April 20 -- Resurrection of our Lord, Easter Day

Listen to this sermon HERE.

They came looking, and he wasn’t there.  They’re told to go to Galilee...and the risen Jesus meets them, meets us, en route!

Grace to you and peace this Easter morning from our risen Christ who appears before us en route, whose feet we grab onto, who we worship and praise, who raises us with him, and tells us to go to Galilee!  AMEN.

"Then go quickly and tell his disciples...
indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee;
there you will see him."  Matthew 28.7

What’s this business with Galilee on Easter morning?  Where is Galilee?  In the Gospel of Matthew, Galilee was where Jesus and all the disciples were from.  Galilee is where Jesus grew up, where he called the disciples, where he preached the sermon on the mount, where he fished, where he ate, and slept, and healed, and worked...Galilee was where they were from...

Mary and Mary were looking for his body, dead in the tomb, but Jesus was alive and well and headed to Galilee.

Where’s your Galilee?  Where are you from? 

I don’t mean, necessarily, the town of your birth or your childhood.  That would mean Houston is my Galilee (or the fjords of Norway).  I mean more like the place and state of mind where you work, where you eat, where you sleep and fish and make friends, where you live.   

Where’d you came from this morning, this week, this past month?  Go back there.  “There,” the angel says, “you will see Jesus.”  Go back to where you came from...

Go back to the office, back to the courtroom, back to the hospital lab, back to the internet, back home, back to retirement, back to school; go back to where you came from.  But now, you will see Jesus there.
Maybe you’ve come from a place of sorrow or frustration lately.  This Easter Gospel ironically sends us back there.  Galilee isn’t all peaceful rolling hills, there’s lots of sorrow and frustration there in Galilee.  Had family friends visit Galilee: there’s even blood shed in those valleys.  But go back there, the angel says.  Don’t run from it.  Don’t ignore it or push your sorrow or frustration away, or bury it, or keep it locked up in the tombs of your hearts and souls.  Go back there.  Only now...[slowly] you’ll see Jesus there.  

Maybe you’ve come from a place of loneliness...or worry about the future or regret about the past or overwhelming anger.  Sisters and brothers in Christ, Jesus has already gone ahead of us to those Galilees, and will meet us there!  So you can go back there now too.  We no longer have to hide from those things that bring us down, even those things that drive us into the grave!  Because Christ is alive, because Christ Jesus has conquered death and the grave, now we can go there, face our Galilees, and find Christ right in the midst of them! [pause]

Those brave women in the story (interesting -- just sayin’ :) -- that the men in the story froze, they became like dead men, scared to death) but the women followed the angels directions, even though they were scared too -- says they were filled first with great fear and joy.  In other words, they were being both humble and honest.  Humbly and honestly, filled with both fear and joy go to our Galilees.  Let’s not be like the men in this story -- frozen, scared to death -- let’s be like the women.  We go now from this Easter day break -- this first sun rising of 50 days of Easter mornings -- with both fear and joy, humbly and honestly.  [slowly] Only now when you go to Galilee, you will also see Jesus there.  Jesus right in the midst of the pain, Jesus right in the midst of our worry, Jesus right in the midst of our regret or our great anger.  Because of the resurrection, because he rises from the tomb, because he lives eternal, because “thine is the glory, risen conquering Son” and he has promised never to leave us, we never have to “go there” alone.  

The resurrection doesn’t promise a painless, sorrow-less happily ever after, just rainbows and Easter egg candy all the day long, all our earthly lives long.  No, what the resurrection of Jesus Christ means is that we never have to go through all that alone.  And we never have to consider ourselves either unloved or unforgivable.  

Let’s go share that Good News with our lives!  The angel and Jesus don’t just tell the women to go to Galillee; go...and tell!  How about we share this good news too, not just make it our little secret (shhh...Jesus Christ is risen and we never have to go it alone again, but don’t tell anyone.)  No, let’s let our lives tell the story -- that Jesus through his life, death and resurrection gives us forgiveness without end, love and hope with out boundaries, mercy overflowing, peace beyond all human understanding, and joy.  

Parker Palmer in his book Let Your Life Speak has a chapter entitled “Back to the World” where he talks about leadership [pause] not as egocentric and immodest, loud out front, self-serving leadership but rather as being who God has made you to be.  He says: “If it is true that we are made for community, then leadership is everyone’s vocation...even I,” he writes, “a person unfit to be president of anything...have come to understand that for better or worse, I lead by word and deed simply because I am here doing what I do.  If you are also here, doing what you do, then you also exercise leadership.”  Let you life speak.

Go back to Galilee...and tell everyone “He is risen” with your life.  How would you specifically say with your life, with your doing what it is you do, that “Christ is risen indeed”?  Go to Galilee, the angel says. There you’ll see Jesus, and, hey, tell others with your life.  

And then the surprise, as they are on their way, as they are en route, Jesus meets them already and says, “Greetings!”  And they worship him.  (That’s what we’re doing this morning.)  Here in this place Jesus is meeting us en route, on our way back to our Galilees!

Our Lenten devotional words are finished now.  40 words for 40 days.  So cool to be in so many homes over Lent and see those words in a prominent place...

Now that those words are done, try this as a faith-at-home practice.  Start talking at the dinner table or writing in your journal or tweeting or blogging or sharing your answer to this question “Where in your Galilee did you see the risen Christ today?”  Take your card when you leave.

Friends, with both fear and joy, I proclaim to you that Jesus is with us, through thick and thin.  Isn’t it interesting that only in Luke’s Gospel does Jesus ascend up into the clouds.  All the others, he stays right here, and today in Matthew, Jesus keeps his feet planted firmly on the earth, and specifically in “Galilee”.  I love that scene of the women grabbing his feet and worshiping him, worshipping Jesus, with his feet not lifting into the clouds, and no longer elevated and nailed to a cross, but planted firmly on the ground.  

But sisters and brothers in Christ, Jesus has also gone ahead of us, not ahead, up, up into the clouds, but ahead, across the land into the Galilees of our every day lives.  The Gospel gets local.  Jesus who is named Emmanuel, which means God-with-us at the very beginning of the Gospel of Matthew, stays true to his name in the very last chapter, where he says, in Galilee, “Lo, I am with you always even to the end of the age.”  Christ is alive, and the the only place he’s going now is right back into our realities, right back into our everyday lives, right back to Galilee.  Alleluia.  Amen.