The Resurrection of our Lord

Easter Sunday, 2019

Acts 10:34,37-43   Ps 118   Col 3:1-4   Jn 20:1-9

Deacon Jim McFadden; St. John the Baptist C.C.

 

       Today we are celebrating the heart of our Christian faith: The Resurrection of the Lord. It is the pivotal event of our Faith, because of its utter uniqueness and its ultimate game-changing dimension.

            In 1^st century Judaism at the time of Jesus’s public ministry, there were many views of what happened to a people when they died. Judaism didn’t come to the belief in an afterlife until the Babylonian Exile era in the 6^th century b.c. Many people simply believed that death was just the end—“from dust you come, to dust you shall return” reflects that somber belief.

Others believed that the righteous dead would rise at the close of the age. Remember the raising of Lazarus, when Jesus approached the tomb and a distraught Martha said, “Yes, I believe he will rise at the resurrection of the dead.” She was referring to this belief.

Still others, perhaps under the influence of Greek philosophy, said that the souls of the just would float up to Heaven following the demise of their bodies.   The body was seen as a prison that trapped the soul. When the former succumbed to death, the soul would escape and be with God.

Some even believed in some kind of reincarnation. When Jesus asked, “Who do people say that I am?” his disciples said that “Some say that you are Elijah or John the Baptist coming back from the dead,” which suggests that our souls transmigrate from one body to another.

Here’s what’s fascinating about the Resurrection narratives of the Gospel: none of these existing interpretations of the time was used to describe Jesus’s return.   The first witnesses maintained that the same Jesus who had been rejected and abandoned by his disciples, who had been falsely accused by the religious establishment, who had been brutally tortured and put to death by the Roman authorities and buried in a tomb, that same Jesus through the power of God was alive again. They claimed is that Yeshua, Jesus from Nazareth, whom they knew personally, who had brutally been put to death and was buried, was alive again!  To put it into perspective, what had been anticipated at the end of time, had happened in time to this one particular man, to this Jesus.

People of God, we can’t underestimate just how radical and revolutionary the belief in the Resurrection of Jesus was. It was the utter uniqueness of the event that gave such energy, vigor, and unbridled fervor to the earlier proclamations that Jesus is Lord.   St. Paul didn’t come into the seaport town of Corinth saying, “I want to tell you about this itinerant teacher from Nazareth who once taught wise spiritual reflections and moral platitudes.” No! Paul said, “Anastasis—Anastasis!—He is risen!” The Gospel evangelists and Paul, were trying to tell the world that something unique and extraordinary had happened in Jerusalem and from that day forward, nothing would ever be the same again.

The Resurrection confirms that Jesus is God in the Flesh and that he has overcome sin and death—that we are, indeed, saved. But, people still have trouble with the notion that God could become a human being, let alone that he really, bodily rose from the dead. Over the past few centuries, there has crept in a narrative both within and without Christianity, that reduces the Resurrection to a myth or symbol. Easter, they said, is just one more dramatic instance of the springtime saga you can find in most cultures—namely, life triumphs over death after the bleak months of winter.

Others maintained that the Resurrection was a symbolic way of saying that the cause of Jesus lives on in his followers, just as the democratic ideals of George Washington or Abraham Lincoln live in those who value democracy.   This view easily lets one sidestep the reality of Jesus’s return after his death.

The Gospels do not use abstract or symbolic language.   In describing the Resurrection, they mention particular places, such as Judea and Jerusalem. They specify that the event didn’t happen “once upon a time,” in a “galaxy far, far away” but occurred when Pontius Pilate was the Roman governor. We can date that. There are coins that have ‘Pontius Pilate’ on them. We know exactly when the Crucifixion and Resurrection happened.

They also name distinct individuals: Peter, John, James, Thomas, and Mary Magdalene, who encountered Jesus after he rose from the dead. 500 people collectively witnessed the Risen Christ.   People who knew him, touched him, talked to him, followed him around the hills of Galilee, boldly said that they saw the Risen Christ and they saw him in bodily form. Nearly all the first evangelists of the Resurrection went to their deaths, defending the truth of their historical claim.

Hundreds of thousands of our Christian ancestors went to their deaths because they proclaimed that Jesus is Lord and that he is Risen. And, in the 20^th-21^st century, there have been more Christian martyrs than even during the Roman era. Christians are still dying for their faith in Jesus. They believe that his Death and Resurrection is the full embodiment that God is love; that God is a gathering force who brings all people, indeed, all of Creation into his embrace.

But when Jesus presented himself to his disciples, we are told that they were afraid. Why was that?   Perhaps their fear may have been a reaction of seeing something uncanny, a dead man coming back to life. But, I wonder if they were afraid that he came back to exact some kind of vengeance. In a normal telling of a story like this, you have an innocent man put to death by the betrayal, abandonment of his followers who ran from him in the moment of truth. Now, this dead man has come back to life and he’s come to visit those who had betrayed and abandoned him and get his revenge.

But, this story is different. After showing his wounds, the Risen Jesus says to his friends, “Shalom.” Peace. The teacher who had urged his followers to turn the other cheek and to avoid violence, exemplified his teaching in the most vivid way possible. What he showed them was that the divine way of establishing order has nothing to do with violence, retribution, or an eye-for-an-eye retaliation. Instead, it has to do with an all-encompassing Love that swallows up hate and conquers aggression. It’s this great Resurrection principle that explicitly or implicitly undergird the liberating work of Martin Luther King in America, Gandhi in India, Bishop Tutu in South Africa, and St. John Paul II in Poland. Those great practioners of non-violent resistance were going with the deepest grain of reality—they were operating in concert with the purpose of God, whose loving presence permeates all of Creation.

This brings us to the second implication of the Resurrection. It means that God has not given up on his Creation. According to the book of Genesis, God made the whole array of all things and he found it all good and precious. All the things of Creation are part of a tightly woven tapestry. As Genesis 3 reveals, however, human sin made a wreck of God’s Creation, but the faithful God sent one rescue operation after another: from the Patriarchs, to Moses, to King David, to the prophets, to the people Israel themselves, and finally he sent his only Son—the perfect icon or incarnation of his Love.

In raising his Son from the dead, God definitively ratifies Creation, including the material dimension—that’s why the bodily resurrection of Jesus matters so much. Over and over again, we say “no” to the Creation that God has made, but God stubbornly says “yes.” Easter calls us to be part of that yes and to be and bring about the Incarnation of God’s love. Jesus lives again in us.