Terror and Hope

Propers: Holy Pascha: Easter Sunday: The Resurrection of Our Lord, AD 2022 C

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for you know his sins are great.

Alleluia! Christ is Risen! He is Risen indeed! Alleluia!

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

We are poised here, in a moment, which cannot be fully articulated, suspended as we are between horror and joy. It is a moment of awe, of wonder, of impossibility undone. Suddenly everything is up in the air: life, death, heaven, hell. Here we stand at the open tomb, a thrill running through us that is halfway terror and halfway hope that we barely dare to believe.

It can’t be—can it? I mean, that’s not how this is supposed to work, how any of this is supposed to work. Dead men stay dead. That’s one of the few certainties we have left in our age of unceasing upheaval: death always has the final word. But Jesus showed us otherwise. Jesus, it seems, could raise the dead. And look at all the trouble that caused. People were going nuts, laying cloaks before Him, laying palms before Him, as though He were a king, as though he were a god.

What did He think was going to happen, hm? Did He think that Rome was just going to let Him walk away, after the spectacle of Lazarus, after that stunt with the donkey? People need to be put in their place, reminded of their place. Uppity rabbis, in off the Galilee—talking about “blessed are the poor,” and “woe to you who are rich,” and “render unto Casesar”—that ain’t gonna stand. We have an order in this world; that order is money; and death will enforce it. Death and taxes, right? Defy them to your peril.

All things have their price, in ancient Rome, just as today. Jesus’ life was valued at 30 pieces of silver; yours would’ve garnered far less. Life is cheap. War is expensive.

To be clear: Killing Jesus was a message, a warning to of all those who might dare to step out of line. You don’t crucify a man for efficiency. A sword would be much quicker, as would a rock. But a cross is a statement, a very public display. A cross doesn’t just kill you. It tortures, agonizes, humiliates, dehumanizes; lifts you up naked and bleeding and shredded and writhing for all the world to see.

This is what happens when you step out of line! This is what happens when you don’t know your place! There is no king but Caesar. There is no law but Rome. And we can take everything from you whenever we damn well feel like it because we have made an artform out of death. Look upon our works, ye mighty, and despair.

And that’s that. But just to make sure—just to show you how thorough and meticulous we can be—after He’s been beaten and flayed and crowned and crucified, we take a spear, and we run it up under the ribs through Jesus’ heart, so that heart-blood and peritoneal fluid gush forth for all to see, just in case there was any doubt. Then it’s off to the tomb, roll on the rock, set on it seals, and place there a guard. Hah!

Now it’s taken care of. Now there can be no doubt at all. The vaunted Jesus Christ, who ran all up and down the Levant teaching and preaching and healing and feeding the hungry and casting out demons and so, they say, raising the dead—He came up against Pilate, up against Rome, and got what was coming to Him, didn’t He? He should’ve known better. Rome certainly did. This wasn’t the first messiah they’d killed, nor would He be their last. Messiahs were but a periodic nuisance in the Middle East, the price of doing business in a land of zealots.

His followers were horrified of course, poor country bumpkins that they were. “Here they had hoped,” isn’t that right? Here they had come down from the hinterland thinking that this at last would be the One, the Christ, the prophesied Savior. It’s adorable, really. Precious, even. Fishermen and tax collectors—what a crew! And just look at how they scatter as soon as their Rabbi is caught. We don’t even need to mop them up. Cut off the head, and the whole snake dies. These days we’d just use a drone, with a camera on it to upload to YouTube.

That’s where the Christians were at, before we were even called Christians. Peter and James and John and Thomas, still in shock, still in grief, hiding in an upper room. A week before it seemed as though anything were possible to them. They had seen the multiplication of the loaves, the glory of the Transfiguration, the raising up of Lazarus after four days in the tomb. Surely, they thought, Jesus could do anything. And when He was welcomed as king, as Son of David, well—nothing would surprise them anymore. Not even the end of the world.

Nothing, that is, except for the Cross; except for His death, slow and awful as it was. Betrayed and abandoned by His followers, His friends—by us! What did it all mean? If He wasn’t the Christ, how could He have done such things? But if He was the Christ, how could we have done such things to Him? Yet in all the agony, in all the ceaseless pain, never once did He curse us. Never once did He cry out in rage. “Father, forgive them,” He prayed, even as we murdered Him.

That was Friday. Saturday, the Sabbath day, was shock and fear and hiding. But the women, they were the brave ones. They didn’t care who knew they loved Him. They set out as soon as the Sabbath was over, even before dawn Sunday morning. They were going to open His tomb, to prepare His body properly, apparently not convinced that the men in their rush had done a decent job. It was time now to mourn, to grieve, to heal, even at the risk of their lives.

Or at least it should’ve been. By rights, it should’ve been. But they got there, and—and everything had changed. Things were not as they ought to have been.

The tomb was open, the guards were gone, the seals broken. The wrappings were there on the floor, the linens with which they had swathed both His body and His face. There was no trace of a corpse here at all. What on earth was going on? Could they not even leave Him to rest when He’s dead? Could Rome not even grant Him the peace of the grave? But then why even bury Him at all? What did it all mean?

That’s where we are, right now. Staring at that open tomb. In grief, in shock—in hope? The horrors of Friday are still in the air. That’s why we’re here in the first place. But the realization of Resurrection, that hasn’t happened yet. Not really. Soon reports will start to come in: strange stories, impossible stories. Angels in the night. Strangers on the road. People who claim to have seen Jesus risen, Jesus alive! It starts with Mary at the tomb, then Cleopas on the highway, Peter in the city.

Soon groups begin to report Him, crowds begin to report Him. He’s different now, but it’s Him. We’ve seen Him! We’ve seen Him in the reading of the Scriptures and the breaking of the bread. We’ve seen Him in the upper room and at the evening prayers. We’ve seen His hands, touched His wounds, heard His voice. And Christ is alive! He’s alive and back from the dead!

And hell, He says, has been conquered, and Satan cast down from His throne, and soon Heaven itself will be hallowed by the Triumph of His return, with all the ransomed dead resplendent in His train! The hellmouth’s jaw is broken. And you shall be His witness to this, sent out to the ends of the earth. For now the Resurrection is our business, Christian business: it goes forth in our testimony, forth in our lives. Our breath is now the Spirit of God, our Word is now the Son of God, our community now is the Body of God—and He will send us out!

Out to end all slavery, to set the captives free. Out to proclaim the forgiveness of sins, to bring us all home in His Name. Out to witness, to all of the world, that death has no dominion here, hell has no dominion here, violence no dominion here! For the old order of things has passed away. No longer is death the final arbiter. No longer is force the last word. Kill us, beat us, mock us, break us—it shall not slow Him down. It shall not turn Him back. His mercy is inexorable. His love is undeniable. His life is now unquenchable.

And the fires of grace He has lit in that Cross will continue to spread, continue to burn, continue to blaze through every last barrier of hatred and ego and sin and regret until all have come home, all are reborn, and God at the last shall be All in All.

So to hell with all violence. To hell with all force. We’ve seen what they can do. We threw everything we had at Jesus—the lash, the thorns, the nails, the spear—and none of it could stop Him, barely even slowed Him down. And even before the Resurrection, before the bursting of that spiced tomb, He had already defeated us, already overcome us, already forgiven us in those impossible words: “Father, forgive them. They know not what they do.”

Because if Christ has shown us anything, it’s that death shall have no power over love.

Alleluia! Christ is Risen! He is Risen indeed! Alleluia!

And don’t you ever forget it.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.