The Resurrection We Celebrate – Resurrection of the Lord (Luke 24: 1-12)
Well, we made it. We are here. Lent is over and now we can celebrate Easter morning. Growing up that meant waking up a little earlier to get ready for church, because on that morning there would be Easter baskets waiting for us to dig into before we headed off to church. The baskets were usually filled with candy, toys, books, all that fun stuff. We also had a little tree. It was a small, bare tree with colorful eggs hanging from it. It looked a little bit like Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree, but with more of an Easter theme. It was sparse because it was a tree in early Spring, that hadn’t yet leafed or bloomed, burst into life. Then we would go to church, and there would usually be a breakfast, maybe an Easter egg hunt. All kinds of special things would happen on Easter, but as a kid, I would say to myself, “This is fun, but it’s no Christmas.”
And I was right. It wasn’t Christmas. Of course, on the Church liturgical calendar Easter Sunday, and Holy Week before it, is the biggest season of the year. Even bigger than Christmas. After all, we are celebrating the resurrection of Christ from the dead and the promise of new life with God. So, for the church, this is the big day of celebration. Culturally speaking, though, (or maybe I should say, commercially speaking) Easter is no Christmas. I mean, it tries really hard to be, but again, as a kid, baskets and eggs and the Easter bunny were never going to beat out presents under the tree and stockings and Santa Claus. Even at church Christmas was a lot easier to get excited about when I was young. It’s easier to wrap the mind around what we celebrate at Christmas, which is the birth of Jesus. I got that. We were celebrating Jesus’s birthday. Birthdays are great. But what about Easter? I knew Jesus dies and comes back to life -he is resurrected- but what does that really mean? I had been to a lot of classmate’s birthday parties, but I had never been to a resurrection party. What exactly was going on with Easter, and what is the celebration about? Perhaps we can get to an answer for this question by talking a bit more about Christmas, and how it compares to Easter.
Specifically, I want to talk about the Christmas and Easter stories, because as different as they are, they have some things in common. Especially when we look at how they are told in the Gospel of Luke. For instance, in each story the first people told of what is to come are women. Then we have the women telling the story and there are men who doubt the story. Finally, someone goes to see and confirm if what has been told actually happened. And, of course, the crux of both stories is Jesus entering the world and changing things forever. This is what gives us a reason to celebrate; Jesus coming into the world. In both cases, Jesus reentering the world.
In looking at these two stories, let’s start at the end of the resurrection account we read this morning. Here we are given an image of Peter, having gone to the tomb to see for himself, he is bending over looking at pieces of linen lying on the ground. The linen cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’s body, now laying loose on the ground. In Luke’s account of the birth story, the Angel of the Lord comes to the shepherds and tells them “You will find a baby, wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” And that is what they find, and their part of the story ends with them seeing the baby Jesus wrapped in cloth. What the angel had told them was affirmed. Just as the linen cloth on the ground in the tomb, is an affirmation that Jesus had risen on that third day, as was foretold by the angels at the tomb, and by Jesus himself throughout Luke’s gospel.
In both stories things are found just as they were foretold. It is easy to see that and celebrate it when we find cloth wrapped around a newborn to keep him warm. It is more difficult to feel affirmed and celebratory when we find the cloth used to cover a dead body, laying empty on the floor of the tomb. This is even cause for confusion and fear, which we see in the reactions of the women and Peter. What we celebrate at Easter, is that empty tomb and the loose cloth represents resurrection. It represents the best-case scenario, not the worst case. It is a reminder that we may still find things as they were foretold. In the Gospel of Luke, much of the account of the empty tomb is a call for Christ’s followers to remember things he had said to them. So, on Easter we can celebrate the resurrection as a sign that there is truth in God’s word. Even if things seem scary or don’t make sense in the moment, there is always hope that God’s promises for the world will be fulfilled.
The revelation of what God has done, in both stories, comes about because of the faithfulness of certain characters. Faithfulness to God and faithfulness to their communities. On Easter morning, for example, the empty tomb is found because Mary Magdalene and the other women have come to anoint Jesus’s body after burial. This was part of the tradition of their time and their Jewish faith. Likely they were doing it on Sunday, the third day, because they had been observing sabbath the day before. At Christmas, the story is initiated when Joseph and Mary travel to Bethlehem to be counted for the census. Once again, they are carrying out a task that has been set for them, and because of this Jesus is born in the stable where he can be found by the shepherds. The shepherds are going about their daily business, tending to their flocks. The angel choir sings to them, bringing good news to all people in the dark of night and the cold of winter and the routine of their lives in the world before Jesus. In excitement over this newness and hopefulness, they go seek out Mary and her baby. On Easter there is no angel choir, just a couple of angels standing outside the tomb telling the women that Jesus has risen. They are scared and confused by this, but still take the message to the disciples. So, at Easter, we celebrate that Jesus, and the good news of his resurrection can reach us even in times of despair over feeling the lack of Jesus, or Christlike presence in our world.
At both Christmas and Easter, we are reminded that God calls us to remain faithful and hopeful so that we are able to see Jesus in the world. We need this reminder because sometimes we, sadly, do not see. Maybe we even forget that Jesus is at work in the world, even now. So, these holy days on the church calendar reminds us that we may find cause for celebration in unexpected places, like a manger or an empty tomb. We celebrate that Jesus has come into the world, changing it forever. We celebrate that Jesus cannot be confined by the traditional, the safe, and the predictable. So, he comes to us in a manger, surrounded by animals, and then again in an empty tomb. We celebrate the freedom of Jesus to be in the world as he needs to be, not in the way we expect or understand. Don’t look for the living among the dead. You will not find Jesus there.
If we follow the story, into the next verses of Luke 24, we see that Jesus is not in the empty tomb, he is among the people. He does not appear to them in the place of death, he appears on the road to Emmaus, as a fellow traveler. He then appears to all the disciples gathered in Jerusalem. Then, even though the gospel ends with Jesus being taken up into heaven, before he leaves, he gives the disciples a charge to be witnesses of his life. To preach repentance and the forgiveness of sins to the people, beginning in Jerusalem, the city where he was crucified. From this a community begins to form in Jesus’s name.
As Ron Allen and Clark Williamson write in their commentary of this scripture reading, “Faith in the living Christ came from the ongoing and transforming awareness of Christ’s presence to the community.” This continued as it went through life together. They continued to find Christ among the living. As in the living, breathing community of faith they were creating in the world. The resurrection of Christ brings a community into existence. Jesus is not among the dead he is among the living. Even now, even in this room. The resurrection is God’s response to Jesus’s death, as an affirmation of his life and what it meant for the world. Preaching and building communities based on Christ’s teaching was the disciples’ response to the resurrection. So, I ask now, what will our response to all this be? Perhaps it should be to celebrate. Together, in community. As we are this morning.
One other thing I always liked about Christmas when I was growing up was that it coincided with a long break from school, but also, that it usually didn’t happen on a Sunday. Meaning there was always a long time to bask in the glow of Christmas and all the Christmas stuff. When Christmas did fall on a Sunday, I found that annoying, because it meant having to go to church. All the Christmas morning fun was interrupted. So, this was another strike against Easter, which is always on a Sunday. Now, there are reasons for that, of course, having to do with the dates being established by things like the changing seasons and the position of the moon. However, isn’t this just another thing that makes our Easter celebration unique? I think it is appropriate that we celebrate always on a Sunday, always as part of a congregation and a community.
At Christmas, we celebrate a baby being born. That baby is a light coming into the world offering hope, good news for all people. However, on Good Friday, that light gets extinguished, because the world can’t help itself. It succumbs to its fear rather than holding on to the hope. On Easter, we celebrate because that light has returned to the world, in the face of death and fear. We celebrate in community because that light is in each one of us. We find it among the living. Among the born and the born again. Christ is risen, and so we celebrate together, because the tomb is empty, but Christ’s church is not.
Amen.