LOOK AHEAD

Matthew's account of the resurrection is more dramatic than the one in the Book of Mark. In Mark everything is understated. The tomb is already open when the women arrive, and the messenger is simply called "a young man."

Matthew is much louder, more cinematic. Here there is an earthquake and the vivid image of an angel rolling back the stone and then sitting on it. Now there's a dash of style! Maybe even a bit Hollywood.

But friends, if Hollywood wrote this story, Jesus would come striding out of the open tomb shouting a greeting like a man who's had an extreme makeover. But that's not how it reads. The angel says, "He is not here." Sort of a letdown, after all that fuss.

The resurrection had already happened. Before the angel- before the earthquake. Before the stone was moved.

So if we allow Matthew his say, the stone was rolled back, not to let Jesus out, but to let the women in, to see the place where his body lay.

They knew the place. These are the same women who stood at the foot of the cross. The same who stood by this tomb when Joseph of Arimathea laid down the lifeless body of Jesus. They knew.

He died. He was wrapped in linen. They laid him in a tomb. This tomb. So they were eyewitnesses to the death and burial. In a court case, we would say these women had seen the chain of evidence.

But then the chain of evidence is broken. The women did not witness what happened before the earthquake, before the angel, before they saw an empty tomb. On that bright morning, Jesus was already gone.

Why is the actual resurrection part left out? WE want to know.

The poet, W. H. Auden throws an insult at the arrogance of the human race: calling it the "Impetuous child with the tremendous brain."

The Tremendous Brain is curious. The Tremendous Brain has learned to study. We have learned to investigate. We have learned to take things apart. From the mower mechanic to the particle physicist, from geologist to literary critic, to the Geek Squad guys with their skinny black ties- we take things apart. We want the facts. We want to know what makes it tick.

We treat Easter this way too. The voice says "Christ is Risen" but the Tremendous Brain says, "Let's get to the bottom of this."

So we dig. We dig into texts, into hillsides, into history. The Tremendous Brain takes things apart.

Archaeology takes things apart in order to put the past back together. Egyptian tombs, Roman garrisons, Galilean villages, -all have been unearthed and analyzed. The Dead Sea Scrolls are read and re-read.

We want proof as a foundation of faith. People who dig into things want to know. We want food for our tremendous brains! More feverish digging will only unearth more lifeless artifacts. From their glass cases they thumb their Roman noses at us like Mark Twain's Petrified Man.

Our questions circle back to the New Testament.

In Matthew, and Mark and Luke the angel makes the same claim. "He is not here." Listen well to that angel.

Looking into the past is fine for learning history. But hear this: digging up the past is a journey to a place where Jesus does not dwell. The angel said, "He is not here." We cannot feed our faith with investigation about what when where and how.

So I suggest that we turn our gaze away from Palestine, and look instead to the future.

Not the dismal future of a post catastrophe world. A future more like the Jetsons. The Jetsons had hope. The message of the Jetsons was that in the future we will still be us, but we'll be living on a higher plane.

I mention something silly to make a serious point. Matthew's account is trying to point us squarely toward the FUTURE, not the past.

The resurrection of Jesus calls us to look forward, not back. They earthquake and the angel are signals that God is acting out of the future, not the past.

The resurrected Christ comes to us from a living future, not a dead past. Looking into the past is looking into a tomb. And it's empty. The message is consistent: "He is not here." Easter disturbs the Tremendous Brain because the living Christ is not found in the past.

Christ comes to us from God's accomplished future. The time of God's perfect reign has burst into this world, and we are called into this future. We are not being poetic when we sing, Jesus Christ is risen TODAY."

The future arrives in this broken world, strange as that sounds. A future with hope. That may sound as silly as the Jetsons, but God is out to redeem the world.

Think of this message like a man standing up to his knees in snow saying "Summer is Coming!" The eyes and the ears show us winter, but we know there will be change.

Perhaps the very best Easter message is one surrounded by know instead of blossoms. God has established a way to reconcile the world and to make the claim that death and destruction will not be the last order of things. All evidence we can see and hear may say otherwise, but that's because we're bound by the past.

The resurrection is God's reversal.

In the resurrection God reverses everything. The resurrection reverses the world's decisions. The world said Jesus must Die. God says Christ is alive. The world said "By the Prince of demons he casts out demons" and God says, "This is my beloved Son."

The political leaders imposed their power on Jesus. The resurrection says God's power is over all. They said "guilty" and God says "innocent."

The women looked into a tomb, God's messenger says, "Look out there, not in here." The Tremendous Brain digs into the past, but God says, "Look ahead!"

On that Easter Day, God put things into reverse. The truth comes to us not from old facts, but from the end of time. Lift up your hearts and look ahead.

The women did start looking ahead. It started with the command to go to Galilee. Think of Galilee as the doorway to the world. "Galilee of the Gentiles" is how the region is described elsewhere. The place where devout Jews crossed paths with foreigners, gentiles, outsiders. The women see Jesus only AFTER they start out walking to meet the world.

"Go to Galilee." The angel said, and it is in going they meet Jesus. God says to you, "GO." God is always ahead of us. We only see Jesus when we step forward to meet the world. And every time we meet God we learn that God has already accomplished something. It happened before we got here. To know that is to live in confidence.

Today is not a commemoration, but an invitation. The resurrection not in the cave, not in the grave, but out there- where we meet the world and its need, that's when we meet Jesus. When we do, we fall at his feet. We worship.