Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!
Easter arrives every year with Alleluias, beautiful music, flowers, bright lights, new clothes. But the first Easter began in darkness – the darkness of a pre-dawn morning, as grieving women slipped through dark streets to the tomb of their beloved rabbi. They had been so optimistic when Jesus was alive, so sure that everything would go right for him, so certain that he would lead his disciples to form a new kingdom of God that would help the poor and heal the sick and throw off the oppressors and bring justice to all – but it seems that all those hopes have died with him. So now they are doing one last thing, a sensible thing, a loving thing, looking for the dead among the dead, knowing that not only their beloved Lord, but also their cherished dream of God’s kingdom, on earth as it is in heaven, has died.
Picture them slipping through dark streets to the tomb, hoping to find some last shreds of their broken lives, some memory, some courage to face the future; arriving to be disappointed, because Jesus was not just dead – he was dead & GONE. Despairing at finding strange emptiness where they expected to find familiar death. Turning to find two men in dazzling clothes standing there, and freezing, terrified. As the angels opened their mouths to speak, they heard the angels’ words – Why do you look for the living among the dead? But what they couldn’t hear was all the angels in heaven singing, shouting, dancing, for joy.
But as the angels say the word – “remember” – and as they remind the women of Jesus’ promise that he would suffer and die, but that God would raise him from dead, something new dawns in their hearts – something born in darkness, a light when all light has failed. Hope that all is not lost, that God’s kingdom will dawn in a new way, beyond all human hopes, a way that can only mean new life for all creation. And only then, only then, Easter dawns on the women at the tomb.
This year, there’s big part of me that feels like I’m waiting in the darkness of a pre-dawn morning. In our world, we are divided and afraid. Ordinary people feel unsafe going to churches and schools and hospitals. Every day there is new and disturbing news. The economy may be heading toward crisis, scientific research is being cut, the judicial system is under threat. Many people live in fear and anxiety; people are excluded, reviled; all kinds of people are living lives of insecurity; people fear the loss of freedoms they have long worked and prayed for. So joyful shouts and bright lights at Easter might feel a bit incongruous this year.
But it helps to remember that Easter is not just about joy. Easter is about joy inexplicably arising out of sorrow; life unbelievably arising out of death. Jesus lived in a time of suffering too. Poverty, suffering, and oppression were widespread in his time. People lived in terror of the Roman occupiers, who were very skilled at brutality, very practiced at oppression. The story of Jesus’s last week of life in Jerusalem is a sad, disturbing drama of plots against his life, danger to his disciples, his arrest by the Roman police, his sham of a trial, his condemnation despite his innocence, his brutal crucifixion, suffering, and death. A story like Jesus’s last week seems to indicate that all the things we fear have the final word. The powers of evil have won. The book has ended. It’s a tragedy.
But … but … but … take a look at how the gospel of Luke tells the story of Easter. There is one word peppered throughout the story that once you see it, it catches your attention and won’t let go. It comes right after the sweet, sad Good Friday story of laying Jesus in the tomb. And it begins with the word “But.”
But! Easter begins with that one little word. And 6 times during this passage, Luke repeats it. BUT on the first day of the week! BUT they did not find the body! BUT the men said to them, why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, BUT he has risen! BUT these words seemed to the men like an idle tale, BUT Peter ran to the tomb and found it empty.
But! But! But! It’s just as if Easter is God’s gigantic BUT to all the suffering, evil, and death in the world. It’s as if God took a look at our whole sad human situation and said BUT! It’s like, Luke tells us this whole sad story of betrayal, denial, crucifixion – tells us about the thief on the cross who will be with Jesus in Paradise, tells us about Jesus forgiving the ones who are torturing him, tells us that despite all his goodness and his forgiveness and his preaching about the kingdom of God, still Jesus died.
But … but … death does not have the final word, the final word belongs to God, and God’s defiant word to death is a giant “but!” BUT – we haven’t heard the whole story yet. BUT it’s time to turn around and hear what God does next. BUT this is not a time for hopelessness, this is a time for action. BUT it is time for the disciples to gather up their courage and share a new story with the world.
To any kind of hopeless human certainty that darkness and death have the final word to say in our lives – God has a new word to say: but – but –
but on the first day of the week, a new hope will dawn, life will arise out of death, and all the cold, dead places where we have stored away our hopes, all the cemeteries where we go to look for the dead among the dead, all the dried-up places where we have wept until we can’t weep any more, all the places where we huddle in fear of the forces of suffering and exclusion, injustice and death – suddenly those places will be healed, empty, and we will be sent out of the tomb to search for the living among the living and practice resurrection lives of courage and hope – and there’s nothing to say to that BUT Alleluia! Christ is risen!
What Luke wants to tell us, what we need to understand from the resurrection, is that what happened to that one man, long ago, on that first Easter, means far more than just a surprise happy ending to a sad story; more than the fact that someone we loved long ago is not dead but alive; more even than the fact that God promises us eternal life through Jesus. All those things are true, but … resurrection changes our lives, it changes you, and me, and the world into something new. Which means that when all is dark in our lives, when there is no more room for optimism, when we know that our dreams and plans have died, God says BUT the risen Christ can reach into our dark world and bring us hope.
To all the worries that fill our hearts, to all the things that keep us awake and weeping in the middle of the night, to the injustice in this world, to all the things that leave us feeling powerless and fearful, God says, BUT … But God is the God of life, and God’s light and hope extends even into the darkest and most hopeless places, even into the tomb itself. And the place to search for life, hope, resurrection, God’s new creation is not among the dead but among the living, right here in our world today, right now with you and me.
The first disciples, once they got over their doubts, were transformed into some of the most courageous people the world has ever seen, giving their lives to share God’s new message of life and hope. Resurrection changed them. It can change us too. As with the first disciples, God’s gigantic BUT calls us to courageous, loving action. We too can make a difference in this hurting world. We can feed the hungry, care for the homeless, visit the sick and prisoners; we can build affordable housing for the homeless (as our diocese is hoping to do at several congregations, beginning with St. Luke’s in North Park), we can create shelter and new life for migrants (as we are doing for migrants who want to begin a new life in Tijuana), we can advocate for the vulnerable and work for justice and inclusion. We can go into the world and proclaim the gospel of love, joy, and peace against the false gospel of exclusion, rejection, arrogance, oppression.
Jesus Christ is alive, God’s love is alive, and God gives us courage. Because we are people of hope. We are people of resurrection. We are people of Easter.
American Christian writer Jim Wallis, in his book God’s Politics, tells a story of hope that took place in South Africa in the apartheid era. Wallis was at the Cathedral of St. George’s in Capetown where Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu was presiding, when a group of the notorious South African Security Police broke in. Wallis writes:
Tutu stopped preaching and just looked at the intruders as they lined the walls of his cathedral, wielding writing pads and tape recorders. … Tutu reminded them that he served a higher power than theirs…. Then, in the most extraordinary challenge to … tyranny I have ever witnessed, Archbishop Desmond Tutu told the representatives of South African Apartheid, “Since you have already lost, I invite you today to come and join the winning side!” He said it with a smile on his face and an enticing warmth in his invitation, but with a clarity and a boldness that took everyone’s breath away. The congregation’s response was electric. The crowd was literally transformed by the bishop’s challenge to power. From a cowering fear of the heavily armed security forces that surrounded the cathedral and greatly outnumbered the band of worshippers, we literally leaped to our feet, shouted the praises of God and began dancing. We danced out of the cathedral to meet the awaiting police and military forces who not knowing what else to do, backed up to provide the space for the people of faith to dance for freedom.” (Jim Wallis, God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005.)
Today, my friends, is the day we dance for freedom. Today is the day we hear God’s song of hope, sung into all our places of despair, God’s gigantic “but” to all the fear and hopelessness in our lives. Today is the day we acknowledge that Good Friday is not the end of Christ’s story and it is not the end of our story either. The powers of this world want to hold us imprisoned and hopeless, but they have lost already. Our God is the God of life and hope and peace, love and joy and invitation. And today is the day Jesus Christ, with arms held wide, invites us to come and dance with him in the joy and hope of Easter.
Christ has risen from the dead, and Christ invites us to join him in resurrection life. So with resurrection strength, courage, and the sheer hope of Christ, we say Alleluia! Christ is risen!