There You Will See Him
Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
March 27, 2005 (Easter)
Acts 10:34-43; Colossians 3:1-4; Matthew 28:1-10
Acts 10 34 ¶ Then Peter began to speak to them: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, 35 but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. 36 You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ — he is Lord of all. 37 That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: 38 how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. 39 We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; 40 but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, 41 not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. 42 He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. 43 All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”
Colossians 3 1 ¶ So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, 3 for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.
Matthew 28 1 ¶ After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. 2 And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. 3 His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. 4 For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. 5 But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. 6 He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. 7 Then go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.’ This is my message for you.” 8 So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. 9 Suddenly Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. 10 Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”
I. INTRODUCTION
I don’t know about you, but the events of Easter can seem a little “other-worldly” to me. We’ve got angels and earthquakes, empty tombs, a man who comes back to life and can depart a sealed tomb. It is, let us say—‘out of the ordinary’.
II. THE TEXT
Certainly the women who come to the tomb see it that way. There was a great earthquake. They encounter an angel who tells them to tell the disciples that ‘the crucified one’ has been raised and has gone ahead of them to Galilee.’ They run from the tomb, afraid, but also joyful. They encounter Jesus as they are hurrying to find the disciples who greets them and tells them not to be afraid, but rather, to “Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”
III. OUT OF THE ORDINARY
It’s a series of events that are ‘out of the ordinary’—if we can continue in our understatement. Indeed, the Resurrection is supposed to be out of the ordinary.
A. Resuscitation
For Jesus’ being raised from the dead is even miraculous by the standards of the miracles he himself performed. On a number of occasions Jesus healed people and on a couple of occasions that we read about in the Gospels, Jesus restored dead people to life: Jairus’ daughter and Lazarus. We are given to understand, however, that these people died at a later time—that is, Jairus’ daughter and Lazarus are not still walking the earth. (Though why do I have this sinking feeling that Tim LaHaye is going to follow up his Left Behind series with a series of novels about Lazarus and Jairus’ daughter traveling the world solving crimes or some such thing?)
We are given to understand that Jesus being raised from the dead is something entirely different—out of the ordinary even for a miracle.
B. Resurrection
Because Jesus’ raising is not referred to as a ‘resuscitation’ but as a ‘resurrection’—that is it is of an order different from merely bringing back people to life. The latter, we do all the time. Every day, doctors bring back to life people who have died (albeit relatively recently). As far as I know, no major religious movement has developed around any of them.
Jesus’ raising to new life is more than simply being brought back to life—it is about God giving to Jesus eternal life, in an incorruptible body. It is a transformation of the bodily life we have now into a new, transformed, eternal and imperishable embodied existence we have when the Kingdom of God comes to earth.
The Resurrection of the Dead is the miracle of miracles. In the Judaism of Jesus’ day many believed in the Resurrection of the Dead. In order for God to be God, there would have to be more to our being than what happens to us in the span of our mortal lives. God’s work of creation is not finished in that span. In order for God to be God, that is to be a God of justice, a God of peace, a God of life, God’s creating work would have to continue with new life for the dead. In Orthodox Judaism to this day, the faithful await the coming of the messiah, and with him the resurrection of the dead who will rise from their graves, incorruptible, and come to Jerusalem. That is the hope that the early Christians shared and what they believed had been foretasted in the resurrection of Jesus.
C. The Engine the Drove Christianity
It was decidedly out of the ordinary. I guess it would have to have been. One New Testament scholar [Luke Timothy Johnson] described the resurrection as “the engine that drove early Christianity.” It was the motivation and inspiration for those who spread the gospel across the Mediterranean, across the known world, often at great risk and peril for themselves. It would have to have been something extraordinary for them to have allowed it to change their lives the way it did.
Sometimes we lose sight of that and we cast the resurrection in terms that are not nearly so inspiring or igniting. But the disciples who were cowering in that Upper Room that Sabbath day, were not about to come out of the room and change the world for anything less than the utterly miraculous.
The events of that first Easter were out of the ordinary in ways we perhaps cannot even begin to comprehend.
IV. GALILEE
There is one more thing that is out of the ordinary, though not quite on the same scale, that is: Jesus’ instructions to the women. He tells them to tell the disciples to go to Galilee, and that there they will see him. Why does Jesus tell them to go to Galilee? Unlike Luke’s and John’s gospels, Matthew and Mark’s do not have Jesus appearing to the disciples in Jerusalem. There is no mention of him encountering disciples on the road to Emmaus, or visiting the disciples in the Upper Room. There is no lengthy forty-day stay in Jerusalem, prior to his ascension days before Pentecost. Why does Matthew’s Jesus seem to be in such a hurry to get out of town? Why does he appear only to the women in Jerusalem—and make the disciples travel?
A. Galilee—Ha Galil
I mean, why to Galilee. I know it was Jesus, hometown, but, why not stay in the big city, in Jerusalem, where things were happening? It’s not like Galilee was particularly well respected in Jesus’ day. It’s not even well respected today. A friend of mine who used to live in Israel told me that Galileans are regarded as something of bumpkins by other Israelis.
We read in the passion narrative last week how Peter was accused of being one of Jesus’ disciples because he was a Galilean. When he denied it, the servant girl said, “Sure you are, you speak with a Galilean accent”. You’re not from around here. You’ve got a hick accent. The name Galilee comes from the Hebrew word “Galil” which means ‘border’—the Galilee is the borderland, the provinces, the sticks.
B. The Galilee of the Gentiles
There was another thing about Galilee, a lot of Gentiles—that is, non-Jews—lived in that region. There were Jewish towns and non-Jewish towns. The most famous of the non-Jewish towns were called the Decapolis, which is Greek for the ‘ten cities.’ In those cities dwelt Greeks, Syrians, Phoenicians, and others who were not of Israelite stock. Pagans. Worshippers of other gods. Roman citizens who might follow the imperial cult. Foreigners.
Perhaps this is no coincidence. Perhaps it is no accident that in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus tells the disciples to go to Galilee where he gives them the Great Commission, telling them to go and “make disciples of all nations”—it would make sense to start in a place where there are already many Gentiles. Perhaps then, Jesus is calling us not to contemplate the resurrection as something that is out of the ordinary, but as something that sends us back to the heart of the ordinary. We are not called to stay in the Upper Room contemplating the mysteries of the divine, but are supposed to return to Galilee and get back to work. We are not called to isolate ourselves in a cloister somewhere, but are called to go back into and among the peoples of the world. It was in Jerusalem where the Resurrection took place, but it is in Galilee where we are called to go in order to encounter the Risen Christ.
V. CONCLUSION
Easter has a tendency to overwhelm us with its mystery and with the supernatural nature of the events it describes. It can become all to easy for us to compartmentalize Easter into those things that are beyond our ordinary experience, outside the realm of our normal lives, such that Easter can lose any relevance to our day-to-day life.
And yet, Jesus reminds us that he goes ahead of us to Galilee—not to some unearthly realm, not to some spiritualized state, not to a theological abstraction, not to some incomprehensible theological concept, but to Galilee. The disciples’ old stomping grounds.
Their folk. Their towns. Home.
If the Resurrection calls us out of the world it is only to give us a new perspective—the way that flying in an airplane gives us a new perspective on the land below. But like in an airplane, we return to earth, carrying this new perspective with us. The Resurrection does not call us out of the world to stay—it changes the way we see the world and then sends us back into it. To serve and to witness to what we have seen and what we have experienced.
It is Easter Sunday and we stand at the entrance to the empty tomb, full of wonder, full of joy, sometimes full of fear and disbelief. And we are met there by an angel of the Lord who says to us: “Do not be afraid, I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. He has been raised from the dead and indeed he is going ahead of you… to the campus, to Washington, to America, the world… there you will see him…”
