Easter Day

Acts 10:34-43
Colossians 3:1-4
Luke 24:1-10

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

I am delighted to welcome you here this morning, and to express my delight I am going to tell you about an article from the Lawyers Journal published by the Massachusetts Bar Association. That sounds boring, but it's quite amusing. My understanding is that trial lawyers should always know how the witness is going to respond to their questions. The Lawyers Journal reported some exchanges that didn't live up to expectations. Here's a corny example:

Lawyer: All of your response must be oral, OK? What school did you go to?
Witness: Oral.

But there were better ones:

Lawyer: You were shot in the fracas?
Witness: No, I was shot midway between the fracas and the navel.

If you watch Law and Order, you are used to sarcastic medical examiners, and Massachusetts seems to have its share.

Lawyer: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
Witness: The autopsy started around 8:30 p.m.
Lawyer: And Mr. Dennington was dead at the time?
Witness: No, he was sitting on the table wondering why I was doing autopsy.

Lawyer jokes are clichéd; and unlike some I greatly admire and respect lawyers, but my favorite lawyer joke is this:

Lawyer: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
Witness: No.
Lawyer: Did you check for blood pressure?
Witness: No.
Lawyer: Did you check for breathing?
Witness: No.
Lawyer: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
Witness: No.
Lawyer: How can you be so sure, doctor?
Witness: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
Lawyer: But could the patient have still been alive nevertheless?
Witness: It is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law somewhere.

If you were in the jury at the time, you're thinking, "The lawyer is a dingbat. He does not know how to handle a witness. He's blowing his case."

All of us have, or should have, in effect sat in the jury box and deeply pondered the resurrection of Jesus. If we take it seriously, it demands stiff cross-examination, critical inquiry, doubt. That is the proper response from us. None of us knows anyone who has been brutally tortured and killed to have risen from the dead. We would also be justified in having doubts about the Church, the witness of the resurrection. The Church errs and sins. We've all heard of Jonathan Edwards' sermon called 'Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God.' At best, that title is a misleading, inaccurate image of reality. A title of a recent Garry Wills article put it better: 'God in the Hands of Angry Sinners.' ⁽¹⁾ That's much more accurate, because unfortunately, that's the way Christians are sometimes, using God for human agendas, many of which are quite unpleasant. We don't always proclaim and live the love of God as we should. I'm sorry for it, at times ashamed about it. But as with other witnesses, that doesn't mean Christian testimony about the resurrection is not true.

When we read S. Luke's account of the resurrection, we get a sense that the disciples felt a great deal of shock, confusion, doubt, anxiety, even fear about it. We heard that women who were part of the inner circle of disciples, S. Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, the same women who were at the crucifixion, the same women who assisted at our Lord's burial - most of the other disciples having fled for their lives, these three women and some other women went to his tomb on Sunday morning and found it empty. They met two men in dazzling clothes, presumably angels, who told the women that Jesus is risen. This bizarre sequence of events startled the women.

The women reported their experience, their witness, to the apostles and the other disciples, who didn't welcome it as the most important news of their life, who didn't eagerly accept this joyous news, but rather dismissed it as "idle chatter." That's understandable in itself, that the disciples refused to believe the women, and all the more so in a culture that generally disregarded the testimony of women. But the disciples would not have believed if they had heard the same report from men. The disciples don't get it. They don't get it until they themselves have an experience of the risen Lord appearing to them, and even then Luke says they still disbelieved. They were still incredulous, and at the same time full of joy. (Lk 24:41) Belief in the resurrection came very gradually; faith takes time and reflection.

The disciples loved Jesus. They had left everything to follow him. During his ministry, Jesus had said mysterious things to them that he would be killed and then rise the third day. Even though they had been told that this would happen, the disciples didn't believe it when it did happen. Even though "the resurrection is not a departure from what Jesus said and did in his earthly ministry but rather is its culmination and the fulfillment of God's purposes," the disciples didn't believe it when it did happen. ⁽²⁾ Easter belief is not facile. It's not something sensible, rational, inquisitive people naturally accept. If you are sitting in a jury and expect a water-tight argument for the resurrection, if you want proof of the resurrection beyond a reasonable doubt, the Church can't satisfy you; no testimony is going to convince you, no matter that the Bible tells us hundreds of people experienced the risen Christ and testified to it.

Faith does not come from sitting passively in a jury box. Faith comes through commitment. We have to commit ourselves to following Christ, to identifying with the story of Jesus, to becoming a contributing part of his community, his body - the Church. The more we commit ourselves, the more we sacrifice, the more likely faith will grow; and, the more life we'll find in ourselves.

Again, we should have no illusion that we are committing ourselves to a perfect institution. Absolutely not! The Church is both human and divine, and since humanity is part of it, it sometimes disappoints and behaves shamefully, but it also fills us with purpose and hope. It makes our lives meaningful because we are part of something far bigger than ourselves. We let go of our anxieties and our self-absorption. We allow ourselves to be possessed by love and goodness and mercy and humility. We have a greater sense of self, of knowing that God loves us, and therefore we're alright.

When we commit ourselves to Christ in a way we are committing ourselves more fully to life, all of life, the good and the bad, the happiness and the sadness, the triumph and the tragedy. That's what Jesus did. He knew defeat, but in it was victory; he knew suffering, but in it was purpose; he knew weakness, but in it was strength; he knew abandonment, but in it was fulfillment. We want Jesus' story to be our story: his passion, his suffering, his death has been made into joy and life today. That means the pain and troubles and sorrow and sin that our so much a part of our own lives do not have to be the final word.

A little while ago a friend sent me a card with this note:

I remember a no doubt apocryphal story about William James. He was lecturing on cosmology, and, in those days, ordinary people - having no T.V. - often attended lectures. After he finished, a smaller group gathered to ask questions, but they were interrupted by an old woman who waved her cane menacingly. "How may I help you, madam?" asked James. "Professor James, everything you said was rubbish. The world rests upon the back of a giant turtle," asserted the woman. "Ah, yes. I understand that idea. But upon what, ma'am, does the turtle rest?" The woman waved and then pointed her cane directly at James. "You can't fool me, you fancy professor. It's turtles all the way down." ⁽³⁾

If we want a happy, fulfilling life — as God intended ours to be—sooner or later we have to have some explanation for life, some coherent and noble basis. Much of the world acts as if it is "turtles all the way down." That's essentially what they make of life. The Church says it's the love of Jesus. The love that triumphs on Easter morning is the love that can renew our lives and change us. If we try to live the way he did, if we try to unite our personality with Christ-like character, then we know the truth that the poor and the mourners and the meek and the righteous and the merciful and the peacemakers and the persecuted, that they are blessed, precious children of God. S. Paul says that we are here to grow in faith, hope, and charity; we are here to have love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. (Gal. 5:22-23) Easter is the victory of these. When we allow Jesus' love to change our lives, we know the reality of the resurrection. Have a happy Easter.

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

1. Garry Wills, 'God in the Hand of Angry Sinners,' The New York Review of Books, Vol. 51, No. 6, 8 April 2004.

2. Paul Scott Wilson, The Lectionary Commentary: The Gospels, Roger E. Van Harn, ed., Eerdmans (2001), p. 460.

3. Mark Steitz.