Easter

There was a disturbance the small town of Yoorana in country Victoria. 6 naked people, covered in dirt had been spotted in in the cemetery during the night. The town’s lone policeman was uncertain what he would find there, suspecting either a prank or a drug trip. He discovered instead 6 opened graves, some dating back decades, and concludes that these people have come back to life.

So begins last year’s quirky TV hit Glitch. The subsequent episodes ask the question of how these people have come alive, and why. Why these six and not others, finding some answers by tracing the backstory of a different character each episode.

What if this had actually happened? It would be a fascinating supernatural oddity. The cemetery would no doubt become a tourist attraction. But it wouldn’t change anything for you or me. These people would eventually die again, as they did on the TV show, and life would return to normal.

It can be easy to gloss over Jesus’ resurrection from the dead in the same way. Even if it did happen, isn’t it just an ancient curiosity, not particularly different to Jesus walking on water and healing a few blind men?

Firstly, let’s establish why we’d even believe that it did happen. Because if it didn’t, the whys and wherefores can hardly matter.

Let’s imagine that police take statements from four eyewitnesses to a crime. If the four witnesses have completely different stories; different descriptions, different number of people, different location, different days etc, police would find it hard to trust any of them as credible. But if they all had the same story, word for word, they’d know that the witnesses had colluded, and couldn’t rely on their evidence either. To be credible, you’d want each witness to describe pretty much the same scene, but with enough variation to show that they are recalling their own experience from their own perspective.

This is what we have in the four gospels written about Jesus. They all tell pretty much the same story about the life and works of Jesus, in the 1^st century AD, in the Roman provinces of Galillee and Judea. There’s plenty of variation, with different miracles and different teachings emphasised from gospel to gospel. But the one thing about which they most concur is that Jesus rose from the dead a couple of days after his execution. They all describe that the tomb was empty, his corpse nowhere to be found, and that numbers of people see and experience him alive again.

That Jesus rose from the dead is the central claim of the gospels, in fact the purpose they were written. In the decades following Jesus’ resurrection most of the original disciples, the eyewitnesses to Jesus’ life were killed by the Roman empire as spreaders of dangerous disinformation. Each of them died, sometimes hideous deaths, because they refused to deny that what they had spoken and written was true: Jesus who was dead is now alive!

To go back to our earlier point though, so what? Remarkable though it was, how does it matter now?

It matters because of how Jesus died, which in turn is tied to Jesus’ life and mission. Jesus did not die of natural causes. He was executed as a revolutionary, as a disturber of the Pax Romana for mobilising the peasant classes with a bold new teaching of a God who is loving, forgiving and inclusive. And like his later followers, he submitted to death rather than deny his message.

With a very specific worldview which might seem foreign to us now, Jesus intended 

his inevitable death to be a sacrifice for sin, for all humanity, the very sin embedded in the social structures of an unjust society which could execute its people.

It was a bold move on Jesus’ part. An act of faith. Because no matter how sure your faith is, it’s a big thing to let yourself be killed. Jesus was holding out his life as an offering to a God whom he felt, but had never seen, saying “take me, take my life on behalf of all the world.” From the cross in his last breaths he cried out “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit”.

Jesus’ resurrection on that first Easter morning is God’s response to Jesus’ self-offering. It is God’s definitive yes, that God accepted Jesus’ sacrifice. It is God’s vindication of Jesus and his message. That all Jesus said and did, and ultimately died for is true. That God is not a harsh and distant judge, but a loving, forgiving, merciful Father. That God’s design for humanity is not an exclusive cult of perfection, but an open, inclusive, egalitarian community committed to justice for all people.

This is what Jesus’ resurrection means. That the words and actions of Jesus are universally true and have enduring significance.

But even more importantly, Jesus isn’t just a great teacher for us to follow. When he rose from the dead, he didn’t die again. His risen life becomes ongoing, though in a spiritual rather than bodily form, so we can have a relationship with Jesus through prayer, and be his coworkers for love and justice, at his personal invitation and direction.

If you want to explore further what Easter means, come and explore Jesus’ backstory with us. Get to know Jesus better both through reading and through prayer. This is what we explore both on Sundays at Mass in the parish, and in the various groups and short term programs we do during the week, including the Spiritual Exercises which we begin next week.

Jesus has risen! He is alive and with us now. Let’s worship him!