Matthew 28:5-6 “You are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come, and see the place where he lay.”

These women at Jesus’ tomb were looking for Jesus, who was crucified. In other words, they were looking for a dead body. Does your family celebrate memorial day? When I was a kid, my mom’s side of the family got together on Memorial Day for a picnic at Aunt Mabel’s house. Then we all went out to the cemetery to put flowers on Grandma Bell’s grave in the afternoon. Maybe you go to one of the parades that honor our fallen heroes, the soldiers who gave their lives to protect our country. Memorial Day honors the dead.

Easter is not Memorial Day. We don’t fly the Christian flag at half-staff . Jesus is not our dead hero. It’s true he was dead. “You are looking for Jesus, who was crucified.” His death accomplished more than the most celebrated soldiers in history. His sacrifice didn’t save a platoon, a city, or a nation. He saved the world–past, present, and future. He saved you. He saved me. Like a soldier who jumps in front of a friend and takes a bullet to spare him, Jesus jumped in front of us, and took a cross to spare us the eternal hell that was aimed at our souls. His death completely settles the score for our sins–all of them. Yes, we look for Jesus who was crucified, because his death on a cross takes away the sins of the world. That’s the reason we even have Christianity, and that cross is the main symbol of our faith.

But Jesus isn’t dead. Maybe you’ve heard this trick question from history class. “Who is buried in Grant’s tomb?” Don’t think too hard. The body of President Grant is entombed there. But some insist that no one is “buried” there, because the tomb is above ground.

Here’s another question from history. “Who is buried in Jesus’ tomb?” The answer is “nobody,” nor is anybody entombed, stored, or otherwise housed in that cave. Jesus’ tomb is empty, because Jesus is alive, which the angel reminds us is “just as he said.”

At least four times before he died Jesus promised he would rise from the dead. Even his enemies understood the claim. That is why they placed a guard around his tomb. Before Jesus gave his promise, the Prophet Isaiah promised it 700 years earlier in the fifty-third chapter of his book. Before Isaiah, Jesus’ great ancestor David promised it a thousand years earlier in Psalm 16. If you are looking for Jesus, look with his promise in mind. Then you will be looking for a living Lord, not a dead hero.

So if you were looking to read some nice words about Christianity’s dead founder at Easter, some profound insights from his life and legacy, I’m sorry, but we don’t do that around here. This isn’t a eulogy. No such dead person exists.

But if you want to find a real, live person who will love you as a friend and brother, save you from yourself, give your life meaning and purpose, and give you a brand new life and body after the one you’re using now wears out, breaks down, and dies, well, read on.

This living Lord Jesus, body and soul, rules your world from his throne in heaven. He lives in the words he has left behind for us to know his love and power. When we trust those words, he even comes and lives in our hearts. Look for him with his promise in mind and you will find him, and with him more gifts and blessings than you could have ever thought possible.

John 19:38-39 “Later, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Now Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jews. With Pilate’s permission, he came and took the body. He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night.”

All four gospels tell us about Joseph of Arimathea. Here was an influential man. He was wealthy enough for Matthew to note for us that he was rich. He was also a prominent member of the Jewish ruling council, or Sanhedrin. His words were sought by others, and his opinion respected. In Jewish society, there was not much higher he could climb.

None of this made it easier for Joseph to follow Jesus. If anything, it made it even harder. Joseph recognized in Jesus’ words the very voice of God. He knew that Jesus was right. But in this, Joseph was almost alone. Almost every other member of the Council had decided that Jesus was a dangerous heretic. Openly declaring himself in favor of Jesus could have cost Joseph everything: his respect, his position on the Council, perhaps some of the partners with whom he did business and had made his wealth. As he carried the body to the grave, perhaps he thought to himself, “Could this have been me?” The hatred of Jesus had been that intense.

So Joseph kept his faith a secret, not unlike Nicodemus who was helping him. Nicodemus had also kept his opinion about Jesus a secret. Remember how he secretly visited him in the middle of the night? Both of these men fit the description the Apostle John offered earlier in chapter 12. “They would not confess their faith for fear they would be put out of the synagogue; for they loved praise from men more than praise from God.”

This was no small sin. The other members of the Council had Jesus’ blood on their hands by calling for his execution. Joseph and Nicodemus had Jesus’ blood on their hands by keeping their mouths shut. These two prominent men had done nothing to save him. Now they carried his dead body to its tomb.

Isn’t Jesus still so difficult for us to follow at times? It’s an easy thing for me to stand in this pulpit and speak warmly about him to my church. Who is going to disagree? But to risk the resentment of neighbors who belong to a non-Christian religion, or of my unchurched relatives, by telling them that they need Jesus–that wants to drive my faith underground. It’s an easy thing for us to talk about the beliefs we share with each other. All that we will find is support. But to risk being considered an intolerant bigot or idiotic half-wit by employers or co-workers, or peers or friends, for standing up for the tenets of our faith–that quickly cools our zeal.

Fear still paralyzes our witness, and ours is no small sin either, is it. Jesus himself has warned, “Whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven.” When we have closed our lips, and bit our tongue in the presence of those who needed to hear our witness, we have given God reason to require their blood of us.

And yet, there is a glimmer of light in John’s description of Joseph. He does not refer to Joseph as an admirer, or observer, or interested researcher. He calls him a disciple. For all his weakness and fear, Joseph still had a sincere faith in Jesus’ words. He still clung to Jesus’ promises. The Lord still considered him one of his very own.

For all of our weaknesses, God still wants us to cling to his promises by faith. In fact, Jesus lay lifeless here for that very purpose, that we might know him as our Savior who forgives our weaknesses and holds us close to himself in faith. As Joseph and Nicodemus lay his body to wrest, we can say with conviction and love, “Sleep well, sweet Savior, who died for a coward like me.”

1 Corinthians 11:23-25 “For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: the Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.”

“This is my body…This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” You know that Christians have debated the exact meaning of these words for over a thousand years. Call me simple, but I believe that Jesus meant exactly what his words say, just like billions of others have.

This bite of unleavened bread is at the same time the body that had the skin peeled off its back by scourges, that slowly suffocated to death over six agonizing hours one Friday afternoon, all for my sake.

This cup holds the blood of the same man whose blood ran from wounds where thorns pierced his forehead, nails pierced his hands and feet, and a spear pierced his side and punctured his motionless heart, all so that he could create a new relationship between me and the God who made me.

I have no explanation for the process, the exact nature of the change, because Jesus gave us none. But that is typical of his miracles. “Draw water,” he once told the servers at a wedding. “Now, go and serve it.” And the water was wine. Did some kind of concentrated, fermented material from grapes suddenly appear in the water and mix with it, sort of like making orange juice or lemonade from concentrate, only miraculously? Was the water instantaneously replaced by wine in the jars? Did some of the water molecules transform into organic material from grapes? And was this a Cabernet, a Merlot, or a Shiraz? I don’t know. He didn’t tell us. But his disciples knew that a miracle had happened, and they put their faith in him.

Jesus once faced a hungry crowd of 5000 men with just five little loaves of bread and a couple of small fish. So he prayed, and gave the bread to his disciples, and told them to go and serve it to the people. Somehow, the bread never ran out. The more the disciples gave away, the more bread they had. All 5000 people ate their fill. Did the loaves in the disciples’ hands somehow come to life? Did the baked cells of crushed wheat begin to reproduce themselves, something like the growing process in the field, only thousands of times faster? Did entirely new chunks of bread materialize out of nowhere as the disciples pulled pieces from each loaf? I don’t know. Jesus didn’t tell us. But at the end there was more bread than they had at the start, and the crowds were ready to make Jesus their king.

It is no great challenge for the one who turned water into wine, and fed five thousand from five loaves–more than that who created the universe and raised the dead– to put his body and blood into a little bite of bread and sip of wine to be present with us for a few moments. Admittedly, it takes a miracle. But that’s the kind of business Jesus is in.

And if he wants us to remember him, isn’t this a better way? A little bite of bread or sip of wine isn’t much of a memorial if that is all they are. What do bread and wine have to say by themselves? The Lincoln and Jefferson memorials in Washington have giant images of the presidents carved in stone. Great quotes of their wisdom are etched into the walls around them. You don’t have to wonder about whom they honor or what they are trying to say.

            But Lincoln and Jefferson themselves are never there. Jesus comes to us in his supper, with the body and blood he gave to save us, in a little miracle he has performed for his people countless times over nearly twenty centuries, so that his people can remember the love and the sacrifice that saved them.

Ezekiel 37:14 “I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord.”

Over and over, the Lord gives Ezekiel the same command in chapter 37 of his book: “Prophesy.” “Preach!” God’s power is in his word. It gives life. It works miracles. It changes people.

It’s been that way since the very beginning. “God said, ‘Let there be light.’ And there was light.” “Prophesy to these bones… Prophesy to the breath… Prophesy to my people,” the Lord commanded Ezekiel. Then the bones came together, and the bodies lived. Seventy years later God’s people went home. Their nation survived.

Jesus tells us his words are spirit and life. Thus they are able to give life. Paul writes that the gospel is the power of God for salvation. It creates faith where there was none before. Faith comes from hearing the message. That message is still the tool the Holy Spirit uses to make us spiritually alive.

Did you notice how certain God was that his words would restore the faith and hope of his people and bring them home? “I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord.” The fulfillment of this promise lies 70 years ahead, but the Lord speaks about it in the past tense. God is like Dr. Seuss’s Horton the elephant. If he makes a promise, he always keeps it. “I meant what I said, and I said what I meant–an elephant faithful one hundred percent.” Once the word is out of his mouth, the promise is as good as done.

Looking back at history, we know that God kept his promise. Israel went home. Years later the Savior came, and the world was saved, just as the Lord had spoken.

For those who follow Jesus and know his promises, there is always hope. We have his word. “Preach the gospel,” an old professor of mine used to say. “And when that doesn’t work, preach the gospel.” There is life and help in those words, even for bones that are very dry.

Ezekiel 37:11-13 “Then he said to me: ‘Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say our bones are dried up and our hope is gone, we are cut off. Therefore prophesy and say to them: This is what the Sovereign Lord says: O my people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them. I will bring you back to the land of Israel. Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them.’”

Israel’s situation was grave, literally. As a nation and as a faith, these people were like dry bones in a grave. They hadn’t stopped breathing momentarily. They hadn’t just flatlined on the heart monitor. They weren’t even like a corpse with rigor mortis, waiting to be buried. They were so dead the flesh was gone, and the bones were dry. The Lord himself agreed. That’s a medical lost cause. Humanly speaking, it is hopeless.

Why should we care? Our country isn’t God’s chosen nation like Israel was–never has been, never will be. The Lord can manage his plan to save souls with our country or without it. But with Old Testament Israel, this is one of those places where God’s promise to send us a Savior appears to be a razor’s edge away from failing. Those promises were bound together with that people living on that piece of geography. If you understand what was at stake here, even for your own eternity, then there is some tension in the story here for you and me. You and I were this close to never knowing the God of our salvation.

The Christian church, as a body of people, does have more in common with ancient Israel. We are basically the same faith in the same Savior on opposite sides of his coming. We see similarities and parallels between the decline of faith among these people and the decline of Bible-believing, gospel-preaching Christianity in our own time. We know family members, friends, and neighbors who have defected from faith in Jesus. They have defected to the gods of pleasure, or do-it-my-own-way, or popular opinion, or skeptical atheism. They show no signs of life. They have become dry bones.

But God can raise the dead. Ezekiel’s vision was not a promise that the Lord would raise dead bodies from their graves literally. However, it is connected to that promise.

Have you been at the grave side ceremony following a funeral? Did you listen to the pastor carefully? At some point before he speaks the final blessing, he says something like this: “We now commit this body to the ground –earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust – in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.”

At our funerals, we profess our faith that Jesus has the power to bring bodies back to life even after they have been reduced to nothing but dust for many years. That’s even farther gone than dry bones: nothing but powder. We have this this confidence because Jesus himself died for our sins and was buried. But he did not turn to dust. He was raised three days later. Now we worship the God who gives life to bodies dead for hundreds and even thousands of years.

It’s enough to make us rethink your definition of a “lost cause.” If God can take the skeleton hanging in your high school or college science lab, wrap it in flesh, and then make it Mr. or Mrs. Smith again, it is a small thing for him to gather people who are scattered a thousand miles from home and resettle them in their own country.

If God can take prehistoric people powder, add some water and spirit, and produce fully functional human beings again, then it is no big deal for him to put his Spirit into us who are already alive and renew our faith. No matter the size of the challenges we face, they are not too big for the God who raises the dead. There are no lost causes with him.

Ezekiel 37:1-5 “The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. He asked me, ‘Son of man, can these bones live?’ I said, ‘Sovereign Lord, you alone know.’ Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to these bones and say to them, Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life.’”

When Ezekiel wrote the words of the 37^th chapter of his book, the people of Israel had reached that point where they were ready to abandon hope for themselves. For almost a thousand years this nation had been “God’s chosen people.” The idea that he would use this nation for the salvation of the entire world was woven into their national identity.

But then their special role and special relationship with God began to unravel. As individuals, more and more people couldn’t care less about their special role or relationship with God. They didn’t like all the restrictions of being his chosen people. The idol religions of their neighbors were less demanding, more exciting, and, frankly, sometimes just more down to earth. They were less focused on some distant Savior and some distant life in heaven. They were more focused on having a good harvest, enjoying a successful business, and building a big, happy family. Gods like Baal and Asherah didn’t so much call people to repent as they promised them pleasure and success. More and more people went through the motions of keeping up the ceremonies and the sacrifices that supported the old religion. They still liked to celebrate the holidays. But each generation saw more and more defections to other gods and other faiths.

The Lord didn’t sit back and let his people slip away without “fighting for this marriage.” As a nation, he let them feel the consequences of their unfaithfulness. Crops failed more often and the weather was less cooperative. National security became an issue. It became more and more difficult to keep foreign invaders out. Their military weakened. Their borders shrank. Their country was divided in two. If only they would turn back to God for help! But for most, that day never came. A little over a hundred years before Ezekiel the Lord let the northern three fourths of the nation fall to the Assyrians. Most of the population was forced to relocate to places hundreds and even thousands away from their homeland. Within a generation or two they had simply vanished as a distinct people.

Now the same thing was happening to the little group left in the south. This time the Empire of Babylon came and resettled the people in other countries. To the little group who remained faithful to the Lord, it looked like hope was lost. They had seen this before. It didn’t end well. “Our bones are dried up,” they said, “and our hope is gone; we are cut off.” As a nation, we are dead. We have lost our land, our king, our institutions. And as a faith, we are dead. Our hearts are empty. Almost no one believes the old promises and keeps the old practices anymore.

So God sent the Prophet Ezekiel and he gave them this vision, this story, about the dry bones coming back to life again. In these verses the Lord’s message is clear. Even though they felt their nation and their faith were a lost cause, God promised help for the hopeless. The nation would survive. Better yet, their faith, and the promises that faith held onto, would survive. Here was hope.

The future often looks bleak for God’s people today. Everywhere it seems like the churches are shrinking. Faith is dying. The Christian hope is coming to an end.

Don’t give up! God’s word has lost none of its power. The promise of forgiveness still brings people from spiritual death to life. It did for us. There never has been much reason to expect good things from the dead or dying people God makes his own. But we don’t rest our faith in these “dry bones.” We place our trust in the one who can make an entire universe out of nothing, who still creates life where there is only death, and one day will restore the dust of our dead bodies to life that never ends. These bones can live!

John 9:4-5 “As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the Light of the world.”

Jesus wanted his disciples to see the blessed opportunity in a poor man’s blindness. He links the man’s blindness to the truth that Jesus is the light of the world. Like light in a dark place, Jesus is the one who makes it possible for us to see the truth. And the truth is that God doesn’t expect us to grope our own way through the darkness of sin until we die in it. When the light goes on, the darkness disappears. When grace and forgiveness in Jesus goes on, sin and death disappear. They evaporate like the darkness. Life, and love, and heaven become visible. God’s work is to turn that light on in as many hearts as possible before it’s too late.

That light of grace and truth were connected with another work of God, the work of love. “Having said this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes. ‘Go,’ he told him, ‘wash in the Pool of Siloam (this word means Sent). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.”

Jesus’ method may seem strange to us, but you can’t argue with the results. His procedure works similar to a sacrament. Is washing off mud the cure for blindness? Not under ordinary circumstances. But when washing it off is connected to Jesus’ command and promise, then yes, it cures blindness. Can plain water wash away sins? Not under ordinary circumstances. But when it is accompanied by commands and promises like “Be baptized and wash your sins away” (Acts 22:16), then yes, there is forgiveness in the water, as strange as the method may seem.

You and I don’t have healing powers like Jesus had. But we can imitate his love for people who suffer. That may be just God’s purpose in allowing their pain or discomfort. He wanted to bring us together. He wanted us to show our love. He wanted us to share our Savior. 

Sometimes, the shoe is on the other foot. We are the ones struggling. We may not be eager to pray, “Lord, make me the person who suffers. Make me the person who needs help.” We don’t need to seek more problems in our lives than we already have. We can trust God to dole them out as he knows is best. When they come, Jesus assures us they have a spiritual purpose. Trust God to do his work, to turn on lights, to build faith in you or the people whose love and help bring you together.

“Lord Jesus, when I don’t see the value in life’s hardships, wash the mud out of my eyes, and let me see. Amen.”

John 9:2-3 “’Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned,’ Jesus said, ‘but his happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.’”

Sometimes people suffer because they are victims. Maybe the blind man the disciples noticed was a victim. It was all mom and dad’s fault. Apparently it’s not just a modern tendency to think, “It’s my parents’ fault I turned out this way.”

There are legitimate cases of children being victimized by their parents’ bad behavior, (though maybe not so much as a matter of God’s supernatural intervention as the disciples proposed here). Fetal alcohol syndrome, cocaine babies, and various psychological traumas caused by bad parenting are all real things.

Shall we be careful, however, about needing to make every tragedy someone’s fault? If we do find ourselves a victim, how much do we want to dwell on that? We live in a broken world run by broken people. There are victims in all directions. Feeling sorry for ourselves, throwing a pity party and inviting everyone to come, doesn’t serve a positive purpose. This grows out of the sinful flesh, not the new man of faith. Jesus wants to help us get past the problems and see our circumstances his way.

Here, that meant considering this man’s blindness may have been intended by God to serve a spiritual purpose. “This happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.”

Is that possible? Could God have actually willed and caused this man’s blindness for his own purposes? That is what Jesus is saying. This blindness happened for a purpose, and that purpose was so that God could do his work.

Does that comfort or scare you? I once counseled with a couple in which the husband had had a heart attack. Years of heart-health problems followed. They always resisted the idea that this setback in life could have come from God. It felt to them as though that would be accusing him of doing evil. No, the heart attack had to come from the devil.

What they failed to consider were all the good things that had happened in their relationship, their family, and their life of witness to neighbors and medical workers as a result of the health issues. Yes, he suffered as a result of the experience. But God used it to draw husband and wife closer in faith. He used it as a platform from which these godly people could talk about the gospel.

That’s God’s work, his saving work. It fits his gracious promise: “In all things God works for the good of those who love him” (Romans 8:28).

John 9:1-2 “As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’

For Jesus’ disciples, the idea that this man was born blind because someone sinned was not a question. It was an assumption. There only question was, “Who was responsible?” Their first suggestion was the man himself. His blindness made sense to them if he was being punished for something.

Sometimes it works this way. Sometimes people suffer some curse, some burden, because of a specific sin. In the Bible God curses the first murderer, Cain, by making him a “restless wanderer on earth.” After David commits adultery with Bathsheba, God takes the life of the child born to them in its first week.

In our own time, we know some sins have negative consequences that affect the rest of a person’s life: maiming injuries, or incurable diseases that are the direct result of certain kinds of behavior. Jesus’ disciples weren’t completely off base in the question that they asked him.

But there are two important points to note. One is that before we draw any conclusions linking a particular sin to some particular setback in some particular person’s life, we need to be able to draw a clear and indisputable line between these things. If that connection comes as a direct revelation from God, as with Cain or David, then we have a valid conclusion. If that connection is clear as a natural consequence, like an injury suffered in an accident while driving drunk, then we have a valid conclusion, too.

The second thing to note is the difference between punishment and discipline. When sin leads to suffering in an unbeliever’s life, that may be nothing more than a matter of justice. They did the crime. Now they have to do the time.

But when God allows his believing children to suffer setbacks connected to their sins, this is always loving discipline. He isn’t trying to make them pay. He is trying to make them better, helping them to grow spiritually. He is teaching and molding them to believe and live and act more like his own sons and daughters. He wants to draw his people close to offer forgiveness and renew their faith.

Most of the time there is no direct connection between a particular sin and the painful setbacks we suffer. Failing to realize this can lead us into sins of our own. When we are looking at someone else’s problems it leads us to judge them falsely. I can find many people less fortunate than me. They can’t walk, they can’t see, they can’t hear.  They daily deal with pain I can’t imagine. If I assume that they suffer as the result of some personal fault, then I become guilty of exactly the kind of loveless judging Jesus condemns.

If we view our own pain or setbacks this way, it leads to a different kind of sin. We may agonize over some moral failing in our lives that simply doesn’t exist. We may wonder which of our past sins made God so angry with us. This leads us to conclude God is the great punisher, not the great forgiver. Instead of trust we feel dread. We base our relationship on performance instead of grace. This destroys our faith.

Paul reminds us we are all in the same boat when it comes to sin: “There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:22-23). He also promises that we share the same forgiving grace: “…and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:24). Jesus did not come to condemn this blind man. He did not come to condemn you or me. He came to open our eyes to God’s saving love.