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The
Challenge of Easter
April
8, 2007
Fr.
George Smiga
John 20:1-9
It
should be a consolation to us that the first response of the
apostles to Jesus' resurrection was one of disbelief. Luke
makes this very clear in the gospel we just heard. The women
come, bringing the news that Jesus has been raised from the
dead, and the apostles do not believe them. The apostles consider
their words an idle tale, a pile of nonsense.
This
disbelief by the apostles should be an encouragement to us
because believing in Jesus' resurrection is not easy. We are
asked to believe that a man, who was dead, really dead, dead
and buried, was raised up by God's power into a new kind of
life. We are called to believe that that resurrection took
place in bodily form. Yes, Jesus' body was transformed but
it was still a body. It could still eat and be touched by
the disbelieving apostles. So the challenge to believe in
Jesus' resurrection is a major challenge. It asks us to believe
something that is outside of our experience. In the world
in which we live, those who are dead and buried do not rise
from their tombs and appear to us in glorious bodies. To believe
that Jesus did is a challenge. Yet, every Easter, we are asked
to believe it. Every page of the New Testament expects us
to believe it. Every time we come together to worship God,
our words and our actions proclaim that we believe it. So
that leaves us this morning with two questions: Why is believing
in Jesus' resurrection so important and how can we believe
something which is outside of our experience?
Believing
in Jesus' resurrection is important because the resurrection
of Jesus is larger than a miracle which happened to him. On
Easter we do not simply believe that Jesus rose from the dead,
we also believe that his resurrection is a sign that God has
begun to transform the world. If God raised Jesus from the
dead, it means that God is serious about destroying evil and
it means that God has already begun to eliminate the evil
of our world and to establish God's Kingdom. If God has raised
Jesus up, then it means that God is on the move, already establishing
a kingdom of grace and peace. That kingdom will not be completed
until Jesus returns, but Easter says it has irrevocably begun.
So what we believe at Easter is not simply something about
Jesus and what happened to him but about God and what God
is doing. When we say, “Christ is Risen,” it is shorthand
for saying that we believe that God is destroying evil and
establishing a kingdom of justice, love, and peace. This larger
understanding of what God is doing is what makes Jesus' resurrection
so important. Unfortunately it doesn't make it easier to believe.
When we look at the world around us, we can find plenty of
evidence that the kingdom of God is not yet here. In fact,
some would say, it is easier to believe that Jesus was raised
from the dead than that God has already begun to establish
a kingdom of justice, love and peace.
So
that leads us to the second question: How can we believe in
something that is so difficult? How can we, with so much evidence
against it, believe that God is establishing a kingdom of
justice, love and peace? Here's where the words of the two
men in the gospel to the women are important. They say, “Why
are you looking for the living among the dead?” If we are
going to believe in the truth of Easter, we must look among
the living. We must look at our own lives and what is happening
within them. We must try to find signs that the kingdom is
being established, signs that God is at work and that Jesus'
resurrection is real.
What
might those signs be? Let's start with this one: Other people
who believe. Every time we meet another person who says, I
believe in Jesus' resurrection, I believe that God is changing
the world Easter becomes more possible. This is why the church
bases the celebration of Easter around those who are to be
baptized. Their choice to accept Christ makes our belief in
Christ more real. All the people in our lives who believe
help us to believe. But they are not the only signs. Each
one of us can locate in our lives other signs that can point
to Easter: a faithful spouse, whose love we know we could
never merit, a beautiful son or daughter, a danger from which
we have escaped, a sickness or addiction that should have
finished us but did not, a moment of peace in the midst of
grieving a loss, the ability to hope on the verge of despair.
Any of these moments of grace, which we claim in our lives,
can be a sign that points to the truth of Easter. None of
these signs prove Jesus' resurrection, for Easter can't be
proven. But it is only by claiming the signs that we find
among the living, that we will ever believe that Jesus was
truly raised from the dead.
So
on this Easter morning, let us sing our Alleluias, realizing
that many would consider them an idle tale, a pile of nonsense.
But for those of us who can claim God's grace in our lives,
and how God has blessed us, they can be light in the darkness,
life in the shadow of death, and a shout of joy which proclaims
that Christ is risen and that I believe God is transforming
the world.
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