Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

He is risen indeed! Alleluia

They were afraid.  They were very afraid.  Some of them had seen death.  Some of them had smelled death.  Some of them had heard the cries of death.  All of them had run from death and now they were hiding together behind locked doors, all but one.  Death through crucifixion had taken the one they loved – their teacher, their master, their Lord, the one they thought was the Messiah of God, the one whom they believed would deliver them from their enemies.  The Romans had crucified Jesus and now his disciples were terrified the authorities would come for them.

 The disciples should not have been surprised.  After all, Jesus had told them at least three times that he, the Son of Man, would be betrayed into human hands, killed, and raised on the third day.  Even before Jesus spoke of his impending death and resurrection, God the Father had revealed to Peter that Jesus was the Messiah of God.  As Jesus then began to tell his disciples about the events that had to take place in Jerusalem, Peter had scolded Jesus because he did not want his teacher to experience suffering at the hands of the elders, chief priests and scribes and death at the hands of the Romans.  If Peter had been able to imagine God’s grand plan to reclaim and restore for Himself all of creation through the death and resurrection of Jesus, then Jesus would not have rebuked Peter for focusing on very human concerns like avoiding suffering, pain, and death. 

But how could Peter or any of the other disciples even remotely begin to understand resurrection?  Everyone they knew who had died, stayed dead…until Jesus raised Lazarus.  Then they watched Jesus, the one who said, “I AM the Resurrection and the Life” die on a cross and they were afraid.  Without a living faith, a living, daring, confidence in God’s grace, they could not begin to understand resurrection and live as those raised from the dead to new life by the power of God.  For the disciples, seeing was believing and what they saw with human eyes told them that Jesus, was dead.

Even so, something about the death of Jesus was different.  As the disciples hid in their locked room, many of them knew that the body of Jesus was missing from the tomb.  Earlier that day Mary Magdalene had told them, “I have seen the Lord” and relayed a message from the risen Christ that he was ascending to his Father, their God and Father in heaven.  For Mary, seeing was believing and she ran to tell the others that her Lord was alive.  Did some or all of them discredit her testimony because she was a woman, because she was emotional or because, for them also, seeing was believing and they had not yet seen Jesus?  Did one or more of them wonder, even for a moment, that what Mary told them just might be true?  We do not know how those disciples interpreted the fearful and strange events that were transpiring before their eyes – the cruel death of their Lord and teacher, his body missing three days later, and an eyewitness account from a loyal woman about an encounter with Jesus in the garden near the empty tomb.  Their world as they knew it had turned upside down, they were hiding in fear and one of them was missing. 

What they didn’t know then is that indeed not only had their little world in Jerusalem turned upside down but God had turned all of creation upside down when He raised Jesus from the dead.   God was doing a new thing in Christ – nothing less than re-imagining all of creation – breathing new life into everything and freeing all that had been held captive to sin and death.   Christ broke the power of sin through the cross, bound death in chains and freed from its power the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve -- all of humanity, all of us.  Sin and death had come through Adam, created first in the image of God.  Freedom and new life came through the risen Christ, the firstborn of the dead, the first with a human body to defeat sin and death.

When the risen Christ appeared to his disciples behind locked doors on the day of Resurrection, he him gave them his peace and showed them his wounds -- wounds from the nails that held his hands and feet to the cross and a wound where the spear had pierced his side.  For the disciples, seeing Jesus with wounded flesh was believing and they rejoiced.  Christ opened their eyes of faith, breathed on them the Holy Spirit, forgave their sins and conferred on them his power and his mission in the world.

When the disciples saw the missing one, Thomas, they told him the same thing Mary had told them.  “We have seen the Lord.”  Thomas responded that he too needed to see to believe.  Not only did he want to see the wounded flesh he also wanted to touch it.  When Christ appeared to his disciples a week later, Thomas was with them.  Thomas, who claimed he needed to see and touch in order to believe, responded to Christ’s invitation with a bold confession – “My Lord and my God.”  Not only did Thomas see his Teacher, as Mary had seen in the garden, not only did Thomas see his Lord, as the disciples had earlier seen behind locked doors, Thomas saw God face to face.  When Christ called his name, his eyes of faith were opened and he believed. 

We often act like those earliest disciples who hid in fear behind closed doors but our hiding places take a different shape -- we could even describe those places as prisons.  We hide in fear behind many kinds of prisons - prisons of shame, rejection, and loneliness – small places with doors tightly locked and shades firmly pulled.  When we hide in fear that others will learn of behaviors we can’t control, we lock ourselves into a prison.  When we feel betrayed by someone we love and retreat to protect ourselves – vowing never to trust again, we lock ourselves into a prison.  When we refuse to reach out to others because we are afraid to hurt again, we lock ourselves into a prison.  From these prisons we desperately try to protect ourselves from real and imagined pain and death.

It is into our dark, small, locked up places, our self-imposed prisons, that Christ meets us.  The resurrected Christ appears in our prisons without knocking, without invitation and gives us His peace to calm our fears, shows us His wounds to remind us that he feels our pain, graces us with His presence to bring us joy, forgives our sins, opens our eyes of faith and bestows on us His Spirit to transform our lives.  Then a most amazing thing happens.  The Spirit in us unlocks the doors of our self-imposed prisons and we are free.  We go back out into the world, into those places we used to fear, not because they have changed but because Christ has changed us, not because suffering, pain and death are gone – they are not-- but because we are completely new.  

Do we need to see in order to believe?  Christ calls blessed all who believe without seeing with human eyes.  St John, eyewitness to the resurrection and author of the Gospel that bears his name wrote “these (the stories about Jesus, the story about the disciples seeing the resurrected Christ) these are written that so that you and I may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and through believing you and I might have life in his name.”

Human eyes can only see so much.  When God opens our eyes of faith we begin to see and live in a new way, God’s way.  Human eyes see an empty tomb and wonder who took the body.  Eyes of faith see an empty tomb and look for the risen Christ

Human eyes see locked doors and lose hope of being freed.  Eyes of faith see locked doors and wait for the Spirit to release them and let them go.  Human eyes see the grave of one they love and weep for the dead.  Eyes of faith see the grave of one they love, weep for their loss and wait for the return of Christ and the promised resurrection of all the dead.  Seeing is believing.  Only eyes of faith can see the resurrected Christ.  But one day, we shall see Him face to face.  Amen.