Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father, my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, we pray, your heavenly Father, we thank you this day for sending your son into the grave on our behalf. For that on this day we would celebrate the resurrection and the new life that you have given not only him, but us also because of him. With us this day, Lord, that you break your word small bit for our consumption, your name, we pray, this man Christ has risen, is risen indeed. That never gets old. And it should not Thank you roaring. It should not ever get old. Christmas and Easter as a pastor can be one of those seasons where it'd be easy to go on autopilot, the text doesn't change the story doesn't change, be easy to preach the same exact thing from one year to the next. Perhaps that is the point. With so many things that change and shift in the world around us, we have to find something that stays the same something that stands as a constant in the store. So we can thank God that this story remains the same. From the beginning of its foretelling as far back as the Garden of Eden, to its very fulfillment, and the Passion of Christ. We need this consistency. We need this story to remain the same. In fact, the text even speaks to this. And if you look at our gospel text for today, the angel says you seek Jesus of Nazareth was crucified. The way that this would be translated would be this is the one who is still in a crucified condition. In other words, even in the resurrection, he is never not the crucified one. He always now forevermore will bear the marks in his hands and upon his side and in his feet, the scars that he carries on our behalf. The answer to our prayers. This fulfillment of God's promises assures us of his presence. Whether we're in the darkest of seasons, or the most jubilant of seasons in our life. Those times when we have to find our way in the dark with our eyes closed. Without being able to see there is a principle of interpretation that when we look at the text and the Greek or the Hebrew, and we looked to see which is the correct the original, the oldest version of the text, because it was copied from one person to the next, from one scribe to the next. And the principle is, is that you always go with the one reading that makes the least amount of sense the most difficult of the readings. And the challenge in that is is that we want to smooth things out. We want to look at all of the rough passage. And we want to just make it all easy. We want to make it sound sweet in our ears and it can't. For the last year, our lives have been turned upside down and inside out and we have been displaced, misplaced in some cases even ignored. What do we do? Do we get angry and say the hell what they were done? Or do we say you know, God, you've given me an opportunity to worship, where I am with who I am with. That on the day like today, we can gather back together in your house where you can cry victory over death, the devil and hell. The power of the resurrection comes first through the cross and second, through the empty tomb. Ponder that for just a moment because suffering. While it is not what God intended or wanted for his people, still becomes a means by which we see the fullness of His love and grace. Those times where we see his power being made known in our weakness, the empty tomb gives that suffering purpose. Those scars a story of redemption and hope instead of despair. In our gospel text, the women wait until the sun had risen. Before they take the spices that they had purchased that same morning, go and anoint a body that Jesus told them wouldn't be there. Three years, he spent with them, telling them, this is what's going to happen. I will die. And I will rise the Son of Man must suffer the hands of sinful men. He will be handed over killed what would rise Three days later. But as is most things they probably heard it and that went in one year and right out the other. Because it doesn't make sense it is the more difficult reading. It's the thing, the rough patch that we want to be able to make sense of and cannot. The Sabbath would have ended at sunset, the day prior on Saturday. So they get up before the sun is even up. They go and they purchase their spices. Because Lord knows they weren't prepared to be anointing Jesus's body. They didn't expect him to die. They go to the tomb hoping for the best being prepared for the worst. And we know this because they even talked about how they would get the stone rolled away. begs the question, do we as his people, do we seek Jesus for the best without abandoning being prepared for the worst? Do we seek Jesus and still hold on to that Lifeline so that we can feel secure? Or another way to ask it is are you willing to jump out of this plane without a parachute? The resurrection of Jesus calls us to a reckless abandonment of any and every other option is the only way to the Father. The only truth and the only life. The challenge that he gives us in His Word is he says this is who I am, this is what I will do. This is what it means for you. And we still go Are you sure Jesus and the weeks that will follow from here for our congregation we are engaging in the red letter challenge. An opportunity to get back to those red letters in Scripture, Jesus his words. See what he says about our life. But his death in our hope, in our death, to God not only removes the stone, but in doing so he strips away all doubt about why Jesus came. And he rips this irreparable hole in the veil of death. Our Old Testament lesson talks about the way that he would swallow up death forever. This bail, spread over nations will be swallowed up forever. The Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces and the approach of his people he will take away from all the earth. But the Lord has spoken. He speaks just as prominently today as he did in the Old Testament through his prophets, through His Son, through His disciples, and today through his words in Scripture, and they are just as true today as they were then they are constant and unchanging. That is the point. So we're in this unchangeable love of God. This constant hope that we have that goes beyond the grave. God always gets the glory now and forevermore. Amen.