|
|
|
|
Reverend Timothy B. Cargal, Ph.D. Looking in the Right Place Easter has taken on many meanings in our contemporary culture. It is about the renewal of spring, about special time with family and friends, about the joys of gift-giving and receiving (yes, it’s not just for Christmas anymore!). The negative aspect of that final aspect of Easter is that it makes Easter a prime example of the transformation of "holy days" into consumer-driven "holidays." But as any young child can tell you, what Easter is about more than anything else is "finding" things, the discovery of what was previously hidden. Children have been counting down with enthusiasm the days until Easter, and most importantly until the Easter egg hunt. They carefully rehearse in their minds, morning after morning, exactly what the procedures will be with the youngest going first to gather what lies in plain sight, and then gradually older children going out to find what is truly hidden. As adults we have given up looking for Easter eggs — except for the hidden features in our DVDs and other electronic amusements that now go by that name. But we still scour the newspaper advertisements and listen for clues on the radio as to where we will find the best Easter bargains, either for gifts and Easter outfits for our children and grandchildren or for ourselves. Yes, looking for things is what Easter has always been all about, even from the very beginning. We have read in the gospel lesson how that "as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb." Clearly they were looking for something, but a comparison with the other gospels makes identifying precisely what they were looking for a bit unclear. Mark and Luke explicitly state that women followers of Jesus had gone to the tomb following the Sabbath to complete the burial process by placing spices on Jesus’ corpse. Matthew and John mention only that Mary had gone to "the tomb." Do they mean to suggest the women had expected to find an empty tomb? Many modern commentators have been quick to point out that what these women disciples (and their male counterparts who weren’t looking for anything at all until the reports from the women get things stirred up) should have expected to find was exactly that — an empty tomb. After all, each of the four canonical gospels report that Jesus had predicted that the he would be raised from the dead after three days. Sometimes Jesus’s statements were somewhat vague ("Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up," John 2:19), while at other times they were direct and specific (cf. Matthew 20:17-19). Had any of the disciples — men or women — only believed what Jesus had told them they might have been looking for the tomb, but only as a likely place to find the resurrected Jesus. Yet the fear and surprise that overtake the women even in Matthew’s and John’s accounts make it clear that these women were not expecting to meet a resurrected Jesus. Is that because they had not believed what Jesus had told them? Not necessarily. Among Jews of the first century there were a wide-range of ideas about what "resurrection" might mean. For some, resurrection was to be understood in terms of literalizing Ezekiel’s dramatic vision of the "Valley of Dry Bones." It would be the reassembling and revitalizing of the stuff of deceased bodies and was something that would happen "on the last day." Others, however, argued that Ezekiel’s vision was just that — a vision, replete with symbolism and not to be taken literally. God would restore life to those who had known death, but the stuff of these current bodies did not factor into the equation. Somewhat like the Lazarus in Jesus’ parable, Jesus himself might have been raised to a personal and eternal life with God even as the physical body of this life remained in the tomb. These women could have believed that Jesus would be — perhaps already was — "raised" as he had promised, and yet not have expected to encounter the resurrected Jesus on that morning. Let’s face it. We who have gathered here for this Easter service have done so because we believe Jesus has been raised from the dead. Yet I suspect that if we were to have those of you here describe what you believe it means to confess, "Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!" that we would find a range of opinions at least as broad as those among Jesus’ first century Jewish contemporaries. And I am absolutely certain that none of you came here this morning expecting to see standing before your very eyes the resurrected Jesus. If you were to see that, your fear and surprise would far exceed that experienced by Mary Magdalene. Yet it was precisely that expectation that was held out to the women by the angel. They were told that they would see Jesus, and not hanging around a Jerusalem tomb but back in their usual homeland of the Galilee. As it happens, here in Matthew the angel turns out to be only half right. They do indeed see the resurrected Jesus in the environs of the tomb, but only so that he himself can reinforce the angel’s message that the proper place to look for him is in Galilee, the place of their normal lives. Encountering the resurrected Jesus was not supposed to be about an experience on a special day and at a special place; it was to be a part of their normal lives — and of our normal daily lives. That is the challenge of Easter faith in the 21st century. After two thousand years of church history, both the glorious work of God done through the church and the horrible corruption we humans even within the church have continued to wreak upon God’s creative acts, it is easy to proclaim, "Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!" That proclamation means so many things that it almost means nothing, as Christianity’s critics are quick to point out. The challenge of Easter is not to believe that Jesus lives even now with God in heaven, or even that he will one day return with apocalyptic vengeance. No the challenge of Easter faith is to believe that Jesus still lives among us. The challenge is to honestly expect to see his presence transforming the world through the very divine power that raised him from the dead. So, where are we to find this resurrected Jesus? Well, again and again we keep coming here, to the church. But, folks, — as scandalous as it may sound — that is like Mary and her friends returning to the tomb. Yes, despite even the expectation of the angel, Jesus is at times encountered here. But this is not the place where we are to be spending all our time looking for him. Church is the place we come to once again hear the message that Christ is risen. It is the place we come to be reminded that — just as Jesus himself said — Christ has gone ahead of us out into the world. That is where we are to find him, not at the tomb. We need to be looking in the right places if we are going to see the living Christ. We need to see Christ in the deeds of justice and grace performed by others in his name. We need to be looking in our own actions for the times when his life is made real in us. That may be the most challenging truth about Easter. Jesus was not raised from the dead so that he could live eternally with God. Jesus was raised, in the words of Matthew’s Gospel, so that he could go "ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him" in the common world of your daily lives. Nor does Jesus go ahead of us in life so that we can see him in heaven and live eternally with God. Jesus was raised in order to live among us now. And when we encounter this risen Jesus, we too are already raised to a new life. Jesus’ resurrection and our own is not about living in God’s presence in heaven; it is about living in God’s presence in the here and now. Or better, it is about living God’s presence here and now. If we find that truth and experience it in our very being, then we have found what Easter is all about. But it will only happen when you are looking in the right place. Copyright © 2008 by Timothy B. Cargal. All rights reserved.
|
|
Send mail to
webmaster@northwoodchurch.com with
questions or comments about this web site.
|