IN our gospel lesson for today Luke says that the disciples…Peter in particular, got to the tomb on Easter morning, and it was empty. Then, they went back home.

Went back home? What! They didn’t stand at the entrance and sing Alleluia!
Kind of reminds you of the two disciples in Luke on the way to Emmaus. We’re so used to the story you miss the oddness. "Some women told us that Jesus had been raised from the dead, but we had already planned to have supper over in Emmaus, so we couldn't change our reservations."

A man is raised from the dead and you can't cancel lunch? How dumb are these disciples?

Marcus Borg of the Jesus Seminar, (group trying to apply scientific means to prove authenticity of the Bible) thinks the disciples had an experience. They said, “Wasn't it great being with Jesus before they killed him? You remember those great stories he told? The lectures, er, sermons? Just thinking about it makes him seem almost still here. Yep, he is still here. Let's all close our eyes and believe real hard that he's still here. Okay?”

Hey, Jesus Seminar, the disciples weren't that creative! These were not imaginative minds we're dealing with here. They were the sort of people who could see an empty tomb and not let it spoil lunch. You don't get an idea like the bodily resurrection of Jesus out of people with brains like Simon Peter's.

You know what…the disciples were people like us.

People like us are the sorts of folk who like to believe that you can have resurrection and still have the world as it was yesterday.

I think that's why Matthew says that when there was Easter, the whole earth shook. Luke does Easter as a meal on Sunday evening with the risen Christ. John has resurrected Jesus' encounter with Mary Magdalene in the garden. But Matthew? Easter is an earthquake with doors shaken off tombs and dead people walking the streets, the stone rolled away by the ruckus and an impudent angel sitting on it.

You can't explain a resurrection. It’s on the faces of the confused disciples who witnessed it. Not one of them expected Easter.

Ah yes…It was a good campaign while it lasted. But we didn't get him elected Messiah. Death has the last word. We had hoped, but you've got to face facts. So…You want some lunch?

I think the world is in a death grip of the "facts."
All that lives, dies.
The good get it in the end.
Face facts.

It may be a rather somber world, but it is our world where things stay tied down and what dies stays that way.

And there are few surprises.

I’m going to head off in a bit of a tangent but hang with me. We use animals to help us picture things…to explain and expand. To help make intangible things real.

Huskies: Strong, endurance, stand up to cold. Cougars: Catlike strength, agile, fast. Countries do it. American…eagle. Russian…bear. Now think of “Death” Guy in a Black Robe…sickle in hand. They did the same thing in Jesus time…images. Death was one of the Canaanite gods. People who lived around the Jewish people. His name was Mot…same word in Hebrew as death. We have statues archeologists have dug up. Mot was round and squatty and fat, and Mot had a huge mouth. Like a grotesque frog. Why’d he have a huge mouth…because he eats everything. Swallows everything.
… The world of Mot. The God of death. The big mouth. Really good way to think of it isn’t it.

It’s not just about a man being brought back from the dead. That’d be great news for the National Inquirer. It was Jesus. Jesus beating death; doing battle with Mot. He doesn’t take it away. He just takes away its power. The power of Mot is fear. And fear consumes all.

A new world is being offered to us; and in it God saying YES to everything he said, did, was….and IS. What does it look like?

Jesus came back to forgive the very disciples who had abandoned him. The world is about forgiveness, as it turns out, not vengeance. And the earth shook.

Jesus picked up a piece of bread and ate it and you could see the nail prints in his hands. The world is about life, as it turns out, not death. And the earth shook.

The women came out to the cemetery to write one more chapter in the long sad story of death's power. One more episode of how the good always get it in the end. This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper of resignation at death's dark victory.

And then the earth heaved, an angel appeared, the stone was rolled away, Caesar's soldiers shook. The angel plopped himself down on the stone in one final act of impudent defiance of death and said to the women, "Don't be afraid. You're looking for Jesus? He isn't here." Not fear…love, a love stronger than death.

Then I can just imagine that angel turning to the soldiers and saying, "Be afraid. Everything your world is built on is being shaken."

We have fun with the bunnies and the eggs. But don’t miss the revolution. A quiet revolution that starts, not by overthrowing a government but by changing this…your heart. And then you find other people who have experienced the same thing. Wow…it doesn’t have to be this way…and the earthquake grows.

In very real ways…to say and to live…not Mot…Jesus.

Because Christ is risen. Even now…even as we sit here. The resurrection is happening.