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"Christ Is Risen"
Easter Sunday April 12, 2009 John 20:1-18 In the Name of our victorious, living Lord, Jesus. Amen. A Russian Communist leader named Ivanovich Bukharin took part in the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. He was editor of the Soviet newspaper, Pravda (which, by the way, means truth), and was a full member of the Communist Politburo. His works on economics and political science are still read today. There is a story told about a journey he took from Moscow to Kiev in 1930 to address a huge assembly on the subject of atheism. Addressing the crowd, he hurled insult, argument, and “proof” against Christianity. After an hour, he was finished. He looked out at the audience, at what seemed to be the smoldering ashes of Christian faith in Russia. “Are there any questions?” Bukharin demanded. Deafening silence filled the huge auditorium; but then, one man approached the platform and mounted the lectern standing near the Communist leader. He surveyed the crowd first to the left, then to the right. Finally he shouted the ancient greeting known well in the Russian Orthodox Church: “Christ is risen!” En masse, the crowd arose as one, and the response came crashing like the sound of thunder: “He is risen indeed!” I say to you this morning, “Christ is risen!” (congregation responds, “He is risen indeed!”) So what? So what? What difference is Christ being risen going to make when you walk out of here this morning? What were you expecting when you came to church today? Were you really expecting a resurrection from the dead? Were you really expecting to be born again in the sweeping proclamation and promise of Easter? Nobody expected a resurrection from the dead on that Sunday morning over 2000 years ago either. Nobody, according to the gospels, expected to see Jesus that morning – in any other way, that is, than laying in the tomb, unanointed but carefully wrapped in grave clothes, just as they had left him on Friday. They couldn’t complete the ritual burial because the Sabbath began at sundown on Friday, and such things were forbidden on the Sabbath. As soon as the sun came up on Sunday morning and the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene was on an early morning mission of sorrow. The darkness of grief was within her, as much as the pre-dawn darkness surrounded her. She was going to the place where her hopes had been crushed, her dreams had died. She went, expecting to see Jesus dead, in order to perform a last act of love and devotion – the ritual of anointing and preparing his body for permanent burial. When she arrived, she found the stone rolled away. Resurrection was the furthest thing from her mind. Her first thought was much more practical, much more earthbound: grave robbers – an absolutely unbearable thought that not only was her Lord dead, but now his grave had been desecrated and his body stolen, perhaps thrown to the wild dogs and vultures somewhere, as most victims of crucifixion were. Afraid and in anguish about what she might encounter inside the tomb, she quite understandably doesn’t venture in, but immediately runs to Simon Peter and John to tell them the news. Unlike our worship service this morning, the day Jesus’ resurrection is discovered begins in confusion and grief. It begins as the worst of all possible bad news. The stone is mysteriously moved, the tomb is unexpectedly empty. Jesus is gone! Women are weeping, disciples are racing back and forth. It seems that finding the tomb empty, discovering Jesus’ absence, is neither exciting nor comforting. Jesus is risen from the dead. The only thing eternally dead now is the power of death. But, knowing only that Jesus is gone, the darkness of grief and fear within Mary and the disciples has yet to be cast out. It seems that the miracle of Jesus’ resurrection is not a magical escape from the harsh realities of life. Not yet knowing the truth, they live through these first moments as those who are perishing without hope. Jesus’ resurrection is about conquering death with life. One of the marvelous truths of Jesus’ resurrection taught by all the gospel accounts is that breaking forth from death to life is not easy. We all know being physically born is a struggle. Even the most wistful of new moms will admit that giving birth was work! When it begins to be pushed out of the warmth and safety and effortless life in the womb, for all a baby knows it is dying. All it knows of life and the universe is its life in the womb. So, its first gasp of breath, of life outside the womb is a shock! And when it finds that it is not all alone as before, but there are faces and embraces and…food!... suddenly the old life in the womb absolutely pales in comparison. But this astonishing new life did not come easily. It came at the expense of all that had been familiar and secure in the womb. The gospel writers sugar-coat nothing about Jesus’ resurrection, either. The stories they tell make it clear that being reborn from death to life doesn’t happen without a struggle. Not only for Jesus, but more to the point, for his human followers as well, who had to “convert” from the old, familiar, and secure ways of thinking, to God’s ways. It’s almost predictable every year during Holy Week that articles and interviews begin appearing with such titles as “Reexamining the Resurrection,” and “Is Jesus Really Alive?” The gospel accounts and other supporting and non-supporting evidence is all scientifically scrutinized, year after year, to see if Jesus’ resurrection from the dead can either be scientifically proven or debunked. The accusation that the resurrection of Jesus is a fraud has been around since the day the empty tomb was discovered by Mary, and emerges from the theory that it was either 1) wishful thinking on the disciples’ part, or 2) that spreading such a story was a way to save face, or 3) that the disciples were mere victims of their own religious delusions and hallucinations, or 4) that Jesus didn’t really die in the first place – he was either drugged, or merely in a coma. I wonder if people really suppose that God is captive to the limitations of human scientific inquiry; that, if we can’t explain it, then God couldn’t have done it. What is a bit amusing about this predictable human effort is that it is the exact same reaction the chief priests had, according to Matthew 27 (my “Reader’s Digest” version): Some of the guards [who had been ordered by Pilate to stand watch over Jesus’ tomb, to prevent his disciples from taking the body and claiming that he had been resurrected] went into the city and told the chief priests everything that had happened [the earth quake, the angel rolling the stone away, etc.] The priests...[paid the soldiers], telling them, “You must say ‘His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were a-sleep.’”...so the guards took the money and did as they were directed. And, [Matthew writes,] this story is still told...to this day. It’s a strange irony that the absence of Jesus threw those who would become the first believers into absolute despair. For – listen carefully here – it is not Jesus’ absence from the tomb which we seek. It is not the empty tomb at all which comforts us. It is Jesus’ living presence, available to us now, in all times and all places, which is the good news of the resurrection. Further, the Kingdom of God, which by his death and resurrection Jesus has opened now to all people, and which Jesus has ushered into the life of our world, is not a parallel universe existing somewhere beyond space and time. Neither does the Kingdom of God blend nicely into 21st century culture. It is a collision of realities. How many times did Jesus say, “The Kingdom of God has come near to you!” It is the new life, the abundant life, the eternal life we were born into when we died with Christ in the waters of baptism, and emerged with him from death to new life; children of a fallen humanity, reborn children of God. It is Christ alive in us which witnesses to the world that Jesus is truly risen. Every now and then we choose life and faith. Every now and then, we choose to say a word of reconciliation instead of carrying a grudge. Every now and then, we choose to be the bearer of hope or joy or comfort rather than of criticism. Every now and then, we choose to love. Our daily struggles of faith become the arena where Christ continues to raise us to new life – and through us, to bring others to faith. Jesus is risen from the dead. What difference will that make when you walk out of here this morning? In the midst of everyday human struggles – recession, illness, suicide, family fights -- we have glimpsed and have been made part of the miracle and the promise of Jesus’ resurrection. The Kingdom of God has come near to you! God grant that, at least every now and then, people will see Jesus, the living Lord, in you and me, as Christ raises us again and again, from death to new life in him. Amen. Rev. Joan Gunderman, Senior Pastor Lutheran Church of the Cross, Nisswa, Minnesota |
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