Acts 10:34‑43; 1 Corinthians 15: 1.11; John 20: 1‑18
Resurrection is a stumbling block for many people. We say that we believe in it in the Nicene and Apostle’s creeds, but most of the time they are just words, for we are unsure what resurrection looks like. We’ve hedged the celebration of Easter with a secure wall of flowers and chicks, eggs and baskets, signs of new life and new beginnings. For many folks, a cruise-control Easter experience is just fine. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride - not too deep, not too emotional, but comfortably predictable.
But Easter is about more than the coming of Spring – which is obvious if you live in the Southern Hemisphere where winter is just around the corner – and more than the sweet silliness we can get sucked into. To take seriously the miraculous nature of what this day represents, we have to try to understand something that for many is unbelievable. We have to accept the truth of the resurrection, even if we don’t know how it happened. With Mary as our witness, we learn the impossible news… Jesus is risen. Indeed.
Early in the morning on the first sunrise since the Sabbath, Mary Magdalene is on her way to the tomb when she realizes she is going to encounter a technical difficulty. Who will roll away the stone? It's a big stone... and potentially a big problem. But she continues on. She knows she has a job to do – Jesus’ body must be prepared for permanent burial. What happens next is unimaginable. The stone has already been moved, the grave is open, and that is just the beginning. Not even her friendship with Jesus has prepared her for what she will see next. The tomb is empty. Jesus is not there. Terrified, she runs to tell the disciples what she has found.
We have no account of the resurrection, only the aftermath. Mary Magdalene thought that Jesus' body had been stolen. Even the appearance of two angels does not trigger a belief that Jesus could be alive and back with them. Mary's faith comes from the words of Jesus. When he speaks her name, she knows him and sees him as he is. She gets it. This is a redefining moment for her and the world.
Hearing Mary's cry of alarm, two disciples race to the cave. Peter sees the empty tomb, but that’s all he sees. He does not believe Jesus has risen until he appears to the disciples later that day. The beloved disciple, John, saw the empty tomb and immediately knew that something miraculous had happened. He can't put a name to it, but he knows that this is no ordinary day. Jesus is alive. He is risen. Indeed.
Faith in Jesus' resurrection is generated in many ways. Since no one saw the resurrection actually happen, we can only frame it within our experiences of God and Jesus through scripture in the story that’s been handed down to us. We know about the resurrection in at least three ways: thru the word... in relationship... and evidence that the story is true.
In the Word, we hear and then tell the story of Jesus' resurrection. Through the biblical story, we hear about the events of the morning and we see the effect that it had on everyone who believed. Jesus' resurrection turned defeat into victory. The Jewish leaders and Roman leaders intended to crush this little uprising. And what better way to do it than to kill their leader? Jesus' resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost literally breathed new life into God's people... it set them on fire for God. It sent them out into the world.
Through the resurrection we have Relationship... On Thursday night I quoted from Henri Nouwen, who reminded us that we don't think our way into a new kind of living - we live our way into a new kind of thinking. This means we have to live, confident in the truth of the resurrection, even if we don’t understand how it happened. We have to live as this newly defined relationship with God and Christ means something to us.
What does it mean to be Easter people? How do we act? If Easter (and recreating it every Sunday) are about believing and celebrating the resurrection, how do we do that? I believe it is in how we treat one another. It is about living in the light of the resurrection every minute of our lives.
And in living we gain Evidence ... Since we have not seen the resurrection event, what evidence is there for us that it happened? It is in our lives... evidence that God has changed us, transformed us and believes in us still. It is in the way that we relate to others, those we love and those we are supposed to hate. Resurrection is about new life, new life given as an unbelievable but evident gift. Now the question becomes if resurrection is available to us, are we ready to receive it and live it ourselves?
In her book Beirut Diary, Sis Levin describes what it was like to be the wife of a hostage taken in the Middle East. Her husband Jerry Levin, a CNN bureau chief and reporter, was kidnapped walking from their apartment to his office on Ash Wednesday, March 7, 1984. For 11 months, Sis struggled to keep her faith alive as she watched government officials, including those in the US, wring their hands, failing to get him released. Sis and her network of family and friends took many chances, talking with anyone who could keep her husband’s name in the forefront of everyone's mind.
Through her experience, Sis
began to see the struggles in the Middle East through new eyes. She recognized
the humanity in her husband's captors, and appealed to them as such, speaking
out to anyone who would listen, addressing the issues of century-long conflict as
one who lived it. And people noticed. Almost one year later, on February 14,
1985, Jerry was allowed to escape by those who were holding him hostage. Encountering
Syrian troops who helped him to safety, he was reunited with Sis in
As they shared their experiences, they came to realize how much their faith in God pulled them through. For Sis, this played out in her continuing activity in the Episcopal Church. But for Jerry, it meant much more. When he entered captivity, he was a non-practicing Jew, and even more, was about as close to not believing in God as you can get. The first five weeks of his solitary imprisonment were the darkest days of his life, and when he started talking to himself, he was afraid he was going crazy. Even so, he felt a great need to talk to someone. And lying on his cramped pallet, chained to the floor, he began to think about himself in relationship to the world, to eternity, and to others in a way that he never had before. He considered the fact that people had been talking to God for several thousand years and they had not gone crazy. Could he do the same?
Over the next ten days, his belief unfolded like a blossoming flower, and he found that not only did he believe in God, but also in the Jew called Jesus. He was drawn to the beliefs that Christians profess but find hard to live out. And he thought over and over of the need to follow Jesus' words ‑‑ Love the Lord and love your neighbor and the rest will fall into place. And when he finally knew he could pray and mean it, he thanked God for the solitude that forced him to think. Then he prayed for his family. He prayed for his captors. And he forgave them as he began to see how bitter and desperate, they were.
On Christmas Day they asked him if he needed anything special. "All I need is a Bible," he said. And the next day, there it was. With it came the realization that even though he was locked in chains, behind closed windows and doors, and guarded with guns, he was already free. If he got a chance to escape to freedom from his captors, he would take it. And whether he made it to safety or not, he would be OK.
Sis & Jerry Levin have experienced the resurrection. They have peeked into the tomb, lived there a while, and then gone out to proclaim the truth. “He is not here. He is risen.” Many have not understood their lack of bitterness at the time they spent apart. Many have not understood how they could bring the issues and needs of the "enemy" to the world's conscience. CNN didn't want a first-hand witness to the violence; they just wanted someone to report it. But in the end, the Levins’ experience is summed in one of Jerry's earliest comments on his first day of freedom. "I don't think for one minute that it was an accident that a Christian wife in an Arab state working to free her Jewish husband from Muslim terrorists was able to make a difference. Those kinds of coincidences only come from God."[i]
The tomb was not the end but is
the place where we begin to see what resurrection means for us. The disciples
didn't have to move the stone and neither do you and me. We simply have to walk
forward, enter the mystery, and God will meet us. For Jerry Levin, being
kidnapped in
The story of Easter is not just a story about a man being raised from the dead. It includes his message of radical love and peace and invites us to live out the story for ourselves every day. So as you think about your life this blessed Easter Day, remember these fateful words: “He is not here. He is risen.” Indeed!
Peace, Deb
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