Welcome Happy Morning!

This is indeed – a happy morning! A morning that celebrates the happiest morning of all mornings.  A morning that recalls and re-calls that morning when Jesus Christ was awakened by God the Father and God the Holy Spirit, from a sabbath’s day rest – in a borrowed tomb. A morning when he was summoned from death to life from seeming defeat to glorious triumph. 

We were there just a week ago – on that Palm Sunday when we heard again the story of how his friends abandoned him in their own stinking, shattering fear. We heard the same crowd that hailed him, that cried “Hosanna,” when he entered the city – we heard them cry “crucify him!”

Or we were there on Friday – Good Friday, strangely the “goodest” Friday that has ever been, we were there when his body – the only body that could bear both the terrible weight of my sins – and maybe your sins if you need forgiveness, indeed the sins of the whole world, we were there when the only body that could bear all that AND stand in the presence of the unimaginable, wondrous and Holy Father -- we were there when that body was nailed to the scandalous, shameful, Roman cross.  It would be 400 years before the cross would cease being seen as something shameful  – 400  years before Jesus’ crucifixion would emerge as an acceptable theme for artists. 

We were there when that kind and gentle, strong and true man’s body was taken down form the cross and placed in the arms of his devastated mother – indeed, into the very arms that had cuddled and nursed the infant that was sung into this world by a choir, by a chorus, of angels.  We were there when his crucified body was hastily laid in Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb – we heard the heavy stone rumble and shake as it was rolled across the narrow opening to the tomb – shutting out all that was left of the day’s fading light and warmth – 

We could feel the cool chill set in, in the stillness of that dark chamber – just as we could feel, we could shudder with the outrage, the tragedy of the day. A Roman guard and a Roman seal were set to guarantee that what had gone into that tomb would not come out.  But now, a new day – the first day of the week, the first day of the new creation is dawning – 

Women go to the tomb to complete the uncompleted sad task of Friday – the stone has been rolled away. They enter the tomb, the linen cloths lay there empty of the body they once shrouded –  and suddenly two figures – arrayed in dazzling clothes with hair-do’s like that of the angel in our Chapel of the Resurrection, two figures appear asking the most puzzling question imaginable  -- why do you look for the living among the dead? Really? Accompanied by the laughable statement – He is not here, but has risen.  Don’t you remember how he told you while he was still in Galilee – that he must be handed over to sinners and be crucified and on the third day rise again – then they remembered and hurried to tell the others who thought it an idle tale.

Why wouldn’t they? Dead men do not return to life. It was thought to be an idle tale then and it is thought by many today to be an idle tale now. A myth, something imagined and induced by traumatic stress! A way to deal with the brutal truth and reality of our existence. A religion fabricated only to control people and inhibit their freedom of self-expression.

We should understand that the Christian claim from the beginning was that the questions about Jesus’ resurrection was not a question of their mental state of mind two days following his crucifixion, but about something that happened in the real and public world. *

That something left an empty tomb – 

That something left a broken loaf of bread at Emmaus in the real and public world

That something left footprints in the sand alongside the lake in the real and public world

That something left his followers including you and me in the real and public world, with a lot of explaining to do. 

Now when those first century disciples talked about resurrection, they meant that people who were thoroughly and physically dead were thoroughly and physically alive again. Not just living on in offspring or memories, not just entering a spiritual world, but alive again in the public world. 

Now today the public world is widely thought to be the domain of the scientist – but it is also the domain of the historian – and arguably the domain of only the historian –  for science studies the repeatable while history studies the unrepeatable. Caesar crossed the Rubicon only once –  there was only one first landing on the moon. Lots of things in history have happened only one time and will not happen again. Yet we are not hesitant to say these things took place even though they cannot be repeated in a laboratory. But the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is held to a different standard by its disputers and by its despisers. Yes, its despisers. There are those who despise the thought of a loving, gracious God who acts to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves, namely, save us!

The accounts of Jesus’ resurrection in the Four Gospels are very different yet these differences are significant because they put into perspective what all these accounts have in common – there is an empty tomb and namely, there is always something immediate and physical happening. Thomas is invited to place a finger in Jesus’ wounded hands or to place his hand in his side –  Jesus is eating with the disciples or inviting them to eat – even cooking up a mess of fish for breakfast one morning by the lake, all the while giving out tips to the disciples on which side of the boat to cast the net. No one who was inventing a story, making something up, would have ever had women be the principal witnesses to this event. Like it or not, women were simply not regarded as credible witnesses in the first century world (things haven’t changed too much, have they ladies? Yes, women’s perspectives still have to scramble for a fair hearing!) – yet they were the first witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection . The bottom line seems to be that Jesus’ tomb really was empty. 

And the disciples really did encounter him in ways which convinced them that he was not a ghost or a hallucination. These encounters transformed them into convinced and convicted witnesses – with changed lives that changed the lives of others. 

The empty tomb and the encounters with Jesus are in combination the only possible explanation for the stories and beliefs that emerged so quickly among his followers as they claimed Christos anesti! Christ is risen! 

It appears that the resurrection cannot be either proved or disproved. Yet it has left physical evidence in the real and public world. Evidence which demands an explanation – demands a verdict, demands your decision. 

No, the grave could not hold him who is life itself –  no the darkness of the tomblike world cannot extinguish the Light of the World, not then, not now. The victory of God is won – it is final, it is finished, it is complete.  Now, nothing, absolutely nothing, not death, not my unworthiness or yours, not my failings and not yours either, can stand between, can come between a loving God and all that a loving God has in store for you and for me – and for all those who see what has suffered for our sake.

Will you raise your own hearts in love, your own life in daily, lifelong, ceaseless praise and service of this risen Lord?

By his wounds we are healed, and with his victory we have come more than conquerors through him who loved us 

Yes, yes, hell yes! Welcome happy morning!

 

* N.T. Wright