Clues, Testimony, and Possibilities

Clues, Testimony, and Possibilities

Thank you all for being here, however many times you have, or have not, been here before.

There is no priority guest list. St. John Chrysostom said something similar on an Easter Sunday some 1,500 years ago:

“If any have toiled from the first hour, let them receive their due reward; If any have come after the third hour, let them with gratitude join in the Feast! And he that arrived after the sixth hour, let them not doubt; for he too shall sustain no loss. And if any delayed until the ninth hour, let them not hesitate; but let them come too. And he who arrived only at the eleventh hour, let them not be afraid by reason of his delay. For the Lord is gracious and receives the last even as the first. He gives rest to them that comes at the eleventh hour, as well as to them that toiled from the first… You that have kept the fast, and you that have not, rejoice today for the Table is richly laden… Let no one mourn that he has fallen again and again; for forgiveness has risen from the grave.”

In the cycle of nature, this is the season of many colored flowers, warmer temperatures, pollen, allergies, rebirth and new life. And when the Church was evangelizing the land of the Anglo Saxons that was becoming known as England, a monk named Bede wrote that what was known throughout the rest of the Christian world as Pascha — Passover — was being called Easter in England because that’s what the cyclical celebration of Spring had been called in honor of a goddess named Eostre. That wasn’t the first time the Church had taken a pagan festival of nature and grafted something eternal onto it

Human beings are the only animals who know they’re going to die. Perhaps that is why so many have been inspired to imagine different possibilities — myths. But today we the Church which has Jesus Christ as its head offers an astounding possibility as a reality — resurrection!

“If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all human beings,” Paul writes to the Corinthians, “But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those fallen asleep.” In other words, Jesus is only the first to have been raised. “But each one in their own order: the firstfruits, Christ, afterward the ones of Christ.” To be of Christ means that we belong to him, and will share in his resurrection. There is no church for anyone to come to this Sunday morning in spring without this astounding possibility that we proclaim to have happened, and will happen.

How is this possible? We have clues, and we have testimony. First the clues. On Good Friday, we were told that Jesus was buried in a new tomb that had been hewn out of a rock by Joseph of Arimathea, and that no one else was buried in there. We were also told that Jesus’s enemies asked that guards be placed outside his tomb to prevent his followers from stealing his body, and that afterward they concocted a story of the body being taken while the guards were asleep.

From this we know that at some point, Jesus’s tomb was found to be empty. That’s one clue. We hear another today. Simon Peter and the Beloved Disciple saw the linen wrappings around Jesus’s body

lying in one place, and the head covering neatly rolled up separate from the wrappings, not tossed aside hurriedly by thieves stealing a body. Those are clues to resurrection.

Now the testimony: “For I handed on to you as of first importance,” Paul wrote earlier in this 15th chapter, “what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures. And that Cephas [or Peter] saw him, then the twelve. Then, over five hundred brothers and sisters saw him at one time…Then James saw him, then the apostles. Last of all, as if to one untimely born, I also saw him.” Paul was the last of over five hundred persons who saw a man who had been a corpse alive.

And over five hundred people testified to what they had seen, however improbable, and handed on that eyewitness testimony to the next generation. And when the next generation received that testimony into their hearts and minds as Paul “received” that testimony, then they became witnesses who handed on that testimony to the next generation, and so on, and so on. If a generation is about 25 years, we’re now in the eightieth generation of witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Less than 100, eighty generations isn’t that long ago.

Consider the clues. Consider the testimony. Consider the possibility. I began with a “John.” I’ll end with another “John,” in this case, John Updike, from his Easter Stanzas.

Make no mistake: if He rose at all

it was as His body;

if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules

reknit, the amino acids rekindle,

the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,

each soft Spring recurrent;

it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled

eyes of the eleven apostles;

it was as His flesh: ours…

Let us not mock God with metaphor,

analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;

making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the

faded credulity of earlier ages:

let us walk through the door.

April 20th, 2025

Easter

The Rev. David Kendrick