Easter: Day of Resurrection; Smashing the gates of Hell

I want you to step with me, out of your own shoes for a moment, and put on those of Mary Magdalene and the other Mary that we hear about in this morning’s Gospel. They’re likely in deep grief - that feeling you’ve had that part of you that made space for someone you loved hollowed out so that you’re no longer connected to this world in the same way. So they go to see Jesus’s tomb, to remember, to pay tribute, to mourn. But when they get there, a huge earthquake shakes them back into the reality of life and they see an angel from heaven descend and roll away the stone that covered Jesus’s grave. They, along with the guards, are rightly frightened by these supernatural events. But the angel says to them: do not be afraid. Jesus isn’t here. He has been raised as he said he would be. I just moved the stone so no one could have come in or come out, but come over here and have a look; he’s not here. 

And off they run to Galilee where the angel says they are to go and tell the disciples that he’s been raised. Then suddenly, Jesus himself appears to the Marys before they can reach Galilee. They don’t hesitate. They take hold of his feet and worship him. They see God face-to-face, as not even Moses could do. They know. The law has been fulfilled. God’s promise to Abraham to provide the sacrifice himself, his own Son, a lamb caught in a thicket crown of thorns, is fulfilled in Jesus’s crucifixion and in his resurrection. I do not need Isaac, or your sacrifices, or your version of goodness and justice. I just need you to faithfully follow me.

They are the first to see that in Jesus, they have been brought from death into new life. That God’s promise to Abraham, to Isaac, and Moses, Mary, Joseph, and so now, to Sherri, Arman, Andrew, Leo, Brandon, Braydon, you and I - to bring us from death into life - is accomplished. The sin that leads to us separating ourselves from God, has been overcome in Jesus’s death. He’s smashed the gates of hell and changed the very fate of all life: no more can death claim us. That is what the Marys now see. And so they bow down in submission to the one who will draw them into a life, a history, a story, that is far more than they could ever imagine, or construct. 

Their lives are knit into God’s own mission of gathering people to himself across the centuries, as particular witnesses, faithful followers, humble servants. All that remains, Scripture tells us, is love. And this is all we know of the Marys: their love of God, their love for the disciples to whom they are bound, but far, far more than their own reach, their love is extended by the Holy Spirit to you and to me, to those who have gone before us and heard Christ’s call just as they did; their love remains as it extends and through them, draws to God those who have struggled to remain faithful through grief, loss, doubt, despair, disappointment, temptation to turn away and lose themselves in the distractions of this world. 

And so today their lives serve as signs of God’s faithfulness in the midst of our deepest darknesses, our losses, our confusions, our fears, and so too our hopes and joys. They serve as we are called to serve, as witnesses to Jesus’s resurrection. To new life. And so it is that we will have six new additions to God’s family this morning. Six baptisms. Six of God’s children, brought through the waters of baptism where sin is drowned, into the very body of Jesus Christ where they are raised to new life; called, challenged, constantly remade, and supported in living out the particular purpose to which God has called them. The Lord is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia.