Breaking

Resurrection, by Rowye

Propers: The Resurrection of Our Lord (Easter Sunday), AD 2023 A

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.

The best news needs no cleverness, no unique angle, no fresh new interpretation. Indeed, it defies such. The best news strikes like a meteor, earth-shattering and abrupt. “Germany surrenders!” “Man on the Moon!” “It’s a girl!” You don’t need to say anything more. You can’t, really. You just stand there with your mouth wide open, to laugh or cry or whoop with joy. Truth is always silent; it simply is. “He is risen!” What more is there to say?

First-century Jerusalem must’ve been a madhouse at the Passover: faithful people streaming in from all the lands around, religious zealots haranguing the crowds, hawkers trying to make a dishonest buck, and soldiers everywhere—a foreign Western occupation force, bored, violent, professional, and ruthless.

Thousands upon thousands would be surging to the Temple on the mount, a towering complex of some 36 acres, each family bringing with them lambs to the slaughter. Oh, the stink of it: people, woodsmoke, incense, offal, burning flesh, and lye! It was an abattoir and a bazaar and a cathedral all in one. And all the blood and feces would run down a sluice, out from the Temple, out from the city, through the Dung Gate, into the Valley of Hinnom, where the worm never dies and the fires are not quenched.

The whole city is humming with violence; not just the mass sacrifice of beasts, cathartic as that might be, but beneath all that the simmering unrest of revolution, promising soon to boil over into messianic war. See, the Middle East has always been the Middle East, with foreign armies invading and hardscrabble zealots outlasting them all: Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, eventually Ottomans and Englishmen.

In the time of Jesus, it’s Rome, and Rome rules the world. For the Romans, the Judeans are just one more unruly little backwater province that needs to be put in its place. And for the Judeans, the Romans are just one more foreign occupier whom they can wear down with patience, grit, and blood. It’s a volatile combination. To make matters worse, the Judeans have this ancient prophecy, centuries old, about an Anointed One, a Messiah, a Christ, who will liberate them from their enemies and establish the eternal Kingdom of their God on earth.

The Romans already have an Eternal City; Jerusalem does not impress. But thanks to the prevailing interpretation of the Book of Daniel, everybody’s looking for the Messiah to show up right about now, the first century Anno Domini. The Legions have already killed more than a few who sought to claim the title. Romans are getting good at grinding down Messiahs beneath their hobnailed heels.

So when stories start to circulate about this man called Jesus, about His preaching and His miracles and His gathering of crowds, the Romans aren’t terribly nervous. If killing this Christ will keep the peace, they’ll kill Him. If sparing Him allows the spice to flow, why, then they’ll leave Him be. What matters to Rome in the Middle East is order, stability, and unencumbered trade, all of which ought to sound rather familiar to folks of my generation.

Thus we have the Passover, and a Messiah, which together were bad enough. But now Jesus throws a miracle into the mix as well, and the whole town just goes nuts. Two miles from Jerusalem, in Bethany, live Lazarus and his sister Mary. It is with them that Jesus stays whenever He comes to visit the city. And Lazarus timely dies. All of Jerusalem goes out to his funeral, and after he’s four days in his tomb, in the punishing Mediterranean heat, Jesus shows up and calls, “Lazarus, come forth!”

And the dead man gets up. You can just imagine how that all went over. Now Jerusalem is in an uproar: He can’t be the Messiah, can He? Has Jesus come to start a war with Rome? That’s why the people greet Him with such enthusiasm on Palm Sunday, hailing Him as Son of David and thus the rightful King. Cleverly, He rides in magnanimously upon a donkey, the royal sign that He comes in peace and not to start a riot. It’s probably what saves His life. It’s why the Romans let Him in.

Violence. That’s what everyone expects. Hell, that’s what they want! Many of them, anyway. They’ve been waiting for a war, a crusade, a jihad, a holy battle. They want to kick those Romans back on their bloody heels. They’re just waiting for Jesus to say the word, to drop the hammer. And when He doesn’t, they get restless. Three days in, they start to plot. Some say, “Now’s our chance to snatch Him by night before things go to far.” Others say in their heart of hearts that they must force His hand, that they must make Him fight.

But Jesus hasn’t come to reëstablish the throne of David. He has come liberate all souls from death and hell. His is not a kingdom of this world. And so He is taken, betrayed, and beaten, tortured and crucified, for daring to act like a king, like a god; the Romans having issue with the former, Judeans with the latter. And the Apostles don’t know what to do. Whatever they’d expected, whatever He’d warned them to look out for in advance, these events devastate them.

Peter, who’d brought his sword, can only cower and weep and hide. Judas, who’d sold Him out, repents in agony and hangs himself; this hasn’t gone the way that he had hoped. Some are grieving, some are laughing, some are saying “told you so.” If they’d come for a war, their hopes are dashed. If they’d come for a Messiah, He’s just one more could-have-been. If they’d come to serve the Emperor, it’s just one more day on the job. Better to kill the one, than to have to kill them all, right? Of course, they’ll come back and kill them all later, a few more decades down the line.

Violence. Blood. Power. It’s just the way of the world. It’s just the life of man.

But then—but then!—strange things start to happen. Darkness and earthquake and rumbles of rumor. The women who went to the tomb, they said He wasn’t there. The guards were gone, the stone aside, no sign of a body, just spices and linens. Angels, some say: we saw angels in the night. The dead, say some others: they’re coming up out of their tombs, coming up into the city. The Christ, someone says, I saw Him alive! I talked to Him in the garden. We walked with Him on the road. He came and found us hidden in an upper room, locked behind closed doors.

And they’re breathless and they’re panicked and they’re scared, not because He’s a ghost, not because they’re afraid of Him, but because they’re afraid to believe what their own eyes and ears and hands now witness. He’s alive! He is risen! Alleluia! How do you process that? How do you believe that? Everybody saw—that’s the point of crucifixion—everybody saw how horribly He died: the lash, the rod, the thorns, the nails, the cross, the spear. They went up under His ribs and skewered His heart so that they could be sure.

You don’t come back from that. No-one comes back from that. Violence and power and blood, remember? Those are the final arbiters of all things. Death trumps all. But we keep seeing Him, individuals and groups and crowds. He keeps coming back. 40 long days, He keeps coming back. And even after He leaves—ascending into Heaven on a mountain in full view—even after that, He’s still with us in strange ways, wondrous ways: in bread and wine, in water and word, within our community and all throughout the cosmos. He won’t stay dead. He can’t stay dead.

And so now everything must change, for us who have seen and believed. Everything must change, for death has been undone, hell has been harrowed, and all the ransomed souls raised up unto eternal bliss. And we will have lifetimes to figure out the implications, centuries to try to hammer out together whatever this new life in Christ must mean. It will kill and resurrect us every day, this encounter with the living God.

But for right now, there’s just the shock, just the Good News: “He is risen!” Death could not conquer Him, hell could not hold Him, and all the hatred and violence of humankind could not stop Him from forgiving us, from loving us, from raising us all up from the dead. All has been undone! “Behold, I make all things new!”

No, the best news needs no cleverness. We can but pray for the boldness to believe.

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

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

 

 

 

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