Preke - Sermons

2017-04-16 - Easter Sunday - Pastor Dr. Christian Nottmeier

Other translations of the sermon:

Sermon text: Mt 28,1-10.

Dear congregation!


It takes courage in this world and in this country to celebrate Easter. Victory of life over death, of hope over the resignation and frustration. However, there are quite a few cells, in which we include ourselves and others, sort them into these. There are quite a few stones, which should still be rolled away, to allow the real light to come to us.


To be sure, the person who looks out with precision, also sees in the Easter stories the pain in this world. He sees the disappointment of women who came to the Tomb in the morning, he sees their horror, their fear and their anxiety. It almost seems that they have been so imprisoned, that they cannot hear the glad tidings, which already resounded once, namely at Christmas. To this extent the pain and the misery, the worry about themselves and the world pulled them down.


Matthew also tells this in his Easter story. He, however, tells us how - at first scarcely noticeable and perceived - of a different reality, God's reality, which broke into the world market by death. There are the women who came to the grave/tomb, as the morning breaks. There are the guards which were hired to guard the Tomb. Because the dead man had to be really dead.


And there comes in this so real and imaginable world that is indeed our world, a different reality. The entry of heaven. Don't fear. He is not here. He has risen, as he said. The morning dawned. The Tomb guards did not see anything. It only dawns on those women, those bitterly grieving, abandoned women in the dawn. They begin to perceive the morning splendour of eternity. But it needed time until the fear was overcome, until astonishment set in. Until they get a new perspective of themselves and the world. Little by little, they need to understand what happened.


And then, even more is put in motion in the Easter story, which Matthew first told much more dramatically than the other evangelists. You are looking for Jesus, the crucified, they hear the Angel say. He is not here. He has risen, and he will pyou precede you to Galilee. There you will see him – and tell it to his disciples. And they went with fear and great joy. They went to Galilee. Where he had already opened their eyes during his lifetime for God's Kingdom and his coming. In all the things he had told them at the time, there was already a light/shimmer from the beginning of the Kingdom of heaven in this world, from the beginning of eternity at that time. At that time,when he preached and taught, did wonders, and the lived his life as an example people of the love of God, the movement for life and against death already commenced. Everything which seemed so lost in the depressing experience of the present, was now present again. The hope that Jesus gave them. The enthusiasm which filled them. The glance which was directed to the front. It was no cheap comfort at that time. They all had their past, their injuries, but Jesus gave them a different a hopeful cheerful light. And opened their view for a future, in which hatred and violence would not prevail. In which the people in their diversity would be united, in their diverse multiplicity, blessed, colourful as a rainbow, which combines heaven and earth.


Suddenly, all that is again present at the women at the Tomb. It has come back to the fore. Yes, it has become apparent to them, that what had moved Jesus during his lifetime in the hearts and awakened hope, continues on Easter morning, actually only really commences/ gets going. Even then, in Galilee, it was the core of his sermon, that the reality in all this, which is perceived by ones’ eyes and makes the death seems so final, doesn't add up. There is yet another reality, God's reality, which has brought Jesus to light, and this light of eternity, remains illuminated over his grave, beyond his death. And that this other reality is not only a consolation, but that it also changes our reality.
But what is our situation today, on this Easter morning of the year 2017, which is now particularly dominated by the big questions about how will proceed. Can we also hear it now, this incredible/unbelieble message, proclaimed by Jesus during his lifetime, and after his death just as alive and true: That despite this our lives are filled with a new understanding, and that a new light of another reality has befallen us, in which our lives which are threatened by death, the limits of our life and even today, is filled with all horrible truths? A message of life that is strengthened in the challenges of our world and our country lets us move outwards. That we, however small and modest it may be, continues to set us in motion continues. Because Jesus says to us as he told the women this morning: Go, go out into the world. Be ambassador of my love, be ambassadors of reconciliation.


Yes, the deadly dangers remain. The suffering of the people of nearby and distantly hits us right in the heart. And yet it is the inscrutable and hard-to-comprehend hope and confidence in life, which will always prevail. Namely: that our own good and our world, that God means it well with us. This courage to be, even if the situation seems so hopeless. This is the truth that unswervingly applies since that Easter morning. We must believe that. Full of fear, full of trembling, and with great joy.


Amen.