Easter Expectations: Not Here

Easter Sermon 4-21-19

(The resurrection story from Luke was read at the beginning of the service, then at the Gospel we read the Road to Emmaus) 

Grace to you and peace from God our creator and from our risen lord and savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

What are you expecting this morning, on Easter morning, 2019?

Where you expecting that, after wandering in the wilderness of Lent, you would come out on the other side, to rise this Easter morning completely refreshed, restored, and renewed? But life doesn’t exactly work out in the way we expect it to, does it? I mean, did any of you really expect to wake up, come to Easter Sunday service, thinking the pastor would have purple hair? Probably not.

But then again, I’ve done a lot of expecting over the years, as I’m sure many of you have.  And for me, reality has more often than not fallen far short of those expectations. And, like many of you, I woke up in the darkness of this morning to the very real, very present realities of pain, brokenness, and suffering in our world and in our lives. Our lives are still in the same mess that they were in yesterday. We still find ourselves buried in dark tombs, or walking down the roads of our lives, perplexed at what is happening around us. Death and violence surround us.

And yet…. here we are, on Easter morning, I’m here. You’re here. Life is poking up out of the ground all around us here. And Easter morning has arrived here, and it DOES change things - just not in the ways we expect.

Really, this whole week tells the story of the unexpected: How Jesus was welcomed into town with a parade at the beginning of the week and being nailed to cross by the end of it. How Jesus shared his last meal with the very people who would betray him, deny him, and run away as Jesus was arrested, tried, mocked, and beaten before being nailed to a cross. Jesus, King of the universe, was hastily laid in a borrowed tomb.  

The women came to that place of death very early in the morning,  with some expectations of their own. They expected to be alone with their grief. They expected to find the body of their beloved Jesus, so that they could care for him one last time by anointing his body with spices, as was their custom. They expected to find death in a place OF death, as we all would.

But instead, the women found the stone sealing his tomb had been rolled away. Instead, the women found a grave with no body. Instead, the women found two men with a question for them: “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” What the women found was the stunning revelation that Jesus was not there. He has risen.

And then the women remembered. They remembered what Jesus had been saying all along. They remembered that he must be betrayed, abandoned, and handed over to be crucified, and three days later he would rise again. And then the women proclaimed. They returned to the remaining eleven disciples and all the rest of Jesus’s followers and told them the amazing and unexpected sight they had just witnessed.

On Thursday we remembered the night in which Jesus was betrayed, and Jesus’ command to us to eat of his body and drink of his blood, in remembrance of him. And these women did just that, on that first Easter morning. These women remembered, and then they proclaimed.

They were the first to share the GOOD WORD, that death no longer has the LAST WORD. Death has been swallowed up in victory, Christ’s victory, the victory of life over death, in all its many forms, calling us out from inside of all of the dark tombs we may find ourselves in. We who have been buried in the darkness of tombs have also been buried with Jesus in our baptisms, as Paul wrote. And that means that we will be united with Jesus in his resurrection. And it begins now, this very morning. New life sprouts up out of the empty shell of death, right now.

The Apostle Paul asks, “Death, where is your sting?”  And we know the answer. - NOT. HERE!

And along with the women that first Easter morning, in this place of death, we wonder, “Where is Jesus?”  - NOT. HERE!!

Why do we look for the living among the dead? We expect to find death in a place of death, but Jesus has done the unexpected. He has risen from the dead. He IS NOT HERE. 

He WAS there in the tomb with us, but he is not here any longer. Instead, he has gone on ahead of us, to meet up us out there on the dusty roads we travel. And he has won the victory for us, so that we who have been buried in our own tombs with Jesus may be raised in his glorious resurrection, now and in the life to come.

Awesome. Well. That sound great… but what about tonight, when we are in the throes of a baked ham and chocolate bunny hangover? What about tomorrow, when we have to go back to work or school, or back to our regularly scheduled, “pretty average at best” lives? What can we really expect from the resurrection out there?

Two disciples were traveling from Jerusalem to Emmaus on Easter afternoon, wondering the same thing. I like to think they were husband and wife, debriefing the crazy 3-day weekend they just had… when Jesus appears to them, hidden in plain sight. Jesus asked about what they were discussing, and they gladly shared with him the whole perplexing story. So, Jesus told THEM the whole of GOD’S story, from start to finish. Then THESE two followers of Jesus REMEMBERED Jesus’ message of welcome and took it to heart – they invited him to share a meal and their Air B-n-B for the night.

It wasn’t until Jesus blessed and broke the bread – HELLO holy communion? Then they KNEW that this was JESUS! And so they RAN – 7 WHOLE MILES all the way BACK to Jerusalem, that same night, just to tell the story to the other disciples of what they had seen – The Risen Jesus!!!!

What would make you run seven miles in the dark? Would it be for something that you didn’t expect? That must have been some “holy heartburn.”

How has Jesus shown up in unexpected ways along on your dusty highways and byways? I bet he has. He certainly has for me.

Three years ago, the last time we read from the Gospel of Luke at Easter, I drove early in the morning to my former church’s Easter Sunrise worship, held in their memorial garden.  It was still dark out, and my divorce had been official for six weeks by then – the same number of weeks that is in Lent. I wasn’t expecting to feel one iota of joy that Easter morning. As I drove in the pre-dawn, deserted New Jersey streets, a song from Panic! At the Disco came on, from a CD a dear friend had given me with a special playlist she had picked out. When the words of the song, “All you sinners stand up, sing Hallelujah.” came blaring over my car speakers, somehow, at that moment, I knew everything was going to be ok. And I could sing the rest of the Hallelujahs that day and mean it.

Now, was my life a piece of cake after that? No way. But I didn’t expect it to be. The very next week my dad was in the hospital back in Wisconsin and I took a last-minute flight to see him before his successful quintuple bypass, and to help him recover. But it was ok. Because I was ok. Because Jesus shows up when you least expect him to. It was true for the disciples on the road to Emmaus, and it was true for me. I remembered. And now, like the women and the tomb, and the couple on the road, I have told you my story. Now it’s your turn.  

What were you expecting this morning, on Easter 2019? Where you expecting to find Jesus here, in church? Because he IS NOT HERE…. At least he is not in this building on a permanent basis. He’s out THERE – he is out there on the road with you… he is wherever there is breading of bread. And sometimes that even happens here in church. Hallelujah. Christ is risen.

He is risen indeed, Alleluia.

Thanks be to God, Amen.