April 28, 2019
Over the years, I have come to appreciate the wisdom of the liturgical calendar.
On the one hand, it provides us a structure by which we remember and celebrate the birth and life, the death and resurrection of Jesus on an annual basis. Over and over and over again, we hear the message of the angels regarding the birth of this child, we witness the wisdom and compassion of his ministry, and we are wrapped up in the events of his last days, and of his ultimate triumph.
On the other hand, there is a particular timing to these events. They are not simply trotted out, one after the other. We do not start with Christmas, the birth of Jesus. We begin with Advent, the four Sundays prior, as a time of preparation. We review Old Testament prophecies. We hear the call of John the Baptist to repentance. We are privy to angelic announcements to Joseph and to Mary about her pregnancy.
Christmas itself is not one day. It is twelve days. Although the cultural celebration of the holiday has been going on for weeks, it stops abruptly on December 26. The church, however, takes the quiet days following to continue celebrating and, along with Mary, to treasure these things and ponder them in our hearts.
As with Christmas, so also with Easter. Easter doesn’t simply pop up on the calendar, sometime in the spring. It is preceded by a time of preparation – forty days – not counting Sundays. From Ash Wednesday until Maundy Thursday, we accompany Jesus and the disciples as they head from Galilee to Jerusalem for the tragic and life-changing events that will happen there.
Like Christmas, Easter is not one day. Eastertide – the season of Easter – is 49 days long – 7 weeks of 7 days each – until the 50th day – Pentecost.
The season of Easter is the longest of the church year. It is the longest because Easter is the most important event of our faith. So, we take longer to celebrate it. But it is also the longest because Easter is the most earth-shaking, reality-disturbing event that is recorded in the Christian Bible. It is so mind-boggling that we need time to adjust, to assimilate, to integrate this happening that is against all our expectations.
We give ourselves time to do this. But we’re not the only ones. It also took time for those first witnesses to believe that the resurrection of Jesus had actually happened.
If you read the gospels carefully, you know that fear and doubt were common reactions to the news that, “He is not here; he has been raised.” In Mark, fear and amazement seize the women. They flee from the tomb and say nothing to anyone. In Matthew, at the very end of the gospel, the disciples gather with Jesus on the top of the mountain to receive their marching orders. “They worshipped him,” Matthew tells us, “but some doubted.” In Luke, when the women report what they have seen and what the angel has told them, the men consider it an idle tale and do not believe them.
Belief was not an immediate response to the resurrection. Belief didn’t even happen overnight. There was a much longer-than-we-would-expect period of adjustment. There was still grief about losing the human presence of Jesus. There was still fear about the new ways he would be present and the new calling the disciples would receive. There was confusion about exactly what all this meant to them and to the world.
In John, resistance to belief in the resurrection of Jesus is expressed by Thomas. On the evening of the day of Resurrection, all the disciples are gathered together in one place. The doors are all locked tight because they are afraid of the Jewish leaders. Despite this, Jesus appears before them. He wishes them peace. He shows them his hands and his side. Then they recognize Jesus and rejoice.
One disciple, however, is not with them. It is Thomas. When he hears his brothers recount what happened, he insists, “Unless I see for myself the holes in his hands and put my finger in the wound in his side, I will not believe!”
So, the next Sunday, this time with Thomas present, Jesus appears again to them. Jesus shows him his wounds and invites him to faith. Immediately, Thomas utters the confession, “My Lord and my God!”
The scene concludes with this blessing – “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”
Unless the risen Jesus has appeared directly to you, you are among those who have not seen and yet have come to believe. How has that happened for you? What experiences or conversations, what prayer or study, have brought you to belief in the resurrection? Or are you still waiting?
For many years, even after I became a pastor, I had doubts about the resurrection. It seemed so fantastic, so outside my own experience and the experience of anyone I knew that it was difficult to believe. I still said the Apostles’ Creed on Sunday morning. I still preached at Easter services and presided at funerals. But I professed and I preached the resurrection in the hope that one day I would come to believe.
Then, when I was 35, my father died. He’d gotten a brain tumor and died within four months. My younger brother said, “I’m sad until I think of Dad in heaven, and then I feel better.” But I consciously decided that I would not believe in the resurrection, because to believe in the resurrection would rob me of my grief.
Time went on. I don’t know how long it was. Maybe it was a year and a half. Maybe it was more. Maybe it was less. Grief has a way of skewing our sense of time.
I was serving in campus ministry in DeKalb, Illinois, when my dad died, so I wasn’t preaching at funerals or at Easter. Then, one day, a student called me. Curt was from a more conservative Christian church, but he had started coming to our campus ministry center because he lived next door. He was a master’s degree student in English, but what he really wanted to be was a poet.
Curt told me on the phone that a brother of his had been killed in a car accident back home in Michigan. He asked if I knew of anyone who might give him a ride to O’Hare so he could fly home for the funeral.
I said, “Curt, I’ll drive you to O’Hare.”
I picked him up early the next morning. We headed east on I-88. Since the drive to O’Hare took about an hour and 15 minutes, I thought we would be having this long, deep discussion about his brother and about life and other such things. But, after a few minutes of chatting, the conversation ceased. Curt was one of the rare people who is more introverted than I am. So, we sat in silence for most of the car ride.
Then, just as we turned north on I-294, and were approaching the airport, he turned to me and said, “You know, if we just die, and that’s it, that’s not very imaginative.”
I thought, “He’s right. That’s not very imaginative.”
Now I know that is not exactly what you would call orthodox Christian theology. I’d never even heard that argument before. I don’t know that Curt’s comment would have meant anything to anyone else. But, for me, when he said that, the stone in front of the tomb started rolling away, ever so slightly.
That was the beginning of my journey to belief in the resurrection. There have been other things along the way. There have been no appearances by the risen Jesus, though, no blinding encounters on the road. But there have been suggestions, wonderings, even directional arrows that point to something greater, something even more imaginative in this unimaginable universe.
Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe. These words are for all of us, for all of us who have not seen, for all of us who are yet coming to believe. They are for you, whoever you are, in whatever manner, in whatever way, at whatever time, for you who are coming to believe that Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
On the one hand, it provides us a structure by which we remember and celebrate the birth and life, the death and resurrection of Jesus on an annual basis. Over and over and over again, we hear the message of the angels regarding the birth of this child, we witness the wisdom and compassion of his ministry, and we are wrapped up in the events of his last days, and of his ultimate triumph.
On the other hand, there is a particular timing to these events. They are not simply trotted out, one after the other. We do not start with Christmas, the birth of Jesus. We begin with Advent, the four Sundays prior, as a time of preparation. We review Old Testament prophecies. We hear the call of John the Baptist to repentance. We are privy to angelic announcements to Joseph and to Mary about her pregnancy.
Christmas itself is not one day. It is twelve days. Although the cultural celebration of the holiday has been going on for weeks, it stops abruptly on December 26. The church, however, takes the quiet days following to continue celebrating and, along with Mary, to treasure these things and ponder them in our hearts.
As with Christmas, so also with Easter. Easter doesn’t simply pop up on the calendar, sometime in the spring. It is preceded by a time of preparation – forty days – not counting Sundays. From Ash Wednesday until Maundy Thursday, we accompany Jesus and the disciples as they head from Galilee to Jerusalem for the tragic and life-changing events that will happen there.
Like Christmas, Easter is not one day. Eastertide – the season of Easter – is 49 days long – 7 weeks of 7 days each – until the 50th day – Pentecost.
The season of Easter is the longest of the church year. It is the longest because Easter is the most important event of our faith. So, we take longer to celebrate it. But it is also the longest because Easter is the most earth-shaking, reality-disturbing event that is recorded in the Christian Bible. It is so mind-boggling that we need time to adjust, to assimilate, to integrate this happening that is against all our expectations.
We give ourselves time to do this. But we’re not the only ones. It also took time for those first witnesses to believe that the resurrection of Jesus had actually happened.
If you read the gospels carefully, you know that fear and doubt were common reactions to the news that, “He is not here; he has been raised.” In Mark, fear and amazement seize the women. They flee from the tomb and say nothing to anyone. In Matthew, at the very end of the gospel, the disciples gather with Jesus on the top of the mountain to receive their marching orders. “They worshipped him,” Matthew tells us, “but some doubted.” In Luke, when the women report what they have seen and what the angel has told them, the men consider it an idle tale and do not believe them.
Belief was not an immediate response to the resurrection. Belief didn’t even happen overnight. There was a much longer-than-we-would-expect period of adjustment. There was still grief about losing the human presence of Jesus. There was still fear about the new ways he would be present and the new calling the disciples would receive. There was confusion about exactly what all this meant to them and to the world.
In John, resistance to belief in the resurrection of Jesus is expressed by Thomas. On the evening of the day of Resurrection, all the disciples are gathered together in one place. The doors are all locked tight because they are afraid of the Jewish leaders. Despite this, Jesus appears before them. He wishes them peace. He shows them his hands and his side. Then they recognize Jesus and rejoice.
One disciple, however, is not with them. It is Thomas. When he hears his brothers recount what happened, he insists, “Unless I see for myself the holes in his hands and put my finger in the wound in his side, I will not believe!”
So, the next Sunday, this time with Thomas present, Jesus appears again to them. Jesus shows him his wounds and invites him to faith. Immediately, Thomas utters the confession, “My Lord and my God!”
The scene concludes with this blessing – “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”
Unless the risen Jesus has appeared directly to you, you are among those who have not seen and yet have come to believe. How has that happened for you? What experiences or conversations, what prayer or study, have brought you to belief in the resurrection? Or are you still waiting?
For many years, even after I became a pastor, I had doubts about the resurrection. It seemed so fantastic, so outside my own experience and the experience of anyone I knew that it was difficult to believe. I still said the Apostles’ Creed on Sunday morning. I still preached at Easter services and presided at funerals. But I professed and I preached the resurrection in the hope that one day I would come to believe.
Then, when I was 35, my father died. He’d gotten a brain tumor and died within four months. My younger brother said, “I’m sad until I think of Dad in heaven, and then I feel better.” But I consciously decided that I would not believe in the resurrection, because to believe in the resurrection would rob me of my grief.
Time went on. I don’t know how long it was. Maybe it was a year and a half. Maybe it was more. Maybe it was less. Grief has a way of skewing our sense of time.
I was serving in campus ministry in DeKalb, Illinois, when my dad died, so I wasn’t preaching at funerals or at Easter. Then, one day, a student called me. Curt was from a more conservative Christian church, but he had started coming to our campus ministry center because he lived next door. He was a master’s degree student in English, but what he really wanted to be was a poet.
Curt told me on the phone that a brother of his had been killed in a car accident back home in Michigan. He asked if I knew of anyone who might give him a ride to O’Hare so he could fly home for the funeral.
I said, “Curt, I’ll drive you to O’Hare.”
I picked him up early the next morning. We headed east on I-88. Since the drive to O’Hare took about an hour and 15 minutes, I thought we would be having this long, deep discussion about his brother and about life and other such things. But, after a few minutes of chatting, the conversation ceased. Curt was one of the rare people who is more introverted than I am. So, we sat in silence for most of the car ride.
Then, just as we turned north on I-294, and were approaching the airport, he turned to me and said, “You know, if we just die, and that’s it, that’s not very imaginative.”
I thought, “He’s right. That’s not very imaginative.”
Now I know that is not exactly what you would call orthodox Christian theology. I’d never even heard that argument before. I don’t know that Curt’s comment would have meant anything to anyone else. But, for me, when he said that, the stone in front of the tomb started rolling away, ever so slightly.
That was the beginning of my journey to belief in the resurrection. There have been other things along the way. There have been no appearances by the risen Jesus, though, no blinding encounters on the road. But there have been suggestions, wonderings, even directional arrows that point to something greater, something even more imaginative in this unimaginable universe.
Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe. These words are for all of us, for all of us who have not seen, for all of us who are yet coming to believe. They are for you, whoever you are, in whatever manner, in whatever way, at whatever time, for you who are coming to believe that Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
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