The Day After Easter

The man told the two Mary’s and Salome,
who were de facto disciples by the way,
to let Peter and the others know
where they could see Jesus again.
“As always,” he might have said, “he’s a step ahead of you.”

We have been stuck for most of two thousand years
with primitive writing, anemic narrative
like the account I just read from Mark.
But we can imagine the original oral accounts of this story
must have been fantastic.

In Mark’s stingy and economical written version,
all we get is a young man matter-of-factly
suggesting they go deliver a message,
as if there is nothing out of order.
“Oh, don’t be alarmed…
Nothing to see here, keep it moving.”

This story is a prism,
it refracts light from every direction
and throws beams and colors and reflections
every which way.
This year I am stuttering over
a very small element that casts a big light,
at least for me.

“Go back to Galilee,
he will meet you at home.”

In essence, that is what the young man was saying
when he invited the Marys and Salome to go back to Galilee,
which he assured them, is where they would see Jesus again.
Galilee was home.
The empty-tomb message was: go home.

I’ll tell you what got me thinking about it.
One of my daughters called me from her commute last week,
and asked why Jesus went to Jerusalem in the first place.

She had been trying to explain the Palm Sunday story
to her boyfriend who did not grow up in Church,
and that piece of the story was now lost to her.

It made me realize how important that question is
on both ends of this story.
Why did Jesus go to Jerusalem in the first place,
and why, the day after Easter, did they go home?

Allow me to color in the lines a little.

The city of Jerusalem was where Jesus was killed.
Jerusalem was really enemy territory for Jesus
and therefore his friends and students.
It was not their home.
It was a hostile environment for them.

Jerusalem was in the southern province of Judea.
Jesus and his cohort were from the north, in Galilee.

The distance in miles
wasn’t very far at all by modern standards,
but the cultural distance between Galilee
and Jerusalem
was as far apart as, say,
the Finger Lakes and Manhattan.

To the smaller, rural provinces like Galilee
with its splash of tiny towns and villages,
Judea and Jerusalem might have seemed like Manhattan surrounded by Jersey City, Newark, and Paramus.

Galilee, the province where Jesus and is friends were from,
was up north – far away.
It was dotted with villages
smaller than Dresden, Seneca Castle, or Reed’s Corner.
There were Garrisons and a spa or two
for the Romans and their collaborators,
but none creating a population center around it.
Nazareth, for example, one of the bigger villages,
was about fifty houses clumped together on four acres.

Galilee was influenced by rural culture
and suspicion of urban life.
Judea was decadent, hostile territory.

To be told to go home,
having just suffered horrendous trauma,
felt like a dream to those women.
Go home – where you feel safe.
Go home – where your memories seed the ground.
Go home – where you are woven with love into community.
Go home – where your grief does not water the sand.
Go home – and away from this hell-hole awash with urban decadence and Roman brutality.

The terror and bewilderment
of that religious experience at the empty tomb
must have been mitigated, at least a little,
by the relief of hearing those words: go home.

You do not have to stay here in danger.
You do not have to go up against impossible odds.
You do not have to try to convince these hostile people.
You do not have to live in fear among such strangers.
You do not have to be crucified.
Go home.

Just stutter on that message awhile.

Jesus’ friends and companions
had no interest in going to Jerusalem
and warned Jesus not to go – we know this from the story.
But it was Jesus’ decision to go anyway,
and now his friends received permission to go home
without guilt or shame.

Preachers and theologians have a bad habit
of neglecting certain parts of the Gospel stories
in favor of other ones
in order to underscore our beliefs.
For example, we have an image of Jesus
going around dragging perfect strangers
away from their lives to evangelize
and maybe get themselves killed in the process.

We have painted an image of Jesus
calling his followers to act like lemmings running off a cliff.
But we have obscured the fact
that Jesus himself had a home.
Jesus had a house,
his own house
where he lived.
(It was in Capernaum by the way,
though that is irrelevant just now).

I think this is important for us,
for our own narratives
and because it may influence how we think
about our own spiritual practice
and the practice of our Baptismal promises.

In all the stories we hear about Jesus and
the vast majority of the people he touched –
even those whose lives he unalterably changed
and radically transformed –
most of them stayed at home.
After a real-life, real-time encounter with Jesus
they stayed at home
with the people they had always lived with.
They stayed at home
and lived their new life where they had always lived.
Of all the people Jesus knew and loved,
and who knew and loved him,
apparently only a very few of his friends
were asked to go south with him to that urban hell-hole
down in the province of Judah.

When we read the Gospels as a whole,
it seems that Jesus and his friends didn’t get into trouble
until they went south;
until they left home to take their message
and their campaign into Judea and Jerusalem.

But now, at the tail end of this Gospel story,
Jesus whispers from the shadow of death
via a strange messenger, and assures them:
“Don’t be afraid, go home.
I will see you at home.”
On this side of Good Friday,
we need to pay attention to what happened
after the third day.
That is where WE live.
What happens the day after Easter?
They go home.

The day after Easter
is the most important day for us
because it is the one we live every day.
The day after Easter they went home.

What I am struck by today
is that the resurrected life
takes place at home.

The spiritual life is a home life,
not necessarily the dangerous hero’s adventure
that takes us to strange places among exotic people.
When we encounter the empty tomb,
what do we do the day after?
We go home.
We go home to our lives as we have lived them,
and then we look ourselves in the eye and ask,
“What do we do now?”

There is a very earthen, practical wisdom here.

We so often forget that home,
among the people we know and who know us,
is where our power is.
When we want to put our faith into action
and ‘walk our talk,’
we often imagine we have to go somewhere else to do it.

While that kind of service is fine
and important to be sure,
especially if it allows us to build relationships
across socio-economic boundaries,
our true power is with those at home.

Our power, the ability to influence change,
is greatest among those with whom
we live and work and play.
If we want to address racism, for example,
we will be far more powerful agents of change
addressing it with those we know
than we will with total strangers.

If we want to be peacemakers,
we will be far more influential seeking converts
among the voters we know
than only public protest.

If we want to be advocates of freedom and dignity,
and lobby against government
and corporate spying on ordinary citizens,
we will be more powerful trying to convince
those we live with to change online and spending behavior
than writing letters to the editor
in the Democrat and Chronicle.

At the heart of our Baptismal Covenant
is the invitation for us to be agents of God’s love
in a world that is often hostile to it.
That is our spiritual practice:
To be agents of God’s love in a world that both
needs and resists that love.

But we do not have to go to Jerusalem
or other strange provinces
in order to serve that love.
In fact, we can serve it most powerfully,
most often,
at home.

We have not been sent as perfect strangers
to proselytize and preach.
Instead, we have been invited to go home
and be agents of God’s love to those
with whom we live, and work, and play.

We have been invited
to share our amazement and joy
among those with whom
we have the greatest influence.
And that is because we are never more powerful
than when sharing our experience
of the resurrected life
with those who know and love us.

Our influence will never be greater
than when we are agents of God’s love
sharing that love
with those we know
and who care about what we know.

“Do not be afraid. Go home.”
Go home and tell the people you know
what it is like to stand before the empty tomb
only to discover it is full of life.

Do not be afraid.
Go home and tell the people you know
how and where you encountered the presence of God,
and invite their sense of wonder.

Do not be afraid.
Go home and tell the people you know
what it is like to feel loved without condition,
and be accepted without judgment
by the God of the Cosmos.

Do not be afraid.
Go home and tell the people you know
that you discovered a community of worship
that seems to be guided by Jesus’ radical hospitality
and welcomes all:
seekers, believers, unbelievers,
and everyone in between.

Go home
and be agents of God’s love
where you live
and among those with whom you live.

Go home
and be powerful.
Do not be afraid, you are home.
Happy Easter!