Easter Sunday

Mark 16:1-8 - Easter Sunday - March 31, 2013 

God’s Words & Actions Speak Loudly

There’s a famous saying attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, who lived about 800 years ago, that says: “Preach the gospel always; if necessary, use words.”  Now, people like to pretend that this is really profound, as though the true nature of the Gospel is seen in the things that we do rather than in the things that we say.  But it is not profound.  It sounds pretty clever, sure.  But it’s really quite absurd.  And we know that!  Because the Gospel consists of words.  They are God’s words.  They tell us something.  God’s words report His actions, and, in fact, it is God’s word itself that carry out His actions.  God’s word actually accomplishes what He speaks. 

They say that actions speak louder than words.  Well, sure they do.  This is true as far as we are concerned, but not with God.  With us, when there’s a disconnect between what we say and do, we call it hypocrisy – like when someone says one thing and then does another.  Or we might simply chalk it up to weakness – like when someone makes a promise to do something, but then lacks the strength to perform.  But with God, neither of these is possible.  First of all, because God cannot deny Himself or lie.  Second of all, because God is almighty.   It’s not possible for Him to say that He’ll do something and then find Himself unable to do it.  He’s God.  There is no dissonance or discrepancy between what God says and what God does. 

God is true to His word.  And if He has done anything that we need to know about, He’ll tell us.   So consider what God does – consider what He tells us. 

By the word of His mouth, He created heaven and earth.  God saw that what He made was good.  And then as the crown of His creation, He placed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden to be fruitful and multiply.  It was very good.  God did all this through His Word.  But when man disobeyed God’s word, God cursed His creation.  No longer would it serve man as it had.  The earth that once perfectly reflected the pure kindness and love of Him who spoke it all into existence, now echoed another word of God – a word of wrath: “Dust you are, and to dust you shall return.” 

God speaks.  And we die.  That’s how it happens.  That’s where death comes from. God’s words and God’s actions go together.  As Isaiah says in chapter 40: “All flesh is grass, and all its loveliness is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, {and why?} because the breath of the Lord blows upon it.”  That’s why. 

God’s words and God’s actions go together.  And even nature, inasmuch as we all die, confirms this.  But there in the Garden of Eden God spoke another word – a better word – a word that nature could not teach us.  God spoke a word that had just as much power to accomplish what He intended to do.  He intended to save us.  He revealed His kindness and love by preaching the Gospel.

“Preach the gospel always; if necessary, use words.”  

Yeah, well, Francis, God used words.  And it was necessary.  Because man needed to hear it.  We all do.  We can’t live without it, because it give us life in place of death.  We can’t know what God does unless we know what God says.  And some 4000 years after He made this promise, God did what He said He’d do.  He sent His Son into our flesh to crush the devil’s head by receiving a fatal blow Himself.  God would die our death by placing Himself under His own curse.  He kept His word.  God’s words and God’s actions go together.

“The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.”  And so we look to where the word of God was fulfilled in the greatest act of love ever accomplished by man: Jesus Christ, the eternal Word of God, died on the cross as the spotless Lamb of God, bearing the sin of all of Adam’s children. 

The women in our Gospel lesson saw it.  What a death! – the death of One who had lived such a life.  And what a life! – the life that honored His God and served His neighbor.  In the silence and stillness of the morning after the Sabbath had ended, they came to anoint His body – to honor His death.  They loved Him.  They brought spices in order to anoint Him.  But, you know, no matter what they did, their deeds were only the helpless acts of sad women grieving what they lost.  No matter what they did, they could not have made Jesus their savior – they could not have made Him alive.  

But God could.  They went to anoint Him.  But God anointed Him first.  The word Christ in Greek, the word Messiah in Hebrew means Anointed One.  The One whom God anointed and so chose to die is the One whom God anointed and so chose to rise.  The women's actions were only as powerful as their words.  And you know what they say about words and actions.  But God’s word … well, God’s words and God’s actions always go together.   And God acted loudly. 

There was no body for them to anoint and honor. But God did one better.  God honored the body of Jesus by raising Him from the dead.  And He sent His angel to speak His word – to proclaim what He had done: “He has risen.”  And you can say it too.  Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!  You can say it too because you have heard the same word that the angel told them.  It’s what the preacher preaches to you.  He preaches what God has done. 

That’s why we gather here on Sunday morning.  We seek Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified under Pontius Pilate.  And like the women, this is where we expect to find Him.  We hear that He has risen – according to the Scriptures.  No need to marvel.  We have heard it and learned it and we believe it.   It’s true – just like the angel said.  But there is one thing that the angel said that we will not hear from our preachers: “He is not here.”  Because Jesus is here.  “Where two or three are gathered in My name,” Jesus said, “so am I also in your midst.” 

But just like it was not the devotion of the women on that first Easter morning that actually accomplished anything, so it is not our gathering on a Sunday morning that makes Jesus here.  It’s God’s word – it is Jesus’ name.  Just as their intent to honor Christ did not make anything happen, so it is not our devotion to Jesus or even our prayers that affect or actuate anything.  No. It is God’s word.  Our faith does not make Jesus here.  Our faith does not make God love us.  Our faith does not make us righteous in His sight.  No, our faith receives.  And that’s why we have gathered.  Faith begins by receiving God’s word.  God’s words and God’s actions go together.  By hearing God’s word, we learn and receive what God has done. 

The angel reported the facts.  This is what God did.  Faith believes it.  And so faith receives what Jesus won.  St. Paul makes the point in Romans 4 that just as Abraham believed the promise of Christ and it was accounted to him for righteousness, so also by faith, righteousness is credited to “us who believe in Him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead.”    Faith believes the facts.  What did God do?  Paul tells us.  He says that Jesus “was delivered up because of our offenses” — we believe that! — “and He was raised because of our justification.”  Now, what does this mean? 

Jesus was raised because of our justification.  Think of that.  He wasn’t just raised in order to justify us.  He was raised because God had justified us.   He was raised because He had offered His holy innocence to take our place, and had satisfied all God’s wrath against our sin.  He was raised because there was no sin left to condemn Him or to keep Him dead.  It had been paid for.  When God the Father raised His Son Jesus Christ from death, His actions spoke loudly – as words – so to speak.  He raised Him not out of pity, but because justice had been fully served.  He raised Him because all our sin had been paid for.  It really was finished.  The world whose sins He bore God declared righteous in His sight. 

God speaks loud and clear by acting.  And there is no disconnect or dissonance.  If Jesus is risen from the dead, our sins must be paid for, we must stand righteous before God.  There is nothing more that needs to be accomplished.  There is no spiritual process that we need to complete, because when the Father raised His Son from the dead with the very flesh that hung forsaken on the cross – God echoed and affirmed what Jesus Himself declared: It is finished. 

Faith hears this, and so receives everything that faith seeks. 

Francis of Assisi said, “Preach the gospel always; if necessary, use words.”  This is supposed to uphold the dignity of good works and acts of kindness.  And certainly we understand the concern.  Such fruits of faith reveal our faith.  We should love one another.  We have been joined to Christ’s death and resurrection in Holy Baptism in order that we might be made new and so live as new creatures as the body of Christ.  But the Gospel itself is not found in what we do or how we live.  It is found in what God does for us and in the life He gives.  It is a real danger to confuse the two – both because it is so easy to do, and because it is so dangerous. 

When the Gospel becomes what we do, then, instead of simply receiving what Jesus has accomplished, and hearing God’s word of forgiveness, our faith becomes the sort of catalyst, the finishing touch to God’s work.  And so we spend our lives trying to polish up this work of faith until we think, maybe, we hope that it is good enough – and woe to him who thinks it is.  Such a presumptuous spirit that focuses so much on its own work is not the Spirit of Christ. 

The reason we naturally want our faith and our devotion to play such a backward role in our salvation is because we want to trust in what we do, which means that we want to justify ourselves.  We want to hold onto what we can accomplish, because we think it is more trustworthy than what God has done.  But it isn’t.  We need to know it. 

This is why God cursed the ground.  He did so to show Adam and Eve and all their children the futility of our works.  He cursed the ground in order to drive us to His word.  God’s words and actions go together.  We see that this is true nowhere more clearly than in the life of Christ — where God takes our curse upon Himself in order to free us from sin – and where He rises from the dead in order to reclaim the life we lost.  They say that actions speak louder than words.  That’s true as far as it goes.  I’ll teach that to my kids.  But God’s actions are found in His words.  

Through His word, He calls us to new life.  He creates in us the image of God that Adam and Even lost.  He does so by forgiving us our sins for Jesus’ sake who obeyed the law in our place.   By making Jesus alive, God made Him your Savior.  This was out of our control.  Thank God.  It is His action.  God’s words and actions go together.  And so by speaking to us the Gospel we hear, God re-crowns the crown of His creation with the righteousness of His own Son.   

In Jesus’ name, Amen.