κήρυξον τὸν λόγον

[Introduction] Hallelujah! He is risen! If you attended our midweek Lenten services, you heard many Sounds of Our Lord’s Passion. The season began with cloth being ripped, a sound of repentance. We heard the chime of silver coins, a sound of betrayal. We heard weeping as tears fell from our Lord’s face, the sound of True Man and True God confronting sin. We heard water sloshing as it was poured into a basin, and Jesus reminded us to love one another. We heard the sound of trampling feet as soldiers seized Jesus in the garden and led him to the cross. We heard the rooster’s crow that reminded us not only of Peter’s denials, but ours too. We heard a mob that had been singing for joy on Palm Sunday cry out for blood on Good Friday. And we heard the pounding of the nails as Jesus was pierced for your transgressions. This morning the Sounds of Our Lord’s Passion have reached a crescendo with the Good News of an Angel wearing a white robe ... You seek Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. H...

How strange is it that today ... for the greatest and most joyful feast of the year ... the Feast of Victory of Our God ... that Saint Mark would announce the Good News of the Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ by noting that the women fled the tomb trembling and ecstatic ... a state of mind that is not good ... and they said nothing to anyone for they were afraid! (v 8). Is that not an unusual response after hearing the Gospel that ... HE IS RISEN!? Are you afraid to share this Gospel outside of this sanctuary? I. The women were expecting to find a dead Jesus (vv 1-3). Mary the Magdalene, Mary the mother of James ... or we could say the mother of Jesus ... and Salome, the mother of the Sons of Thunder, James and John ... they had all watched the terribly bloody and gruesome crucifixion of Jesus at the place of the skull (15:40). They probably saw the centurion thrust a spear into the side of Jesus. They certainly saw Joseph of Arimathea take the body of Jesus down from the cros...

Where, O Death, is your victory? Where, O Death, is your sting? Saint Paul asked us these rhetorical questions in his epistle to the Corinthians. And we have a fitting response. GOD’S NOT DEAD! DEATH IS! This is our theme today.  And what a thrilling experience it is to recognize this truth! God’s not dead! What a thrilling experience it is to join the whole Christian church on earth in rising from the ashes of Lent ... rising in celebration of the Resurrection of Our Lord ... rising in celebration of his continued Divine Service to us ... rising into eternal life in his name ... rising in praise to God that he has taken the sting of sin and death. He is risen ... He is risen indeed! Hallelujah! All of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus can rejoice in this good news because all of us who were baptized were buried with him into his death so that just as Christ was raised from the dead we too can walk in the newness of life in his resurrection (Rm 6:4).  1. So can y...

And (the angel) said ... He is risen. And having gone out, (the women) fled from the tomb, for trauma and ecstasy had them, and to no one they said nothing, for they were afraid. In the glow of Easter morning, we have some loose ends to tie up, unanswered questions that perplex us, pieces in our puzzle that don’t seem to fit anywhere. We began our worship with an echo of the resurrection faith: He is risen!   But was it only that, an echo of the resurrection faith that, with each repetition, becomes quieter and softer until you can’t seem to hear it any more? Are you ecstatic with both fear and joy this morning? Maybe neither? Maybe not at all? Tomorrow we’ll come back to earth again, knee deep in the burdens of life, and we’ll have to incline our ear once again to hear the good news spoken with great conviction: He is risen! So I have to ask ... 1. What good is this news, anyway that He is risen?  How excited do you get when you hear it? Is your reaction more like this ......