Easter 3
Year B
St. Stephen’s, Orinda
Great things, Thou hast done, O Lord, my God. I would name them and proclaim them, but they are more than I can tell. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.
On Monday, the Warrens were lucky enough to be in the path of totality for the solar eclipse. It was a family trip seven years in the making. I say family trip and because pouring over meteorological data and cloud forecasts for three days isn’t the stuff of a laid-back vacation. But, luckily, we were able to enjoy an unobstructed view of the eclipse as we threaded the needle of several clouds floating overhead.
I have described the eclipse as “evocative.” It seemed to pull the emotion out of you. You can not be unaffected by such a strange and other-worldly experience as a total eclipse. For some witnessing the celestial dance overhead, it was euphoric and exhilarating. Many people had tears in their eyes, caught off guard by how arresting it was to see stars in the middle of the afternoon. While we couldn’t hear birds roosting, we did see several bats begin to fly overhead. Others watched in stunned silence. It was startling, terrifying to some, there was joy and disbelief and wondering.
If I didn’t know better, it would seem like I was right in the middle of a resurrection appearance! Listen again to how Luke describes the disciples: “They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost…While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering.”
Startled, terrified, disbelieving, and still wondering—we’re not exactly breeding confidence, are we?
There is a chasm between how the church remembers the disciples and how they are portrayed in the gospels. After the Ascension, the disciples cast lots to decide who will take Judas’ place as an apostle. Matthias is selected, and the church recalls that of the thirteen apostles (remember Paul will be selected late in time as an apostle), twelve died as martyrs. Only John dies of old age. Tradition says that the apostles were crucified, beheaded, skinned alive, stabbed, and stoned. There was a truth that these apostles were willing, sometimes even eager, to sacrifice their lives to. Over the centuries, the Church has rightly lauded the faith and the witness of these apostles. But they weren’t always pillars of the faith. For almost the entirety of Jesus’ ministry, they are confused, selfish, timid, and dense. I can only think of two episodes in all of the gospels where Jesus actually praises the disciples. 98% of the time he is chiding them for their lack of vision, the stubbornness, and their faithlessness.
And here they are, gathered with the Resurrected Christ, and all we hear of the disciples is that they are startled, terrified, disbelieving, and still wondering. In Luke’s gospel, this episode immediately follows the appearance along the Road to Emmaus. This is actually the first time in which Jesus is gathered with all of his disciples. And so, their bewilderment makes sense.
Death was absolute and invincible. But to see someone they knew brutally executed on the cross, to see Jesus up and about—and not just up and about, but inviting them to see the wounds of his crucifixion…it’s incomprehensible.
And believe it or not, that’s the good news. You might think that the disciples response of being startled, terrified, disbelieving, and still wondering is just another in a long line of their apparent failures. But I think that this is different.
The wondering, disbelieving is the start of understanding the outlandish truth of Easter.
How do the disciples go from pig-headed ne’er do wells to pillars of the church? It starts here on Easter evening.
There was nothing that could have prepared the disciples for the truth of the resurrection. They might have heard Jesus talk about his rejection and resurrection—but resurrection, being brought back from the cruel fate of the cross was something that had to be seen in order to be believed. And even then, the fact that someone had come back from the finality of death—it was so shocking that even seeing it for yourself somehow didn’t even make sense.
But there’s a difference between making sense and being true.
Because the only way to get from A to B, the only way the disciples can move from numbskulls to heroes, is to be dumbfounded by the resurrection. The only plausible explanation to how the disciples can preach with power and conviction is to believe that something remarkable, something absolutely earthshaking changed the very trajectory of their lives.
Just three days earlier, Peter was shamed and frightened to be even associated with Jesus. He denied him three times. All the disciples were faithless. They scattered and ran, hoping to save their own lives. But in just a few days time, we hear Peter open challenging the temple leadership in Jerusalem, inviting people into the fellowship and faith of Christ resurrected.
They finally get it. As Luke tells us, “Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.”
They were indeed. And now, we are the witnesses. Now, we have to process the news of Christ resurrected for ourselves, as scary and confusing, and startling as it might be, it is still true. But more importantly, the news of the resurrection, the knowledge of Christ brought back from death’s strong bands has to change us. If we believe that God resurrected Jesus, then we have to believe that our lives are now changed.
We can still be scared, questioning, and confused…but the message of Christ’s resurrection will change us. The question is how.
A few years ago at Easter, a study came out about Church growth. They found that churches experiencing growth—92% of them were led by clergy who believed in the literal resurrection. Of churches that were experiencing decline, only 48% believed in the resurrection.
If Jesus was just a simple teacher who taught us to be nice to one another…its a nice story, but it has no claim on our lives. If, however, we believe in the resurrection, then we believe that God is a God of transformation, a God who is stronger than the forces of entropy and death. A God who seeks to be reconciled with creation and gives us the tools to be reconciled with one another through the example of his Son. That ’s what the resurrection changes. Jesus isn’t just a nice teacher—an Ancient Near East version of Mister Rogers—his resurrection is proof that what he has taught us about God is the truth. The resurrection changes everything. And as the sediment settles from the earth shaking news of Christ’s resurrection, we see the world differently.
The Good News this morning is that we are given time to contemplate, wonder, and marvel at the news of Jesus brought back from the dead. It is a report that wows and amazes, it might even be a touch intimidating…but when we work out for ourselves what this news means, I promise, everything will be different.
Amen.
