A homily by: Fr. Gene
Tucker
Given at: Trinity
Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois; Sunday, April 1, 2012
“THE LOCAL AND THE COSMIC – PART II”
(This
homily is a continuation of the one preached at our Good Friday service. At that time, we considered some of the
circumstances (which we called the “local) surrounding Jesus’ betrayal, trial,
suffering and death, including the brutality of the Roman occupation of the
Holy Land and the motivations of the ruling elite of the Jewish people as they
sought to get rid of the challenge that Jesus’ ministry posed to their
prominent place in the society of Jesus’ day.
Then, we considered how God might be involved in all of these events
(which we called the “cosmic”.)
Easter
morning.
Mary
Magdalene comes to the tomb and finds it empty.
Jesus’ body is missing, and she runs to tell Peter and another disciple
about her discovery. “They have taken
the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him,” she
says.
As these
two run to the tomb, enter it, and find it empty, just as Mary had said, we
read that neither of these two men knew, yet, the scriptures that said that He
must rise from the dead. Even Mary, who
encounters the Lord, does not recognize Him at first, until He calls her by
name.
In this
brief summary of John’s account of the resurrection, we have two threads at
work: the “local” and the “cosmic”.
The “local”
threads are the circumstances of Jesus’ burial.
The “cosmic” threads are the resurrection appearances, showing that God
is at work in bringing Jesus back to life again.
But, lest
we get ahead of ourselves, let’s back up a bit and pick up the “local” threads
as they are found in Jesus’ death on Good Friday….
Recall with
me that, in our Passion reading from John’s gospel account, chapters eighteen
and nineteen (heard on Good Friday), that Joseph of Arimathea came to Pilate to
ask permission to take Jesus’ body away.
Pilate granted permission for him to take the body down, and to bury it.
We might do
well to stop right here in our consideration of the “local” aspects of Jesus’
death. First of all, Jesus is positively
identified by the sign which hangs over His head, proclaiming that this man is
“Jesus of Nazareth”. Secondly, Jesus’
execution is a public event, witnessed by many who stood around, watching.[1] Third, Jesus really died….a person didn’t get
off a Roman cross alive. Not only had
Jesus lost a lot of bodily fluids, but He also suffered the wounding by the
spear that was thrust into His side. All
of these things confirm that He was positively identified, that He really died,
and that He didn’t just fall into some sort of a swoon or a coma. Jesus died after about six hours’ time on the
cross. That was a relatively quick death
for a crucified person. (Remember that
the two thieves who were also crucified with him were still alive, and so their
legs were broken so as to prevent them from continuing to breathe.) After ascertaining that Jesus was, indeed,
dead, he grants permission for Joseph to take the body away.
Here we
come to a critical aspect of the “local” events surrounding Jesus’ death: Joseph lays the body in his own tomb, a tomb
which was cut out of the rock, and which had never been used for burial. A large stone is rolled across the opening to
the tomb. In Matthew’s gospel account
(see Matthew 27: 65 – 66), we read that the stone is sealed (with an official
Roman seal, most likely), and a guard is posted outside the tomb.
These
details of the “local” circumstances are quite important, for they relate
directly to the reality of Jesus’ resurrection.
An
explanation is in order: Many criminals
who were crucified didn’t receive a burial, many scholars think. Their bodies
were, most likely, dumped somewhere, and maybe even in the immediate area
around the site of execution. (Some even
think that the name of the place where Jesus was crucified, “The Place of a
Skull” came from the fact that skulls of previous victims littered the area,
their gaunt eyes looking up at the faces of the crucified ones who would follow
them.)
It’s possible that, in some cases, family members refused to take away the bodies of relatives who’d suffered such an ignominious death.
The point
is that, instead of suffering this fate, Jesus’ body was taken to a secure and
known place for burial, a place which was guarded to prevent theft, a place
that was sealed with a Roman governmental seal.
These
“local” circumstances assure us of the location of Jesus’ dead body. They assure us that the only way He came out
of the tomb was because God caused Him to come out. These would be the “cosmic”
aspects of the resurrection.
So,
resurrection appearances begin….to the original disciples (minus Judas, who had
committed suicide, and minus Thomas, who was absent on Easter Sunday evening[2]),
to Mary Magdalene, and then to others, as St. Paul enumerates them for us in I
Corinthians, chapter fifteen…He tells us that over 500 saw the Lord at one
time, a fact that rules out some sort of hallucination or mistaken identity
among those who saw the Lord one-on-one.
The Lord
appears and eats with those He loved. He
invites them to touch Him, to see that he has flesh and blood, and is not a
ghost (see Luke 24: 39 – 43). The point
that Luke makes is that the Lord has risen with his body intact.
Now, what
does this all mean to you and me?
Simply
this, I think: The resurrection is the
central most important truth of our Christian faith. St. Paul affirms this as he tells the early
Corinthian believers that “if there is no resurrection, then Christ has not
been raised; if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and
your faith is in vain.” (I Corinthians 15: 14)
Paul writes
thus to the early Corinthians because, apparently, some doubted that the
resurrection really happened. Alas,
these early believers have a lot of latter-day company: Many Christians today don’t believe that the
resurrection really took place…. “Oh, these stories must be the fabrication of
ancient peoples whose religious world views are represented in these fanciful
tales,” some would say.
But the
question here is, “How big is God?” Is
God capable only of the things that normal human beings are able to do? If so, then we must rule out any possibility
of resurrection. Human beings can’t
raise dead people to life again.
Essentially,
that is what our response to the resurrection accounts comes down to….do we
believe what we read?
If the
scriptural accounts are true (and I believe they are), then the “cosmic”
aspects of the Easter event tell us that an all-powerful God cares enough about
each of us to show us the way to come to a personal, enduring relationship with
that very same God. God’s power
overcomes every obstacle to our relationship with Him….even death cannot
separate us from the love of God (see Romans 8: 31 – 39). We come to the
Father, following in the footsteps of the Son, whose purpose is to lead us to
the Father.
We come to
the Father through the Son in faith, believing that what we read in the Bible
is true and trustworthy. We come to the
Father through the Son, entering into a deeply personal, life-changing
relationship that creates new life for us now, and which offers us the
guarantee of eternal life in the age to come.
Thanks be
to the God who works through “local” events to bring “cosmic” benefits to those
who believe.
AMEN.
