Easter_as

EASTER AS STORY

INTRODUCTION

We were attending John Paul Pack’s memorial celebration. I wanted it to be like Easter. I wanted to celebrate the life that would never, never die.
I was sorry he was dead. I missed him. I wish there was some certainty that somewhere he is still alive in ways too mysterious to understand.
We talked about him, remembered many things, told stories that only we knew from our experience of him.

I think we were doing like the friends of Jesus during that first Easter.

I. I think Jesus really died. I mean that his body was dead, like all bodies are dead and that his body stayed dead, like all bodies stay dead. This is not a new heresy. In fact, it is not heresy at all. Of course, lots of Christians think Easter is about a dead body coming to life again. That isn’t what the first Christians thought. Even Paul, when talking about resurrection is not talking about physical bodies. He says: “Someone will ask, ‘How can a dead body be raised to life? What kind of body can they have?’ You fool! When you plant a seed in the ground it does not sprout to life unless it dies…There is a physical body and there is a spiritual body….When it is buried it is a physical body; when it is raised, it will be a spiritual body.” Jesus’ body stayed dead.

II. I think his friends grieved like we grieve. We gather for memorial services, not because it does any good for the one who is dead, but because we feel loss. The friends of Jesus felt great loss. They gathered and remembered stories and talked about him. They wished he could be with them once again. The Easter stories report experiences of grieving friends, remembering Jesus. They remembered him while fishing, while walking on a road to Emmaus, while gathered in a room for a meal. He was in their minds and in their hearts. It seemed to them like he was with them in spirit.

III. As they remembered and talked about him, he became very real to them. This is true when we think about loved ones who have died. When we remember their words and lives, their love for us and ours for them, they seem close to us. During John Paul’s service, there were moments when I looked around the room, almost expecting him to be visibly present. It was that way for the friends of Jesus after Easter: “We saw the Lord,” they told Thomas. “Jesus came and stood among them,” John reports of that gathering in a room. “It is the Lord,” John said to Peter, while they were fishing. Paul reports that 500 people at once had an experience of the presence of Jesus after his death. Paul himself reported, “He appeared also to me.” It was a personal, spiritual happening in which Jesus seemed to speak to him.

IV. What continues with us is not the one who died, but the values left by the one who died. I find myself thinking about John Paul Pack’s contribution to my life. I want to make some of that part of me, to make part of him part of me. Of course that is exactly what the early Christians did. Jesus became the “Christ” present in them and with them in the world.

CONCLUSION:
I cannot bring myself to think that John Paul Pack is simply dead and gone. Any more than the first Christians could think Jesus was dead and gone. The grave does not hold him. He has rolled the stone away. He is not in that tomb. He is risen! Risen, indeed!

- Art Morgan