The Hope of Resurrection

            I really don’t know what to do with Easter.  Resurrection is something that I want to believe in with all of my heart, but I’ve never seen one.  I have stood beside many, many caskets at funeral services and wished with all of my heart that I could somehow do a resurrection; not necessarily for the person in the casket, although I loved them very much, but particularly for the grieving people sitting in the pews in front of me.  The tears always break my heart. 

            We certainly understand Good Friday.  We have all done Good Friday.  We have felt the torture, the cross and the pain in many ways and we have been part of inflicting that kind of misery on others.  Mostly, we stay away from church on Good Friday because of the somber service and the reminder of the pain; but we crowd into the pews on Easter Sunday because of the joy and the celebration.  Easter is something that we want to be true with every part of our being.  We don’t want death to have any dominion, as Dylan Thomas so eloquently put it.  We hope to celebrate life forever with those whom we love and the God who so obviously loves us.  That is what we hope and pray for on this glorious holy day.  That is why we gather as families and pray together as communities and watch the kids color and hunt eggs and peek into Easter baskets full of chocolate bunnies and jelly beans.

            Some critics point to the diversity of the resurrection stories in the four Gospels as proof that the story is made up.  I don’t think so.  I think it is like four different people viewing the same event.  They tell the story from their own point of view.  I have always loved the way that John’s Gospel shares the good news of the risen Christ.  Grieving Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb on Easter morning looking again for her Lord and wanting to cry at the tomb. She found the stone rolled away from the front of the tomb, so she went to tell Peter and the other disciples.  They ran to the tomb and found it to be empty.  The Gospel goes on to tell us that Mary stayed outside the tomb weeping when she saw two angels in white sitting where Jesus’ body had been.  Why are you weeping?, they said to her.  She answered them and then saw Jesus standing nearby.  She thought that he was the gardener.  He said to her: Woman, why are you weeping?  Whom are you looking for? Frantically, she said to him: Sir if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him and I will take him away!

           

            That is when the miracle happens.  Jesus says to her: Mary! She knows immediately that she was looking at Jesus.  She went and told the disciples:  I have seen the Lord!

            That is a story of resurrection, and the only one that I have ever heard about.  It is a story of faith, of hope and of complete joy that comes out of a sea of pain and devastation.  That is always what my faith tells me is going on when I stand by the casket at a funeral.  Death is certainly not the end.  We will see our Lord again and be welcomed into the joy of the presence of the father and of each other.  That is why we celebrate Easter with such vigor. Thank God for such wonder.