Mark 16:1-8, Luke 24:13-35

         A pastor was once giving a children’s sermon on Easter Sunday, and, as one might expect, she had more than the usual number of little ones gathered about her on the chancel steps at the front of the church.  She was telling the story of Easter with immense drama and flair – knowing that she would probably not see some of these children again until Christmas Eve. 

         She began with the three women making their way to the cemetery as the first hint of dawn spread its rosy fingers across the Eastern horizon.  The children listened intently.  She then went on to tell how the women found the tomb in the garden amidst the dew-laden lilies and daffodils.  The children were in her thrall.  As she continued the story, she asked the children to imagine being one of the women who saw that the enormous stone across the tomb entrance had been rolled away, revealing the darkened interior. The children were silent.  Their eyes were as big as saucers, hanging on the pastor’s every word. 

         She then paused dramatically before asking them the pivotal and climactic question:  “And when the women peeked inside the tomb, what do you suppose they saw?”

         One little girl, attired in her brand new white dress with its pink satin bow, her Easter bonnet tied coquettishly around her chin, could hardly contain her excitement.  The pastor repeated the question for added emphasis:  “And when the women peeked inside the tomb, what do you suppose they saw?”

         The little girl excitedly blurted out, loud enough for the entire congregation to hear, “Jelly beans?”

         Well, we who are wise to this story know that Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome did not find jellybeans when they came to the tomb that first Easter morning.  However, they knew full well what they would find:  a corpse hastily laid on a cold rock shelf, Jesus’ body – broken and torn - that had not been properly prepared for burial due to the taboo on doing any sort of work – particularly touching a dead body – on the Sabbath. 

         And so, because of an ancient Jewish religious ritual that the Pharisees enforced, the three of them had now come to the garden cemetery in the darkest hour just before dawn, carrying their baskets filled with spices – myrrh and aloe, cedar, rose, and lavender – common embalming ingredients in the ancient world.  They had come to offer their final gift of love and respect with the rising sun. They had come to weep one last time and to say goodbye forever.  They knew the rock closing off the entrance to the tomb would be a problem, but, well, they would cross that bridge when they came to it. 

         Of course, we who are wise to this story know that the stone was not an issue.  Nor did the women find a corpse.  In fact, they found nothing – nothing except emptiness and an even darker dark than they had known before. 

         They found only some guy dressed in white whom they did not know sitting where Jesus’ body should have been lying, some guy spouting a tale that he was gone, that he was raised, that he had hightailed it off the Galilee.  In short, the three women only found an empty tomb.  And they were so torn between terror and amazement that they ran away and told no one. 

         It is a lousy ending to the story – no doubt about it. Could not the Gospel writer of Mark have done a bit better than that?  

         It was such a lousy ending, in fact, that an editor years later, when this resurrection business was perhaps somewhat better understood, added on a few more verses about Jesus meeting up with his disciples again. However, any way you read this particular Gospel narrative – with or without the second, later ending, you have got to figure that the women must have told their story to someone – or else we would not be continuing to tell their same story year after year, Easter after Easter.

         However, it is little wonder that the women ran away, their lips sealed.  I mean, there are so many explanations for an empty tomb – and the least likely would have been that Jesus had come back to life again. 

         Was it not in the 1988 film “The Last Temptation of Christ” that director Martin Scorsese speculated that Jesus never actually died on the cross but was rescued by his guardian angel, got married, and lived peacefully to a ripe old age?  That caused a flap in the orthodox Christian world! 

         And then there was the possibility of grave robbers.  It was not uncommon for peasants to make a little extra cash on the side by stripping dead people of any and all worldly possessions they may have tried to take with them – and even absconding with the body itself.  

         And what about the disciples themselves hiding Jesus’ body in the hopes of duping the public into believing that Jesus had indeed returned from the dead and this time really would lead the much anticipated political revolution?

         In addition, scholars of ancient Roman history and cultural practices wonder about the likelihood of Jesus’s body being placed in a tomb in the first place.  It would certainly have been uncharacteristic of the fate of other crucifixion victims. 

         Biblical historian Bart Ehrman notes that it was against Roman practices for criminals to be given decent burials.  Their bodies were left to rot on the crosses as part of their punishment and as a reminder to those living that it was dangerously foolish to cross the Roman governor.  Sometimes all that was left were weathered bones.  Sometimes vultures or dogs or wild beasts ate the carcasses, waiting in the wings until nightfall to pull the parts they could get at to the ground and feast on the rotten remains. 

         Ehrman goes on to say that, if criminals such as Jesus were buried, the Romans took care of it, eventually shoveling them into shallow common graves like first century Holocaust victims. There in peace the worms and insects could finish the work begun by the hot desert sun. 

         And as far as the story of Joseph of Arimathea asking a favor of Pilate and obtaining permission to take Jesus’ body for a proper burial?  Well, Pilate was not exactly known for being a sympathetic ruler and bestowing his kindness for nothing in return. 

         In fact, the first century historian Philo, In describing Pilate's personality, writes that Pilate had "vindictiveness and furious temper", and was "naturally inflexible, a blend of self-will and relentlessness".

         Referring to Pilate's governance, Philo further describes "his corruption, and his acts of insolence, and his rapine, and his habit of insulting people, and his cruelty, and his continual murders of people untried and uncondemned, and his never ending, and gratuitous, and most grievous inhumanity."  Not someone likely to agree to a proper burial for a two-bit Jewish criminal that he had washed his hands of a few days before.

         So where does all this leave us on Easter morning?  After all, this is the day of the empty tomb.  This is the day that is supposed to have us all belting out the Hallelujah Chorus and believing wholeheartedly in Jesus’ resurrection. But on the basis of some guy dressed in white and three women who were too afraid to tell anyone their outlandish story?  Come on!

         The empty tomb is traditionally the symbol of the resurrection – but the evidence is so flimsy.  Where does all this leave us on Easter morning?

PLAY SKIT GUYS VIDEO – THE ROAD TO EMMAUS

         Resurrection is indeed central to the Christian faith.   That much we know.  After all, without it, Jesus would have been just a footnote in Jewish history, his followers a small sect within Judaism that likely would have died out over time.  Most assuredly, it was the disciples’ belief in resurrection that changed everything.  However, that belief had little to do with the empty tomb.

         And so, I would submit that those of you who come to church only on this Sunday – but are serious about this resurrection business - ought to hang around for the next few Sundays at least.  Because, you see, what made the difference was not the empty tomb of Easter.

     What made the difference were stories like the two old men in the video.  Decades later, they remembered – maybe not what they had for lunch that day but forever how their hearts had burned inside of them when they had met Jesus on the road, and he had shared a meal with them. 

         There are other stories like that one in all the Gospel narratives.  There is the story of Jesus cooking breakfast on a beach, of Jesus confronting Mary Magdalene in the cemetery garden and her mistaking him at first for the gardener, of Jesus allowing Thomas to touch his scarred hands and wounded side.  Even that later editor of Mark’s Gospel eventually comes round to a story – albeit short on details - about Jesus appearing to his followers, those stubborn men of little faith.

         It was not the empty tomb that caused them – or causes us - to believe in his resurrection – or to toss it aside as a fanciful tale.  It is those experiences of Jesus appearing to those who loved him that make all the difference. 

         It was visions of Jesus alive again – not the empty tomb - that inspired Jesus’ followers to know – beyond the shadow of a doubt – that he had been raised from the dead, that he was alive. The two old men said it themselves:  Their hearts burned inside of them.  Their lives were changed forever.

         The guy in white at the tomb told the three women to tell the disciples to meet Jesus in Galilee, where his ministry began.  Maybe that is what we should do as well: Return to the beginning and see the life of Jesus unfolding with new eyes. 

         As Lutheran pastor Jonathan Davies writes, we see Jesus “caring for the sick, and sitting with the people no one else wants to sit with, and loving the people who hate and betray him. And when we realize those things are still happening today, then all of sudden we have something say about the resurrected Christ in the world today.”  He is risen! He is alive!  He is here!

         And every time we do something, no matter how small, to welcome the refugee, to readjust the off-kilter balance between affluence and poverty, to heal the rift between us and the ones we are unable to forgive, every time we do something that leaves our hearts burning within us because we know we could not have done what we did just on our own, well, there you have it:  He is risen!

     From death to life, from war to peace, from hopelessness to joy:  I believe all those pie-in-the-sky things are possible even when so much in our world tries to prove to me otherwise.  From death to life, from war to peace, from hopelessness to joy:  I believe those glimpses of God’s dream for the world have happened and will continue to happen. 

         Call me gullible, but I will keep belting out the Hallelujah Chorus annually – even though I have never had a vision like those early disciples.  I have never breakfasted with Jesus nor heard him speak outright to me nor touched him.

          In that regard, I am a pretty ordinary person.  However, I am also darn sure that I have been touched by him - if only by being touched by all that he stood for. 

         I have seen him in the face of a wheelchair-bound man who beamed as he waved goodbye to a few of us who had built him a handicap ramp in Tennessee. I have witnessed him breaking bread in soup kitchens in Portland, and I have watched him picking up weekend groceries at the food pantry at Maine Seacoast Mission.  I have even felt his presence once in a while here in church.

        And on that perhaps flimsy basis alone, I will keep telling this story – year after year, Easter after Easter.  Not so much the empty tomb part as the times I have sensed something bigger than myself holding me up, giving me courage and strength that I never really thought I had, leading me – when I actually let him lead me - on a way laced with compassion and justice and reconciliation and inclusion. 

         It may not be much.  It may not be enough for some of you sitting here this morning, but for me, for now, it is enough to be able to say.  He is risen!  He lives!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia – and amen.