Bible Text: St John 20:1–18 | Preacher: Rev. Dr. Christian Preus
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
He is risen. And this is Jesus’ justification. That word is arguably the most important word in the Bible. St. Paul writes everything he writes to show this one point: we are justified by faith in Christ. It means a declaration of righteousness. Justification is God saying you are righteous, holy, innocent. And since He says it, you would be sinning a great sin, the greatest sin, far greater than any you think you’ve committed, if you said He was wrong. You’d be calling God a liar. God isn’t a liar. He justifies you. He declares you righteous. He says you are pure as the driven snow. And you can look at your life and say, No, I’m not. You can point out just this morning your selfish thoughts, your worries, your unbelief, you can point to your past and the things you’ve said and done, and you can insist that this is true, obviously true, you are a sinner, not pure, not righteous, you deserve God’s punishment and not His reward.
But this remains true, that God says you are righteous. God justifies you. Let Him be true and every man a liar. He’s right.
And He’s right because Jesus is risen. He is risen and that’s His justification first. That’s the point. What did they say to Jesus as He hung on that cross? Come down, if you are the Christ, the Son of God. They declared Him unrighteous. They called Him a liar. Because that’s what’s at stake. Jesus said He was the Son of God. He said it. He made Himself equal to the Father. He kept on saying, I AM, kept claiming the name of God. Prove it, they said. And He did. He proved it. And God doesn’t prove it the way sinners tell Him to prove it. They ask for a sign from heaven, and the only sign Jesus says I’m going to give you is the sign of Jonah. The sign of death and the sign of resurrection. Destroy this Temple, kill this Son of God, and in three days I will raise it up. And He did.
So He is justified. Declared righteous. The bare fact of the resurrection, of Easter’s truth, with all the meticulous detail of His empty tomb, of the grave clothes discarded, of Mary and the other women, Peter, and the other men, seeing Him alive, of hundreds witnessing the crucified One risen from the dead, this is the justification of Jesus – He is the Son of God.
But it isn’t the bare fact that we celebrate today. We celebrate what Jesus announces to Mary.
He says, “Go tell my brothers I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” That is Jesus’ complete and total identification of His justification with His disciples. He calls them a lot of things before this. He calls them friends, He calls them disciples, He calls them sheep, He calls them little children. But never does He call them brothers. Not till now.
Why? They didn’t act like His brothers. Maybe Mary acted like a sister. She stayed with Him. She watched as He died. She saw the place where He was buried. She came with spices to His tomb. That’s what a sister does for her dead brother. But even she didn’t believe His words. Even she came to the empty tomb that first morning and could not, would not, believe what her Lord told her. She assumed the Jews had come and taken His body away. She expects a dead man. She weeps because she can’t find a dead body. She doesn’t believe in His resurrection till He calls her by name. But at least she showed love.
The disciples? They abandoned Him, all of them fled. They left Him to die. Peter denied Him. He insisted he wasn’t His disciple, that he didn’t know Him. They all repaid their Lord’s love and instruction with cowardice and betrayal. They were not His brothers. And they knew it.
But He says so. He calls them His brothers. For the very first time. After they’ve abandoned Him and denied Him. Why? Why does He call them brothers? They are shocking words. And they’re true words.
Because Jesus’ resurrection isn’t simply His justification, it isn’t simply that He is declared righteous, declared the Son of God. No, it’s ours. As much joy as it gives the Christian heart to hear Jesus call us brothers, the joy of Jesus on that day and now on this Easter day is far greater, the joy to call you brothers and sisters, to justify you, declare you righteous. For Him the joy isn’t clouded by any doubt or fear. For Him there is no regret or uncertainty for the future. There is no struggle to believe with all His heart the words He gets to speak, to call Himself our Brother and God our Father.
To say this was the goal. Of all His suffering, of the mockery and betrayal, of the hell He went through when His Father handed Him over to suffer and die. He was crushed for our iniquities, the chastisement for our peace fell upon Him. They said, If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross, and He stayed on the cross, He bore it all, because what the Son of God wanted was to speak the words He spoke to Mary, and to speak them in His Church to you. So He took your death, and He took your sins, and He took the devil’s accusation, and He drank the cup of God’s wrath. Until He could say and not lie, “It is finished.”
And now, in that garden, as Jesus speaks to Mary, there’s nothing left to say about your sin. It’s gone. He won’t speak of it. He can’t. It’s finished. There’s no more talk of death. He died. And He’s risen. There’s no hint of reproach anymore, no devil in that garden. This is amazing, that in this garden Jesus refuses to bring up His disciples abandoning Him, Peter’s denial. It’s the last thing they did, it’s what they’re worried about. But not Jesus. He speaks what He knows and He speaks it in the cool of the garden. The devil did his wicked deed in a garden, and the first woman was deceived, and the first man disobeyed his God and plunged us all into sin and death. But now in this garden, there is no devil, his head is crushed, there is no judgment, it’s already fallen on Jesus, there is no sin, no separation from God, because the second Adam died and now He lives and He speaks to His Bride the words He has wanted to speak from eternity, Tell my brothers that my Father is your Father and my God your God, my life, your life, my justification, your justification.
Easter is our joy. Because it’s Jesus’ joy. We can’t separate the one from the other. That’s what you revel in today, as you eat and drink His body and His blood, as you go home and feast, as you say your prayers this evening and lay your head down to rest and thank Him for His resurrection, you are joining in Jesus’ joy, that He has won you as children of His Father. He lives forever, we live forever. He is justified, we are justified. He ascends to His Father, we will ascend to our Father. Share His joy today and know that in the resurrection you will share it fully and forever.
Alleluia. Christ is risen.