April 11, 2004
By Jack Price

Christ is risen.  This good news of Easter Sunday broke slowly in on Jesus’ followers.  They knew more confusion than joy, more panic than fulfillment.  So, what happened?  The historical facts are limited.  Jesus from Nazareth was crucified under Pontius Pilate around 30CE.

The biblical accounts vary in detail.  According to Luke’s Gospel, Jesus was executed before the Sabbath and buried in a borrowed tomb.  Some of his women followers went to the tomb after the Sabbath to anoint the body with spices.  They discover the body was gone.  Then they experienced an angelic vision.  The women were terrified until they recalled their hope of Jesus’ return.  Then, these women ran to tell all others who promptly dismissed the story as an idle tale.  Peter alone ran to the tomb.  He didn’t appear to be sure why, perhaps just in case the women had indeed seen something important.  He, too, found the tomb empty and went home, feeling amazed and maybe confused.  Evidently he just stayed home feeling amazed.

That is essentially the story according to the Gospel of Luke.  Gospels are about meaning, not scientific data.  They are not non-fiction as we think of it.  They are unashamedly biased – more preaching than biography.  The gospels proclaim who Jesus was and is because of his resurrection.

What did first Easter mean?  The resurrection story from Luke tells us about who Jesus really was, who Jesus really is, what God is doing, and what God is like in images we can grasp.  It is therefore a sacramental story.  This is not a satisfactory realization for those of us wanting an explanation of what happened.  But the gospels are concerned with the meaning of Jesus.

The story of Jesus’ crucifixion is the product of a community of believers.  They understood crucifixion as both unbearable suffering and unspeakable shame.  Jesus’ body entombed means that he is really dead.

The resurrection story is also the product of a community of believers.  The empty tomb on the third day, three being a divine number, means this is God’s work.  Discovery of the empty tomb on the first day of the week, after Sabbath that is God’s traditional holy day, tells us there is a new “day” dawning.  The supernatural experience of angelic beings bringing God’s message proclaims the Word of God is indeed alive.

That the testimony of women is featured is extraordinary in that culture.  That their testimony is discounted by men, skepticism and disbelief by the disciples, is not extraordinary in that culture.  The women got it and the men didn’t.  Even Peter, who is  revered by time of Luke, runs alone to the empty tomb and is amazed, but not convinced.

There were Jesus’ resurrection appearances that, again – tells us meaning more than facts.  What is happening in Jesus is clearly outside the realm of normal experience.  This is not the resuscitation of dead body.  It is a qualitatively different thing – a rising, a resurrection.

The gospel writers differed in their accounts of how the rising happened.  Their only real agreement is that Jesus was resurrected.  Such differences of interpretation are not surprising then or now.  The church into the second century held vastly different interpretations of resurrection.  There were a great many different understandings of who Jesus was and what his coming meant.  Unanimity only came when the minority voices were suppressed in favor of institution power.

Author C. S. Lewis writes. “The ‘Resurrection’ to which [the disciples eventually] bore witness was not the action of rising from the dead but the state of having risen.”  They tell us that over a period of 50 days, God’s Jubilee, the living Christ seeks out his disciples, not to prove identity or the reality of his resurrection, but out of a strong desire to see them.  He wants to reassure them because he loves them.  He comes to invite them to walk his path with his help and to live the truth in the world.

Today reaffirm the great truth of Easter – that Christ is risen.  Like the gospel writers and the first and second century church, we still ask what does resurrection mean?  We can say this:  resurrection affirms the victory of the cross.  God says “Yes” to Jesus and “No” to Rome and the temple cult.  It clarifies the defeat of “the powers” of darkness and evil in this world and affirms the “way” of the cross.  The first Christians even called themselves followers of the Way.  Resurrection reveals the full extent of God’s love for humanity.  It affirms our direct access to God.  No temple hierarchy, no institutional church, and no insider group hold the monopoly on dispensing God’s grace.  Forgiveness is freely available to all.

Today we reaffirm that resurrection is a living reality.  The risen Christ is now an abiding presence.  Regardless of how we interpret or understand how resurrection began, it is the reality with which we must deal.  Resurrection means things have changed.  How Jesus related to followers and how his followers related to Jesus had to change.  How they came to understand his nature changed.  To embody the resurrection ourselves, we must also see a change in our motives, a change in our priorities, and a change in our feelings of being stuck.

The truth of God’s new life revealed fully in the risen Christ is a timeless truth.  It is a pre-existent truth, present even before Jesus lived.  In the Old Testament book of Isaiah, people of Israel are invited to experience new life while in exile.  They are invited to find hope in the middle of hopelessness.  Resurrection meant reason to live  when cut-off from home -- life in face of death.  It meant transformation within status quo.  It meant a present hope of future peace – to live in the reality of heaven in the very experience of hopelessness.  It meant to dare to live as whole people even in personal, relational, and global brokenness.

Resurrection declares that we too can dare to cast our lot with the power of peace when faced with chaos and violence.  We, too, can dare to risk the wrath of the powers of this world by choosing way of non-violence.  We, too, can risk ridicule, knowing on whose side we stand. 

            What is the “Easter truth” to take home with you?  There is the story itself and how you interpret it – the “rising” of Jesus as revived body emerged from a tomb, with the stone rolled away to let him out or to reveal no body there; or the risen Jesus of spiritual presence regardless of the disposition of his crucified body.  What really matters about resurrection? 

What is the Easter truth for our lives?  First, only God who is God is worthy of worship, even when our living betrays we often worship lesser gods.  Second, the              gift of resurrection is ours today through the abiding presence of the risen Christ; -- a tangible presence we find through prayer, self-awareness, commitment to a small group, engagement in ministry, and a commitment of the whole self to spiritual growth.  Third,     resurrection lets us live fully in every thing we do.  Resurrection frees us to allow the decaying dimensions of our lives to die completely; frees us to let go of destructive patterns of personal and relational behavior and allow what is deadly and dead in our lives to be buried.  The resurrecting power of God renews us not just in the large crises of life, but in our day-to-day living through the abiding presence of Christ’s Spirit.  Henri Nouwen writes,

“Anyone who enters into communion with Jesus will receive the Spirit of truth – the Spirit who frees us from the compulsions and obsessions of our

contemporary society, who makes us belong to God’s own inner life, and

allows us to live in the world with open hearts and attentive minds.” 

(from Walk with Jesus)

The challenges & dangers of life do not disappear because of Easter.  Because of Easter, however, they become bearable.  Resurrection was God’s gift to Jesus, who lived his humanity fully, without giving in to the fears of death and suffering.  God did not rescue him from death, but saved him through death.  God likewise save us not from death and its many forms – fear, hatred, hopelessness, meaninglessness, and death of the physical body -- but from the power of death to defeat us.  Death holds no ultimate power over us.  Death no longer defines us.  Our most mundane existence is full of meaning.

Resurrection becomes a daily reality.  After every Good Friday comes an Easter Sunday.  Again, Nouwen writes,

“The world’s death powers destroyed [Jesus], but his death removed death’s sting.  To those who believe in him, he gave the power to become children of God, that is, to participate in the life where death can no longer reach.  …By his death, Jesus was victorious over all the powers of death –

[the darkness within ourselves],  the darkness in our society that makes us victims of violence, war, and destruction, has been dispelled by the light that shines forth from the One who gave his life as a complete gift to the God of life.”

The story of Jesus’ resurrection is a sacrament, revealing God’s nature and God’s activity in the world.  This truth, embodied in Jesus, is also in Christ’s abiding presence.  In the New Testament’s final book, Revelation, the risen Christ says, “I am the first and the last, the living One.  I died and behold I am alive forevermore.”

Resurrection, if it is to be true at all, is a present reality to be embraced in the individual and communal lives of the faithful.  The living Christ still seeks his disciples.  He comes to us in the trials and confusion of daily life and invites us to walk his path with his help, and to live the truth in the world.

Why do we seek the living among the dead?  Christ is risen and goes before us into Galilee, the Galilee of broken dreams, hopeless lives, and mundane existence.  Christ goes before us into the Galilee city and suburb, of struggle and triumph, of seeking and searching.  Christ waits for us there.  Christ waits to walk with us the road of our journey.  Christ waits to reveal in the living of our lives, individually and as a body of faith, the power of resurrection within us.  Christi encourages us to live our lives fully, to embrace our fears.  Christ challenges us to become all that God creates us to be.  Christ inspires us to encounter all that God calls us to face and shows us how to demonstrate in our living that we understand, we trust, and we commit ourselves to be resurrection people, and so reveal the living Christ in our living.