Easter Day
Acts 10: 34-43
Colossians 3:1-4
John 20:1-18
Year A
I envy the Jews at this time
of year, because their holy time of Passover has never been violated by the
department store gods. Cards for Passover are few, tastefully displayed in a
section reserved for religious cards of the season. And you won’t see any
bunnies or chocolate eggs or chickens jumping all over a Passover card. Now I
think spring is absolutely miraculous and I have nothing against chocolate
addiction. In fact there’s a beautiful chocolate rabbit sitting on my kitchen counter
that’s just waiting for me to bite his ears off. But all of it is far removed
from Easter, for Easter is about an event that shook the world to its very
foundations; the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
Easter is not the celebration
of springs’ awakening. Neither is it saying that life is immortal. It isn’t.
When we die we end up every bit as dead as was Jesus. Neither is it saying that
Jesus was resuscitated back to his former life. He wasn’t. He didn’t come back
and die an old man in bed in
When Mary Magdalene arrived
at the tomb she thought it must be the gardener standing there in the shadows,
and when she realized who it was she tried to embrace him. Part of what the
gospel writer is trying to tell us, when he tells us Jesus could not allow that
embrace, is to say that Jesus was changed, transformed, the same yet very
different.
Easter is utterly central to
Christianity. Without it we would never have heard of Jesus. His story would
have ended with his crucifixion in a world where thousands were put to death in
the very same way. We might find a trace of him somewhere, something written
about a first century rabbi who caused a great stir at the time, but that would
have been the end of it.
We are given scant details
when it comes to the resurrection. According to the gospels there was no sudden
explosion of light in the sky, no choir of heavenly hosts singing “Alleluia”. The
way the gospel writers tell it Jesus’ risen appearances did not come in a blaze
of glory, but more like a candle flame flickering in the dark, first in one
place and then in another, and after a certain period of time, in no place at
all.
Yet there is nothing subtle
about Easter. Easter is confrontational because the resurrection appearances of
Jesus were explosive encounters. All those who had surrounded Jesus were exhausted,
grief-stricken, and fearful. Like the rest of us they were pre-occupied with
their own thoughts and questions about the future. Yet, in spite of the thick
density of their emotions and the fog they were in, they were confronted by
God’s act of resurrection. And it wasn’t the beauty of springtime that brought
about this confrontation.
No one said “If we endow a chair for him at
Jesus was dead – very dead.
He did not ‘recover’ from death. Yet, the first cry from the disciples, who had
been reluctant to believe any stories from women, was not, “The Lord is risen”, but “We have SEEN the Lord!” It was a cry of
sheer and utter astonishment. It was so unexpected they had no word for
resurrection. The word they came to use was the Greek word ‘anastasis’, to ‘stand up again’; meaning to ‘stand up
again’ – over and against death.
All kinds of people get hung
up on whether the resurrection of Jesus can be proven as an historical event;
when, in reality it is an event that happens both in history and outside of
history. It is an act of God that ‘affects’ history but is not confined to it. Our
faith does not rest on what historical or other scholars can prove. Our faith
rests on our encountering God in our own experience of life, because while the
risen Christ is not bound to history, the risen Christ affects all history; our own personal histories
and futures as well.
As one writer says, “God’s intention is to get our attention.”
This is what happened to the disciples. Life truly began for them when God got
their attention. It is the same for us.
Most of us look at life like
a bank account. We figure out how much or how little time we have left and then
decide how to spend it. The disciples’ experience of Jesus’ resurrection was
not about adding time on after death. Life began for them when they stopped
being afraid both of what they did know and afraid of what they did not know.
Life began for them when they dared to believe that the risen Christ meant that
all life was transformed. Life began for them when they knew this to be certain,
even though they could neither understand it nor explain it. That’s what
empowered them.
Resurrection is not a
reversal of crucifixion. It is God’s power over it; God’s power over all kinds
of death. In the Easter event we are confronted with the fact that life is not
simply an unexpended amount of time, a balance remaining in our savings account,
with all the powers and dangers that go with it. When we can see that in the
Easter event God has removed the power of all death, then and only then, are we
free enough to be able to take full possession of all the life God offers to
us. That is why the primary message of resurrection is “Fear not”.
Harvard Chaplain Peter Gomes
writes: “Fear, not sin, is the great
curse…Fear that I will not have enough time to do what I must. Fear that I will
hurt or be hurt. Fear that my love will be painful and hurtful. Fear that I am
untrustworthy..(but) the empowering words of the resurrection are ‘Be not afraid.’
….Some people we know fear death; they are terrified of it. But the greater
curse is those who fear life, who dare not embrace the fullness of their
opportunities for life…Such defensive living is not the stuff of which Easter
faith is made.”
Easter is less the founding
of a religion than the breaking through into the world of the utterly deathless
life of God; of God’s desire and will to overcome every kind of death that
seeks to undo us.
There are two ways to look at
life. One is to focus upon all the violence and pain and tragedy that are all
around us. If we believe that is the only and final reality then Easter can
only be one more fairytale among many. However, if Easter is the one incontrovertible
fact about what God intends for the world and those whom God loves, then Easter
becomes, not only a preview of ultimate reality, it becomes the starting point
for new life for each and every one of us in the here and now.
We can leave here and go on
thinking, as society is prone to do, that Easter is just about earth’s renewal.
Or we can begin again, allowing God to confront us in a way that will change
our lives forever. Then and only then, will we come to know what it means, what
it truly means, to say, “I have seen the Lord”.
AMEN
The Rev. Virginia L. Bennett,
D.Min.
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church,