What kind of story is the resurrection?

Luke 24:36b-48

Happy Easter!

Yeah, I know – Easter was two weeks ago.  But here in the church, Easter is still today.  Easter is such a big deal that it can’t be confined to one single Sunday; we take six weeks to fully celebrate it.  Patrick continued that celebration for us last week with a story about how the resurrected Jesus showed up to the disciples (and famously, “doubting” Thomas).  And I’m glad he did – because on Easter Sunday, we sat with the cliffhanger of Mark’s ending.  Some of you remember:  Mark’s gospel ends with the women leaving the empty tomb afraid, telling no one.  What happens next?!

What happened next is that Jesus started appearing to people.  A lot of people.  The New Testament tells us about it so much that it runs the risk of being redundant.  Last week John told us about Jesus appearing to “doubting” Thomas; this week Jesus appears again and says many of the same things.  Yet again he lets them see and touch his body.  He even eats some fish with them – an act he repeats in a fishing story at the end of the gospel of John.

Luke – and the other resurrection stories – are driving home a critical point.  It’s the point that Paul says is of first importance to the gospel, to this Jesus story:  that Jesus died and was raised from the dead.

Because this is so important, let’s talk about what it is and what it isn’t.  Since this is the continuation of a story it might help to think about some other stories we know – how it could have gone.

I’ll start with an easy connection:  this isn’t a ghost story.  Think:  the movie Ghost.  Ghost came out when I was in middle school, and even though my parents wouldn’t let me see it I still knew what it was about, because everyone was talking about it.  It’s the story of a man who gets murdered (Patrick Swayze) but comes back as (you guessed it) a ghost so he can warn his girlfriend (played by Demi Moore) that she’s in danger.  Ghost was the highest-grossing hit of 1990.  And why wouldn’t it be?  For any of us who has lost a loved one, what wouldn’t we give to hear from them one more time – to have them levitate pennies or say their secret language to us through medium?

But that’s not what this is.  Jesus doesn’t come back as a ghost.  That kind of thing was assumed as a possibility in the ancient near east.  Scholar and bishop N.T. Wright says that there was language to describe the visions, ghosts, and dreams people sometimes had for the dead, “and it wasn’t resurrection.”  What happened with Jesus was different, which is the point that the almost-redundant resurrection stories are driving home.  “See me, touch me!” Jesus says.  And then, in multiple stories:  “Feed me!”  And more than once, point blank:  “I’m not a ghost!”

Are you getting a sense of what a big deal this is?  This is a whole new, never-been-done before thing.

Which brings us to another kind of story this is not.  This is not a sequel repeating the same old formula.

Another movie from 1990 was Home Alone, the story of Kevin being left behind by his family and having to fend for himself against some bumbling robbers.  In 1992, Home Alone 2 was released.  In that movie, Kevin was separated from his family and had to fend for himself against some bumbling robbers.  Besides the fact that one happens in suburbia and the other happens in New York City, the plots are pretty much the same. 

That’s not the resurrection story.  The resurrection is consistent with all that God had done before – you know, Jesus came not to abolish the law but to fulfill – but it’s not a repeat.  This is God doing a whole new thing, something that’s never been done… and something that will continue.

In other words:  this is not an ending that makes the whole story kind of pointless.

In the early 2000s there was this TV show, Lost.  I loved it.  My friends and I loved it.  It was about a plane crash on a mysterious island where so much weird stuff happened.  Every episode raised new questions:  What do those numbers mean?  Where did that bunker come from?  Who was the Dharma Initiative?  What does that statue only have four toes???  My friends and I would get together on Wednesday nights.  Every time there was a commercial break we’d speculate about what was going on and agonize over the fact that there was only 15 minutes left in the hour and so many questions left to answer!

Then came the last episode.  Our group had grown over the years.  We packed into a basement, leaned in, waited to finally have all our curiosities satisfied.  And in the end… wait.  Wait.  Was that all just in Jack’s dying imagination?

Every now and then I think of Lost and how much I loved watching it.  I’ve considered re-watching it.  But I never have – because for me, the ending made everything else… kind of pointless.  It was a great story, but now that I know the ending there’s no need to relive it again.

That’s not how the resurrection works.  Once we experience it, everything we’ve done has new meaning… and everything that’s to come has new hope. 

Resurrection means that this story matters, right now.  What we do in these lives matter.  God didn’t carefully create this world together so that one day it’ll be erased.  God didn’t knit us together in our mother’s wombs just to let us unravel at our death.  The way we care for creation matters, the way we live in these bodies matters, the way we care about one another’s physical well-being matters.  At the same time, resurrection means we aren’t doomed by our own inability to live in this world and these bodies perfectly.  God is always resurrecting, always redeeming, always making things new.

This is the kind of story the New Testament is telling us, over and over.

This is what we mean when we say, “Happy Easter.”