Jeremiah 31: 1-6 Psalm 118: 1-2, 14-24
Colossians 3: 1-4 Matthew 28: 1-10
Grace and peace to you from God the Creator and from the risen Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ. Amen.
Did you ever know that person, maybe in school, who had some kind of reputation and when you got to know them you discovered that what you had heard about them, was not true at all? Maybe it was a teacher who had a reputation for being unreasonable, but what you discovered was that they simply liked to challenge their students. Or maybe it was something you’d heard about your neighbor that wasn’t true at all. Like the old man in the Home Alone movie that everyone is afraid of. They won’t go near his house and they think he’s some kind of evil person, when it turns out that he is merely lonely and ends up helping to save the day.
The same thing is true about the church. Not this church, exactly, but the CHURCH…capital C. What we hear about the church is so often simply not the case. For example….maybe you’ve heard that the church is a place where if you simply follow the rules, only good things will happen to you. And maybe you’ve heard about those “rules” in church…that we are a very stodgy bunch who don’t know how to have any fun. Or maybe you’ve heard that the church really LOVES its rules and regulations and that it simply LIVES to say NO….NO….to fun, to laughter, to all of the good things in life. Well, if this is what you’ve heard about the church….WELCOME TO OUR CELEBRATION! CHRIST IS RISEN! ALLELUIA! (He is risen, indeed!)
Now, let me tell you about the Church. And let me start with the story of Easter.
First, you need to know that Jesus of Nazareth put together a group of radicals. That’s all there was to it. They were not rule followers, in fact Jesus and the disciples broke just about every important rule of the time. He healed on the very day when the rules said you weren’t supposed to do any work. He talked to women. He even told women the news of his resurrection first. He hung out with sinners and outcasts. He touched lepers. He sat down and taught in the temple and declared that he was the fulfillment of all that he had read.
Jesus was a radical to end all radicals. No organization has come close to being as subversive as his was…not the NAACP or the NRA or move-on.org or the Tea Party. They all pale in comparison. They probably couldn’t have even kept up with Jesus.
What Jesus taught was exactly the opposite of what the culture said we were to do. Love your enemies. If someone strikes you on one cheek, offer the other one. Treat others like you want to be treated. Love your neighbor as you love yourself.
Jesus was so controversial, so subversive that some people didn’t want to be seen talking to him. Nicodemus came to ask his questions under the cover of night. Other people couldn’t wait to see him…they’d even climb trees to catch a glimpse. One woman even spent extravagant amounts of money just to buy perfume to wash his feet with.
The Church…big C…and this church….do not follow a safe leader. In fact, those closest to him when he was alive often found themselves in danger or worse. And those who follow him the most closely now….well….this is when we’d like to have that rule that says if you do this…follow Jesus….you will have that….safety, security, peace of mind. But the truth is, when you look at the lives of those who have walked most closely with Jesus…those whose lives are guided by the same principals, there is often just the opposite. Because the world will turn on someone who turns the other cheek. The world will mock someone who loves their enemies and their enemies will often not love them in return. Too many martyrs have been lost in the cause of love and justice.
Following Jesus means risk. It mean vulnerability. It means opening ourselves up to the possibility that not only don’t the rules work in our favor very often, they don’t exist at all!
I would imagine that at this point some of you are thinking that if this is what the church is about, then maybe you don’t want any part of it. But I’ve only told you a part of the Easter story.
You know the rule that says when you die and they bury you you’re, well, dead and buried?. That rule….that rule was broken on this day. Jesus…who’d been tortured and humiliated had hung on a cross there before the women who were brave enough to stay. He hung there before the guards who had mocked him. He hung there and hope simply seemed to vanish from the world. And if this were the end of the story, none of us would be sitting here. Jesus might simply have been another fine teacher, another astonishing prophet. But Jesus was more than that. Jesus was God, among us, with us. God with us in our struggles and our sorrows and every single moment of our lives. God with us in the times when we made very bad decisions and God with us in the better times as well. So, for him to die, well, like I said, hope seemed to vanish from the world.
Until the first day of the week…the third day after Jesus had died. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary had gone to the tomb when there was an earthquake! Then there was an angel…and angels were scary figures. They were not haloes and wings…they were hulking, fire breathing scary figures. And what do you know? That great rule breaker broke the most certain rule of all….death. He rose just as it had been prophesied that he would, just as he had promised he would. And the hope that seemed to vanish from the world came flooding back.
And so every Easter day and in fact, every Sunday, when the Jesus followers, when the Church…big and little c…gathers, we gather for a party! We don’t gather to review the rules. We don’t gather to tell one another that there will be no celebrating, no fun, no joy. We gather for just that reason. To celebrate!
Now, maybe your experience somewhere along the way has been of a judgmental church, a church overly focused on rules and laws. But that’s not what the early church was about at all and that is not what the church is about at its core.
At its core, we are like the very first apostles, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary. They were the very first ones that Jesus instructed to “Go and Tell”. And they did. But here’s the thing…they were afraid. And rightly so. All of the rules that they knew to be true…most especially the rule that once you died, you stayed in your tomb….those were no longer true. Because Jesus was alive hope lived, no… hope lives, again. And so it is entirely possible and even probable that we are going to go forward and be the people of the resurrection while we are filled with great joy AND while we are, in fact, afraid.
If what you’ve heard about the church has made you want to run the other way, let what you hear here this morning invite you back. We are Jesus followers and that means that we are a band of folks who are living in ways counter to what the world calls for. We are justice seekers. We are mercy givers. We are grace filled. We are enemy lovers. We eat with outcasts and sinners because we are outcasts and sinners. And we are forgiven, loved, freed and filled with hope. We are filled with hope. Because Jesus lived and lives still.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed)
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