Empty (Pulpit Notes)

Matthew 28:1-6 “Early on Sunday morning, as the new day was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went out to visit the tomb. 2 Suddenly there was a great earthquake! For an angel of the Lord came down from heaven, rolled aside the stone, and sat on it. 3 His face shone like lightning, and his clothing was as white as snow. 4 The guards shook with fear when they saw him, and they fell into a dead faint. 5 Then the angel spoke to the women. “Don’t be afraid!” he said. “I know you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. 6 He isn’t here! He is risen from the dead, just as he said would happen. Come, see where his body was lying.

To be empty means containing nothing; not filled or occupied. I was raised to believe that emptiness is not a good thing. Empty pantries, empty freezers, empty wallets, empty actions, and most importantly empty words (we should not say what we don’t mean; my grandfather went as far to say that we talk so much that we talk up all the talk; James Brown calls this talking loud but saying nothing). 

Emptiness is generally a sign of one’s inability to fill a void. I’m implying that when something is missing, someone feels the absence but doesn’t know what to do about it. At the death of Buddha, one of his followers was left so emotionally empty, that he said, “To the end of us that began”. He was empty, on spiritual E and didn’t know if he’d ever be filled again or if anyone or anything could ever take Buddha’s place. But today, resurrection day, Easter Sunday, with billions of believers all over the world, we don’t pity our future, but we celebrate a greater level of existence! In antiquity, death was all that life had to offer. Death was the pinnacle; it was the ceiling. But when Jesus stormed out of the grave, he stripped death of its sting and demoted death from being the ceiling of life that caps our existence, to be the floor! Now we don’t fear death as if it’s our enemy, but we use death as merely a means to usher us into the blissful presence of the God who sought us, saved us and secures us in the palm of his own hand!

After an earthly ministry that was so successful that we’re still talking about it and have been positively affected by it over two thousand years later, Jesus was s executed by crucifixion on Golgotha’s skull shaped hill, on Friday. His body was encapsulated in a first century garden grave; literally a cave carved in rock, with a stone sealing the corpse of Christ from the world, for what the Roman government and the Jewish clerics hoped would be forever.

Jesus’ burial was so rushed, so hurried, that he was not properly embalmed. But thank God for women! When men are more concerned with getting finished, so they won’t disrupt their rituals, that women know how to not just get the job done but they know how to get it done right. Some women showed up with burial spices, in order to properly embalm the body of their Lord, early Sunday morning. They speculated on the way there about who’d roll the large stone away from Jesus’ grave. I like that they didn’t allow an obstacle that they didn’t know how to overcome, to stop them from arriving where they’d set their minds to go. 

It’s funny how life works out sometimes. What the women were so worried about, wasn’t even a concern at all. The stone was already rolled away when they made it to the cemetery. It was God’s way of saying “Don’t worry about the stone, because what’s heavy for you is of no consequence to me. I’ll handle your light weight before you even get to it”! Thanks be to God that when we’re up twiddling our thumbs trying to figure it out, that God has already worked it out! That’s why you don’t have to worry about the heavy stones of life, and you can go to sleep tonight, because God is up working the night shift all night long!

These dear women made it to the tomb, expecting for it to be full. Full of their dead savior. Full of their dead hopes and full of their dead dreams, for him to be their messiah; their Christ; their deliverer. But when they arrived at the tomb, for once in their lives they were overwhelmed and overjoyed that something that was supposed to be full, had turned out to be empty. Maybe emptiness in this instance, isn’t such a bad thing at all. I don’t know how you feel about it, but this Easter, I’m grateful for emptiness! Just when they thought Christians were washed up and the fat lady had sung, Jesus rose from the dead, giving us all a new lease on life! Frank Sinatra/Ol’ Blue Eyes sung what I feel Jesus may have thought on getting up morning: I faced it all and I stood tall, and did it my way! Your way said the grave should be full and stay full, but I did it my way, and emptiness sealed the deal of salvation for evermore!

I’ll land this lesson when I tell you what I came say. All of that was just my introduction. Here’s the meat of this message. Late verse 5 and verse 6 says “I know you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. 6 He isn’t here! He is risen from the dead, just as he said would happen.”

I’ve got to wrap this up so you can get to brunch, so here is my one line Easter speech: Jesus’ grave was empty, but his words are full! He meant exactly what he said, and it happened just like he said. Don’t doubt the Lord, because his word is true! He did in fact die. He did indeed fill a garden grave. But it’s EMPTY now! And because of the empty grave, we can say that his words are full of help for today, full of hope for tomorrow, and full of certainty that he lives within my heart! The application of my little Easter speech for today, is that because of the empty grave, and the fullness of Jesus’ words, our hearts should be filled with grateful commitment. I’m talking about a heart promise, that we’ll live for Jesus with all of our lives for rest of our lives!