Isaiah 65:17-25
For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth.
Acts 10:34-43
He commanded us to preach.
Luke 24:1-12
He is not here, but has risen!
I.
While the weather may be cold, we at Rock Spring Church wish visitors, neighbors and friends warm Easter greetings this day. Our presence together is a powerful sign of hope for a depleted world. Welcome and shalom!
The world stands on tiptoe this morning, straining to get a peak inside that dank, very empty tomb. Not only Christians, but agnostics and even some atheists (and neo-atheists) are among the crowd, and adherents of other religions too- all eager to know what God can do; all straining for any sign of hope for this war-torn, global warming world. Because the inconvenient truth (Al Gore) is that we are dying of our own missteps and calculated misdeeds. Our politics have polluted our policy; our technology has outrun our ethics; our personal morality too often mocks our declared beliefs. We worry about the kind of legacy we are leaving our grandchildren.
Peter may have been alone when he had his look into the tomb, but there is a crowd with us today, interested in our reaction to the biblical story. And you and I just as eager to see and hear and absorb every detail of that Easter morning, just in case there is something for us to hang on to, some shred of hope, some glimpse of assurance that we are not destined for disaster; some evidence that a merciful God does exist, does defeat injustice and all manner of evil, and ultimately brings healing to all creatures great and small.
Some students of the text dispute that Peter ever went to the tomb, but this, to my mind is impossible to take seriously. Peter, as leader of the disciples surely would have wanted to check out the story for himself. And what a story it is!
The women, we presume Mary of Magdala, Mary the mother of Jesus and Joanna, like Peter, were central to the Jesus’ moment. Scholars believe Mary Magdalene and Joanna supported the mission enterprise with major financial contributions and in many other vital ways. All three were devout followers of Jesus. In fact, that very morning, they were on their way to complete ritual embalming preparations for the body before permanent burial. So when they ran to the disciples reporting what they had experienced that early dawn, their story should have been taken seriously.
Their story was not just about an empty tomb. That would have hardly surprised the disciples. Matthew’s Gospel speculates that Roman soldiers, bribed by corrupt religious leaders, removed the body, saying that the disciples had stolen it. Other theories about the empty tomb undoubtedly circulated as well.
II.
But what really convinced the disciples was the women’s report about the two angels, and what they had said to them. In Biblical times, angels were understood to be messengers from God often meaning that someone was to be taken in death. The frightened women, heads bowed low, were convinced that they were in the presence of the Holy, receiving sacred instruction (Luke 24:5-7):
Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.
Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man
must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise
again.
It had to have been these words of the angels, not the empty tomb by itself, that moved Peter to run to the garden, peer into the tomb, ponder the cloths by themselves and leave the area amazed at what had happened (vs. 12), and convinced that all that Jesus taught was true- God was in Jesus for the salvation of the world, God’s love incarnate that all people in every generation might have a second chance, all people, regardless of whether or not they are Jew or Gentile.
Peter later risked his life to testify to this faith as he preached to the Roman officer Cornelius, a Gentile, and his household(Acts 10:34-43):
God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power…he went
about doing good and healing all who were oppressed…for God was with him.
We are witnesses to all that he did…They put him to death by hanging him on
a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear…to us
who were chosen by God as witnesses…and commanded us to preach…and to
testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead…
that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.
The witness of the women convinced the other disciples and Peter of the Resurrected Jesus as did Jesus’ several appearances to them, as the various gospels tell- behind closed doors, by the lake in Galilee and elsewhere. None of them ever again referred to the empty tomb to justify their faith; nor to the “how” of the Resurrection, only to the witness of the angels and of the women, and of Peter, and of Jesus himself. Even the non-Christian historian, Josephus, testifies to something extraordinary having happened to Jesus’ followers, something that gave them power to preach, teach and minister in His name after some kind of Resurrection from the Dead.
III.
Yet so many deny Jesus on the basis of a lack of proof of a physical resurrection. What greater proof is needed than in the extraordinary lives of Jesus’ followers? And the spectacular growth of the Christian Church, Roman, Orthodox, Protestant and others? How did the Resurrection happen exactly? Why is it important? Presbyterian minister, scholar and writer, Frederick Buechner, puts the question of the Resurrection in perspective this way (Listening to Your Life),
There is really no story about the Resurrection in the New Testament.
Except in the most fragmentary way, it is not described at all. There is no
poetry about it. Instead, it is simply proclaimed as fact. Christ is risen!
In fact, the very existence of the New Testament proclaims it. Unless
something very real indeed took place on that strange, confused morning,
there would be no New Testament, no Church, no Christianity. –p.101
So here we are in 2007- some of us- still trying to find our way to faith by seeking a literal resurrection of a body. No wonder we remain skeptics! We look into a dank, dark hole in the side of an embankment just outside what is now the Old City of Jerusalem to see…an empty tomb, linen cloths resembling, we’re told, those of Jesus. There aren’t too many answers there, I can assure you. I’ve been there, stood in line, done that! I know!
Why do we look for the living among the dead? Are we afraid that we really will be amazed? I know people who have stuck their noses into dark tombs their entire lives trying to find direction and faith. They’ve worshiped icons of the Risen Jesus hoping to feel the Resurrection. They’ve searched for the Living Christ everywhere but where he is to be found, among those who are doing their best to live His Way.
All of us know what it is like to seek the wrong goals, make security our god; power, prestige, sex, pleasure of every kind the end game of all our efforts. ‘Get the corner office, become the boss, get the title, be the name in the papers, travel the world, mingle with the mighty, corner the market—whatever such goal we seek, so long as we do it for our own validation, we will never satisfy our heart’s yearning, ‘never know the amazing life Easter promises. All we’ll be doin’ is putting our noses into one dark tomb after another, seeking one phony miracle after another. If life is all about us, it won’t be long before life isn’t worth much. Building our empire without much concern for the welfare of others pretty well insures our own loneliness. And as we work every so much harder year by year to make the world safe for us, we may find one day that the world is safe for no one. Striving or a world that is safe and clean and just for all people is to see the Risen Christ, God with us.
Easter is about coming home to such basic understandings. For the Risen Christ is with us, and it can be a new day for each of us, and for all people and nations. 600 years before Jesus, the prophet of Isaiah 65 paints a vision of Israel’s return to its homeland after traumatic defeat and exile. In these words, early Christians found a wonderful metaphor for their Resurrection hope, and ours-
For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth;
The former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.
Be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating…
No more shall the sound of weeping be heard…
Or the cry of distress…
The wolf and the lamb shall feed together…
Easter comes not once a year, but every day of every year to those who live Amazed! by what God has done. And living amazed is nothing more or less than living life each day as a witness to God’s highest and best hopes for humankind, embodied in the life of God’s Beloved One, Jesus. Loving God by loving loved ones, neighbors, strangers all. Striving to be servants, seeking the best in all people, hearing the echos of the holy. Building communities of mutual concern. Earth sharing, not hording. Helping all boats to rise. Making peace a genuine possibility through every means at our disposal, including the U.S. Institute of Peace; healing the earth; being givers and not just consumers. Seeing something of holiness in everyone we meet.
Giving each day, not spending our days.
Then the Resurrection will become a reality, Christ will be risen…for us…and all peoples.
…and we will, one day, like Peter, go home, amazed at what (has) happened.
May it be so. Amen.