, Heavenly Father, who did deliver Your Son for our offenses, and did raise Him again for our justification: We beseech You, grant us Your Holy Spirit, so that He may rule and govern us according to Your will; graciously keep us in the true faith; defend us from all sins, and after this life raise us unto eternal life, through the same, Jesus Christ, Your Beloved Son, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, One True God, world without end. Amen. (The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind for Easter).
2. Now I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you – unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve. Then He appeared to more than five hundred 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. of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared also to me. 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 was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.
3. The first disciple to see the resurrected Jesus was Mary Magdalene, and the last disciple to see Him, when the epistle was written, was the Apostle Paul. About forty years later, the Apostle John saw the risen Jesus in a vision on Patmos. There is a striking similarity between Mary Magdalene and Paul: both were the least and unworthy.
4. Mary Magdalene shouldn’t have even been a disciple. Jewish society in the first century ad was very traditional, and that meant women were not permitted to be disciples of rabbis. Nevertheless, Jesus had quite a large number of female disciples, and Mary Magdalene was perhaps the cream of the crop. She is the one of the few disciples who sorrowfully stood at Jesus’ feet when He was crucified; she lead the women who went to the tomb at Easter sunrise; and she was the first person to behold the risen Christ with her eyes. She was even able to grab ahold of Him, and she realized that Jesus was risen with a real physical body and that He was not a disembodied ghost or spirit. Her testimony would not hold up in a Jewish court because in that era Jewish women were considered unreliable witnesses. Yet, Jesus chooses Mary, and other women to be His disciples, and He furthermore gives the least reputable in Jewish society the most blessed privilege of witnessing the empty tomb and His resurrection.
5. Paul wasn’t a disciple at first. He was a devout and zealous Pharisee who had studied under the well-renowned Rabbi Gamaliel. Paul was present when the Sanhedrin convicted Stephan of blasphemy and stoned him to death. Luke tells us that Paul consented to Stephan’s death (Acts 7,58; 8,1). Paul persecuted Jewish Christians and rounded them up for blasphemy trials. Luke tells us: »Paul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem« (Acts 9,1-2). Shortly thereafter Jesus appeared to Paul in His resurrected glory; Paul became a disciple and a preeminent apostle.
6. The Apostle Paul states the core doctrine of the Christian faith in his Epistle: »I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures and that He appeared to apostles and all of His disciples.« The cornerstone of Easter is that Jesus’ tomb is empty, and it is empty because He has risen from the dead.
7. Saint Paul later writes in his Epistle: »Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, then we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a Man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the First-fruits, then at His parousia those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when He delivers the reign to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death« (1. Corinthians 15,12-26).
8. When Mary Magdalene told the apostles that the tomb was empty and that Jesus had risen, they did not believe her (Mark 16,9). When two disciples from Emmaus told the apostles that they had seen the risen Jesus, the apostles did not believe them (Mark 16, 12-13). Afterward Jesus appeared to the apostles themselves as they were reclining at table, and He rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who saw Him after He had risen« (Mark 16,14). All these events occurred on the first Easter Sunday. Finally, as Easter draws to a close, the hard-hearted apostles believe that Jesus is risen, just as Mary Magdalene and the women had told them earlier that morning.
9. The Apostle Paul writes in his Epistle: »We preach that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures and so you believed.« This is the same gospel preached today, and it continues to create and strengthen faith in those who hear it. This preaching is based on historical facts:
i. Jesus was crucified;
ii. He died and was buried;
iii. three days later His tomb was empty; and
iv. His corpse was never found.
These facts are attested by both the Romans and the Jewish religious leaders. There are only two conclusions one can draw from this: either Jesus truly rose from the dead, or someone stole His body to make it appear that He had risen from the dead. The chief priests and elders convinced their guards to spread the rumor that the disciples stole Jesus’ body while they were sleeping (Matthew 28,11-15). The disciples continued to proclaim that Jesus is risen.
10. The Christian faith is grounded upon the empty tomb and Jesus’ resurrection. St. Paul declares: »If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that He raised Christ. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man arrived death, by a Man has arrived also the resurrection of the dead« (1. Corinthians 15,14-15.20-21). The risen Jesus did not appear to one person, who then claimed a personal vision or an unverifiable event as the sole veracity of his statement. Jesus appeared to many different people, in varying numbers and in different places throughout a forty-day period. He appeared to women and men. He appeared to one person, two, eleven and even five hundred at one time. He appeared at His tomb, in Emmaus, a locked room, Jerusalem and Galilee. His resurrection was witnessed by many different people, and thus their claims establish a solid testimony of verifiable and reliable statements.
11. Our faith is trustworthy and true. Jesus’ tomb is empty, and He is risen. Our sins are forgiven. Mary Magdalene was the first to see, believe and proclaim the Easter gospel. The Apostle Paul saw the risen Christ three years later (AD 36) and began proclaiming the gospel throughout the Roman Empire. Each of us here today can trace our faith back to Mary Magdalene and the Apostle Paul. Their faith and their testimony set the foundation upon which our faith was established nearly 2000 years later. Amen.
12. Let us pray. O Christ Jesus, who died but now lives forevermore, give us the joy and certainty of faith in Your resurrection so that whatever befalls us in this life, nevertheless You have the keys of Death and Hades, and these cannot prevail against You or us. Amen.
To God alone be the Glory
Soli Deo Gloria
✠
All Scriptural quotations are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 4th Edition © 1990 by the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, and the Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland 27th Edition © 1993 by Deutsch Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart.
All quotations from the Book of Concord are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using Die Bekenntnisschriften der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche, 12. Edition © 1998 by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
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