Matthew 28:1-10
A group of academics at Cornell University recently released a study and described the outcome like this:
When groups compete for members, the resulting dynamics of human social activity may be understandable with simple mathematical models. Here, we apply techniques from dynamical systems and perturbation theory to analyze a theoretical framework for the growth and decline of competing social groups. We present a new treatment of the competition for adherents between religious and irreligious segments of modern secular societies and compile a new international data set tracking the growth of religious non-affiliation. Data suggest a particular case of our general growth law, leading to clear predictions about possible future trends in society. http://arxiv.org/abs/1012.1375
Hmmm…. Let’s try simple English: in nine countries (not yet including the US) religion is in such rapid decline that mathematicians say they can calculate just about when it will become extinct.
What we’re seeing here in the US is a little different. Fundamentalism remains strong – Christian and Islam. The decline is in the old “mainline Protestant” traditions. Christians like you and me – open-hearted, open-minded, and non-judgmental – are going the way of the Dodo bird. We like Jesus all right but don’t want to get too worked up over him. And that just may be our path to extinction.
I, for one, don’t want to be a conservative Christian. I couldn’t pull it off. I couldn’t look anyone in the eye and tell them they’re either saved or they’re going to hell for what they believe, who they are, or whom they love.
But along with that generous and welcoming spirit comes a dilemma: many of us approach Easter the same way the disciples approached that borrowed tomb. We expect to find the body still there and then to walk away with a shrug. For some of us, the Easter claim is an embarrassment that seems highly unlikely.
If we could only agree that Easter is really about bunnies and bonnets, and chicks and daffodils, we could then have our little party and watch sports on TV and fall asleep in the La-Z-Boy…
Don’t sell out to that, friends! Easter is about resurrection – not solely one man’s escape from the grave but rather the victory of seemingly powerless love over loveless power. God’s love for you, for me, for us, is stronger than the worst that can happen.
Easter’s insistent message isn’t reserved for people who’ve had it easy; no, its power speaks to those who’ve experienced both sides of life: the mountain tops and the pits, the unanswered questions and the unexpected answers.
The more we acknowledge that we live in a Good Friday world the more fervently we must believe that Easter is God’s intended response.
Author Norman Cousins once remarked: “the greatest loss is what dies inside of us while we are living.” Ain’t it the truth: we can crucify the best among us only if we’ve already crucified the best within us. It’s the rust and corrosion and moths that eat away at the blessings we used to notice. Only when you recognize that some things have died inside can you experience new life.
The Gospel of Matthew tells this profound truth in a few short sentences in the 28th chapter. It’s familiar because all four gospels share a common witness with just slight variations. But Matthew adds a twist that rises from the page: Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were on their way to the grave to prepare the body for burial. They expected to find him. Instead, they encountered an angel who said: “don’t be afraid!” Sound familiar? That’s what the angel said to Joseph, years earlier, when he learned that Mary, his betrothed, was pregnant.
The women in the garden now left the tomb, “with fear and great joy.” Isn’t that our experience… that joy and fear come so close together they overlap? Like the crocus and tulips pushing through last year’s blanket of dead leaves, it’s hard to untangle the fears from the joys, the new life from the drumbeat of death.
“In this world you will have trouble,” said Jesus. “But don’t be afraid, for I have overcome the world.” He was talking about all the events that threaten to steal away the joy and meaning of our lives. He was talking about all the little deaths, as well as the big one. He was saying they’re not the final word.
Sometimes we live in fear, seeing only what’s ending, mourning the loss of what has been. Sometimes we’re able to see what’s beginning, knowing the joy of gaining what has not yet been.
- “I’m not losing a daughter,” says the bride’s mother. “I’m gaining a son.”
- Well, I’m not losing my hearing; I’m gaining a new aural assistance device.
- I’m not losing my athletic physique; I’m gaining reserves for a prolonged walk in the wilderness.
We can choose whether we focus on the world’s Good Friday or God’s Easter.
Most of you know that Andrea grew up in an Air Force family. Transfers to new bases were frequent. Dads were focused on the mission and moms handled the home front. Some families faced each transfer with grim acceptance – another loss, another uprooting. Andrea’s own mother would announce the transfer by saying: “Guess what, kids – we’re going on a wonderful new adventure together…”
Easter faith says there’s a new beginning in every ending. There is new life in every death. You don’t have to be a fundamentalist to believe that.
Good Friday had been an awesome display of human power on parade. The leaders of the temple and the Roman governor did what they set out to do: they arrested the one who had entered their city, hailed as Son of David and King of the Jews, and they killed him on a cross. When he was dead they put him in a stone tomb, sealed the door with a boulder, and posted guards.
Then something happened. None of the Gospels tells us what happened. No one saw Jesus’ lifeless body rise and emerge. There were no eyewitnesses to the resurrection itself. But that’s not the point.
The point of Easter is that there have been countless witnesses to the Risen Christ. Paul saw him and told of 500 others. And there’s no debating that the disciples were ten times the people after Jesus’ death that they were before. They proved the truth of Easter just as we do – with their changed lives: lives in which joy overwhelms fear and life swallows up death. I so believe in resurrection because I’ve felt it in my own life: the presence of the living Christ not just recalled it as a distant memory.
To those who fear that Good Friday has the final word, Easter is a breath-taking rebuttal. Death is not the end of life. Resurrection is the end of death. Death, in any of its forms, is a horizon and a horizon is simply the limit of our sight.
Those who witnessed the Risen Christ went to their deaths more certain than ever that Good Friday could not prevail.
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Before we say “Amen” and march out, let’s remember that Easter is not only a promise. It’s a commandment. If you believe that Easter cancels Good Friday, rather than the other way around, you’ve got to act like it!
If you believe life holds victory over death, live it. Matthew records that our Lord said to Mary: “don’t be afraid. Go and tell my beloved to go to Galilee. There they will see me.”
How do you suppose the disciples greeted such news? I can imagine some of them had earlier felt relief that the battles were over. They’d done their time, kept their promises. They figured the Roman guards could take it from there. But now he’s back! And what does he want them to do?
In an old Calvin & Hobbes comic strip, Calvin was sitting by the side of the road in a booth, with a sign that said: “Swift Kick in the Pants $1.00.” He’s had no customers. Calvin says to his sidekick, Hobbes, “I can’t understand. Everybody I know needs what I’m selling!”
Many of us need what Calvin is selling! – we who take Easter too lightly, who toss it off like a silly gig, who wish we could leave Jesus and empty tombs out of it, and stick with bunnies and tulips and brightly colored clothes.
We are the ones who will go the way of the Dodo. If we quietly act as though Easter and resurrection belong to fundamentalists and biblical literalists, we deserve to disappear because we have nothing to offer to a world locked in war and death and Good Friday’s bad news.
But the tomb was empty. I can’t explain it, and I don’t need to. It was empty because God’s love swallowed up hatred and even death. This wasn’t Jesus’ doing but rather God’s. And God chooses to do the same for us:
Life is eternal. Love is immortal. We can’t say what lies beyond death, but we can say who. That kind of faith doesn’t belong to fundamentalists. That kind of faith will never go extinct.
As we sing it with lumps in our throats, let’s embrace it with joy in our hearts: “Made like, like him we rise; ours the cross, the grave, the skies, Alleluia!”