Easter Hope (Mother Beth)

Go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.
 
When Mary Magdalene, Mary the Mother of James, and Salome come to the tomb on the first Easter, they are coming looking for an end. Jesus is dead, his mission is over, and they just want it all to have a proper burial. They are coming looking for an end, whereas God is offering them a beginning. They are going to bid farewell to their hopes, whereas God is welcoming them to a future in which hope becomes something substantial and concrete.
 
Go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.
 
The hope Mary Magdalene and Mary the Mother of James and Salome learn about this morning is not primarily a hope of life after death or a hope of comfort now, though the Christian faith does offer us life after death and give us comfort. The young man at the tomb tells these three women not that they can feel less sad because Jesus has gone to heaven, but that Jesus has been raised to new life by the power of God, his body is no longer in the tomb, and he is already out in front of them -- in this world, in that risen body, going ahead of them to apply to our world the same power that raised him.
 
In this year where so many human bodies have been invaded by a virus, where nearly 3 million human bodies have died of it, where we’ve reckoned anew with all the human bodies who have been harmed because their skin is brown or black – in this world, we need a God who deals with bodies. We need a hope that is substantial and concrete, a hope that is bodily, a hope that is not just for later, but for now -- and this is the hope we hear about on Easter.
 
The Presbyterian writer Timothy Keller has a brand new book drawing on the overwhelming events of the last year, which for him coincided with battling pancreatic cancer in his own body. It’s called Hope in Times of Fear: The Resurrection and the Meaning of Easter. As he works through the data on the resurrection, he lays out why the hope Easter proclaims works in times of fear: because it guarantees that Jesus in his risen body is already out in front of us, drawing his future into our present, and his risen body into our mortal bodies.
 
“In the resurrection,” Keller writes, “we have the presence of the future. The power by which God will finally destroy all suffering, evil, deformity, and death at the end of time has broken into history [on Easter] and is available, partially but substantially – now.” That power breaks into the world specifically in the risen body of Jesus. Not in an idea or an aspiration, but in human flesh – human flesh remade into a carrier of the power of God’s coming Kingdom.
 
So hope for a Christian is not optimism. Hope is not wait and see. Hope is not put a good face on it. Hope is not pie in the sky when you die, although the hope that begins today certainly extends past the grave. Hope for a follower of Jesus is substantial, concrete and bodily, guaranteed in the risen flesh which carries God’s future now, and brings it into our world, our bodies, our lives.
 
Go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.
 
Let me read that quote from Keller again. What we learn today is that “The power by which God will finally destroy all suffering, evil, deformity, and death at the end of time has broken into history [on Easter] and is available, partially but substantially – now.”
 
It is available. Not in its fullness till the next world, when God’s whole future is made manifest, but still available, partially but substantially, here where we can see it. And in fact, you will see it in just a few minutes yourself. After all, the body of Christ that we offer and share at every Eucharist is, of course, that very same risen body, that very same carrier of the power by which God will finally destroy all suffering, evil, deformity, and death at the end of time.
 
Easter is not just for later. If you come to communion today, in just a few minutes you will hold it in your hands. And at the end of time, the fullness of its effects will be realized, substantially and concretely, and all suffering, evil, deformity, and death will be destroyed. But it begins now. It begins here. Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Happy Easter.