Sermon delivered Easter Day, Sunday, March 31, 2013, at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Franklin. TN. (Scripture passages: Year C: Acts 10:34-43; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24; 1 Corinthians 15:19-26; Luke 24:1-12)
To observe Christianity from the outside, filtered through the lens of American culture, it might seem that Christmas is a bigger deal than Easter. After all, we see decorations on homes and town squares, hear Christmas music playing in stores and restaurants, and receive Christmas cards and presents from friends and family. By contrast, the cultural celebration of Easter is much more muted. Sure, you might see a few giant Easter baskets in some neighbors’ yards, but nothing like the total light extravaganza that takes place in December. Though the greeting card companies stock the aisles with Easter cards, they just don’t seem to be as popular as that annual Christmas letter. And when was the last time you heard “Welcome, happy morning” or any other Easter hymn blaring over the loudspeaker at the grocery store? And as far as the secular mascots go, everyone knows that Santa Claus is way cooler (and usually brings way better presents) than the Easter Bunny.
But despite the message sent by our culture, Easter is actually the most important Christian holiday, even more important than Christmas. The Easter message – that Jesus was raised from the dead – is the central claim of Christianity, the core message of our faith. It is also significantly more controversial than the message of Christmas – that Jesus was born. Perhaps the wider culture prefers Christmas to Easter because it is easier to affirm that Jesus was born than to affirm that he was raised from the dead. Even people who do not acknowledge Jesus as the Son of God or the Messiah can accept the historical fact that he existed, and thus, that he was born. But our Easter faith demands something much more challenging of us than an acknowledgement of Jesus’s birth and a respect for his teachings. It demands the proclamation of an outrageous claim – that Jesus has been raised from the dead.
Jesus’s Resurrection is not accepted as historical fact in the way that his birth is because it is not universally acknowledged, nor was it universally experienced. In Peter’s famous speech to the Gentiles in Caesarea that we heard from Acts today, he tells them that “God raised [Jesus] on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people, but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses” (Acts 10:40-41, emphasis added). It certainly would have been a lot easier to “prove” that the Resurrection happened if God had allowed Jesus to appear to all the people rather than only to a select few. But as it is, the evidence for the Resurrection is limited to the experiences of a relatively small number of people, whose testimonies we are asked to accept on faith. And once we have accepted it, we are to join them in their witness, to spread the message of Jesus’s Resurrection and ask others to accept our testimony on faith as well.
So why didn’t God allow Jesus to appear “to all the people” after his Resurrection? If God is all-powerful and desires to bring all people to faith in Christ, why did God not make the Resurrection of Jesus as undeniable as the fact of his birth? Why didn’t he appear to the whole world and prove his triumph over death and the powers of sin? Why would God choose such a messy and inefficient means of delivering such an important message? Although we will never have definitive answers to these questions in this life, this humble means of spreading the news of the Resurrection does seem to be in keeping with what we know of the nature of God through the earthly life of Jesus.
Despite Jewish expectations that the Messiah would overthrow the occupying Roman government and restore the kingdom of Israel, Jesus arrives as a baby, born in the most humble of circumstances, in the ancient near Eastern equivalent of a rest stop, to a poor, virtually unknown family. The star of Bethlehem and the stories of the magi coming from the East notwithstanding, his birth was probably largely unnoticed in the world’s terms. When he began preaching and teaching as an adult, he did not seek fame and power, but traveled humbly on foot in the midst of a community of people from all walks of life, but primarily those who were poor. He taught his disciples that in contrast to the world’s rulers who lord their power over their subjects, it should not be so among his followers. Instead, he taught them that “whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all” (Mark 10:42-45). His “triumphal entry” into Jerusalem before the Passover, which we commemorated last week on Palm Sunday, was not a grand military processional led by a powerful king on a horse ready to lead a revolution against the occupying powers, but a peaceful and joyful celebration led by a peasant riding a donkey. The night before his death, he takes the role of a servant in washing his disciples feet, and he goes willingly to death on the cross, executed in a shameful manner among common criminals. He has no crown but the crown of thorns, no throne but the cross.
And yet, despite the utter humility of his life, we who call ourselves by his name – Christians – have been unable to resist the temptation to use royal and militaristic language to talk about his death and Resurrection, saying that he has “won the victory” over death, and that he now “reigns” in heaven as “king.” We talk about Jesus “conquering” death and the grave, but Jesus himself did not seem to be interested in “conquering” much of anything, but rather in transforming things through mercy, prayer, and service. Even after his Resurrection, Jesus is no more the powerful king some of his disciples wanted him to be than he was before his death.
In Luke’s account of the story, Jesus’s first appearance to the disciples after his Resurrection is on the Road to Emmaus, which comes immediately after the Gospel passage we read today. Although the angels at the tomb appeared in dazzling white clothes, Jesus appears as a regular guy walking down the street, and the disciples don’t even recognize him. It’s not until they sit down to eat together, when he reenacts the four actions of the Last Supper – taking, blessing, breaking, and giving the bread to them – that their eyes are opened and they recognize who he is. After his Resurrection, Jesus is not a regal king riding in as a triumphant conqueror, but a regular guy walking down the road and sharing a meal with his companions – doing the same kind of thing he had always done when he was among them before his death. In his Resurrected life, as in his earthly life, Jesus reminds us that the extraordinary is mediated to us through the ordinary.
Perhaps Jesus did not appear “to all the people” after his Resurrection because the God we know in Christ is not a God who forces himself on others through showy displays of power, but who comes among us humbly and gently, among the outcast and the lowly, in ways that make it easy for those of us expecting power and looking for “triumph” to miss him entirely. Perhaps it is fitting, then, that the Resurrection was not an event that drew universal recognition beyond the shadow of a doubt, that it took place quietly and humbly, in an unmarked tomb, and was witnessed by a small group of unassuming, mostly poor people, and that the news about it spread through the messy and inefficient means of word of mouth. Because in this, we see the truth that Jesus taught us time after time in his early ministry, that God uses the ordinary to mediate the extraordinary.
God used the testimony of regular first-century people to spread the news about the Resurrection, and God continues to use regular people like you and me to spread the message of the Gospel today – because we, too, are called to be witnesses to the Resurrection. Although we were not among those who experienced Jesus in the resurrected flesh in Jerusalem, we have a continual opportunity before us to, like the disciples on the Road to Emmaus, meet the risen Lord in the breaking of the bread. Each time we celebrate the Eucharist, we have an opportunity to encounter the presence of Christ in the elements of the bread and wine. The Resurrection is as extraordinary as the ultimate undoing of the powers of death and sin and as ordinary as bread and wine. It is as distant as an empty tomb in first-century Palestine and as near as the wafer on your tongue. And so, as we carry on the testimony of the apostles that “Christ has died, Christ has risen, and Christ will come again,” we become witnesses with them to the Resurrection. As we go forth nourished from this table, our experience here enables us to join with them in proclaiming, “Alleluia! Christ is risen!"
