April 20, 2014 Easter Sunday

Matthew 28: 1-10

1 After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.
   2 There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. 3 His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. 4 The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.
   5 The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. 6 He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. 7 Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.’ Now I have told you.”
   8 So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. 9 Suddenly Jesus met them. “Greetings,” he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. 10 Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”

 “With Fear and Great Joy”

“Christianity begins with Easter.  Without Easter there would be no Gospel, not a single narrative, not a letter in the New Testament.  Without Easter, Christendom would have no belief in Christ, no proclamation of Christ, nor any Church, any divine worship, any mission.”   Hans Kung, “Eternal Life”, p. 107

Without Easter there would be no Christmas either.

Easter is vital to a vibrant faith and a vibrant church.
Without it, we are of all people the most to be pitied.

The Resurrection created the church!  We celebrate this today with great fear - because it is always stunning, amazing, confounding, bewildering - this message which is so incomprehensible.  And we celebrate it with great joy - for it touches our hearts and lifts our spirits and gives hope to our living.

Easter is a celebration of something new happening in this old world which forever changes things.  It is a powerful reminder that “God’s steadfast love endures for ever.” (Ps 136)
Easter is a love feast!

“The Resurrection tells us that at the heart and center of the universe, love is reigning”    Morton Kelsey, “Resurrection”, p. 93

The Resurrection “is a vista that makes our world too small and it makes human life too great.”   Paul Scherer

The Resurrection is love’s finest hour!
Things are soul size now!
This we celebrate today - with fear and great joy!

 John 20:1-18  (An alternate text for Easter)

  1 Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. 2 So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”
   3 So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. 4 Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5 He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, 7 as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. 8 Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. 9 (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) 10 Then the disciples went back to where they were staying.

 11 Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb 12 and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.
   13 They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”
   “They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” 14 At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.
   15 He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”
   Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”
   16 Jesus said to her, “Mary.”
   She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”).
   17 Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”
   18 Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had said these things to her.

“He Saw and Believed”

Easter proclaims the most incomprehensible, illogical, mind boggling, far fetched idea ever proposed on the face of this earth.  It is way out, man!

There was nothing to prove it true for Peter or John; and there is nothing to prove it true for us.  It is a mystery to be embraced; not a truth to be reasoned.  It is the impossible happening and we have to be open to something that wild or we will miss it.
All things are possible now; life can break out in new and wonderful ways.
To believe in the resurrection is to embrace a miracle and live with possibility.

When Dr. David Read, then Chaplain and prisoner of war was released by the liberating armies in 1945 he went up to the first soldier he saw, held out his hand to him, and said,
“Sir, I’m glad to see you, and that’s an understatement!”

An understatement - “He saw and believed.”

Hidden in these words is the mystery of faith, which embraces a mystery; the mystery of hope, which dares live in that mystery; and the mystery of love, which carries that mystery into all of life with transforming power.

To believe in the resurrection is to be captured by it; and made different because of it.
To believe in the resurrection is to let God love you and trust as someone has said, that “Hence forth, all safety is in love.”

Dad died this past Jan. (1878) At his death bed he said to us (Mom and I) “It’s been good.”
I said to him, “You’ve been good.” ( A classic understatement to be sure!”)
He said three times a word I couldn’t get; then he spelled it - “Hurrah!”
And he died.  With a word of thanks, a word of joy, a word of love on his lips.

A word which was also, an understatement, for in that word was all the words of faith, hope, and love, born of a resurrection.