easter

Why do you look for the living among the dead?   Why do we get stuck in bad habits and unhealthy patterns of behavior?  Why do we let nostalgia and fears hold us back from experiencing the present in its fullest?  Why do bad memories haunts us? Why do mistakes, regrets, secret sins, failures, and losses prevent us from enjoying the life God has given us?  We are haunted by pasts we cannot change and an unknown future that ends in death.  The older we get the more life is behind us.  More memories, fewer hopes.  Harder to make amends as time goes by.  Why do we look for the living among the dead?  Because we have learned what to expect.  We have learned that life is a journey from birth to death. We have learned that we cannot survive death.  It is inevitable. So we live as best we can. And along the way there is both joy and sorrow, pain and pleasure. We seek the pleasure and the joy where we can find it.  We lament “Why me?” when pain or grief overwhelm us. We swing between the pendulum, from the joy of living to the fear of dying.  We avoid the latter as much as we are able by sheltering ourselves in our small, comfortable worlds. We keep the threats at a distance, taking few risks, preferring to watch death on television as entertainment or distant news. Why do you look for the living among the dead?  Because we know that life is lived in one direction, a direction that leads to the grave. But Easter tells another story. It is the story of what happens when the sun came up. But Easter began in the hours before that…in the darkness before the dawn.

 

No one witnesses the resurrection itself. The resurrection of Jesus happens between sundown on Good Friday and dawn on Easter morning. We do not know the exact time, the exact moment, or what that was like. That event itself is mystery.  It is supposed that Jesus rises on the 1^st day of the week, on Sunday.  According to Genesis, the day when God created light, separating light from darkness. Separating good from evil.  Separating order from chaos.  Separating life from death. On day One God infused the universe with all of the necessary ingredients for life to begin.  That initial divine spark that began life is breathed again into the lifeless body of Jesus.  I imagine that the resurrection was like a blast of light and energy that lifted Jesus up and infused his body with the power of the creator. And Jesus emerges out of the darkness of death and tomb into the dawn of a new day, initiating a new kind of creation.  A creation that has experienced birth and death and then something completely new and unprecedented. Jesus becomes a human being living beyond the grave.  Not resuscitated or revived. He wasn’t mostly dead.  He was dead and buried for two days.  And then he wasn’t. Because this new creation occurs within the old one, others will see glimpses of it. Jesus is different; he has changed. His scars are real.  He breathes, He eats.  But he has become more alive than before, the threat of death behind him forever. They see a new man.          

Because they witness what happens after the resurrection. Easter is the collection of stories of what Jesus’ friends experienced on the Sunday after his crucifixion, death, and burial.  There are two kinds of stories that were preserved.  Empty tomb stories and appearance stories. Mark has only an empty tomb story.  Matthew, Luke, and John include both empty tomb stories and appearance stories. Interestingly, they do not share common appearance stories. The empty tomb stories are quite similar. All four gospels agree that a group of women, at least three, went to the tomb in the early morning, while it was still dark.  They went to perform the solemn family ritual of preparing the body for burial.  They brought spices and oils. They go with the expectation that they will enter the well-sealed tomb and take care of Jesus’ body. They are shocked and afraid to find the tomb unsealed and empty.  Both Luke and John tell us that Simon Peter also goes to the tomb and finds it empty.  He was amazed.  Since women were not considered reliable witnesses, they assure the readers that the story is true by including a man as an eyewitness. Nevertheless, the initial reaction is astonishment, surprise.  They were prepared for the predictable outcome of natural events in time. Jesus dies.  He is buried.  They anoint his body.  He is kept in the tomb for a year.  His bones are then collected into an ossuary or bone box.  This is the procedure.  This is the way things will go.  But their prediction is interrupted by something totally unexpected. He is not here.  He was raised.  They must be told, because the empty tomb is not enough information.  An empty tomb could mean several things:  Wrong tomb.  A stolen body.  Wrong tomb. But it means that a new kind of way of being alive has now happened. They are told to go and tell others.  The right response to this new reality that has broken into the predictable routine of life and death on planet earth is to tell others. Tell them what? Death is not the last word.  It will not end the way we think.  Our sense of time and history, predicated on the linear reality of chronological forward movement from birth to death is not altogether accurate.  Once, God made a dead man live. This changes the course of human history.  And it changes us.  Why look for the living among the dead?  With God anything is possible.  Why accept that things must and will remain the same? The old rules don’t apply.  Old paradigms, social norms, and cultural consistencies that do not promote the fullness of life for all of God’s creatures must be buried, so that God’s new way can emerge.  A nonviolent world.  A hunger free world. A disease free world.  A world where our common humanity transcends any tribal, ethnic, racial, or religious barriers.  That is the world that is coming.  It has already come, if we choose to believe in empty tombs and resurrected bodies. Easter is a glimpse of what is yet to come. Death will someday be a thing of the past that no longer holds any power over God's creation. Life forever.  That is the promise of Easter and the future hope of the church for the whole earth and all its creatures. May you live, work, play, and worship with this hope drawing you ever closer to the mystery of God revealed to us in Word, water, bread, and wine; Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.