Owning Resurrection

Easter 2013

Luke 24:1-12 

            When I was about to graduate from seminary and started looking for a job, I interviewed with a rector who asked me whether I believed in the bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead.  Whether I believed that Jesus’ actual body came alive again and that same body ascended into heaven a while later.  And this might sound odd coming from a priest, but to tell you the truth, I actually hadn’t thought much about it.  I don’t have any problem with the Easter story of the empty tomb.  I know they are stumbling blocks for many people, but for me Jesus’ miracles in general aren’t hard to believe.  And so I answered something like, “Um…, I guess so,” which I’m sure was not the rousing proclamation of faith the rector was looking for.  I suspect my name was scratched off the list of candidates pretty quickly.  And I crossed that church off my list of possibles too.  Not because I don’t believe in the bodily resurrection, but because I think that boiling the Christian faith, or even Easter, down to that specific take-away is somehow missing the point.

My favorite piece of the Easter story has always been when Jesus appears to Mary who is weeping at the empty tomb and he calls her by name.  As soon as she hears her name spoken gently by her friend and teacher  – “Mary”, she recognizes Jesus and embraces him.  That short interaction has always spoken to me; summed up most of what I find most compelling about this faith of ours.  Somehow in those few sentences, I’ve been reassured that we are known truly and deeply by God; that we are not forgotten by God in times of sorrow and suffering and darkness; that although we may not always recognize him, Jesus is always near.

So imagine my surprise when I realized that Luke’s Gospel version of the Easter story is missing that beautiful piece.  Mary and the other women are terrified rather than weeping.  Jesus doesn’t step on the scene, so there is no tender reunion, no gentle voice calling her by name.  Instead of personal assurance, Mary and the other women with her have only the message of the dazzling but frightening men to convince them: "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.”  This is a different story entirely!

            For Luke, the Easter story starts with a message rather than first-hand proof.  The women at the tomb get a report from someone else.  And as much as I miss that beautiful encounter between Mary and Jesus, I find that this version hits pretty close to home.  Here we are, 2000 years removed from the events of Easter.  We aren’t terribly likely to get a close up, undeniable encounter with the resurrected Jesus in all his glory.  Instead, we have the word of others.  A message retold and passed down through the centuries.

            And while it doesn’t seem as substantial, sometimes a word from someone else can be what it takes to carry us through.  Several Tuesday nights a month we have a group that meets by candlelight in this room.  We sit in silence together, theoretically meditating, but sometimes, for me at least, never getting past listening to the sound of the creaking roof or watching the flickering of the candle or getting caught up in my distractions.  But after the silence is over, when we speak in the circle about our struggles with faith or share some experience from the week, I always come away knowing that it was holy time.  Even when my spiritual life is going nowhere, somehow knowing that others in the circle have experienced God in some way that week helps me to keep looking, keep hoping, too.

Now, for the women at the tomb it doesn’t stop with the message from the two men.  The men also call them to remember.  There they are at the tomb with their spices, ready to anoint Jesus’ dead body.  Ready to do their duty. Perplexed and probably a little bit paralyzed by the empty tomb.  They have forgotten what Jesus said about dying and rising again.  Or maybe they just didn’t believe it and had written it off as fantastical.

            But when they start to remember, suddenly the impossible seems possible. They remember Jesus alive -- he was different from anyone they’d ever met.  They remember how he made them feel – alive, unique, loved.  They remembered all that they’d passed through with Jesus – the miracles, the teaching, the meals.  They remember how he changed the way they saw the world.  Sickness and death no longer felt permanent.  Sin no longer felt insurmountable.  Poverty and need and oppression were not the last word.  They remembered; and I think they recognized in those memories that they’d brushed up against their living God.  And suddenly Easter was more than a message relayed to them by someone else. Suddenly it was something they could believe in for themselves, even if they couldn’t understand it.

            Many of us come to Easter in the same way those women did.  Doing our duty, maybe feeling like we’re just going through the motions.  Maybe just showing up here this morning to commemorate a long ago resurrection that doesn’t feel particularly meaningful to us.  Maybe hardened by our certainty that we can’t be surprised by God.

            What if we also follow the call to remember.  What if we think back to moments when we felt absolutely loved.  Or utterly, heart-breakingly forgiven.  Or when we had a flash of inspiration so beautiful we knew it didn’t come from us.  Or when we were filled with a deeper longing than we ever thought possible to meet.  What if we open ourselves to the surprising Easter possibility that all of those moments were times when we brushed up against our risen Lord?  Maybe them Easter would be something we can believe in for themselves, even if we can’t understand it.

            But it doesn’t stop there either for the women at the tomb.  They don’t sit back and bask in their heartfelt memories of Jesus.  They take the message from the two men and they take their own memories of connection with God and they run back to share them with “all the rest.”  Some see their story as an idle tale.  There are always some who do.  But there are also some who hold the story close to their heart, being fed and inspired by it, passing it down for 2000 years until it got to me and you. 

I don’t think Easter has anything to do with understanding the resurrection.  I don’t think it has anything to do with having the right doctrine.  I don’t think it’s about pinning down Jesus so the story always feels exactly the same.  It’s about claiming God living and present in the moments of our lives. 

So listen to the message, remember and recognize your moments of brushing up against the Living God, and share them.  The empty tomb is just the beginning of the story.  We are part of an ever-expanding community of witnesses that began with Mary and those women at the tomb and continues to be built -  message by message, memory by memory, story by story. 

So maybe I can’t say with absolute certainty today any more than I could five years ago that I know what happened to Jesus’ physical body on Easter morning.  But there is one thing I am sure of -- resurrection is all around us. 

Alleluia, Christ is Risen!  The Lord is Risen indeed, Alleluia!