The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen. Jesus Christ has risen! He is risen indeed!
Throughout these past seven weeks in the Lenten season, and then Holy Week, we’ve been following Jesus and Peter. During that time, we watched Peter fall into various kinds of stupidity and sins. In a sense, in this series, Peter inspired it. He inspired it by showing us what sin looks like in the sort of everyday following of Christ. It’s about pride and complacency, misunderstanding, which is a fancy shorthand for bad doctrine, bad teaching, keeping Christ and Christian doctrine and church attendance at a distance, forsaking Christ for bad company, denial, cleansing, finally death. That’s what our sin, and Lent, was all about.
On Good Friday, we read Peter’s Pentecost sermon, and we heard Peter declare the penalty for all those kinds of sin, and every sin indeed. But on Easter morning, we see that the answer is not death, but in fact the exact opposite. Peter is welcomed back to life, after all he said and did throughout that journey to the cross. Peter, on Easter morning, is singled out and called back to life in Jesus Christ. And after all, that’s what Easter is all about. It’s about life after sin, life after death, life, the new life in Christ.
A few minutes ago, that new life in Christ, that life after sin and death, was given to June in the waters of Holy Baptism. She was given life, life abundant, life eternal, the lifetime of the forgiveness of sins. She was given the entire person and work of Jesus Christ, the Gospel in liquid form. Jesus said in John 11:25: “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.” And then Romans 6:4-5: “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” And then the Bible verse I put on the baptismal certificate: “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” June received nothing less than the entire person and work and the promises of Jesus Christ.
And the resurrection shows that Jesus is who He said He was: God in flesh, who atoned for the sin of the world. It was Sunday morning, the day after Sabbath. He was crucified on Good Friday and died. They entombed His body on Holy Saturday, and then He was raised from the dead on Sunday morning. Three women came to the tomb on that Sunday morning to anoint a dead body, the body of Jesus. But when they arrived at the tomb, they saw something they didn’t expect. They saw that the stone had been rolled back. It was very large. And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were alarmed. And he said to them, “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.”
The same Peter who had been rebuked just a week earlier, “Get behind me, Satan.” The Peter who on Maundy Thursday didn’t think he needed a washing by Jesus. The Peter who boasted that even though the other disciples might forsake Jesus, he, Peter, would never forsake Him. Peter, who fell asleep there in the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus told him and them to stay awake and be on the alert. Peter, who drew his sword and cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant Malchus. Peter, who denied Jesus three times out there in the courtyard of Caiaphas the high priest. But this is also the Peter who wept bitterly on Good Friday for his part in the whole bloody mess.
But on Easter morning, an angel made sure Peter knew he was still loved, he was forgiven, and he was part of the family. He singles out Peter by name: “Go, tell his disciples and Peter that he has risen.” See, the Easter message is for all, but in this moment the Lord wanted Peter to know it was especially for him. The scourging was for Peter. The cross was for Peter. Christ’s death was for Peter. Jesus’ resurrection was for Peter. There was life in the resurrection of Christ, and it was given to Peter.
And all of this and more was contained in Peter’s Gospel promises. A few moments ago, the Lord God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, gave June the very same gift, all these things and more, to those who trust in Christ. Because all of us need what it is that Christ gives in His own person and work. And we all have heard, whether churched or not churched, that commonly quoted: “The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Our Lenten series showed that Peter is but a mirror of us. When we look at Peter’s life and his relationship to Jesus, we see his life and our lives have an awful lot in common, one with the other. We too have moments of great faith and clarity and courage. We also have times of confusion, fear, doubt, self-righteousness, and other sinful thoughts and deeds. We too get lazy, complacent about doctrine. We get lazy about the work of the church. We doubt what Jesus actually said and taught in the biblical text. We deny Him when we deny His words. When we disagree with Jesus, it’s more than just a simple disagreement. We fall prey to temptations and sin on every hand. And where there is sin, there is automatically death. We learned about that through a series of Epistle readings. We learned that in the Good Friday service. Good Friday was all about death: the wrongful death of Jesus, and the death of death by way of Jesus. Easter morning, on the other hand, is all about life: life eternal, life forgiven, the resurrection from the dead in both body and soul. Good Friday and Easter are for all sinners and for the sin of the world.
After the third denial of Jesus, Peter heard that rooster crow the third time and saw Jesus looking at him, and immediately he was moved to repentance, the exact opposite of what Judas had done. And he went out of the courtyard and he wept bitterly over his sin. Judas did the same thing, by the way. He wept bitterly over what he had done. But he never returned to Christ. He simply committed suicide.
Because Good Friday is the day of death, then came the crucifixion and the darkness. And in the darkness of the morning, the women headed out to the tomb to do what the Law required concerning the dead body of Jesus. But when they got there, they were greeted by an angel. He said to the women, “You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him.” The news stunned them. It shouldn’t have been a surprise to anybody, especially to the disciples and the women who traveled with them. Mark 8:31: Jesus “began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again.” Matthew 28 adds this commentary: “He is not here, for he has risen, as he said.” That’s quite a turnaround from the death and bloody mess of Good Friday.
Easter morning: the complete reversal of everything. Everything for Peter, everything for us, everything in the world. It’s why we here have such a stark contrast between how the sanctuary is decorated on Good Friday, covered in black, dark, all about the death of Jesus Christ, and then three days later, here on Sunday morning, before you is a proclamation of life and the glory of Jesus Christ. Easter is the exact opposite of Good Friday. Easter is the exact opposite of death. It opposes it. It is the opposite of everything Jesus experienced on Good Friday. It’s the opposite of everything Peter experienced on Good Friday. Easter is about life. And that is a message right now that our families, our friends, our communities, even our civilization needs to hear. They need to hear messages of life and salvation and gifts, not the death that we’re occupied with.
And what did this turnaround accomplish for us? Well, 2 Corinthians 5:21: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” It’s the divine swap. It’s our sin for His righteousness. And He’s the one that brings about the entire transaction. Christ’s very own righteousness is imputed in the waters of Holy Baptism and in the gift of faith. That’s what God the Father sees when He looks upon us: righteous children. He sees us in the image of His Son, Jesus Christ.
The cross and resurrection mean the sins of the world have been atoned for. That means they’ve been paid for by Christ’s death. Second, it means there’s the forgiveness of sins for all who live and die and believe in Christ and abide by His words. And three, where there is the forgiveness of sins, there is always, by necessity, life and salvation. Sin brought death. Eliminate sin, death also eliminated. June was made right with God. All who believe and have been baptized have been made right with God. That means He’s at peace with you, and you are at peace with Him. You’re heaven-bound. You’re alive in Christ, and Christ is alive in you.
Peter fell to sin time and time again, yet he’s called by name. The angel says, “his disciples, and Peter.” So also in the waters of Holy Baptism, God calls each one of us, each one baptized, one by one at a time, by name, and makes him or her His own. That’s why we make a big deal at baptisms. We want the proper full names of the child or the adult being baptized. God said through the prophet Isaiah: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.” So we baptize in the name of the child or the adult, the full name. It was the old tradition that she actually got a baptized name, but that fell by the wayside long ago. So also we are to use the proper name of God when we baptize: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
The living Christ goes before the baptized. He who mastered sin and death, mastered sin and death for you. The resurrection of the dead is coming for all of us. Physical death is a reality, and it’s temporary. We will all live again in our bodies on the last day, in the resurrection from the dead. The clock is ticking, by the way. In Acts, a sermon by St. Paul, he said God “has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.” Easter is about life: life after sin, life after physical death, life in the resurrected Christ. This is the story of Jesus, the Gospel. It’s the story of Peter, one redeemed. It’s the story of each of us, redeemed in Christ. And it’s now the story of June. Her sins forgiven, forever. Amen.
May the peace that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.