Year C
 Isaiah 65:17-25
 Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
 Acts 10:34-43
 Luke 24:1-12
 
May the words of my mouth O God…  speak your truth…

The Gospels are silent…  about what happened after Jesus’ body was wrapped in a linen cloth…  and placed in Joseph of Arimethea’s rock-hewn tomb…  the women who had come from Galilee on Friday saw the tomb…  and saw just where and just how his body had been laid…  but because the Sabbath was beginning…  they returned so they could prepare the spices and ointments they’d use after the Sabbath ended…  and from sunset on Friday until Sunday morning…  they rested according to the commandment…

They saw with their own eyes where Jesus’ body had been placed…  but when they returned on the first day of the week…  perhaps recalling the first day of creation…  the stone was rolled away from the entrance…  and when they went in…  they didn’t find his body…  there was an empty space where Jesus was supposed to be…  a void…  and in that Sabbath silence…  just like in the same moment in Genesis…  God created something new…  out of irrepressible and unconditional love…  and even though the four Gospels’ accounts of the discovery of the empty tomb…  are significantly different from each other…  it doesn’t really matter that the testimony of witnesses can’t agree on the number of women…  the number of angels…  the timing of the tomb’s opening…  the appearance or absence of Jesus…  or in the message which was given to be conveyed…  it doesn’t really matter…  because all of the accounts tell the same story of life out of death…  and yet…  even in their differences…  they hint at what today’s two men in dazzling clothes asked the women… with their faces low bowed to the ground…  perhaps even touching the dust…  Why do you look for the living among the dead… 

The Gospel is silent about what happened next…  but I’m aware of some interesting questions…  the text says…  the men said…  so did the two men speak in unison… when did the women stand back up…  after that first question…  or not until the two men stopped speaking…   were the women able to look on the angel’s faces…  when and how did the two angels depart…  did the women talk among themselves before they left…  were any of them overwhelmed by the presence of the holy…  like Peter may have been during the Transfiguration…  and did they acknowledge to each other that they probably wouldn’t be believed…

And they weren’t…  their words seemed an idle tale…  but still…  after hearing the women’s testimony…  Peter got up and ran to the tomb…  stooped down…   looked in…  and saw the linen cloths by themselves…  you see…  even when we do believe what someone tells us…  even when they describe an event in such detail that we know they couldn’t possibly have made it up…  credibility can still be strained…  and it may be…  that even if a man had come back…   and told the apostles what the women told them…  Peter would still have gone…  he just must have been one of those people who had to see it for himself…  because when we experience something with our five senses…  it becomes real in a different way…

Just three days ago…  we returned to communion in two kinds…  for two years…  we have abstained from the chalice citing an abundance of caution…  and while our theology strongly affirms…  is adamant…   that when we receive in one kind…  we receive the benefits of both kinds…  because Christ is contained fully in each…  even when we believe fully that we lose nothing by receiving bread alone…  we all know…  it’s just not the same…  we want to drink deeply of that which gives life…  we want our spiritual thirsts to be quenched with Christ’s life giving love…  so we’re reassured that we’re forgiven our sin…  reassured that we have been united with Christ in a resurrection like his…  reassured that we’re not alone in resisting evil…  the problem with Easter is that once we celebrate…  here…  Christ’s victory over sin…   death…   and the devil…   we go back out into a world where sin…   death…   and the evil are still stark realities… 

We are still navigating deep political divisions…  horrific evil being perpetrated on Ukrainian civilians and catastrophic destruction of property…  regular mass shootings in this country…  and police shootings in our own city…  laws aimed at making it more difficult for some groups of people to vote…  a new Don’t Say Gay law in Florida…  an emerging COVID variant which may set us back…

And so for me…  and for many others I know…  our Easter celebrations may be a bit muted this year…  our iron-clad faith remains in tact…  but the grace through which we slosh…  may be tainted with fatigue…  with trauma and grief…  with us feeling hesitant to tell our tale…  for fear of not being believed…  it may feel a little bit like receiving communion in only one kind…

But I wonder too…  how many of us continue to search for life in the midst of death…  Pastor Nancy Claire Pittman wrote…  we may want to tend the corpses of long dead ideas and ideals…  we may cling to former visions of ourselves and our churches…   as if they might come back to life so long as we hold onto them…   we may grasp our loved ones too tightly…   refusing to allow them to change…   to become bigger…   or smarter…   or stronger…   we may choose to stay with what we know in our hearts to be dead…   because it is safe…  that’s why the words of these unworldly messengers remind us to stop hanging onto the dead…   and to move into new life…   that the Holy One dwells…   wherever new life bursts forth…

And even though…  even if…  our experience of Easter is muted somewhat this year…  because of everything going on around us…  I’m confident that most people from two-thousand years ago would think we’ve got it made in the shade…  that the challenges we face would seem like nothing compared to their daily struggles…  but even more so…  Christ’s resurrection and promise of eternal life…  would be like going from face down in the dust…  to having robes put around us…  and sandals put on our feet…  and rings placed on our fingers…  because we were dead…  and have now been found alive…

In an essay entitled Return to Tipasa…  the French novelist Albert Camus…  responding to his own life’s adversities…  wrote…  In the middle of winter…  I at last discovered that there was in me… an invincible summer…  this invincibility is Emmanuel…  God with us…  it is…  as Thomas Merton wrote…  a point at the center of our being of pure truth…  a spark which belongs entirely to God…  it is like a pure diamond…  blazing with the invisible light of heaven…  and it is this light of heaven…  which gives us hope…  and makes joyous our Easter celebrations…  not because of our experience here and now…  but because of how incomprehensibly glorious our experience will be…  when the fearful finality of our deaths really do…   turn out to be just idle tales…  and for that we say Happy Easter…