The Rev. Dayle Casey
The Chapel of Our Saviour
Colorado Springs, Colorado
April 12, 2009

Easter Day
Acts 10:34-43
Colossians 3:1-4
Mark 16:1-8

In A Painted House, John Grisham tells a story about growing up in a family of cotton farmers in rural Arkansas in the 1950s as seen through the eyes of seven-year-old Luke Chandler.

Early in the story, the Chandlers go to town on a Saturday afternoon, and as seven-year-olds do, Luke and his friend Dewayne leave their families to explore, and they wander behind a store and walk in on a back-alley beating. The Sisco brothers have started a fight. The Siscos are mean older boys, the town bullies. They are poorer than the Chandlers, poorer than most people in the county, mere sharecroppers. The Chandlers and other God-fearing people consider the Siscos “white trash” from the wrong side of the tracks who don’t even go to church. Perhaps, reasoned the God-fearing people of town, perhaps that’s why they are mean, and bullies.

The Sisco brothers are beating up on someone they consider even lower than themselves, a boy from the hills outside town whose family are not even sharecroppers, just itinerant cotton pickers. But another hillbilly steps into the fight with a two-by-four to even the odds, and Jerry Sisco is killed. Well, reasoned most of the God-fearing people, Sisco had picked the fight; he was a “no-a’count” anyway, a bully who had picked on the wrong guy this time, and he had just gotten what was coming to him.

But the next morning at church something happens that leaves seven-year-old Luke Chandler utterly astonished and totally baffled.

“Other than family and the farm,” Luke explains, ”nothing was as important to us as the Black Oak Baptist Church. It was family, for better or worse. Everybody loved one another, or at least professed to, and if one of our members was the slightest bit ill, then all manner of prayer and Christian caring poured forth....

“Down the street at the Methodist church, there were fewer trucks and more cars. As a general rule, the merchants and schoolteachers worshiped there. The Methodists thought they were slightly superior, but as Baptists, we knew we had the inside track to God....

“Dewayne and I found the cookies in the fellowship hall, then went to our little classrooms.... Our Sunday school teacher, who taught at the high school in Monette, Miss Beverly Dill Cooley, started things off with a lengthy, and quite generous, obituary for Jerry Sisco, a poor boy from a poor family, she said, a young man who never had a chance. Then she made us hold hands and close our eyes while she lifted her voice to heaven, and for a very long time [she did something that completely floored us. She] asked God to receive poor Jerry into His warm and eternal embrace. She made Jerry sound like a Christian, and an innocent victim.

“I glanced at Dewayne, who had one eye on me.

“There was something odd about this. As Baptists, we’d been taught from the cradle that the only way you made it to heaven was by believing in Jesus and trying to follow His example in living a clean and moral Christian life. It was a simple message, one that [every seven-year-old can understand, a message that] was preached from the pulpit every Sunday morning and every Sunday night, and every revival preacher who passed through Black Oak repeated the message loud and clear. We heard it at Sunday school, at Wednesday night prayer service, and at Vacation Bible School. It was in our music, our devotionals, our literature. It was straightforward, unwavering, and without loopholes, compromise, or wiggle room. Anyone who did not accept Jesus and live a Christian life simply went to hell. That’s where Jerry Sisco was, and we all knew it.

“But Miss Cooley prayed on. She prayed for all the Siscos in this time of grief and loss, and she prayed for our little town as it reached out to help this family.

“I couldn't think of a single soul in Black Oak who would reach out to the Siscos.

“It was a strange prayer, and when she finally said, ’amen,’ I was completely bewildered. Jerry Sisco had never been near a church, but Miss Cooley prayed as if he were with God at that very moment. If outlaws like the Siscos could make it to heaven, the pressure was off the rest of us.

“Then she started on Jonah and the whale again....”

When Peter heard about the empty tomb, he was as baffled by that as Luke Chandler was by his Sunday school teacher’s prayer. It just didn’t fit with everything Peter had always been taught to expect.

Easter is like that. It leaves us scratching our heads and wondering what’s happened. Like seven-year-old Luke. Like Peter.

Only later, only after the risen Jesus appeared to Peter and the others, did Peter “get it.” “The truth, I have now come to realize,” Peter said then, ”is that God does not have favorites – those from one side of town but not the other, those who are ‘in’ but not those who are ‘out,’ the Baptist Chandlers but not the hayseed Siscos – but that anybody of any nationality who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to God. The truth, I have finally come to realize,” laughed Peter, ”is that the joke is on me! The only favorite God plays is life over death.”

Well, we all know that if you have to explain a joke, you might as well save your breath. I imagine that was true for Peter. For years, before the Resurrection, Peter had been trying to understand what all the people around Jesus were laughing about. But it was no use. Every time he thought he got the punch line, it would slip away from him. Lord knows it had been explained to Peter often enough. Like that time on the mountain top when Peter had seen the glory of God shine right through Jesus. At that time, Jesus had explained clearly that he had to go on to Jerusalem, that he would be crucified, and then be raised. But Peter didn’t get it then.

It had been explained to Peter over and over again about how God is a God of generosity and grace, and that that’s why everyone who got the point was laughing. But it just hadn’t sunk in with Peter yet.

From the Scriptures Peter had heard all the stories about the grace and love and power of God. He had heard about the laughter of Abraham and Sarah – about how, when Abraham and Sarah were in their eighties God had promised them a son, and about how, years later, when Sarah was ninety, she and Abraham were sitting outside their tent one day, long after they had given up hope for children and grandchildren, when an angel appeared to Sarah and said, ”Well, Sarah, the time has come!” “The time for what?” asked Sarah. “It’s time for you to have your baby now,” said the angel. “You’re going to have the son God promised you.”

And Peter had heard how Sarah had laughed. Had laughed right there in front of the angel. And Abraham had laughed, too! And then the angel laughed. And who wouldn’t! Imagine! Ninety years old and being told that you are going to have a baby in the geriatric ward with Medicare picking up the tab! Life just doesn’t work that way! It’s nonsense. It’s as ridiculous as being told that someone who was dead is alive again. The angel must be wrong. So Sarah laughed. And so did Abraham

And Peter had heard, as all Jews had heard, how Abraham and Sarah soon stopped laughing at God and started laughing with God when the promised child was born. And Peter knew that they had named the child “Laughter,” Isaac, the laughter that was the result of a promise of God kept and of life restored! Because God loves a good joke, too. Still, Peter failed to see just how this fit in at Jesus’ empty tomb.

And you’d have thought that Peter would have gotten the punch line about God even earlier, back when Jesus told that story about the two sons, about the younger son who had run away from home, the story about the younger son who had gotten his degree from Princeton, which had cost his father a cool $150,000, the story about how, after the graduation party his father had thrown for him, the young man had said, ”Dad, I’m going to level with you. I can’t stand it here. I can’t stand you, your values, or your face. Drop dead, Dad. I’ve got my diploma now. It’s my passport to suburbia and the sweet life. And the trust fund you set up for me is mine tomorrow. I’m splitting. Good night, and goodbye.”

And from Jesus’ story Peter remembered how the younger son had just disappeared for years, and how he had lived a life of such squalor and immorality that it really was a joke to imagine that he and his father could ever even speak to each other again, but how one night, about two o’clock in the morning, the doorbell rings, and the father stumbles out of bed and trips down the stairs and opens the door to find his son standing there, booze on his breath, lipstick on his collar, eyes disoriented, clothes disheveled, and how, instead of slamming the door, the young man’s father threw his arms around his son and told him that he loved him, and then threw another big party for him the next weekend, so that he and his family and friends could laugh and make merry and enjoy the fact that the young man was alive and home again.

And Peter knew, too, about the young man’s older brother, the one with the Harvard M.B.A. who had worked faithfully for dad all those years, and about how the older brother, like Peter, didn’t “get” the story’s punch line, .so that he didn’t go to the homecoming party or see the truth, the truth that no one likes to laugh more than one’s father, especially when a son who was lost is found, especially when a son who was dead is alive again.

Now Peter was no dummy, and you’d think that with all these explanations he would somehow have received from the stories of Abraham and Sarah and the Prodigal Son some notion of what God is like. So when the women came to tell him that they couldn’t find Jesus’ body, you’d think that Peter would have suspected that God must have something up his sleeve, something mysteriously delightful for Jesus, just as he had for Abraham and Sarah and for the two sons in the story Jesus told.

You’d think that right there at the empty tomb Peter would have realized the truth – that the grace of God is so generous that we had better not count on our own limited expectations about life, because God is one who goes beyond our expectations. You’d have thought that Peter would get the punch line this time, that when he saw the empty tomb he would also see that when we limit our expectations about the grace of God, well, then, the joke is on us!

The joke is on us, isn’t it? Abraham and Sarah, grown old, had ceased to expect God to keep his promise. After all, no one has a child at Sarah’s age. The runaway son wouldn’t have been surprised if his father had slammed the door in his face. After all, he knew he didn’t deserve anything else.

The joke is on us human beings who are prepared for a god who strikes a hard bargain, but not for a God of grace. The joke is on us who are not prepared for a God who makes Sarah laugh and leaves Peter scratching his head at an empty tomb.

The joke is on us who have lived so long in a world that fails to keep its promises that we cease to trust that God will keep his. The joke is on us who are so blind that we can believe anything, except that beyond our blindness lies a great light! The joke is on us who are prepared for a god of death, but not for the God of Life.

When the women went to the tomb to anoint Jesus’ body, they went with the expectation of death. But they found that the stone had been rolled away, and when they entered the tomb, they found a young man sitting where the body had lain. And when he told them that Jesus was not there, that he had been raised, they were terrified.

Mark says that they were so dumfounded that they told no one what they had seen. Luke says that the women did go and tell Peter and the others, but that Peter and the others thought the women’s tale was nonsense, and they wouldn’t believe it. Peter still didn’t see that the joke was on him.

Well, if you have to have Easter explained to you, one might just as well save his breath. Because Easter, like grace, cannot be explained. Easter, like grace, can only be experienced and enjoyed. That’s why there’s so much singing and laughter at Easter. Easter is like seven-year-old Luke hearing his Sunday School teacher’s strange prayer. Easter is like ninety-year-old Sarah having a baby. Easter is like a son who was lost being found, like a daughter who was dead showing up at your doorstep at two o’clock in the morning.

Here we are with the women at the empty tomb this morning. Jesus’ body is not here. But the one who was not in the tomb is very much with us today? And the questions of the empty tomb still hang in the air after 2,000 years: Where are we to find him? Do we look among the dead for someone who is alive?

You and I have come here today with Mary Magdalene and the other women to find Jesus. Are we looking for a dead Jesus or a live Jesus?

If we’re looking for a live Jesus, we need to realize that one doesn’t “find” him the way you’d find a lost button or a lost bicycle. No, you find a live Jesus when Jesus calls your name, as he called Mary’s name. And then you remember all the things he said about the grace and power of God, and all the things he did, and he shatters your world and intrudes into your life and invites you to go and tell Peter and the others what you’ve discovered. Jesus finds you, as he found Peter when he called Peter’s name on the seashore that morning and then cooked breakfast for him and told him that he loved him, and then, after breakfast, sent Peter on to do all the works of grace he’d heard about all his life.

What do we expect here this morning, here at the empty tomb?

The difference Jesus made in Peter’s life did not come when Peter saw the empty tomb. The difference for Peter came when the Risen and Living Truth found Peter. Then the light dawned, and Peter remembered all the things Jesus had said about the power and love and grace of God, and all the things he had done. And then Peter said, ”The truth, I have finally come to realize, is that the joke is on me, because I’ve expected too little of God. Nothing could be plainer: God plays no favorites! It makes no difference who you are or where you’re from – if you want God and are ready to do as he says, the door is open. The Message he sent to the children of Israel – that through Jesus Christ everything is being put together again – well, he’s doing it everywhere, among everyone.* I’ve expected more dreary religion, but instead I have been found and given life by the Risen Lord!”

We haven’t found Jesus’ body here this morning, but the one who is not in the empty tomb is very much here with us. Maybe he’ll find us, too. Listen for him to call your name. And listen for the doorbell. Or perhaps, if this is what would make the difference between death and life for you, go ring a doorbell yourself.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

*Peterson translation