Easter Sunday
April 04, 2010

“May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.” Amen

Growing up, I always loved the Easter holiday.  It was a major event in our family.  The week before Holy Week, my mother would take me shopping for the Easter outfit.  I always got a really pretty dress.  I also always got some fancy hair thing, big bows when I was young, and cool, funky hair clips when I grew older.  And the Easter shoes, oh my goodness, they were spectacular.  The year I got my first heels, I thought there was no better way to commemorate the Resurrection.

In addition to the fabulous shopping, Easter also meant a really fancy meal.  After church, we would dine in the dining room on English Spode china and Francis I silver.  There would be lighted candles and white rose centerpieces, champagne and yeast rolls.  And even though we were Texas beef people, on Easter we always ate ham.  But the feast was redeemed by some incredible dessert.  I loved Easter, not only for the outfit and the special food; I was also taken with the pageantry of the worship.  In my home church on Easter morning, everything was dazzling.  All the robes were starched.  Everyone we would throw into a procession was suited up.  There were twice as many flowers for the cross outside than could ever fit in all its tiny holes.  The first Sunday of Lent, the Sunday school classes made Alleluias in the shape of caterpillars and stuffed them in jars and hid them away.  Easter morning, all the Alleluias came out as butterflies and they were hanging everywhere.  And then there were the trumpets, the glorious trumpets.  I watched the service unfold and I thought this must be what it’s like in heaven every day. 

Every year I was transfixed by the Resurrection liturgy.  Every year I was captivated until we came to the Gospel reading and then, every year, I hit a bump in my personal revelry.  Everything was beautiful and happy and hopeful and then we came to Mary at the tomb and the mood shifted for me.  I never understood what was going on in that scene and I always thought the whole exchange between Mary and Jesus was really odd.  But, it was Easter, and it seemed rude and inappropriate to question or ponder negative thoughts.  So, for years I just waited for the Creed and Peace and the really good songs to come up again. 

This strategy was effective for a long time, but there came a year when the confusion in my mind would not be ignored, so I went looking for answers.  Here’s what I found: God created the world perfect.  Human beings broke God’s perfection by their prideful, poor behavior.  God realized personal intervention would be required to restore his ideal, so when the world was ready, he sent his essence in the form of his Son to earth for three specific purposes.  First, he came to live as the best human example of God’s original intent.  For 33 years, the Son lived as a man who centered his life on being devoutly connected to God.  Pleasing God was his only priority.  When he woke up in the morning, when he ate his midday meal, when he fell into bed at night, in every action and decision, doing God’s will was the first consideration.  For 33 years, the Son also lived as a man deeply connected to the well-being of his brothers and sisters – meaning the well-being of all humanity.  Care, respect, justice, equal access to all benefits of God’s bounty for all people was the focus of the Son’s activity.  Loving God, loving neighbor, teaching others to do the same through words and actions was his first mission.

The second charge to the Son was to take on all the sin and all the brokenness and all the wrong choices of all humanity for all time.  As the perfect, pure, all powerful Son of God, he and only he had the necessary strength and goodness to accomplish this incredible feat.  By sacrificing himself, by dying for the bad debts humankind accumulated, he wiped the ledger clean and gave us all a fresh start.

The third part of the Son’s mission was to complete his work in a way that left no doubt as to his identity and his singular power.  Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus the Christ was a once for all time phenomenon.  He was to come into the world at a particular time, live a short, exemplary human existence, and then take on the sins of humanity.  He would redeem their fallen nature by his human demise.  When those two extraordinary feats were accomplished, he would have to do one more astounding deed.  He would have to prove that he was no ordinary agent.  He would have to convince credible witnesses that he was not a mere prophet or martyr, that he had the power and the authority to represent God without question and he had the power to create change to transform the world back to its original order.  He had the power to create change to transform the world back to its original order. 

That first Easter morning, the first two requirements had been fulfilled.  Jesus, Son of Mary, Jesus, carpenter from Nazareth, had lived an exemplary life.  He preached amazing sermons.  He taught poignant object lessons.  He created a new ethic . He touched, moved and healed people.  He presented the world a new way of living.  That first Easter morning, Jesus, an innocent, died for the benefit of others.  He hung on the cross for no personal misdeeds.  He allowed himself to be sacrificed for the cure and restoration of the world’s souls. 

That first Easter morning, all that remained to be determined was whether or not Jesus was authentically from God, of God, or just a really fine man with a well-defined faith and elevated social conscience.  And the odd encounter at the tomb answers the question.

Mary Magdelene, who had known Jesus for months and months and months, gets up in the early dawn hours the morning following the Sabbath.  As soon as it’s light, as soon as the law allows, she goes to the tomb to take care of the human remains of her friend . She has every expectation that the corpse of the man she so respected will be behind the great stone blocking the entry.  What she discovers defies human reason and experience.  The stone is moved, the tomb has no body, and Mary sees Jesus standing nearby and doesn’t recognize him.  She knows Jesus really well.  He’s standing right in front of her and she doesn’t realize who he is.  She thinks he’s the gardener.  Why?  What possible explanation can there be for her amnesia, her lack of cognition.  And to make the strangeness even stranger, Mary’s “blindness” seems to be contagious.  The narrative tells us that later on the road to Emmaus, other friends will encounter Jesus and they too will fail to recognize him.  Days later, the whole group of disciples will see him on the shore and not know who he is.  Really?  Why?  How can they not know Jesus?  What is the point and purpose of their confusion?  Why is the point so important that it is repeated several times by multiple sources? 

Dear ones, Mary, Cleopas and his companion, the original disciples do not recognize the resurrected Jesus on the road because Jesus of Nazareth, who went into the tomb, came out as Jesus the Christ.  They all had intimate, repeated experience with the human Jesus.  The Risen Jesus is not that entity.  The Risen Jesus is the Christ, the Holy Divine One.  And divine beings do not look like, sound like, act like mortals.  Holy, immortal ones do not conduct or comport themselves like humans.  As God says through the Prophet Isaiah, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.  For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

At the tomb and in the days following, Mary and the others encounter Jesus in a form and fashion unexpected and unprecedented.  Their surprise and confusion is detailed and documented for a specific purpose.  Those who knew the earthly human Jesus best, bear witness that in the Resurrection he was a different entity.  This difference maintained, repeated, recorded, passed on serves as testimony and evidence that Jesus of Nazareth was not another in a long line of devout, gifted prophets.  Jesus of Nazareth was not a human, saintly martyr willing to sacrifice himself for the glory of God and in the name of his faith.  Jesus of Nazareth was the singular, one time only, incarnation of God Almighty come to earth for a specific, cosmic mission!  He came empowered and equipped to teach us and to save us.  To prove his authentic authority, he revealed his true origins in the Resurrection.

Mary, Peter, Thomas, all the other friends didn’t know the Resurrected Jesus because he was truly and fully the Son of God and God is not knowable.  He is beyond human comprehension.  Oh, we get glimpses, we get notions, but we never attain the full measure of the divine.  We do not see into the mind and essence of God or his Son or his Holy Spirit.  This can either be unsettling or immensely comforting.  What security, what awe and wonder is there in a God that can be dissected and categorized by human intellect?  God is greater than that which we can conceive or imagine.  God is greater and we need him to be so.

Therefore, dear ones, beyond the fabulous outfits and fine dining, better than the return of the alleluias and rousing music, the best Easter news is that Jesus of Nazareth went into the tomb and Jesus the Christ came out.  Credible witnesses saw the singular, once in all eternity difference and that observed documented change means, my friends, that everything, everything Jesus told the world was true.  He was Emanuel.  He was “God with us.”  He had healing in his touch and peace in his words.  He had the power of God to save us all and give us the fresh start to bring about God’s dream – the new recreation. 

So, is there any possible better, happier news?  Today is the Feast of the Resurrection.  Today is the great recognition of Christ – King of Kings, Lord of Lords.  He is true God and our Savior.  Happy, happy day.  Today we celebrate the best day in all human experience.  Therefore, rejoice and be glad.  Alleluia…