The Challenge of Easter

John 20:1-18
April 1, 2018
First Presbyterian Church, Sterling IL
Christina Berry


John 20:1-18
1 Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. 2 So she 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."
3 Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. 4 The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5 He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in.
6 Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, 7 and the cloth that had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. 8 Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; 9 for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. 10 Then the disciples returned to their homes. 11 But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; 12 and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet.
13 They said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?"
She said to them, "They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him."
14 When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. 15 Jesus said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?"
Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away."
16 Jesus said to her, "Mary!"
She turned and said to him in Hebrew, "Rabbouni!" (which means Teacher).
17 Jesus said to her, "Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, "I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.' "
18 Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, "I have seen the Lord"; and she told them that he had said these things to her.

The word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.


Easter is a challenging day for Christians. It isn’t quite as appealing as Christmas is to the rest of the world. No shopping season, no Easter carols, no tree or office gift exchange. Father James Martin, a Jesuit priest, said several years ago:

“It doesn’t boast its own annual TV specials for kids.
It doesn’t spawn new albums from pop stars.
… It doesn’t have its own sweaters.
…It doesn’t even have its own set date.
But in the eyes of most Christians,
Easter is a more important holiday than Christmas.”

Nevertheless, plenty of non-Christian people celebrate Easter. And similar to Christmas, they manage to do so without even a polite nod in the direction of the church, or Jesus. I had to do a little shopping last week for some things we needed here. For Holy Week and the stations of the cross, we needed a crucifix – not a cross, I have tons of those, but a crucifix, a cross with Jesus on it. It was eight days before Easter, should be a simple task, right?

No.
No, it was not.

In fact, as I looked, I discovered that in all the Easter displays, there were only a few tepid nods to the resurrection of Jesus. In three huge rows of Easter merchandise, there were bunnies and baskets and boxes and jelly beans, there were tulips and chickens and plastic eggs and plastic grass, and candles and cards and cute cuddly toys, but there was hardly anything that indicated even the slightest awareness of any religious significance of Easter. I saw one pastel cross and one decorative sign that said, “Amazing Grace.”

But they DID have a SWAT team Easter basket.
That’s right.

It was jam-packed with fun Easter toys … like handcuffs.

The Walmart website described it like this:
“It allows your child to receive both fun toys and tasty candies for Easter. It includes all the items necessary for S.W.A.T. and police role-playing, including a badge with handcuffs, rescue blaster, walkie talkie play set and a tin box.”

Also, it has Fun Dip.
And Skittles. 

And M&Ms. 

Right next to it, on the main display, was an American Hero basket. It has “special forces toys.” And fruit snacks.

One of my friends said,
“Nothing says ‘hallelujah! Christ is risen!’ quite like a SWAT team Easter basket.”

For Christians, the crucifixion of Christ symbolizes humiliation, oppression, injustice and brutality. The resurrection, Easter, is a hallelujah shout of hope! For a child’s Easter basket to contain toy handcuffs and guns…well…

That’s why it was so horrifying for me to see toy guns in Easter baskets. To give gifts such as that, to commemorate our Risen Lord, runs counter to all that we believe as Christians.

But wait, pastor! Isn’t the cross a symbol of violence?

Well, in those days after the crucifixion, people certainly didn’t see the cross as a symbol of hope. In Jesus’ time, and in the decades following his death, when the Gospel accounts were written, the cross symbolized humiliation, oppression, injustice and brutality. It was a symbol of death, and of how Jesus died.

When they came to arrest Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, where he was praying, they came with clubs and swords. Like a SWAT team. And then they took him away and tried him on trumped up charges, but they couldn’t even get the witnesses to tell the same lies. See, he’d led a protest march of sorts earlier that week, led it into the city of Jerusalem with a bunch of peasants waving palm branches, the symbol of victory.

And the powers that be were terrified of him,
terrified that he challenged their smug religiosity,
their corrupt practices,
their cruel and inhumane treatment of the poor and lowly,
their immoral and unethical lives.

They were terrified that he would start an insurrection to overthrow them. So they came and arrested the Prince of Peace. He asked them, “Have you come out with swords and clubs to arrest me as though I were a bandit? Day after day I was with you in the temple teaching, and you did not arrest me.”

But arrest him they did, and they brought him before Pilate. And then they executed him, like a common criminal, hung him on a cross atop a smoldering heap of garbage, between two thieves.

His friends were distraught. They couldn’t imagine that what he had been telling them for the last three years was literally true. After he died, the disciples thought it was over.
They ran away.
They hid in a locked room, afraid of being arrested or being killed.
They couldn’t see how the nonviolent resistance of Jesus Christ, which had resulted in his execution, was going to result in anything but more trouble and suffering for them.

When your leader has been hunted down and arrested,
tried in a sham court,
convicted of blasphemy and sedition,
and publicly executed,
your movement is pretty much over, right?

But it wasn’t over!
He came back!

He came back, alive, and the despair of that Easter morning turned to hope. Mary told them that Jesus was not in the tomb, that he had risen as he said. But they did not believe it. But after encountered the risen Christ, they were willing to believe, and then willing to risk their lives for what they knew.

They became fearless apostles.
Easter changed everything for them.

The challenge of Easter is not the sadness of his death or the surprise of his resurrection.
The challenge of Easter is this: how will it change our lives? 

The challenge of Easter is whether we will go out of the church building today with renewed commitment to following Jesus, or whether we will walk away with the false assurance that we need not do anything more than show up and sing Alleluia! 

The challenge of Easter is whether we will be willing to risk for the sake of the God’s love for all people, or whether we will succumb to the safety of silence and respectability, and live unchanged by grace.

Easter is not a story of bunnies and chocolate.
It is a story of God’s love for the world overcoming power and violence.
It is a story of resistance in the name of hope.

The great Black theologian, J. Deotis Roberts, said, “The Easter story, rightly understood, enables us to engage evil and suffering, transmute it for constructive ends, and move forward in hope to God’s future and our own.”

The challenge of Easter is whether we will join with God in the work of resurrection, as we transform despair into hope, and resist oppression by engaging the powers of death and violence. Every new morning, we have the chance to look into that empty tomb and remember who we are, and whose we are.

From the moment of our baptism,
until the day when our baptism is complete in death,
we are surrounded by the extravagant love of God,
which will stop at nothing to bring us
to that moment of wonder and commitment,
when we shout, “I have seen the Lord!”

The cross represents that challenge
to live as Easter people,
to be those who commit to the risky business of following Jesus:
to resist idolatry,
to speak for those long silenced,
to live in obedience to love.

Christ is risen!
Christ is risen indeed!

Alleluia!

Amen!