April 11 2004
Acts: 10:334,37-43 + 1 Corinthians 5:6-8 + Luke 24.12-35
It is a great privilege and a joy to welcome our visitors and the guests who are with us today. The community of believers who celebrate the Resurrection in this holy place every week welcomes you, and it is a thrill to squeeze together and have you here on this holiest of Sundays.
With the Word of God today, we give clear evidence of what we believe and of what it means: that Christ, the Son of God is risen from the dead, and that we who have come to believe this are rising with him.
What happened to Jesus of Nazareth on the third day after his death on the cross is of no interest to us. There is no information other than the record that his followers found an empty tomb, and some of them claimed to have seen him later. Today’s Gospel from Luke provides that information. The rest of the story directs our attention to what matters most: not what happened, not what happened to that body and where it went; but rather what it meant to rise from the dead, and what it continues to mean. We may not know what happened to Jesus, but we can certainly know what happened to those who have given witness to his death and resurrection.
In his life and his teaching among us, Jesus claimed to be God’s chosen one, the one through whom the fulfillment of God’s promises would be accomplished. If anyone claimed such a thing and died that claim would die with them. But, to make that claim, die, and rise from that death gives legitimacy to the claim; and we can believe it. How we come to believe it rests upon three pieces of evidence.
The first piece of evidence: an empty tomb. It is, at best, a questionable piece of evidence, because what it means is that the body was gone, not necessarily that He was risen. The second piece of evidence: some people claimed to have seen him. Since mystical experiences of people are unique and difficult to prove, this is not a lot to go on either. The third piece of evidence however is something quite different. It is the quality of the lives of those who live out their faith in the Resurrection. We see it clearly in those whose names we know, like Peter who went from misunderstanding the Scriptures to interpreting them; like Paul who set out to put Christians to death, only to become the champion of the “dying and rising Christ.”
We see what happens in the lives of countless women and men today and in our past who are and have been examples of extraordinary integrity in the midst of deceit. We see what happens in the lives of people of dedicated and selfless sacrifice in a world of selfishness and hedonism. We see what happens in people of patience and understanding in the face of violence or forgiveness and reconciliation where there has been personal violation. Such lives are evidence that Jesus has risen from the dead and is alive in the world today. If an empty tomb is not enough; if the testimony of those who were there is not enough; then the lives of those who shape their values, their relationships, and their decisions upon what Christ has taught us will be. Such lives are our experience of the risen Lord, one who not stop loving, one who not stop forgiving, one who would not abandon his trust in God his father.
This is the day when we celebrate the one who would not give up on us; the one who would not stay dead. He broke the hold that death had over us all. Death could not keep him down, and if we are joined to him, neither can it keep us down.
Our Joy today is selfish in some sense; because we have put on a new life, not new clothes. If new hats, suits, shoes, or dresses were bought for this day, they must simply be signs of the new life we have put on in Christ.
By the grace of God, the power of Easter at work in us will so transform us that people will wonder about us too, will wonder, “What happened”? They will come to believe in the Resurrection because we live through and with and in the one who has Life and whose life we proclaim and make our own.