OK, “two quick ones…“just because” it is still an “early hour” for some of us!
I heard about a little boy sitting next to his best friend at church one Easter Sunday morning at 8:00.
His friend asked, “How did you get that big ugly bruise on your arm?”
The boy replied, “I ate some Easter candy before I came to church.”
His friend said, “Eating Easter candy won’t give you a bruise.”
The boy quipped, “It will – if it’s your big brother’s candy!”
I heard another one about “two brothers” who were getting ready to boil some eggs “to color” in preparation for Easter Sunday.
“I’ll give you ten bucks if you let me break three of these on your head,” said the older brother.
“Promise?” asked the younger. …”Promise!” Came the reply…
Gleefully, the older brother broke the first egg over his brother’s head, and then a second one.
The younger brother braced himself for “the last and final egg,” but nothing happened…no egg came…
“Ain’t ya gonna break the third one?” the boy asked.
His brother replied, “Nah, if I did that I’d owe ya ten bucks!”
Life is full of “empty promises” like that.
Often, if something “sounds too good” to be true… it usually is. That is not the case this morning…
Marketing experts create commercials and advertisements that tell us that we can be happy, skinny, rich, or famous, if we only purchase a certain product.
The government promises us that if only we’d support “this bill” or “elect this candidate, then everybody will be healthy and wealthy with great public services provided for all.
It doesn’t take “too terribly long” before we have been “fooled enough” to know that the world’s promises are full of “emptiness.”
But that is not true about our God, nor is it true of the Scriptures…THERE, the promises ring true…
Perplexed. Terrified. Amazed.
That is but a part of the message we get on Easter morning…Be it the women, or the disciples or any of them, in general…on that first Easter morning, they found themselves to be perplexed, terrified and amazed…
What did this all mean?
Just how do you wrap your head around an angelic visitation?
If we were to return to the scene of Jesus’ execution on “that Sunday morning,” chances are pretty good that we would “still find” the relics left over from Good Friday.
A braided crown of thorns… Iron nails covered in dirt and blood. And an empty cross of crucifixion. And that, empty cross promises forgiveness…
Next, were we to take a look at the place of burial…
The first thing everyone seemed to report was the empty tomb, itself.
The stone was rolled away. That in and of itself was perplexing…
No one was there. Jesus was gone. The tomb was empty, deserted, desolate and abandoned. The empty tomb was a sign of hope!
And reported next, was the burial cloths, all neat and folded, lying separately, again abandoned…like yesterday’s folded laundry…a tangible reminder of Jesus’ death, a symbol of tragedy—and yet, another symbol of hope…
Burial clothes with nobody in them…
Strange. And the scripture says they were perplexed,terrified and amazed.
What did it all mean? What did it all signify? Where was Jesus of Nazareth?
Where did he go? Who removed his body? Where did they take him? What in the heck is going on?
Three “signs of emptiness” that “each” pointed beyond themselves to something even bigger and greater…
All of these “signs” should have meant death and destruction, annihilation and a permanent ending…And yet, they did not…
The cross-empty
The crown of thorns – abandoned
The nails – tossed aside
The tomb – empty
The burial clothes – nicely set apart and stacked…
The only thing missing was Jesus. And he would soon appear, enough!
Our God is a God of promises. He always keeps them! His word is true. His promises are not empty.
The very fact that the cross, the clothes, and the tomb were found empty assures us that God’s promises are not!
And when Jesus says he is with you always to the end of the age, you can count on those words to be true.
Happy Easter, Everyone!