Sermon for Easter Sunday 2025
Readings:
There is a wonderful scene in the biblical book of Job, where Job, who is a righteous man that is suffering mightily, starts to question God’s justice and God’s goodness. Job is also getting some bad advice from his friends as he is trying to figure out how God works. So, Job demands an answer from God, and God gives him one. Incidentally, you should be careful when you ask God questions, because sometimes you do get answers. Only you may not like what God has to say.
Anyways, God answers Job and says:
Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.
5 Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?
6 On what were its bases sunk,
or who laid its cornerstone
7 when the morning stars sang together
and all the heavenly beings[a] shouted for joy?
Where were you?
‘Have you commanded the morning since your days began,
and caused the dawn to know its place,
‘Have you entered into the springs of the sea,
or walked in the recesses of the deep?
17 Have the gates of death been revealed to you,
or have you seen the gates of deep darkness?
18 Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth?
Declare, if you know all this.
Where were you?
Do you know the ordinances of the heavens?
Can you establish their rule on the earth?
34 ‘Can you lift up your voice to the clouds,
so that a flood of waters may cover you?
35 Can you send forth lightnings, so that they may go
and say to you, “Here we are”?
36 Who has put wisdom in the inward parts,[c]
or given understanding to the mind?[d]
37 Who has the wisdom to number the clouds?
Or who can tilt the waterskins of the heavens,
38 when the dust runs into a mass
and the clods cling together?
Where we you? Where were you when I created the earth? God asks. God encourages Job to take a look at the world around him and he says to him: you had nothing to do with this. You did not create this.
I love that scene, because although it is perfectly fine and natural to question God about the mysteries of the universe, we always need to do so with great humility. And we humans, even the best of us, are not good at sustained humility. Sooner or later we all are prone to thinking a little too highly of our own ideas and our own actions. We like to think we are all-powerful. We like to think it’s all up to us. So, we humans need a good, loving smackdown from our creator now and then. We need to be right-sized. We need to be reminded that we are not in complete control of the universe. We need to be reminded that we did not create this beautiful world that we are living in. We didn’t even create our own lives. Every single one of us in this room was created by someone else. And there is no such thing as a self-made man. We didn’t call ourselves into existence. And most of the beautiful things in this world are not the work of human hands.
I love that scene in Job, because it is sharp reminder that in the beginning, God did marvelous things without any help from us.
Now I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. God cares about what we do, and how we live our lives and how we treat each other. That is abundantly clear across all of sacred scripture. Our actions are not meaningless. God gives us commands about how to live in both the Old Testament and the New, so how we live matters. But this is still our Father’s world. God always has the last word. The next time you are worried about something, remember that. You don’t need to wait for God to shake you up and speak to you out of the whirlwind like he did with Job. Our scripture and our tradition are filled with stories to remind you that God is in control. Your actions matter; God care about your actions, but God is always in ultimate control. It is his world. God gives us wisdom and advice for living, that’s true, but God also works miracles without any help from us. Remember that the next time you are feeling anxious, or tired, or broken. God can work a miracle without your help. And don’t let God’s miracles go to waste. It is amazing to me how prone we are to doing just that: wasting God’s miracles. God shows us his love and faithfulness and power in the most astounding of ways, and we still can’t take it in or believe it, or we won’t believe it. We still want to think that our actions are more important than God’s actions. We still want to think that it is up to us to save ourselves.
Think about the Passover story. God spared the Children of Israel from the plagues in Egypt, he led them with clouds and a fiery pillar, he splits the sea for them, destroys Pharoah’s army, feeds them with miraculous food, makes water to come out of rocks, saves them from poisonous snakes, makes them victorious in battle and leads them through the desert to a land flowing with milk and honey and all along the way what did the people say?
You know, it wasn’t so bad in Egypt was it? Sure, we were enslaved and treated harshly, but we had melons and cucumbers and a little meat now and then, so it wasn’t so bad, was it? I wonder if we can find our way back. Let’s turn around and head back there.
I can just see God scratching his head, if God had a head, and wondering, did I just waste all those miracles on you people? Did you think that I would bring you this far and just leave you here? Did you split the sea or make the water come out of the rock? No. I did that! Why are you so convinced that I am going to abandon you now?
But this is what we think sometimes, isn’t it? Not just the Israelites wandering in the wilderness, but all of us. We all are inclined to think that God has abandoned us to our own devices. That it is up to us. God has done whatever God has done, now the rest is up to us. That’s the voice we hear. But I don’t think it is the voice of God telling us that. Time and time again, God has shown us in the most miraculous ways that we are not abandoned and that he is still in control and will have the last word. God has given us miracles to remind us of his love and faithfulness. We don’t want to waste those miracles do we? A good miracle is a terrible thing to waste, especially the miracle of Easter.
Who helped Jesus get out of the grave early on Easter Sunday morning? Was it Mary Magdalene that rolled the stone away? Did all of the women get behind the stone and say “alright, on the count of three, push!”? No. God didn’t need our help to get out of that grave. Nobody moved his body. It’s funny, I can tell you with 100% certainty that there were a lot of clergy staring at blank computer screens last night trying to figure out how they are going to get Jesus out of the grave again this year. What a waste of a miracle. Jesus doesn’t need any help getting out of the grave. God has shown us that he has the power to do that without our help. But we like to think he needs us. Clergy can be terrible about this, myself included, we can be terrible about thinking that God needs us to make Easter happen. Well, if that were the case, Easter would never have happened. Easter was a miracle to remind us that God has the final say in all things, including life and death. Jesus did not need help getting out of the grave Easter Sunday morning. It was not our superior faith, our correct opinions, our education, our wisdom, or our abilities that restored breath to his lifeless body. It was the power of God alone. Nobody moved Jesus’s body. It got up on its own. And the women didn’t roll the stone away. God’s angels did that. And why did they do that? Was it so that Jesus could get out? Was that stone holding him back?
In next Sunday’s gospel reading a curious thing happens. Here’s a preview: the risen Jesus appears to the disciples who are hiding in a locked room. Nobody unlocked the door for him. He just showed up. His resurrected body is real flesh and blood, but it has different powers. Jesus can get through a locked door, so I have to believe that he could also get out of a sealed tomb. That rock wasn’t holding him back. So why was the stone rolled away? Was it so Jesus could get out? NO. It was so that we could look in and see that the tomb was empty. The stone wasn’t rolled away for Jesus, it was rolled away for us. We are the ones who need to see God’s power at work. Jesus doesn’t need any help getting out of the tomb. The stone was rolled away for us. We are the ones who needed to see that God was still in control and that God has the final say in this world. Don’t let that miracle go to waste.
Don’t waste Easter. Don’t waste this miracle. Don’t waste the free grace that God has shown us by leaving this place worrying about how you are going to save the world. It isn’t all up to you. God made the world without your help. You weren’t there when God created the world. And God raised Jesus from the dead without your help. The women weren’t there when it happened, and you weren’t there either. You didn’t roll the stone away. You didn’t breathe life back into his body. God can work miracles without your help, don’t forget that. We can rejoice in God’s power today without being focused on our own power, whether we have it or don’t have it. Witnessing God’s miracles, witnessing God’s power, can and should inspire you to live differently. God obviously cares about what we do, but God is not waiting on humans to start living right before he works his purposes out in his world. God isn’t waiting for you to get it together before he starts loving you, and saving you. Don’t go home today more anxious than when you came. God is giving you a gift this morning. God’s miracle is offering you hope. If a dead body coming back to life doesn’t give you hope, then I don’t know what will. Celebrate that hope. Celebrate that love. Feel the joy in this story. Share this joy with others. Don’t waste Easter. Don’t waste a good miracle.
Inwardly Digest 