There's Work To Do

The mall’s Easter Bunny has put his costume back into storage. All of the plastic eggs have been gathered up from Easter egg hunts, their candy long gone. Stores are gearing up for Mother’s Day and graduation parties. Can Christmas shopping be far behind?

In the church, meanwhile, it’s still the Day of Resurrection. Every Sunday is a feast of our Lord Jesus Christ, as the prayer book says, but the first two Sundays after Easter take us right back to that day itself. This week two disciples have rushed back from their walk to Emmaus on which they encountered the risen Christ. As they breathlessly tell their story to the others, suddenly Jesus is right there in their midst. This time no bread-breaking is necessary for everyone to recognize him. They’re terrified, of course; how else does one respond when seeing someone known to be dead? They think he’s a spirit.

But Jesus is real flesh and bone. Resurrected flesh and bone, to be sure, but real just the same. He shows them his wounds and invites them to touch him. They are so overwhelmed and overjoyed that they still can’t get their heads wrapped around the fact that he’s actually there. So to prove he’s real, Jesus asks for a bite to eat, then nibbles on some broiled fish. Finally their internal questioning subsides and they are ready to hear him out.

What Jesus says is that this is all part of the plan. The Messiah is supposed to suffer and die and rise on the third day. He’s been telling them that all along, and they still don’t get it. So he opens their minds (a wonderful image) and lays out the scriptures before them. They are to spread the message so that all repent of what they have done, turn back around to God, and let God forgive them. “You are witnesses of these things,” Jesus says. Tell everyone!

Peter and John do just that. Peter heals a lame man and then preaches to the crowd that assembled to see the sight. He tells them exactly what Jesus had poured into his open mind, clear through the part about repentance and turning to God. John is more subtle. “See what love the Father has given us,” he writes, “that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.” John, too, knows that this fish-eating resurrected Christ has changed everything. That fact should change us as well. There’s still a lot that needs explaining, but “what we do know is this….we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.”

Several themes come through loud and clear in all of the Easter stories. One is that this is all part of God’s plan. Another is that Jesus will arrive in the midst of fear and say, “Peace to you.” Those two messages we hear. Yet a third is just as insistent: “You are witnesses of these things.” It’s all fine and dandy that God loves us and that we don’t have to be afraid. But there’s no complacency in the Easter message. There’s work to do. It’s not a sit back and bask in the warmth of God’s love like being full of Easter ham and chocolate bunny. It’s more like Christ is risen, now get out there!

That’s the most threatening part of the Easter message. Work is hard enough, but when the work involves talking about Jesus, we’d just as soon eat that chocolate bunny, thank you. It’s especially hard in a culture that associates “Christian” with judgment, with condemnation of others in the name of God.

Yet we don’t have to stand in a crowd and proclaim Jesus like Peter did. We can do it ways other than words. In fact, Jesus provides us a list in Matthew 25 – feed the hungry, water the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, care for the sick, visit prisoners. Those things witness to the risen Christ just as much as preaching Jesus. And it’s also why we hear about Easter again and again. There’s too much to do to fit into one hour a week. In fact, we spend all of our lives living into the meaning of that one day. That’s the wonder, the glory, the richness of the resurrection. So get going! There’s work to do!

[3 Easter: Acts 3:12-19; 1 John 3:1-7; Luke 24:36b-48.]