“Easter Surprise”

April 4, 2010

I Corinthians 15:12-20, 53-58

Luke 24:1‑12

“Easter startles us.” That’s what Marcus Borg, one of the leading liberal voices on Jesus, tells us about this day.

We shout “Christ is risen!” We sound the trumpets and sing our alleluias. All of this gives expression to our joy-filled surprise that after the arrest of Jesus and his death by crucifixion, God raised this Jesus from the dead. The cross was ultimately not a defeat but a victory. We live in this startling, new reality, not just on Easter Sunday but every day.

Easter startles us into a new way of living. We are moved out of our empty lives.

Now, you might think that our Easter Sunday I’d talk more about the empty tomb than empty lives. That tomb is a problem for many, however, so I want to approach it slowly.

Years ago during an Easter sermon, telling about the women arriving at the tomb I asked with great rhetorical flourish: “Where is Jesus?” A three year old girl visiting with her grandparents that day, who was obviously unfamiliar with the niceties of worship yelled out for all to hear: “I DON’T KNOW!”

While this is not the reason that we dismiss the younger people to children’s church before the sermon, since then I have been much more cautious about asking questions when I preach.

And yet, that little girl’s uncertainty over the whereabouts of Jesus gives voice to our own uncertainty as well.

Paul wrote his letters to the early churches some 20 years after the crucifixion and before any of the Gospels were written. Paul’s hope in the resurrection was strong, but he seems to know nothing of accounts of the empty tomb. He never mentions those Easter morning stories when writing about the resurrection.

Still, he can say with confidence to the Christians in Corinth: “In fact Christ has been raised from the dead.” Now, that’s a bold affirmation.

In fact, Christ has been raised from the dead.

And that affects how we live.

In his prison cell in Nazi Germany, Dietrich Bonhoeffer understood what that might mean for the world and for us. “From the resurrection of Christ…a new and purifying wind can blow through our present world. If a few people really believed that and acted on it in their daily lives, a great deal could be changed. To live in the light of the resurrection—that is what Easter means.”

In the risen Christ the power of death has been defeated. So Paul can write: “Be steadfast.” And because we might not really be sure what he means by that, he tells us.

“Immovable”—that is, standing firm in the face of the winds and experience that can blow against you. The harsh judgments of others or the adversity that comes with taking a principled but unpopular stand, or the simple bad breaks of life might threaten to crush your spirit. God, however, has begun something good in you and will bring it to completion.

Because God is working within you, to be immovable is not to be stiff and resistant. It is to be flexible and resilient—like a tree that can bend without breaking. It is to be active and involved—abounding in the work of God. You can give with abundance; you can love with abandon. You can give yourself to those you love, to the causes that claim your heart. You can walk in the way of peace in a world that celebrates violence; you can work for justice in a world that favors power and wealth; you can speak the truth in a world that prefers easy lies. You can laugh and sing and dance.

You can live in the light of the resurrection—that is what Easter means.

Each of us can do this because we know that in the resurrected Christ our labor is not in vain. The good that we do does not end with our defeat or even with our death. By God’s power our works continue, still bearing fruit.

Yes, death is real. And death is an enemy. But we have heard once more the startling good news that death has been swallowed up in victory, that we can live fully because Christ is risen.

The resurrection means that this time, these days are filled with great significance. The work of God that we do—the work that God does through us—is a part of the future that God is making. “Acts of justice and mercy, the creation of beauty and the celebration of truth, deeds of love and the creation of communities of kindness and forgiveness—these all matter, and they matter forever.”  

Easter startles us, calling us into life in all its fullness and abundance. Far from having a futile faith, we can abound in the work of God because what we do in Christ will bear fruit.

Easter startles us, calling us out of empty lives into a new way of living.

With that awareness, we dare to approach that empty tomb once more.

In twenty-five years of ordained ministry, I’ve spent a lot of time in cemeteries. I’ve prayed at gravesides in small towns and large cities; I’ve stood with people in the oppressive heat and the freezing cold. Sometimes crowds of people were gathered; at one rainy committal service just one other person present.

One of the immense and humbling privileges that a minister has is to be with people as they die, and to be at the graveside to commend their lives to God. We’re with people right up to that edge, up to, the “shoreline of eternity”—to that boundary beyond which, we, the living, cannot yet go.

On Easter morning, however, the Gospel story takes us further—beyond the stone markers and the brass plaques, beyond what we can see, beyond what we can know with our partial knowledge. It startles us with the announcement that the tomb, the cemetery is not the end. We are ongoing participants in the life-giving power of God.

Each of the four Gospels tells a somewhat different story, but all acknowledge that women come to the tomb first. As Luke tells it, on a Sunday morning Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James and other women come to tomb. On the previous Friday they saw how the body of the crucified Jesus was put in this rock-hewn tomb. On their arrival, they see that the stone that had sealed the entrance is rolled away. But going inside the tomb, they do not find the body.

They are at a loss about this. They are “perplexed,” Luke says. That is the effect that Jesus often had on his followers. It was always difficult to get a grip on what he was saying, what he was doing.

As the women take in this situation, as they try to make sense of this startling reality, two men in dazzling clothes show up. Luke doesn’t come right out and say it, but in describing what seems to be the first occasion of people all dressed up for Easter, he is suggesting that these two are angels—a word, you will remember, that simply means “messenger.”

The message the women receive is straightforward: “He is not here, but has risen.” While these words might have echoed oddly in their ears like some unknown language at first, it dawns on them that if they are looking for Jesus, they are in the wrong place, for one does not seek the living among the dead.

“He is not here. He is risen.” We aren’t told how. We aren’t told when. Nobody ever knew exactly what happened because nobody was there to see it.

The women tell others what they were told. As is the case in all the Easter stories, a lot of people had their doubts about the women’s story. A lot of people still do. And so a lot of breath has been spent in Easter sermons trying to “prove” the resurrection, trying to argue people into belief. But what convinced the people that Jesus had risen from the dead was not the arguments of others, not even an empty tomb. What convinced the people that Jesus had risen from the dead was a living presence.

Hearing the witness of the women, Peter does run to the tomb. In Bach’s Easter Oratorio Peter sings “Come, haste and run you fleet feet, reach the cave which harbors Jesus. Laughter and merriment attend our hearts, for our Salvation is risen.” Luke tells us Peter then comes home amazed—laughing all the way.

In the struggle of life and death, God has had the last laugh.

This is the promise of Easter. Not certainty about what has happened. But certainly amazement. Certainly laughter and merriment.

Resurrection startles us. “It is God’s way of getting us to listen up.” That’s how Peter Gomes puts it. And once God gets us to listen up, we are able to hear the invitation to embrace life with all its possibilities and challenges. Live a fully human life; let the image of God in which you were created, in which we were all created, shine through you. You can live with passion and abandon because of the resurrection.

Christ is risen. And we are all made alive in Christ.