Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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In Moby Dick, Melville describes a ship's lantern that hung in the captain's cabin aboard the Pequod. It was suspended from the ceiling in such a manner that, no matter which way the ship pitched and yawed, Melville wrote, the lantern always hung "perpendicular to a line drawn through the center of the earth." And then these words about the lantern: it "revealed the false, lying 'levels' of everything around it." Easter does that. In the light of the resurrection, all things false in this world, all things not perfectly level, all things out of plumb, are shown to be the lies that they are. That's why the enemies of Jesus, from the very beginning, sought to discredit the Christian faith by discrediting Easter - not only because Easter was the Christians' central miracle (which it is), but also because Easter made them look bad. It exposed them and their materialistic, power-based life styles for what they were. If life begins with God and goes back to God (and therefore, belongs to God from start to finish) - as the resurrection implies -- if the line between life and death is permeable - as the resurrection implies -- so that we can no longer measure brain waves and say "this one is quick and this one is dead," but must now assess life and death by one's closeness to God, then all our materialistic strivings, all our desires for status and power (upon which so much is based) comes apart at the seems. All those "false, lying 'levels'" are revealed. The world is a new place, and we are new people, people of the resurrection, Easter people.

In the past three weeks I have watched Mary struggle to put the pieces of her world back together. Watching, one realizes how complex even the simplest things are, how much "junk" we sort out of our perceptions before admitting anything to consciousness, how intricately we file away and how skillfully we retrieve materials stored in memory. The world Mary is re-entering is a "brave new world" for her - a world where everybody else has a map, and can read the road signs, but she must learn it all from scratch, often by trial and error.

I don't think it is disrespectful to say that, because of the resurrection, the first Christians faced a similar "brave new world." The fundamentals, the assumptions, the maps and road signs which had served them well in their previous lives, were now worthless, and they had to learn the world all over again. Maybe Uncle Jonathan, who was crucified for his faith, and whose body we took down and buried in a pauper's grave (and didn't mark it so that the enemies of Christ could not desecrate it) - maybe uncle Jonathan is not dead, although he sure appeared to be. And maybe my mother, with her cynicism and abusiveness, has been dead for years and just hasn't had the sense to lie down. And maybe the poor, not the rich, will be admitted to the kingdom. And maybe the meek, not the macho-men, will inherit the earth. And maybe the hungry will be filled. And maybe the servant is better than the master. If a dead person can live again, anything is possible! The first Christians saw the world through new glasses, resurrection glasses. At first what they saw seemed distorted and was disorientating, but one thing was sure: nothing looked the same after Easter.

Christians, as well as their enemies, understood from the beginning the central importance of Easter. We still understand that. We all come to church on Easter. We celebrate the resurrection every Sunday morning, worshipping not on the seventh day, but on "the first day of the week," when Christ arose. At every funeral service we read Paul's moving words from I Corinthians, the ones where he mocks death and the grave ("O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?"). That passage begins where it ought to begin, with the resurrection of Jesus. Paul opens it this way: "If fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of them that sleep." And in that same discussion he makes the point clearly, "If Christ has not been raised," he says, "then our preaching is in vain, and your faith is in vain….If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied." Easter is everything.

E. Stanley Jones, the great missionary of a generation ago, told of an African man who, immediately after being converted to Christianity and baptized, had his named changed to "After." He wanted the world to know that there were two parts to his life, the part before he met the risen Christ and the part after, pre-Christ and post-Christ. He didn't want anyone to think he was still the old man. He was not what he was "before," he was, "After." Unless one is brain-dead, no one comes away from hearing the Easter story without changing. You can choose not to believe it, but you can't choose to believe it and remain the same. That doesn't compute.

You remember the story of the customer in a restaurant who said to the waitress, "I'd like a lobster tail." She smiled, and said, "O.K. Once upon a time there was a beautiful lobster who…." She misunderstood. Asked for one thing, she gave something else. Sometimes, when we ask for assurances of life after death, our desperation is misunderstood, and we are given something else - some theological mumbo-jumbo about heaven or the immortality of the soul. We should ask the question about life after death. It is the fundamental question of human existence ("If a man die, shall he live again?") And the best answer is not theoretical or academic. The best answer is in these resurrection stories. Each Gospel tells its own version of the resurrection, emphasizes different things about that great morning "when the stars began to fall," but every account is breathless in its telling. The excitement and confusion of that morning still comes across on the written page.

In John's account, which I read to you just now, the stone has been rolled away before Mary arrives at the garden. (She concludes, from that, that the grave's been robbed…or at least that someone has moved the body. ) The stones that sealed the mouths of sepulchers in those days were made especially for that purpose: they were heavy disks of rough-carved stone, often as tall as a person, which were rolled down a narrow stone track, or trough, along the face of the tomb to the opening, at which point there was an indentation, a low place in the track. The stone would settle into place precisely there, only to be moved again by great effort. So Mary Magdeline knows immediately that whatever was done was done not by vandals but by someone (or ones) who were strong and had a purpose. That is why when Jesus appears to her she thinks he is the gardener. That way, for a split second, it all made sense. The gardener wanted to move Jesus so he could clear the tomb (it was only a loaner in the first place) and tidy up his garden. "Just tell me where you've laid him, and I will take him away." "Mary." And nothing would ever make sense again. At least not in the same old way.

Matthew tells us that, just as Mary and two other women, arrived at the garden, the earth shook and an angel rolled the stone away and sat upon it, and from that perch told the women that Jesus had been raised - "go ahead, look in, you'll see it's empty."

Luke has the women arrive with the stone already pushed back, and two angels who ask, "Why seek ye the living among the dead?" The women run back to tell the sleepy disciples who decide it's just "chick talk." In Mark, too, the stone has been rolled away before the women arrive..

The stone is important. It represented to the gospel writers that heavy, immutable barrier which formerly had existed between life and death. On one side of the stone was life, even a beautiful garden, on the other side was death and decomposition. That's the old world: two categories, no exceptions. When the stone was no longer there, (regardless of how or when it was moved) - when the stone was no longer there the barrier between life and death had been breached. You really have to make up your mind. We don't want to be like those professors in Athens who, when they heard Paul preach the gospel, told him they would think about it. Listen, dearly beloved, either death wins or life wins. You can't have it both ways. And life is enormously different depending on our answer. Choose life, my brothers and sisters. Believe in the resurrection of Jesus and in your own resurrection. Life wins. That's what Easter says. Choose life..