The Festival of the Resurrection of Our Lord – Pr. Faugstad exordium & sermon

Festival exordium:

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! That was not the disciples’ reaction on Easter Sunday. “Christ is risen!” said the angel (Mar. 16:6). “Christ is risen!” said the women (Luk. 24:9). “Christ is risen!” said the Emmaus disciples (Mar. 16:13; Luk. 24:34). But this shocking message, this wonderful news, was met with questions and doubt. “Is Christ risen?” they wondered. “We won’t believe it until we see it with our own eyes.”

We know the truth that Jesus certainly died and certainly rose again on the third day. We know it, because the disciples did see Jesus after His resurrection, and they reported exactly what they saw and heard from Him. His resurrection is a fact. Christ is risen indeed!

But where our doubt comes in is here: “Is Christ risen for me? How can I be sure? How can I know that when I die, I will rise again? Or that my loved ones will rise again?” We can understand the disciples’ doubts—when had anyone ever risen from the dead? Our doubts seem reasonable too—when have we ever seen someone rise from the dead? But experience only goes so far.

The two disciples walking on the road to Emmaus on Easter afternoon were experiencing sadness. Jesus joined them on the road, but they didn’t know it was Him. They told Him everything they had witnessed and heard over the last few days, including the report of Jesus’ resurrection.

And Jesus said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” (Luk. 24:25-26). Then what did He do? “[B]eginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (v. 27).

We may not have seen anyone rise from the dead. But we do have the Scriptures, God’s own Word. Jesus’ life and works match perfectly with all the Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah. And everything that He told His disciples would happen during Holy Week, including His resurrection on the third day, did happen exactly as He predicted.

So we do not need to doubt His promise to return on the last day to raise up the dead, or His promise that He has gone to prepare a place for all believers in heaven, or His promise to be present with us now through His Word and Sacraments to strengthen our faith. His resurrection verifies that what He promises, He does.

We rejoice in these promises by rising to sing hymn #348, “He Is Arisen! Glorious Word!”

He is arisen! Glorious Word!
Now reconciled is God, my Lord;
The gates of heaven are open.
My Jesus died triumphantly,
And Satan’s arrows broken lie,
Destroyed hell’s direst weapon.
O hear
What cheer!
Christ victorious
Riseth glorious,
Life He giveth—
He was dead, but see, He liveth!

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Sermon text: 1 Corinthians 5:6-8

In Christ Jesus, through whom you are a new creation, a new lump, filled no longer with the leaven of sin, but with the sincerity and truth that come from Him alone, dear fellow redeemed:

God sent nine terrible plagues on Egypt, but still Pharaoh would not let the enslaved people of Israel go into the wilderness to offer sacrifices to the LORD. God promised to send one more plague, after which Pharaoh would let the people go. In preparation for this plague, the LORD instructed each Israelite household to take a male lamb without blemish and kill it at twilight. Then they were to put the blood of the lamb on their doorposts and eat the flesh of the lamb roasted over fire.

They were also instructed to eat unleavened bread. All leaven had to be removed from their houses, and they would eat unleavened bread for seven days. The penalty for eating leavened bread during this time was severe. The LORD said, “if anyone eats what is leavened, from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel” (Exo. 12:15). He repeated the same warning a few verses later that anyone who disobeyed “will be cut off from the congregation of Israel” (v. 19).

In today’s Epistle lesson, the apostle Paul draws on this account of the Passover. He tells the Christian congregation in Corinth to “cleanse out the old leaven.” But he is not talking about their bread. He is talking about the congregation. The Christians there were puffed up. They were boasting, puffed up with pride, and they were not boasting about what their Savior Jesus had done for them. They were boasting about their open-mindedness and their willingness to tolerate what was clearly sinful. In this case, they were boasting about a clear violation of the Sixth Commandment—one of the members of the congregation living in open sin.

This is the kind of approach that is cheered by our culture today. The churches that are willing to compromise the Word of God, change their teachings with the times, and stop calling out sin are praised. These churches probably don’t say much about the Ten Commandments anymore, or they might explain them in such a way that no one in the congregation is really challenged or convicted by them. “Oh, the Ten Commandments are for the bad people,” they say, “and for the people who just want to judge others. But we are doing just fine.”

Paul writes, “Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?” Then he tells us what that leaven is, it is “the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil.” It is the sin that characterized us before we became unleavened, before we were born again in Christ through Holy Baptism. It is the sin that Jesus died to free us from, we who were formerly enslaved to sin and death.

We are freed from this sin, because “Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed.” Here, God’s stunning plan of salvation becomes clear, a plan that was illustrated by the Passover lamb. Right after Jesus’ public revealing as the Messiah at His Baptism, John pointed to Him and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (Joh. 1:29). He could take the world’s sin, because He had no sin of His own to carry. He was “a lamb without blemish or spot” (1Pe. 1:19).

The blood of this spotless Lamb was poured out for you on Good Friday just before the Passover was celebrated in Jerusalem. This holy blood cleanses you from all sin (1Jo. 1:7). We just sang a verse about this in Martin Luther’s great Easter hymn: “Here the true Paschal Lamb we see, / Whom God so freely gave us; / He died on the accursed tree— / So strong His love— to save us. / See, His blood doth mark our door [the door of our heart!]; / Faith points to it [to His blood], death passes o’er, / And Satan cannot harm us. / Alleluia!” (Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary #343, v. 5).

Jesus’ resurrection on the third day is the irrefutable proof that all sin was atoned for by His sacrifice. Now is the time to “celebrate the festival,” writes Paul. Now is the time to celebrate the Lamb’s victory. Now is the time to celebrate the forgiveness of sins. Now is the time to celebrate the eternal life that is ours because Jesus rose triumphant over death.

But how are we to “celebrate the festival”? Today’s reading says, “not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil”—not by returning to the sin that Jesus has freed us from, not by confirming others in their sin and boasting about how charitable and accommodating we are of them. Remember that the Israelites were told to get rid of every trace of leaven from their homes. In the same way, we are called to get rid of every trace of sin in our own hearts and to recognize that our sins not only affect us—they affect the congregation to which we belong and the whole body of Christ. “A little leaven” in just one area of a batch of dough “leavens the whole lump.”

The way we “cleanse out the old leaven,” both individually and as a congregation is through repentance. We own up to our weaknesses. We admit our sinful actions, words, and thoughts that we have tried to justify or pass off as being “not so bad.” We even pry the lid off old sins that we have done our best to cover up but that continue to trouble our conscience.

We repent of our sins, because they have already been paid for. Jesus carried them to the cross, and when He came out of the tomb, our sins were left buried for now and forever. The payment of His death and the triumph of His resurrection are applied to us in Holy Baptism. Romans 6 tells us that just as Jesus was raised from the dead, so through Baptism “we too might walk in newness of life” (v. 4). “We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him” (v. 9). Because that is true for Jesus, “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (v. 11). His victory over sin and death is your victory.

You are not dead in your sins; you are alive in Jesus. You are no longer a slave to sin; you are free from it. You are free from the “leaven of malice and evil” that used to permeate you and rule you. You are free to “celebrate the festival” of Jesus’ victory “with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”

Paul explained more in his Second Epistle to the Corinthians what this “sincerity” means. He wrote, “we behaved in the world with simplicity and godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom but by the grace of God” (2Co. 1:12). And again, “we are not like many, peddling the word of God, but as from sincerity, but as from God, we speak in Christ in the sight of God (2:17, NASB).

“[T]he unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” is the faithful confession of God’s Word, no matter what cultural winds are blowing, and no matter what pressure is applied against the church. We have nothing to be ashamed of before God, when we believe and teach the Word of God with “sincerity and truth.”

But what if you haven’t spoken His Word faithfully, but instead compromised what He says? Or what if you haven’t done such a good job of “[cleansing] out the old leaven,” so that you are often still puffed up with sin and pride, or you are full of bitterness or anger toward others? Then repent of these sins and listen to these words: “Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed” for you. God the Father sent His Son to atone for all your sins.

And He has called me to proclaim it to you. I can stand here today and tell you with no hesitation that your sins are forgiven, because Jesus won your freedom from them through His death and resurrection. Because He lives, you will live also (Joh. 14:19). That is what He promises all people who put their trust in Him. They are no longer full of “the old leaven,” they “really are unleavened.”

“You Really Are Unleavened.” That is how you are in Jesus. You are baptized into Him. You trust in Him. You know that He will return again on the last day to raise up and glorify you and all believers. He really has risen! He has risen for you, indeed! Alleluia!

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, forevermore. Amen.

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(picture of Easter morning sunrise taken by Redeemer member, 3/31/24)