When I preach from the lectionary, which I do most of the time unless I'm working on a series, one of the first things I do is to try and find the common thread among the different passages. And on this glorious day when we celebrate the resurrection of our Lord, the central message is God's victory over sin and death. And this is good news, always, every day of the year, not only during this season. We proclaim the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ every time we celebrate communion, every time we request and receive forgiveness for our sins, every time we close our prayers by saying "in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord."
But there's another aspect to be explored, because the proclamation of the good news always takes place within a particular context. The good news comes to a particular people in a particular time, and they respond in very different ways.
The death of Jesus looked like a crushing defeat for his followers. The death of Jesus looked like victory for the status quo, victory for the complacent, victory for the old order, victory for those who were secure in their own righteousness. The death of Jesus meant that people could get on with their lives just the way they had been doing.
A good friend of mine, a highly educated and committed Jewish woman, asked me once why I believed that Jesus was the Messiah since the coming of the Messiah was supposed to be characterized by a radical and complete restoration of the kingdom of Israel, and anyone could see that that had not happened.
The death of Jesus caused barely a ripple on the surface of the empire. The death of one obscure Jewish troublemaker meant nothing to the Romans, and less than that to most of the rest of the Mediterranean world. The earthquake? a coincidence. The tearing of the veil in the temple? Who even noticed outside of a bunch of fanatics? The world went on. And the resurrection? Who could believe that? Everyone knows that once you're dead, you're dead. The soul may be immortal but the body dies. We're talking sophisticated, educated people, here, this was the most literate, well-traveled, cosmopolitan society ever. Only superstitious backwoods hicks could believe a tale like that!
I have a weakness for adventure movies, and not just the classics like the Indiana Jones series. My standards aren't that high. Anyway a few weeks ago I was watching Force Ten from Navarone, a real potboiler cooked up to capture the audience from the blockbuster Guns of Navarone. I should probably be ashamed to admit to enjoying it. At any rate, the plot involved sending a multinational team of highly trained, incredibly brave, outstandingly resourceful combat and demolition mavens behind enemy lines in Yugoslavia to blow up a dam which would unleash the river which would wash out the bridge over which the German army was scheduled to attack. Anyway, to make a long story short, they get the explosive charges laid and escape the soldiers guarding the dam and activate the detonator and rendezvous at the appointed spot and turn to watch the dam blow up and nothing happens.
And the team goes ballistic (you should excuse the expression). Here they have risked life and limb and performed incredible heroics and done everything perfectly and IT DIDN'T WORK! They start yelling at each other and accusing each other of malfeasance and incompetence and who knows what else - all except the cool, laid-back British major. He's just leaning back against the bank, smoking his pipe, listening and watching. And one at a time they fall silent and turn around to see what he's waiting for. And a tiny trickle of water appears on the face of the dam. And then another. And the trickles become spurts and cracks begin to appear in the concrete and the whole dam seems to bulge out in the middle and the entire river bursts forth down the ravine and the team leaps to its feet, shouting and cheering and waving their caps in the air and the bridge is washed out and the German tanks are destroyed.
And that is what the resurrection is like. The old order is destroyed absolutely, but you don't see the results right away. Little by little, drop by drop, with irresistible power and utter inevitability, the resurrection of Jesus Christ changed the fundamental relationship between God and his creation.
It starts very small indeed.
"Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus' body... As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man. "Don't be alarmed," he said. "You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here... But go, tell his disciples and Peter... Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid." [v. 1-8]
The first to hear the good news were three women. Now, anybody who knows anything about Palestinian culture of the day would know better than to have the first messengers be women. No one would believe them even if they had said anything! Women's views were of so little value that their testimony was not even accepted in the courts. But the first crack appears when, as John reports in his Gospel, Mary Magdalene blurts out to Peter the one piece she can't keep to herself: "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don't know where they have put him!" [Jn 20:2]...She doesn't pass on the angel's message about the resurrection. She knows she won't be believed. But on hearing what she does say, Peter and John rush to check it out, and the full story begins to unfold. They saw that Jesus' body was gone, but as John goes on to tell us, "They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead. Then [they] went back to their homes." [v. 20:9-10] Mary stuck around and saw him, and believed, and went back and told the disciples. It doesn't say whether or not they believed her, I rather expect not, don't you? Especially considering how surprised they all were when Jesus appeared to them in the upper room.
Well. These things take time, don't they. It wasn't easy to swallow. They were still reeling with shock over the death of their beloved leader and the shattering of their dearest hopes. These things take time. Who wants to appear to be a gullible fool, after all, right? Everybody knows that people don't rise from the dead. So Jesus appeared in person to two on the road to Emmaus, and back in Jerusalem to the disciples in hiding in the upper room, and again for Thomas' benefit, and later on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, and still more over the next 40 days that we're not given the details of. And one by one, they begin fully to believe that it is actually true. Jesus was alive.
And then what happened?
What did all these new believers do?
How did they respond to the good news?
The last thing Jesus had said to them was to wait in Jerusalem for "the Holy Spirit to come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." And they did. They waited in Jerusalem. And the Holy Spirit came on them at Pentecost, and - they stayed in Jerusalem. And they were indeed witnesses, and powerful ones, and courageous ones, and the church grew. But still - they tarried in Jerusalem.
The beginning of the book of Acts is often held up as a model for the Christian church.
"They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need."
And this was good, and this was right. But it wasn't enough, though they thought it was. Most of them were waiting for Jesus to return. They expected it to happen any day. It's easy to get rid of your possessions when you're sure you don't need them any more.
Some AIDS patients, early in the epidemic, were interviewed in a Time magazine article about the protease inhibitors that were increasing their lifespans back to near normal. They were having trouble adjusting to the idea that they were going to live after all. Some had spent all they had on travel or luxuries; after all, why not enjoy the little time you have left? One said, "I'm not sure it's such good news, really. I was all prepared to die and now I have to go back to work again." Now, they weren't on a spiritual mountaintop like the Jerusalem church. But the priniciple is similar. When your time is short, you pack it with special events and don't count the cost. The believers didn't want to come down from their spiritual high. They were having too good a time celebrating with the other insiders. They had forgotten there was work to do.
Remember back before the last supper, when some Greeks wanted to see Jesus? Remember that he recognized this as a sign that his mission to the Jews was over and the mission to the Gentiles was about to begin? The coming of the Holy Spirit was the beginning of that mission. But the apostles tarried in Jerusalem.
Jesus used the metaphor of a kernel of wheat which, in dying, brings forth many more seeds like itself. I think a better metaphor would have been one of those plants that, when the seeds mature, the pods explode and scatter the seeds all over the countryside. Because it took an explosion to get the disciples moving. It took the persecution of the church and the martyrdom of Stephen to shake them out of their complacency and scatter them even as far as the rest of Judea. And still they stuck with their own kind. Still they kept the good news to themselves.
Not until the 10th chapter of Acts, more than 3 years later, does Peter realize what Jesus has in mind. Not until a Roman centurion named Cornelius and the witness of the Holy Spirit come together does Peter understand that the good news of Jesus Christ is for all people everywhere. Not until then. The explosive news of the resurrection blew up the dam, all right, but most of the blocks of concrete stayed stubbornly in place. Only now does the good news begin to trickle out into the Gentile world. And the words Peter spoke were incredibly shocking to his hearers.
"Truly," he said, "I realize that God has no favorites; but in every nation one who fears him and does what is righteous is acceptable to him... everyone who believes in him will receive forgiveness of sins through his name."
Years had already passed from the moment when the women first saw the empty tomb until that day when the light finally dawns on Peter. Years when a watcher might be tempted to say that nothing much had happened. Years when discouraged or frightened people fell away, despairing of the fulfillment of their hopes. Years that we can criticize the disciples for wasting, for misunderstanding, for nearsightedness. Years when people could have heard the good news of Jesus Christ, but did not.
Yet are we not the same?
Are we not also tempted to stay where we are, tarrying in Jerusalem, basking in our blessings?
I believe that each one of us goes through a similar progression as we mature in our lives as followers of Christ: First comes disbelief. Second is dawning hope. The third stage is excitement, celebration. The next stage, often a long one, is solidification. The last, and one filled with trial and error, is discovering and acting upon vocation.
Each of us spends different lengths of time at each stage, and sometimes we go back and repeat, and sometimes we are in more than one at once. The only thing that is wrong with any of them is refusing to move on to the next when we are called. But sometimes we need to be seriously shaken up before we will move.
Today we celebrate the good news of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The whole world was shaken and changed because of what God did. Have you been shaken? Have you changed? I invite each one of you to consider where you are as you hear the good news: are you disbelieving, hoping, celebrating, solidifying, or practicing your vocation? Consider where you are, and ask the Holy Spirit to let you know if it is time to move.
