Sermon 4/21/2019 “Remember!”
Preacher: Jo J. Belser
Location: Church of the Resurrection in Zabriskie Chapel at Immanuel Church-on-the-Hill
Text: Luke 24:1-12
Day: Easter Sunday 2019 (April 21, 2019)
Remember when our children were young, and they would ask us to tell them a story? Again! And remember we would dutifully tell the story again? Over and over?
Well, today we are here to hear THE story. We are here to remember, to retell what happened on this day, to re-enact if not to re-LIVE the greatest story ever, the greatest event in human history. I know you want to hear THE story, again:
- On the first day of the week—on Sunday, then, like today
- At early dawn—even earlier than we begin our Sunday-morning worship services these days
- Jesus’ female disciples—wait, that’s NOT how the story goes; stick to the story, Jo! Ahem, then: “The women who had come with Jesus from Galilee,” the women we only occasionally hear about for some reason.
- THOSE women went to the tomb to anoint Jesus’ dead body.
There, I’ve set the scene for you. Do you REMEMBER what happened when these women arrived at the tomb? The stone had been rolled back and the tomb was EMPTY. And then, if that wasn’t confusing enough, two men BLINKED into existence right there in the tomb with them, right beside them. No wonder the women were terrified.
Do you REMEMBER what these men told the women? They didn’t say what angels usually say; they didn’t say “Fear not.” Instead, they instructed the women to “remember.” Luke’s account of the resurrection is the only one that reports this detail. But, remembering is frequently instructed of God’s people. A lot of remembering goes on throughout the Hebrew scriptures: God remembers his people, the people sometimes remember their covenant with God, and God remembers our sin no more when he forgives us.
Then, too, last Thursday night Jesus told us to eat and drink of his Body and Blood saying, “Do this in remembrance of me.” Yesterday one of the people who was crucified with Jesus asked Jesus to “remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And now the two men in the tomb are instructing the women to “remember” what Jesus had told them about his coming death, how on the third day he would “rise again.”
The women DID remember what Jesus had told them, finally. This is when the women finally understood what Jesus had told them about his coming death in Jerusalem.
But REMEMBERING is more than an “aha” moment or simply recalling some forgotten happening. Remembering requires an action on our part. Remembering changes our opinion or our behavior. Remembering Christ’s Last Supper, Crucifixion, and Resurrection requires us to come to the tomb on the first day of each week and eat and drink Christ’s Body and Blood together. In these ways we move something that happened in the past, some person or teaching or event that otherwise would be forgotten and inserting what is to be remembered into our present time. Remembering changes us, transforms us, moves us into action.
The person crucified with Jesus was asking more than for Jesus to think kind thoughts about him. He was asking for Christ Jesus to remember him by bringing him into eternal life. The thief was asking Christ to remember him by transforming him into someone who no longer stole, no longer was stuck in life, but transformed by being “remembered” in “paradise” that very day.
Remembering requires action. When Jesus told us to remember him, he didn’t want us to just picture him in our mind or to just meditate on his suffering and death. Rather, Jesus wants us to incorporate all he taught us into our very being and live as he lived. Jesus wants us to remember him by living differently because of him.
And we do remember Christ Jesus. We come to this tomb on the first day of each week. Together we tell the Jesus-story. How Jesus lived. What Jesus taught. How Jesus enjoyed life and loved everyone. We remember what God has done, how God has interacted with history through Christ Jesus. We remember how Christ Jesus has changed our life.
Because of our remembering, we come to understand that love lives beyond death, is in fact eternal, never-ending. Because of our remembering, we are certain that death happens to us all, but death does not have the final word. Christ lives again and so will we.
Alleluia, the Lord is Risen.
The Lord is risen indeed, alleluia!
