Well? What are you people doing here!? Didn't you see the show on the Discovery Channel? They found Jesus' coffin and bones and all that? Didn't you know they proved the resurrection false? Jesus died and they put his bones in a box. It has to be true, after all, the Director of “Titanic” produced it. But you are here, dear Christians, because you know such blasphemous documentaries are NOT true. No, you confess because you have heard the eyewitness testimony of the Gospel writers: Christ is risen! He is Risen indeed, Alleluia! But such lies are nothing new! The claim that God has not done what He said or that Jesus didn't do the things written has always been around. In fact, the Devil, the Father of Lies, has been doing this since the beginning. All his work and effort are poured into making people believe anything else than what God's Word says. But the words of the Easter angel are clear: He is risen! He is not here! The women were there; they saw and heard the angel; they saw the empty tomb; later they saw Jesus Himself. No hoaxes, no stories. The truth: Christ is alive!
Easter changes everything! It restores what was lost! It gives life where there was death. Consider the Garden of Eden. We heard about it long ago, on the First Sunday in Lent. The Devil came and spoke lies to Eve. He questioned God's Word and promises and made her doubt. He lied and said that what God says is not so. Eve believed the slippery snake and so she preached that sermon to her husband, telling him what a nice fruit it was and they should have some. Adam, who was to be the preacher in the family, failed in his duty to preach God's word to his wife and instead listened to her preaching and brought the whole human race into the corruption of sin and death. Through one man, says St. Paul, sin entered the world. It's all about the preaching, brothers and sisters! In that first Garden, the preaching was a preaching of lies, preached by the Devil to Eve and preached by Eve to Adam and the world was ruined. Sin sprang up. The curse fell mightily. Death came into the world and held sway and power over us. Sin and death. The Devil's work. The result of the Devil's preaching.
But see how Easter changes everything! Now a new Garden with a tomb in it. Now another angel, this time not a messenger of lies but an announcer of Good News. The women are there too. Soon Jesus will be there also. Who becomes the first to bring the Good News that Jesus is alive? The women. See? Everything that went wrong in the first Garden is undone and restored by what happens in the Easter Garden. An angel. Women. The New Adam, Jesus through whom now all people have life. This is because all that was a curse given in the Fall in the first garden is laid upon Jesus in His suffering and death. The Tree of Knowledge brought death. Likewise the tree of the cross brought our Lord to suffering and death. But because not just any man died but the Son of God, true God and true man—because of His holy, precious blood and His innocent suffering and death, the tree of the cross becomes now a tree of life. And He who was killed with our sins and trespasses and suffered death is now alive forevermore. All that Adam brought into this world through his sin, Christ defeats and overcomes by His death and His resurrection from the dead. The devils' power and influence: stopped! The rule of sin: ended! The terror of death: defeated! The punishment of our sins: absorbed! All of it, the whole curse upon this world because of sin, Christ has overturned and triumphed victoriously over it. Easter changes everything because God Himself has come in the flesh to suffer for our sins and rise victorious, putting back all things to the way they should be.
Easter changes everything! But it's not immediately obvious. Just as the women thought to find death at that tomb but the preaching told them otherwise, so in this life, we see one thing with our eyes, but he truth is given to our ears in the preaching of His Word. Before the Lord draws the final curtain on this world, the preaching of this Good News goes to the end of the earth. The world is still fallen; it is still corrupt. That is why faithful preaching is everything! Pay close attention to the preaching of the angel at the tomb. Listen carefully to his sermon: “You seek Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified. He is risen! He is not here! See the place where they laid Him. But go to Galilee where you will see Him where He promised to be.” What is in that preaching? The crucified and risen Jesus and the location of that Jesus now. That is first Easter sermon and it is the model of faithful preaching. For true Christian preaching will always proclaim the crucified and risen Jesus to us while pointing us to the place where that risen Jesus is. That is the one difference between you Christians today and the women on Easter morning. They went expecting to find a sealed tomb and instead saw a young man in white preaching to them. You come to God's house fully expecting the man in white to be preaching to you! And he tells you that Jesus was crucified for your sins and is raised again to life this Easter day.
Easter changes everything because now that sin and death have been conquered by Jesus, He can send His preachers out into the world. Now we don't go to Galilee to find Jesus, He comes to us in the preaching of the Gospel and the giving out of the holy gifts. The preaching going on in the Garden of Eden brought sin and death. But now the preaching of the risen Christ brings the forgiveness of sin and eternal life. See how the angel preaches this: “Go and tell His disciples—and Peter—that He is going ahead to Galilee.” Those little words “and Peter” are great comfort! For Peter was the denier who had sworn with oaths and cursing that he didn't know Jesus. That's hope for you and me! The resurrection of Jesus preached is the forgiveness of sins delivered. And it's given to you at the font in the waters of Holy Baptism. It's preached to you in the sermon and the absolution. It's given into your mouths in the Supper of Jesus' body and blood. In those gifts, not in Galilee, Jesus comes to meet you, to restore you, to forgive you and to give you new life. Here in these means of grace in His church, Jesus undoes all that you have done, He wipes out every transgression, He carries every iniquity, and He blots out every sin. No matter what you have done to offend against God, no matter what lies of the Devil you have heard and believed, no matter whether you have failed to heed God's Word—all of that is taken care of by Jesus' death and the proof that it is taken care of is given in those words “He is risen!” “He is risen” means He has overcome sin and death for you and from the font, pulpit and altar, the young (or not-so-young) man in white will always announce to you this Good News.
So let the world have its lies and big-money blasphemous documentaries. Those who have no sins to worry about can delve into those sorts of things. But you, dear sinner, come and be comforted by the holy words of the angel: He is risen! Come and be comforted by the words of the messenger in white: You are baptized. I forgive you all your sins. Take, eat and drink; the body and blood of Christ given for you. All that we have done wrong, Jesus has done right. All that we have undone, Jesus has redone. And all that we have destroyed has been made right again because Jesus is risen from the dead. While we cannot see it with our eyes, the eyes of faith confess that all is right again in Christ. He is risen! He is risen indeed, Alleluia! Amen.