EASTER SUNDAY 2013

 

                        Some ideas are larger than our intellectual capacity to deal

                        with them. Some news is richer than the words we have to

                        describe it. When that happens, we turn gratefully to art and

                        music and works of the imagination. That’s why on Easter

                        we put the emphasis on beautiful hymns and great organ and

                        trumpet music. Words alone cannot convey the message. 

                                                                        “Sounds of Easter”

                                                                          John M. Buchanan

I would certainly agree with Mr. Buchanan’s sentiments. At no time during the church year do clergy feel more inadequate than on Easter morning when they begin to preach their meager sermons about the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. How can our proclamation of the resurrection event even begin to measure up to its significance? However, with that said, please allow me the time to make a few comments about the Easter text from the Gospel of Luke (24:1-10).

 

This account of the discovery of the empty tomb on the day which we call Easter Sunday is the story of three women – Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James – going to the tomb of Jesus to anoint his body with spices, which was the Hebrew custom. In the reading, we hear that they were surprised to find that the stone blocking the door had been rolled away. That was not the only surprise which they found there. When they entered, they found that the body of Jesus was not there. And then another surprise! Two men in dazzling clothes appear near them. (We assume that they are angels.) The two men tell the women that Jesus is not in the tomb, but has risen from the dead. The women are visibly shaken. Luke tells us that they are “terrified.” The women leave the tomb and go in search of the eleven remaining disciples. They tell them what has happened at the empty tomb. For some reason, the next verse in this reading is usually omitted, but it shouldn’t be. Verse eleven in chapter twenty-four reads:  “. . .  but the words seemed to them to be an idle tale, and they did not believe them.”

This is an important point and one that shouldn’t be overlooked. Peter and the rest of the disciples did not believe the women’s story. That reaction is definitely not a surprise! Who would believe such a thing? A man executed who came back to life! Such a story was an insult to their intelligence. Nothing in their experience prepared them to believe such an announcement. And yet eventually they did come to believe it. And not only did they believe it, they went out into their world and told everyone they could about what had been found at a tomb in Jerusalem on a particular Sunday morning. We see evidence of that conviction in a reading from the Acts of the Apostles. Peter, preaching a sermon, says about Jes

 

We are witnesses to all that he did in both Judea and Jerusalem. They

 put him to death by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him on the

third day.

                                                                Acts 10:39-40a

In a short period of time, Peter and the rest of the disciples went from thinking that this story was nothing but “an idle tale,” to believing that it was a proclamation that could change the world. What had happened?

            Interestingly, that question has become the subject of a great deal of speculation these days. The author of the Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown, has put forward the idea that the story of the resurrection of Jesus was part of a massive hoax foisted upon the world by the Emperor Constantine and the Church. According to his theory, Jesus was only a man, but it was necessary to transform him into a divine/human person to solidify the Church’s claim to power. And fairly recently, another sensational story surfaced. This one involved the claim that the buried tombs of the family of Jesus were discovered in Jerusalem and that the bones of Jesus were possibly discovered. What are we to make of all this? Someone has rightly observed that we need to be more than a little suspicious of sensational claims and discoveries when they are brought to light by novelists and movie producers. I agree! The sad fact is that there have been people in every age who have attempted for a variety of reasons to discredit the claims of Christianity. Our own time is certainly no exception.

            Again, the three women left the empty tomb shaken because “two strangers” had told them that Jesus was alive. They found the disciples and told them all that they had heard and seen. Initially, the disciples dismissed the story as “an idle tale.” Shortly thereafter, these same scoffers were preaching the good news about Jesus at great cost to their personal safety. We must ask again, “What happened?” We can only conclude that the “resurrection” in some mysterious way, shape, or form did occur and that Jesus did appear on various occasions to Peter and the others. It would have made absolutely no sense at all for the disciples to decide that – even though they believed the story of the empty tomb to be an idle tale – they would perpetrate a hoax to spread a story which they believed to be fiction. To what end would they do this? To ensure for themselves persecution and martyr’s deaths? I don’t think that they would have laid themselves open to those dangers unless they had become themselves convinced of the resurrection of Jesus.

            We know that something dramatic did happen on that first Easter Sunday because of otherwise inexplicable changes in the lives of the followers of Jesus. Shortly after the alleged resurrection, 1) they found themselves formed into a community which would become the Church; 2) they felt that the “corporateness” of this enlivened community to be a direct response to the presence of the Lord and his Spirit; 3) and gripped by the meaning of what had happened to them, this “Church” began to reach out to share its insight and faith with others. None of this would have happened if the resurrection of Jesus had not burst into the reality of their lives transforming them for ever.

            Since that first Easter, the Church and countless millions of believers have based their lives on a faith in the reality of the resurrection. The resurrection of Jesus is the cornerstone of Christianity! On Easter this fact is celebrated and, like Peter, we need to affirm our belief that, “this Jesus who was persecuted and put to death on a tree (cross) was raised to new life on the third day and everyone receives forgiveness of sins who believes in his name.” This belief is the foundation of faith!  Alleluia! The Lord is Risen!