April 20, 2025 – Easter Day
Hosea 6.1-3
Luke 24.1-11
Now You See Him…
Easter Day
I don’t watch much television, so I have not seen any episodes of The Chosen, a multi-part series about the life and ministry of Jesus – is any of you following that series? It is being streamed on Amazon Prime, Netflix, and YouTube channels, and the story so far has followed his life up until Holy Week. The final seasons are being released theatrically later this year and will feature the events you and I have been observing since last Sunday. I was thinking about The Chosen because of a conversation Debbie had a week or two ago with a woman who is an avid follower of the series. She is really excited about the final installment and plans to see it in the theater before it hits the small screen because that’s where you get the best cinematic experience. But then she said something curious about the concluding episodes: “I can’t wait to see how the story ends.” I can’t wait to see how the story ends. Well, if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say it ends here, on Easter Day, with the resurrection, or perhaps with the resurrection appearances the Bible describes between now and the Ascension. And I thought to myself, “Well, if she doesn’t know how the story ends, at least she stands in good biblical company.”
Because regardless of which gospel you read, there was a good deal of confusion about how the story ends. This morning we heard Luke’s version of the story; it features Mary Magdalene, Johanna, Mary the mother of James and some other unnamed women. Matthew has just two women at the tomb, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary; Mark adds Salome to the mix and John includes Peter and “the other disciple,” a thinly veiled reference to John himself. But regardless of who came to the empty tomb that first Easter morning, the reaction is the same. When they discover the body is gone, they ask the question “Where is he? What have you done with him?” Luke tells us the women were perplexed and terrified. When the two men in dazzling clothes tell them Jesus has risen, they ran to tell the apostles who, being men, did not believe them.
The Bible slowly unfolds different answers to the women’s questions, Where is he? What have you done with him? In Matthew we read, “He is going before you to Galilee, there you will see him.” Matthew also describes a government plot to accuse the disciples of stealing Jesus’ body in order to stage a resurrection. In I Corinthians Paul argues with the rumor that Jesus was not resurrected, but rather just came back to life like a Greek or Roman demi-god – remember, Paul wrote fifteen to twenty years before any of the gospel writers, and the church was rife with rumors of where Jesus went. And at the Ascension, as the disciples watched Jesus lifted up into a cloud and out of their sight, they were jarred by two men in white robes who asked them, “Why are you standing there looking up into heaven?” suggesting that Jesus is not somewhere in the ether, but is already going about the work of building his church on earth. So the woman who was excited to see how The Chosen would end has a lot of biblical company, because there are many possible answers to her wonderings, even in the Bible. I can’t wait to see how the story ends.
This certainly has been a Lent, hasn’t it? Sometimes it seems as though the worries of the world have taken up residence on our shoulders, or at least in our consciousness. Who has not awakened some mornings wondering, Good grief, What is it going to be today? Are we going to war with Greenland or Denmark? Is my 401(k) still there? Is there no end to the dying in Gaza? Are my children and grandchildren in danger of getting measles? Is my Social Security safe? Are my daughter and her wife going to be OK? And I know some of you have children or grandchildren with Federal jobs, so you know what worries that entails as well. In these unsettled and unsettling days, we may be excused for asking, Where is Jesus? What have you done with him?
Twenty year old Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez was pulled over in Florida on Wednesday for speeding. But because of a language barrier and a customs form he had filled out years earlier, Immigration and Customs Enforcement ordered his detention even though the law under which he was arrested had been suspended by a federal judge. Nevertheless, Lopez-Gomez was threatened with deportation, and as we have seen this week, once you are deported, there is little if any hope of coming back, even if it turns out you are innocent of the charges against you. Fortunately he was released Thursday night after he was able to produce his birth certificate. Merwil Gutierrez was not so fortunate. He was swept up in a New York City ICE raid along with two friends of his. As the agents arrested them, one of the agents realized, “No, he’s not the one,” offering Gutierrez a glimmer of hope. But another agent replied, “Take him anyway,” and he now sits in El Salvador’s notorious super prison where so many others have been sent, beyond the reach of American courts. And most of us have heard the story of Rumeysa Ozturk, the Tufts University graduate student from Turkey who was snatched off an empty Somerville street early one morning, whisked away to New Hampshire, then to Vermont in order to keep her out of reach of Massachusetts courts, and now sits in a Louisiana prison. What was Ozturk’s crime? An op-ed piece she wrote in the student newspaper.
When I was in college, I wrote a weekly opinion column for the school paper under an obvious nom-de-plume, where I took aim at everything from local school issues to national politics. This was in the mid-70s, in the thick of Watergate. And uncannily enough, at the same time Richard Nixon was resigning under the shadow of scandal to be replaced by his Vice President, our student government President was also forced to resign under the shadow of scandal to be replaced by his Vice-President. You will not be surprised that I had a field day writing about both. Those columns pretty much wrote themselves. Did I have to worry about being arrested by the federal government? Would it have made a difference if I were a Turkish exchange student? Not in 1974. Yesterday’s news continued Ozturk’s story, because she was ordered to be returned to Vermont for a hearing on her status. Whether or not the government cooperates is anyone’s guess, but it does make you wonder how many other innocents are being swept up on the flimsiest of evidence. As the families of Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez, Merwil Gutierrez and Rumeysa Ozturk might reasonably ask, Where is he? Where is she? Where are they? What have you done with them?
And as people of faith might reasonably ask, Where is He? Where is Jesus in all of this? Indeed, on this Easter morning, when we celebrate an empty tomb, we have both the right and the obligation to wonder where Jesus is in all of this.
One of the fascinating aspects of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances, and we haven’t spoken about this together before, is that nearly all of them, nearly all the stories about what Jesus did after the resurrection echo or repeat events from his life before he died. For example Matthew tells about his appearance to the disciples on a nearby mountaintop, a clear echo of the Transfiguration story. He recreated the Lord’s Supper with the disciples in and upper room, where we read “he was revealed to them in the breaking of the bread.” He met them by the sea of Tiberius and went fishing with them, as he had done so many times before. In short, during Jesus’ brief earthly time between his resurrection and his ascension, he continued to do the things he did before the crucifixion. His ministry continued as it always had.
So if we were to ask the questions the women at the tomb asked, Where is he? What have you done with him? then we might well find him doing what he has always done. Eating with sinners. Advocating for the widow and orphans. Ministering to the poor and the outcast, to the alien and the immigrant. Feeding people. Siding with the people who have no voice, living among the ones who exist on the edges of society. Hanging with tax collectors and prostitutes. Offering encouragement and succor and hope. Or in his own words, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor… to proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free and proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Proclaiming release to the captives and letting the oppressed go free.
But Jesus cannot do it all. It is why from the very start of his ministry he depended on his disciples, on his followers, to share the mantle. And so you and I feed the hungry. We advocate for the poor and the homeless. We provide for the widow and the orphan. We take special note and care for the outcast, for the alien and the immigrant. We raise our voice for releasing the captives and letting the oppressed go free. We live out what theologians have called Jesus’ preferential option for the poor. In the fresh umbra of Easter’s resurrection you and I are meant to continue doing the things that Jesus did during his own lifetime.
Where is Jesus? Well, among many other places, this morning he is in the pews of Christendom, listening to the story of the empty tomb, considering what we are being called to do in his name, remembering all those around us who are in desperate need of a good word, and not just a good word, but a powerful witness, a dedicated advocacy, a good meal, an affordable home, access to life-giving medicine, freedom from captivity, the protection of the same justice the rest of us enjoy. As people of faith we already do much of this. As disciples of Christ, there is so much more that needs to be done. Jesus’ work before the crucifixion goes on long after the resurrection. And we are the ones to do it. We want to make our voices heard. We want to make our actions count. We want to lift up our neighbors, our Chester neighbors, our Maryland neighbors, our Venezuelan neighbors, our Turkish neighbors, our Salvadoran neighbors, our American citizen neighbors who because they may look different than you and I and become caught up in an unjust and illegal net too widely cast.
My Easter hope this morning is that the next time someone wonders Where is Jesus? What have you done with him? they might look at us, recognize what we have been doing to perpetuate Jesus’ ministry among those who need him the most, and say Ah! There he is – I can see him now. Jesus becomes most vivid when he is seen in us.
If you can’t wait to see how the story ends, spoiler alert: it ends in you and me and in every act of love and compassion we can muster in the name of the risen Christ.