Easter Sunday: THE CROSS IS EMPTY NOW

Isaiah 65:17-18
For I am about to create new heavens
    and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered
    or come to mind.
But be glad and rejoice forever
    in what I am creating;
for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy,
    and its people as a delight.

Acts 10:34-43
Then Peter began to speak to them: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality,  but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all.  That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced:  how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.  We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree;  but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.  He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead.  All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”

Christ is Risen.  Alleluia.  Indeed.  It has been a hard Lent.  Just because I am a preacher it does not automatically follow that I am a masochist.  I do not remotely enjoy diving down deeply into the suffering Jesus went through for us all.  I would – and do – infinitely prefer to focus on what Jesus’ life and death mean for us today.  I really prefer to spend time with the Christ who lives in us today, rather than the one who died for us back then.  But you cannot understand one without spending time with the other.  We can’t know the living Jesus without spending time with the dying Jesus. But – we’ve done that – and today is Easter – and the cross is empty now.  The suffering has been endured and now is the time for wonder.

He lives!  What an extraordinary statement!  This is not only our experience today – those of us who have actually experienced the living Christ in our own lives, here and now -- but it is the word of those who were there at the time – those who saw him taken away by the soldiers, those who watched him die, who took his lifeless body down from the cross and sealed it away in the earth.  That should be the end of the story – but that’s not the way we hear it – that’s not the story they wrote down – the one we read about 2000 years later. The one we are here to celebrate today.

Christ arose: people have argued for centuries as to whether or not this resurrection is meant to be an actual physical event or a metaphor for a spiritual resurrection.  Believe what you will – for me, it doesn’t matter.  Because what does matter is that he lives.

Our first reading today, from Isaiah, tells us that God was doing a new thing:
I am about to create new heavens and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.
Jesus was and is that new thing God is doing.  Why then – if God is doing a new thing in Jesus – must we be worried about how it was done? The important truth for us is that within days after he died, Jesus was discovered to still be moving among and speaking with his friends.  Through all human history, this is the man who refused to stay dead.  Whether he physically walked among us for 50 days doesn’t really matter. What matters is that he lived then and he lives now.

However it came to happen, have you ever noticed in the various gospel accounts, how often, after his resurrection, Jesus is recognized among his friends while they are at table together?  Jesus, of course, set it up that way even before his death.  Several of us gathered here Thursday evening to recall that last meal together when Jesus told them that his very body was present right there in the bread they were eating and his life’s blood in the wine they were drinking and sharing.   Bread and cup. 

Mark tells us that after his death Jesus appeared to the eleven while they were eating together in the place where they were hiding.  Luke tells us the story of the travelers to Emmaus who recognized him “in the breaking of the bread.”  John recounts the fishermen-disciples coming in at dawn after being out fishing all night, only to find someone they didn’t recognize at first giving them advice on where to cast their nets, and how later they found him again tending a fire on the beach and offering them breakfast.  And then they recognized him.  Bread and cup.

After those first frantic weeks of shock and despair at Jesus’ absence, and wonder at stories of his reappearance, the handful of people who had loved him and followed him began getting together for comfort and company.  They’d all bring their own food and they’d sit around and tell their Jesus stories.  Once again, bread and cup.

It is really important to take just a minute here to recognize just what a small number of people this would have been.  This was not a large movement - they weren’t a big enough group to get any mention at all in secular histories of the times.  Not right at the start.  Maybe a couple of hundred people, max, in all the world.  Keep that in mind.  It’s important for what comes next.


Anyway – they would gather to eat and share their Jesus stories – and somehow, when they did this, something happened.  Somehow, they began to recognize that he was with them – somehow – there in all those small rooms – he was right there with them – somehow, they hadn’t lost him at all.  He was right there - he had never left them.


And, no, I am not talking just about memories here.  There is much more than simple memories at work in these gatherings.  There is power.  The power of the living Christ.

Galilean fisherfolk, and tax collectors, and housewives did not have power in that time and place.  They were a subject people conquered and occupied by the mightiest military force in the world at that time.  In the world’s terms, they were truly power-less.  They were even a minority among their own people, having been kicked out of the temple and labeled  no longer true sons of Abraham.  Remember how I emphasized how few of them there were at the start?

But somehow, these few, “power-less” people managed to change the world.  These powerless people turned out, in fact, to be anything but powerless because the power and might of the living Lord Jesus was with them and in them – was there in the middle of their story-telling and their meals.

Having found Jesus once again in their midst, this handful began telling the world about it all.  Sometime later in time - weeks, months, but not very long – Peter recounted this story to the Gentiles of Caesarea:
The message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced:  how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.  We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree;  but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.  He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead.

We are witnesses, those early Christians said, we saw this and we experienced this, and empowered by the living Christ within them, they would not let the story die, and they changed the course of history.  That handful of powerless people.  With Jesus with them, his followers spread out across the world, inviting others to join them in the breaking of the bread so that they too would come to recognize the Risen Lord among and in them.  Reaching millions more people than Jesus in one physical body could ever reach.  

So we here today, 2000 years later, on the far side of the world, speaking a language those long-ago Christian wouldn’t recognize, living in a world so very unlike theirs, we come together to our table to share a meal – bread and cup -- and to share our own Jesus stories – and we, just like those first folks so long ago, know that he lives – here and now.  We know  because we recognize him in every one of us.  He lives.  They did their best on Good Friday to stop him -- those priests and soldiers and governors – but it wasn’t remotely good enough.  He lives.  And we, like the first Christians, are witnesses to this glorious truth.


So rejoice, people of God – you Easter people.  Christ is risen.  Alleluia.  He is risen, indeed.  Alleluia. Alleluia.