Easter Happened, and Then…
By Rev. Elizabeth Matthews Duffin
April 23, 2017
Luke 24:36-49

While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet while in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence.
Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.
Luke 24:36-49 (NRSV)
To be invited by a pastor to preach in the church they serve is a big deal. It means a lot to be trusted with the people a pastor loves. But there is something particularly special about preaching in your home church. I grew up at St. Luke’s. I was baptized with water from the font. My senior year of high school I gave the prayer from the lectern here. On Sunday mornings at 8:30 I sat with Pure Sound in the Chancel. I was confirmed on the kneelers here, and married at this altar.
St. Luke’s confirmed my call to the ministry, supported me through seminary and has filled my cup in more ways than I can count. When I was in school I served as an acolyte. I acolyted – is that a verb? Did I acolit? You get the point. I sat up in the chancel and Sunday after Sunday I watched as men and women stepped into the pulpit, and I always wondered what it was like. I wondered what it felt like to stand in the pulpit. I wondered what you looked like from up here.
And this is what you look like. So thank you. Thank you for being the church. Thank you for being my church. I am grateful to call St. Luke’s my home.
Will you pray with me? God, we know that your presence was here before we arrived, that it was your Spirit that welcomed us into this place. And we pray that that same Spirit would open us up. That it would fill us up, and that it would send us out. And God, we ask – I ask - that the words of my mouth and the thoughts and the meditations of all of our hearts will be pleasing and acceptable to you. For you are our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
This lesson from the Gospel of Luke catches the disciples in the middle of an emotional roller coaster. Last week was Easter and we might be tempted to think that Easter is over. But the whole point of Easter is that what we thought was over is really only now getting started.
That morning the disciples had heard the report from the women. They had gone to the tomb and found it empty. Then that afternoon two of their companions were walking along the road to Emmaus, walking along when all of a sudden Jesus appeared and was with them but they couldn’t recognize him. Their eyes were kept from seeing him. It wasn’t until they sat and Jesus broke the bread that they could recognize him, that they knew that it was Jesus. Then just as quickly as they can tell that it was Jesus, he’s gone again. He appears and disappears.
And now they’ve gathered and they are hearing this report of the events on the Road to Emmaus and they’re talking about Jesus appearing when all of a sudden Jesus appears.
It’s like when you’re with a friend or a co-worker and you’re talking about that other friend or that other co-worker, and you’re in the middle of a sentence when all of a sudden they come around the corner. You look at each other and wonder, “How long have they been there? How much have they heard?”
Except it’s not like that at all. Because Jesus died. They watched him die. They watched his body be laid in the tomb. Now here he is in front of them. It’s the first time that the disciples, the eleven who remained, are seeing Jesus, are seeing the risen Jesus. And they have so many different emotions. Their reaction isn’t “Oh, Jesus, thank goodness, we knew it had to be true! We believed those women.”
And their reaction isn’t even, “Thank goodness, Jesus. We had heard you speak over and over again and we believed you every time.” Instead, Jesus comes to them, he shows them who he is and they are afraid. They think they’ve seen a ghost.
Even when Jesus reaches out and shows his hands, the Gospel writer says, “While they are in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering.”
By now you and I have become accustomed to the Easter story. We’ve become used to the story of a man once dead, who now lives again. But think about it – if you can’t count on the dead to stay dead, what can you count on? They say that two things in life you can depend on in life are death and taxes. If you can’t count on the IRS to collect taxes, if you can’t count on the dead to stay dead, what can you count on?
And we certainly expect the dead to stay dead. We take flowers to the cemetery and we’re just getting use to the harsh cold reality of death, when Jesus doesn’t stay dead. Even for those who had been there. Even for those who had heard him teach, who had watched him heal, and who had listened to him say that the Son of Man must be handed over. That he would die and then be raised to new life on the third day, even they doubted. And that tells me that if it isn’t hard for me to believe in the resurrection, if I don’t have some doubts, I’m probably doing it wrong. Because the resurrection defies expectations. It breaks the rules. It changes everything. It turns the world upside down. If you can’t count on dead people to stay dead what can you count on?
So when Jesus shows up, he shows them that it’s him, the disciples have joy but they also have all these other emotions: disbelief and doubt and fear and wonder. And who can blame them? They’ve been through a lot. How could they possibly begin to make sense of everything?
Believing in the resurrection is hard for the disciples and it’s hard for us. We have doubts. So many doubts. But what Luke tells us, what the disciples show us, is that doubt is not the opposite of faith. The disciples had both joy and disbelief at the very same time. Doubt is not the thing that keeps us from faith, doubt is the thing that pushes us deeper into faith.
There’s a website for the online magazine called “Smith” and one of the projects they run is six word stories. Memoirs. Memoir stories told in six words. People both famous and ordinary submit a story, something that’s interesting or distinguished about them. They keep an online submission where they can read the most recent submissions.
Some of them I find fascinating. Here are a couple of them. “Not quite what I was planning” says one. “It all changed in an instant” was another. Some of them are poignant: “I still make coffee for two.” Some of them are funny. The comedian Stephen Colbert submitted: “Well, I thought it was funny.” And some of them are heartbreaking. The impetus for the story is said to come from Ernest Hemingway when he was asked to write a story in six words and he said, “For sale: baby shoes never worn.”
I wonder what your six-word story would be. What would your six words be? Not quite what I was planning. Found love at 72, finally happy. What will happen next for us? I hit the jackpot with her.
The Easter story in six words is “Jesus is risen from the dead.” Jesus is risen from the dead? Six words and they change everything. They changed the whole course of human history. They make the whole world make sense. They make your story make sense. They make my story make sense. “Jesus is risen from the dead.”
The disciples that day see Jesus and they aren’t quite sure what to make of him. They have joy but they also have disbelief and wonder, and maybe that’s where you are, too. The good news is that Jesus can work with that. He took a group of misfit meandering men and made of them messengers of the Gospel. Easter happened. Jesus is risen and then they are off, preaching, teaching, healing, starting churches. Jesus is risen from the dead. It changes everything.
In the weeks leading up to Easter there was an ad running on TV and it showed kids at an Easter egg hunt. But this wasn’t an ordinary normal Easter egg hunt. The kids were pretty intent. The music that was playing in the background was Blondie and the words were “One Way or Another I’m gonna find ya… I’m gonna get ya, get ya, get ya” At the 8:30 service I joked that that was probably the first time that’s been sung from the Chancel. And now I’m going to bet that’s the last time that’s going to be sung from the Chancel. I was always more of a chorister than a soloist.
While the music plays, the kids are going nuts. They’re clearing benches, and fences and they’re jumping over bushes, racing to try to get as many Easter eggs in their basket as they could. And then at the end, the tagline that shows up says, “Easter like you mean it.” Easter like you mean it. Easter it seems has become a verb. And maybe this is one time when the marketers got it right. Maybe Easter is a verb.
If this is true, if Easter is a verb, then what would it look like, what does it look like to Easter? I think it looks like this.
Father Boyle is a Jesuit priest and the founder of Homeboy Industries. Some of you may be familiar with Homeboy Industries, a gang intervention rehabilitation and reentry program. In addition to the social services there at Homeboy Industries they run social enterprises, businesses where former gang members can get job skills and get paid to learn a new trade. So they run some cafes, a bakery, a grocery store, a farmer’s market.
Father Boyle tells the story of Danny, and he’s known Danny since he was 13. Not because Danny would ever come into Father Boyle’s office, but from the streets. Danny went to prison, and he got out when he was 20. When he got out he found out that his mom had cancer. She had six months to live. So he became her caregiver, tended to her day and night by her bedside. She died and Father Boyle did the burial.
A week later Danny came into Father Boyle’s office and he started their 18 month program. Four months into the program Danny shows back up in Father Boyle’s office and he says, “What happened to me yesterday on the way home has never happened to me before in my life.”
Danny had been on the way home on the train. The car was full but Danny found a seat. In front of him was standing a man Danny could tell was a little bit drunk. He was an older guy but Danny could see from his tattoos that he was a gang member. Danny was wearing a sweatshirt that said “Homeboy Industries. Jobs not jails.” The guy looked at Danny and said, “You work there?” Danny said, “Yeah.” The other man asked, “Is it any good?” Danny said, “Well, it’s helped me. I don’t think I’m going to go back to prison because of this place.”
Danny stood up and took a piece of paper out of his pocket and turned it over and wrote down the address of Homeboys Industries on the back. He handed to the guy and said, “Come and see us. We’ll help you.” The guy looked at it and said, “Thank you.” Then he got off the train at the next stop.
Danny looks at Father Boyle and said, “What happened to me next has never happened to me in my entire life. Everybody on the train was looking at me. Everybody was nodding at me. Everybody was smiling at me.” Danny can hardly speak when he said, “For the first time in my life I felt admired.”
Jesus is risen from the dead and it changes everything. Maybe Easter is a verb. We might be tempted to think that Easter is over but the whole point of Easter is that what we thought was over is only now getting started. The whole point of Easter is that everything has changed. It used to be that dead people stayed dead but this one didn’t.
By the power of God Jesus lives. And it means that the things that we thought were dead, they can live, too. Gang members can get a second chance. People can get sober. Relationships we thought were over by the power of forgiveness can live again. Marriages we thought had died can have a new beginning. Dreams we had buried in the past can have a new future.
The disciples that day find it hard to believe. Jesus shows up and they find it hard to believe and the truth is that we do, too. Believing in the resurrection is hard. Mostly because it’s not really about belief. Belief in the resurrection isn’t about agreeing to some dogma or some doctrine. It’s not about getting the words to the creed right.
The resurrection isn’t a belief. The resurrection is practice. The resurrection is meant to be lived. Jesus is risen from the dead – six words that change everything. Easter is a verb. Jesus is risen from the dead – it changes everything. It can change even you.
Maybe your six words will be “The resurrection has changed my life.”
Let us pray. God, we long to be Easter people. To be people filled with the power of your resurrection for life and light and goodness. We confess that we have doubts. Help us use those doubts to push us further into faith. God, by the power of your Spirit, Jesus is risen from the dead. It changes everything. Help it change even us. In the name of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit, we pray. Amen.