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March 27, 2005; The Easter Sunday, Year A
    The Rev. Harold "Skip" Comer, Rector

The Easter ad by Crystal Mountain the past couple of weeks in the Record Patriot caught my eye.  In case you missed it, it showed two young girls in their Easter outfits carrying baskets full of Easter eggs.   The caption under the picture was, “More than eggs this Easter.”  My first thought was wow, Crystal Mountain running a religious ad.  But as I read the fine print I realized that it was an ad for their Easter Day brunch.   Oops, no religion here, just the “tradition of eating Easter Brunch in the company of loved ones.  I must admit that what first drew me to this ad was the memory of an ad and flier that we mailed out at St. Alban’s in Ft. Wayne 10 or 15 years ago just before Easter.  It had a large picture of a basket full of jelly beans with the caption above it, “Does Easter mean beans to your kids?”  In the fine print underneath it said, “If you agree that Easter should do more for you children than raise their blood sugar level, we invite you and your family to experience the true miracle of Easter in our church.”[1]

“The true miracle of Easter.”  This is certainly why all of you are here this morning, to hear and celebrate the true miracle of Easter.  Today celebrate the power of the living God, not only to give life, but to sustain it even though we die.  God demonstrated this power in raising his Son, Jesus Christ from the dead.  A resurrection in which we can participate through faith in God and Jesus Christ. 

Where did the Easter story come from?  Did it arise out of a dream to be able to live forever?  Was it born in the human desire to go on living and somehow be able to experience immortality – creating with it philosophies of afterlife that later became doctrines of faith?  Or did God create this possibility?  Through our faith and our experience of the Living God did we come to believe, and thus make resurrection a fundamental expression of our faith experience? 

People have pondered what it might mean to live beyond death for centuries.  They developed elaborate philosophies of immortality.  They even built pyramids and other monuments in the hope of gaining immortality.  But faith in the resurrection came when God demonstrated his power to raise up his Son, Jesus Christ, even though he had died, to set him free to live as the living Lord forever.

In the accounts of the resurrection, as we have them in the Gospels, the primary focus is not upon what happened or how it was done.  Indeed a part of the mystery, which surrounds the resurrection of Jesus Christ is not knowing exactly what or how it happened.  This is why the only way it can be experienced and embraced is by faith.

John tells us, as do the other Gospel writers, that the first shocking discovery of that first Easter morning was simply that the stone, which had blocked the entrance to the tomb where Jesus had been buried, had been rolled away.

The Gospels of Mark and Luke report that women had gone to the tomb early in the morning wondering who would roll away the stone so that they might go in to where Jesus had been laid; and according to Jewish custom anoint his body.   In all four Gospels the women are startled and afraid when they saw that the stone had been rolled away from the entrance to the tomb.   In their fear, they ran to tell the disciples.   These women did not expect to find the tomb open, let alone empty.  They knew that they could not roll the stone away.  They knew that the Jews had not opened the tomb, because they had insisted that guards be posted to insure that no one would steal the body of Jesus.  So who did it?

Peter and John, upon hearing Mary Magdalene’s report, took off running, not in the opposite direction because they had stolen the body of Jesus, but toward the tomb, because they did not believe what they had just heard.  Even when they saw with their own eyes that the great stone had been rolled away, they did not know what to make of it.  With hesitation, John peeked into the tomb and saw that it was empty.  But bold Peter would not be satisfied with just looking into the tomb; he had to go in for a closer look.  The tomb was empty.  What had happened to Jesus?

John the Gospel writer just says that the two disciples went into the tomb, saw that it was empty, and believed.  And then they went home.  It’s almost as if it was no big deal.  The other Gospel writers fill us in at this point.  They state that the disciples were amazed and afraid, and they ran home to hide, perhaps under their beds.

I wonder what the disciples believed at this point – just that the tomb was empty!  It was Mary Magdalene who lingered at the tomb crying because she thought that someone had stolen the body of the man who had healed her.  It was Mary who, with tears in her eyes, peeked in the tomb again and saw two angels.  It was Mary who turned around and saw someone standing outside the tomb.   Not knowing who it was she explained that she was looking for Jesus.  The man spoke to her, “Mary,” and immediately she recognized that voice and said, “Rabbouni!”   He then told her to go and tell the others that he was alive.  Running as fast a she could she came to the disciples and cried out, “I have seen the Lord!”

This is the pivotal experience of our faith in the resurrection – seeing the risen Lord.  Even though our faith states that the tomb was empty on Easter morning, our faith in the resurrection is not based on the empty tomb.  It is based on the resurrection appearances of Jesus to many people on several different occasions.  All of these people were shocked when they first saw Jesus alive because they had no expectation of ever seeing him alive again.  Even though he had told them, they had either not understood or not believed.  It took an experience with the risen Lord for them to believe.  We have their witness.  The question is do we believe their witness – the testimony of the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament that Jesus is alive.

I found the quote of the week in yesterdays Record Eagle interesting.  “Science basically involves assumptions and faith.  We must make the best assumptions we can envisage, and have faith.  And wonderful things in both science and religion come from our efforts based on observations, thoughtful assumptions, faith, and logic.”  The quote is from Charles Townes, a physics professor at the University of California.[2]

Our human logic says that bodily resurrection from death is impossible – impossible at least for science.  Does that mean that the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ did not happen?  Science is still discovering many things about the human body, the world in which we live, and the universe.  Science does not have all of the answers to everything yet.  We gathered this morning not having all of the answers, yet believing through faith in the observations of people who saw Jesus alive.  Did he rise from the dead?  Each one of us has to wrestle with the resurrection for our selves and come to our own conclusions.  I stand before you this morning as one who believes, and therefore proclaims, “Alleluia, Christ is risen.”

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