Easter — John 20.1-18
“I AM the Resurrection and the Life,” the LORD Jesus declares to Martha of Bethany whose brother Lazarus decomposed in the tomb, four days dead. Such an attestation demands the question which follows it. “Do you believe this?”
Do you?
For over a decade now I have suffered a rare, incurable cancer. Since January of last year, I ingest twice a day a chemotherapy that requires me to put on gloves before I place it on my tongue. Trust me, I believe in the laws of nature and the scientific method and the reliability of rational observation. Every day for me is Ash Wednesday in which I am forced to reckon with the fact that from dust I came and to dust I shall return. I know none of us is getting out of life alive.
Nevertheless!
I believe Christ is risen. I believe the crucified Jesus is indeed not dead. I believe Mary’s boy is alive not because the Bible tells me so but because I have met him.
I have met the LORD.
The first time:
I was a teenager about to attend the University of Virginia. I was a reluctant churchgoer, about six months into my mother’s mandated worship attendance, when I came forward, like so many other ordinary Sundays, down the aisle, hands held out like a beggar, when suddenly, for a moment, like a rip of lightening, the hands tearing off pieces from the loaf were no longer the hands of the man I knew to be named Steve Chiocca. Nor was the body to which those hands belonged his body.
I cannot say how I knew.
I simply knew.
I knew it was Jesus.
“This is my body, broken for you,” he said— out loud, in my head?
There were holes in the hands that placed the bread in mine.
It terrified me. And it made me a believer. The encounter so unsettled me that I skipped past the chalice and sat down in a frightened, astonished daze.
“What if it’s true?” I remember muttering under my breath, “What if it’s all true?’
Again, I believe the Easter alleluia is a true word of God because I have met the Risen Jesus.
“Do you believe this?” Jesus asks Martha.
I do.
You need not, however, take my testimony as credible in order to answer the LORD’s question in the affirmative. You can reckon rather with the historical record. During the year Caesar finally destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem, Rome crucified five hundred Jews per day; so many, they ran out of wood. Along the Appian Way, the Roman general Crassus crucified six thousand people— one body every forty meters for two hundred kilometers. The thieves killed beside him were hardly the only ones Pilate crucified on Calvary. And yet, of the tens of thousands crucified by Rome, all of the victims’ names have been lost to history— save one.
Easter is a faith claim.
But it is a claim about history too.
If your answer to the question that the LORD poses to Martha is “No, I don’t believe this,” then the burden of proof shifts to you to riddle how, among the countless crucified by Rome, the only name the cross did not vanish into oblivion is the name of Jesus. The name of— let’s face it— an otherwise unremarkable rabbi.
“I AM the Resurrection and the Life. Do you believe this?”
Once again, you do not need to trust my testimony, and you are not required to wrestle with the historical record. The Gospel accounts themselves invite you to ask questions to which Easter is the only intelligible answer. For example, how is it that we know that Mary Magdalene failed to recognize the Risen Jesus? She is weeping outside his tomb such is her love for him, yet she mistakes him for a stranger— the gardener. Not only is it an embarrassing detail, there is no one else there with them. Who told? And why would Mary present herself in such an unheroic light? For that matter, how is it we can know that Nicodemus, who helped Joseph of Arimathea to bury the body of Jesus in the virgin tomb, still fell short of discipleship. Who could know Nicodemus’ abiding unbelief other than Nicodemus? Just how is it we know the scandal that Peter, the one on whom the LORD pledged to build his church, thrice denied Jesus? You think the little girl to whom Peter uttered his denial bothered to recall the exchange? Why would she remember Peter if Jesus is just another victim who died on the cross and stayed dead?
Speaking of scandal:
How do we know Thomas doubted the testimony of his friends?
How do we know the Sons of Zebedee tried to manipulate Jesus into promoting them above their peers?
How do we know the sisters of Lazarus, Martha and Mary, both— individually— lost their tempers with Jesus? “LORD, if you had been here, our brother would not have died!” Each was a private conversation with him.
How do we know these unflattering, unseemly details? There was not an omniscient narrator following them around from Galilee to Jerusalem. The Promised Land did not have TMZ. How could we know their specific sins and shortcomings? How could we know their private failures and unique infidelities if it is not true that the Risen Jesus encountered each of them with a word that set them free to tell the vulnerable truth about themselves?
Even if we dare to answer, “Yes, I believe— I believe you are the Resurrection and the Life,” it is still not clear that we understand what we are saying when we profess that “Christ is risen indeed.” To claim that Mary’s boy and Pilate’s victim is risen from the dead is to say something far stranger and infinitely more promising than we have been led to believe. Quite simply, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is not the reanimation of a corpse who then finds his way out of the tomb and back into life. His death is not an interruption in his life; such that, after Easter he resumes his life, alive for the future with memories of his past.
He does not just come back.
In his Gospel, Matthew the Evangelist makes clear that the angel of the LORD rolls back the stone which seals Christ’s tomb not to empty the tomb but in order to demonstrate that the tomb was already empty. Therefore, whatever God’s word means when it proclaims that God raised Jesus from the dead, it does not mean that the resurrected body of Jesus required a door. Again, when Mary Magdalene encounters the Risen Jesus at the empty tomb, she fails to recognize him. She mistakes him for the gardener. And notice, when Mary hears Jesus call her name, Mary turns to answer him. She turns around; that is, the voice of the Risen Jesus comes not from the man Mary thinks is the gardener but from behind her— from the empty tomb. It is no wonder then the next words the Risen Jesus speaks to her are “Do not cling to me.” “Do not cling to who you have known me to be.” Which is to say, “I AM not who you have known me to be. I AM more than who you have known me to be.”
Mary Magdalene is not the only person who realizes the resurrection is surpassingly stranger than the dead Jesus coming back to life. The Risen Jesus can be touched and seen and heard— indeed. But in the instant he breaks the bread with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, he disappears from their sight. He does not get up from the supper table and walk away; he vanishes. On Easter night, after Mary Magdalene has relayed the resurrection news to them, the disciples go back to the Upper Room to hide. Out of fear, they lock the doors. No matter, the Risen Jesus arrives among them, appearing in their locked room. Curiously, John notes, they do not see the Risen Jesus, they do not know he is standing amongst them, until they hear him say, “Peace be with you.” Later, Thomas insists to his fellow disciples that he will not believe the good news unless he can see for himself the scars in Christ’s hands and touch the wound in his side. According to John, the Risen Jesus is not present in the room when Thomas stipulates what he needs in order to believe. No one sees the Risen Jesus. No one hears the Risen Jesus. For all they know, the Risen Jesus is not with them. But eight days later, Jesus again appears in their locked room and the first words out of his mouth are what Thomas said in that allegedly empty room, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.”
The resurrection is not the crucified’s life starting up again.
That would be a miracle.
But Paul says the resurrection is a mystery not a miracle.
When Mary Magdalene proclaims her empty tomb experience to the eleven disciples, they dismiss the good news as “nonsense” and an “idle tale.” If what Mary told them was merely that the dead Jesus was alive again, they would have no reason whatsoever to reject her testimony. They had witnessed such miracles firsthand.
“Talitha, cumi,” Jesus orders the dead body of the daughter of Jairus.
“Little girl, I say to you: arise.”
And everyone, Mark reports, including the disciples, erupt with amazement.
At the entrance to the town of Nain, Jesus touches a dead boy’s funeral bier and he is made alive again. When the widow’s dead son sits up in his casket, the crowd, including the disciples, glorify God.
In Bethany, before the tomb of Lazarus, Jesus commands the four day dead body, “Lazarus, come out!” And Lazarus does, no doubt dazed. Alive again to die again. In response to the miracle, so many believe into Jesus it sets the plot against him in motion.
Doubting Thomas, along with the rest of the disciples— they had all witnessed (at least) three different corpses restored to life. So if all Mary Magdalene testified to them was a miracle, if Mary Magdalene merely relayed the news that Mary’s boy was the next in line after Jairus’ daughter, after the widow of Nain’s son, after the brother of Martha and Mary, if Mary Magdalene proclaimed to them nothing more than the spirit of Jesus reentered his dead body as though it were a pair of pants, then why did they dismiss her good news as nonsensical?
An idle tale?
They had already born witness to such miracles.
The mystery Mary proclaimed must be so inconceivable, the promise of it must be so surpassingly good, that even the disciples initially dismissed it as absurd.
“What if it’s true?” I muttered under my breath all those years ago.
I still had the torn piece of Christ’s body in my hand.
“What if it’s all true?’
I do not know if Mary Magdalene would have recognized him.
But I knew it was Jesus.
I knew because this is how Jesus now wants to be known.
In the locked Upper Room or at the table on the road to Emmaus, the Risen Jesus does not so much vanish from the disciples as he reveals to them the new mode of his existence. Or, as the theologian Robert Jenson writes, what happened to the crucified Jesus was not a “coming back to life.” It is not the next thing that happens to Jesus after he dies and is buried. Easter is not his life simply starting up again. When Lazarus stumbles out of his tomb, no one in the crowd exclaims, “Who the heck is that?” But no one immediately recognizes the Risen Jesus. No longer is Jesus who they have known him to be.
His spirit does not reenter his dead body like it is a pair of pants. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men could not put the crucified Christ back together again. Neither does God. Jesus is not resuscitated. Jesus is resurrected. The resurrection of Jesus is not the resumption of a life momentarily interrupted by death. What has happened to Jesus is not a coming back. It is the coming of God. Jesus does not return to all things as they remain; Jesus turns all things to himself. At Easter, God does not rescue a corpse but establishes a new mode of presence. Notice how Jesus poses the question to the sister of Lazarus, “I AM the Resurrection and the Life.” He does not say, “Resurrection is a miracle I can perform.” He does not say, “Resurrection is what God will do for me.”
Resurrection is not an act.
Resurrection is not a skill on the Father’s resume.
It is the Son’s identity.
The resurrection of Jesus is not an event that happens in time. You could not have filmed it. The resurrection of Jesus is not an event that happens in time; the resurrection is an event that happens to time. The Father does not reanimate the dead body of Jesus. He transfigures the personal history of Mary’s boy and Pilate’s victim into the eternal heart of creation. Which is to say, God the Father does not resurrect the remains of Jesus. He resurrects the whole of Christ’s lived life. As Karl Rahner puts it in an Easter homily, the resurrection is “the permanent, effective saving of Jesus’ life.”
What does that mean?
It means the Risen Jesus is not Captain America. It means Jesus is not now alive, a little over two thousand years old, with memories of a life he once lived, a past he can remember. It means the whole life of Jesus, its fullness and all its parts, (from Mary’s “Let it be…” to Christ’s cry “Father, forgive them…”) has been translated into the very heart of creation. It means every moment of Christ’s life is now alive, fully present to you and present to all things. This is why— or how— the church father Maximus the Confessor can write, “He who is initiated into the inexpressible power of the Resurrection apprehends the purpose for which God first established everything.” In other words, God wants the Resurrection to make all of Jesus available everywhere to anyone.
Sharon worships virtually with us each week and afterwards often writes me.
During Lent she sent me an email:
“Dear Jason,
Saturday, I went to an early Alcoholic Anonymous meeting to hear my son tell his story— after celebrating a year of sobriety. I slipped into the back row anticipating his story of rescue and of my significant role in his rescue. I walked into that meeting blind. He told his story according to the prescribed AA format. During the “what it was like” segment he talked about his childhood. He explained that I was a counselor and the kindest and smartest person he knows. He was right on target with my image of me.
And then he said, “My mother is (notice the tense – because I paid attention to every word) what the Big Book calls the “hopeless variety” of alcoholic. And then to illustrate, he told a story of when I “forgot” to pick him up from school. And he told the story of when he took his first drink. He was eleven. I was in a period of supposed sobriety, but he found a bottle of vodka I’d stashed in a box of Christmas decorations in the basement. He decided to see for himself what this mysterious elixir was all about. He started chasing alcohol that day. I was the one who had loaded the gun and pulled the trigger.
I slipped out of that meeting as quickly as I slipped in— stunned, with tears streaming down my face. I drove home and quickly googled how the Big Book of AA describes “the alcoholic of the hopeless variety.” It says, “They have lost the power of choice, are often dishonest/selfish, and require a spiritual experience to recover.”
I sat for a good hour and wrestled with Jesus, and his mercy that day was not tender but a blunt instrument, smashing my sanctimonious self-image. I was blind and Jesus made me to see. I was blind but now I see.
— Sharon”
Notice:
When Sharon left her son’s AA meeting, shamed, what was alive to her was not a reanimated corpse but a moment— a resurrected moment— in Christ’s life, the moment Jesus met a man blind from birth. That moment is not two thousand years old. Because Christ is risen indeed, the hour he exposed the Pharisees’ own blind eyes is as present and alive as I am to you this morning, which is why— or how— Sharon could stumble into it in a church basement in the middle of Lent.
The resurrection of Jesus happens not in time but to time.
The resurrection happens not to his remains but to the whole of his life.
Today is Easter. But because of Easter, today is also Good Friday. And today is any of days in the desert. Because of Easter, depending on your sorrow or circumstances, your hopes or your fears, this day is also his night of terror in the garden or the dawn he calmed the disciples’ storm-tossed boat. Today is Easter. But because of Easter, if you are me, living Ash Wednesday every day, then every day is the moment Jesus promises of Lazarus, “This illness will not end in death.” Resurrection means every moment of his life is alive forevermore. Jesus is not in the tomb because now the tomb is in him. His life is not behind us to be remembered or emulated; it is before us and with us and within us as living grace.
If you are afraid of the suffering ahead of you, terrified of tomorrow— if you are afraid to die, Jesus is alive and he is still in Gethsemane praying for the Father to move this cup.
If you cannot quell the voice in the back of your head, if there is something for which you cannot absolve yourself, then hear the good news. Jesus is alive and exactly because he lives he is still on his cross praying, “Father, forgive her.”
If you are wracked with grief or simply still missing a love you lost, because of Easter today is also the day Jesus tells his friends, “I am with you always to the end.”
If you are a prodigal who has squandered your good fortune or an elder brother consumed by resentment or a parent who has messed up your whole family, today might be Easter but because of Easter it’s also the day Jesus promises, “What is lost is going to get found.”
God resurrects not his remains but Christ’s entire life.
For eternity.
Therefore:
If you are an addict of the hopeless variety, Jesus is in the wilderness right now facing down the tempter’s lure. If you feel invisible, forgotten, stigmatized, he is right now seeing the woman in the crowd by asking, “Who touched me?” If you feel ashamed, he is right now— because he is risen indeed— saying, “Neither do I condemn you.” If you are anxious about the state of the world or frustrated with the state of our politics, because he is alive, right now Jesus is calling King Herod a fox and right now he has nothing at all to say to Pontius Pilate. And if you struggle to believe this, Jesus is right now accepting the meager faith of a frantic father who says “I believe; help my unbelief.”
Christ is risen.
He is risen indeed.
He is the Resurrection and the Life.
Today is Easter. And because of Easter every one of your days can be any of his days. Every moment of his life is alive for you as you need it. Exactly because he is risen indeed, even though it is Easter, today he can nevertheless say to you:
“Patricia, Peter do not be afraid.”
“Kelly, I will not leave you orphaned.”
“Dennis, I want to heal you.”
“DJ, Blair, you are worth more than many sparrows.”
“Pat, your sins are forgiven.”
“Bill, you will be with me in paradise.”
“Jason, this illness will not end in death.”
I believe Christ is risen indeed not because the Bible tells me so but because I have met him, yet I am not the only one to have met him. Nor is Mary Magdalene the only one to have touched him. Don’t believe me? Come to the table. He is more now than we have known him to be. He is on the table because the table is in him.
