A friend of mine, who worked with schizophrenic patients, once made an interesting observation about those patients of hers that heard voices. The thing is, she said, was that the voices never said anything helpful or life affirming like “My, you look handsome today, have you been working out?” Instead the voices were always unhelpful telling them bad things about themselves and others. And while this was certainly attributable to mental illness the phenomenon of having voices inside our head give us negative, unhelpful and wrong information does not solely belong to the mentally ill. If you don't believe me than believe the Bible and Mary Magdalene because today we hear, "So [Mary] ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, 'They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him'". And I don't want to be too hard on Mary because she did reach a fairly logical conclusion, but still in the absence of information her mind went to the worst place. The body of Jesus was not where it was supposed to be so there must be nefarious forces at work - the unnamed “they” have taken him. And if “they” have taken him it must be for less than charitable reasons. In Mary’s mind the missing body could only point to one more insult in a week already full of insults. It was not just enough to crucify Jesus but now it seems that, like Oliver Cromwell, they wanted to dig him up just so that they could hang him. However as we all know, because this is the Sunday when the Easter bunny shows up, that this is not what really happened. Mary's mind, by going to the worst place, was not reflecting reality but rather a much darker version of it, a version where evil won and continued to win. But if there is anything to learn from Easter it is that evil did not win. No matter how dark and horrible things looked the light shone forth in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.
In the drama of this week we start with the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, which was followed, in rapid succession, by the Last Supper, the betrayal and arrest of Jesus and finally the crucifixion of Jesus. We have gone from excitement and anticipation to unease to utter despair. And the reason for the despair is that it all seemed so final, so absolute because Jesus was dead, they had seen him laid in the tomb and everyone knows what it means when you are laid in a tomb. This is why death has been the preferred method of tyrants across the ages because it works so well to silence those who were inconvenient to their view of reality. Both the crosses of the Roman Empire and the death camps of the Khmer Rouge had one purpose and that was to get rid of the people who opposed the regime. And up until today it had worked. Once you killed someone they ceased to be an issue because, as we learn from the beginning of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland, “Dead men tell no tales.” And that is why Mary’s mind went straight to grave robbing today. The only thing that could be done with someone who had died, in terms of movement, was for a living person to move their body. But as Jesus told us earlier in Matthew’s Gospel – With God all things are possible. With his death there were now more options than someone taking the body of Jesus.
There is something of a debate going on in the world of physics these days about why our universe follows the laws that it does. So for example why is gravitation acceleration always 9.80665 m/s^2? Why doesn’t a rock fall faster in Ho Ho Kus, New Jersey than it does in Montreal, Quebec? In other words why do things always work the same? Why are there actual repeatable laws in the universe and not just a series of random events? Why if I let go of a rock does it not occasionally float up in the air rather than drop? I won’t get into all of the theories about why the universe follows set laws but I will just say that it does. Science depends on experiments being repeatable and for experiments to be repeatable there need to be fixed laws that govern the universe. And so while I am sure you are all fascinated by this conversation a few of you may be wondering what this has to do with Easter. What does this consistency within the fabric of the universe mean in terms of the Resurrection of Jesus? Well I am glad you asked. The thing is that up until today when people were crucified they stayed dead – always. If you don’t believe me go and watch Spartacus (The Kirk Douglas version not the TV series). And so the question to ask today in Jesus being raised from the dead is did God step in and briefly alter the underlying laws of the universe? And the answer to that is yes and no. Yes in the sense that in the time before and after the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth dead people have stayed dead. Jesus is the only person who has been resurrected. But here is the no part of the answer. The temporary altering of the laws of the universe was not a onetime trick but was rather a revealing of the ultimate plan of God for everyone and not just Jesus. In other words the plan is for all of us who believe in Jesus to be raised from the dead. This is why we say that we believe in the resurrection of the dead every Sunday during the creed. This is not a fancy church way of saying that we float up to heaven, play harps and help George Bailey get out of trouble, but rather means that just like Jesus today we are going to be resurrected; we are going to have glorified bodies. Just like Jesus, death will not be the final word. That is why today is so celebratory. The one thing that humanity has never been able to conquer, death itself has been conquered. And so our minds do not need to be like Mary Magdalene’s today and think that the worst has happened because we know through the Resurrection of Jesus that no matter how terrible things may look the final victory is assured. Or as St. Paul puts it, “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”
Since chocolate bunnies do not put as much money into the economy as Christmas wish lists, Easter has been relegated to the other Christian Holiday. Easter decorations do not start showing up in stores in mid January. And all of this can make us think that Easter while being nice is sort of optional, but that is not the case. Easter, not Christmas, is the day that is the central event of Christianity. In the Nicene Creed Christmas gets 15 words and Easter gets between 25 and 59 words depending on how strictly or loosely you define the term. All Christmas tells us is that Jesus came (which is of course a big deal) but he could of come looked around and decided that it was all not worth it, that we were beyond saving. But today is the day where he tells us that we are worth saving and have been saved. Our sin has been forgiven and if our sin has been forgiven we are able to revert back to the original plan. The plan where there was no pain or death but only life everlasting. Today is a glorious day because it shows that through Christ’s death and resurrection we are able to be with God both now and forevermore.