“Hallelujah! I Wonder What Just Happened?”

Scripture Text: Luke 24:1-12

What a terrible week we have just come through, and this one doesn’t seem to be starting out much better. All within 24 hours, Jesus had been arrested, falsely accused of sedition, tried, declared guilty, beaten, crucified and buried. All because the leadership of Judah felt threatened by His teachings! What next? Will they come looking for us? Will we suffer the same fate that Jesus did?

For that 1st century band of followers, Easter didn’t start out all that wonderful, and it was headed downhill from there!
Friday had been a terrible day, and the Sabbath had been anything but worshipful.

Read Luke 24:1-3

And as if the past 3 days weren’t bad enough, now Jesus’ body was missing. Did the soldiers take Him? Was it thieves! You see, the story was still being written, and even though Jesus had told them how it would all end, it hadn’t settled in to their hearts yet. They had yet to discover the glory of this day!

James A. Harnish (Tampa, Florida), in an Easter sermon, tells the story of a little boy who was not exactly happy about going to church on Easter Sunday morning. His new shoes were too tight, his tie pinched his neck and the weather was just too beautiful to be cooped up inside ...
As he sulked in the back seat of the family car, his parents heard him mutter: 'I don't know why we have to go to church on Easter, anyway; they keep telling the same old story and it always comes out the same in the end.'
- Homiletics On Line.

Talk about an Easter contrast! The disciples were terrified, and the little boy was bored. Personally, I think we would be a lot better off if more people were more terrified today, and many more were less bored! It’s far easier to move from fear to overwhelming joy than it is to get there from complacency! We need more emotion in the Church, especially on Easter! And on that first Easter, the women would make that transition, from pain to ecstasy, much sooner than the men would.

Read Luke 24:4-5

Well, maybe the fear isn’t gone quite yet. Can’t you just hear the thoughts of the women, their hearts racing, their knees trembling, their eyes glazed over – “What in the world is happening here? Will nothing ever make sense?”

Imagine coming face to face with, not just one heavenly being, but two!
After all, Mary only needed one angel to tell her that she was going to give birth to the son of God. Granted, it was the archangel Gabriel, but still, only one. The shepherds only needed one angel to tell them that Christ was born – he had quite a choir backing him up, but still, only one delivered the message.
But here were two of the heavenly beings, talking about “looking for the living” inside a grave where only the dead belonged! But at least they were half right – the women were looking for their dead Lord.
But what was that about the living? They were the only ones who were living, and the One they came to minister to was missing!

Read Luke 24:6-8

Raised again! From the dead? Yes, Jesus had told them that! Could He really be alive? Could those strange words that He was always speaking really have been prophesy? Their heads were spinning as reality was beginning to set in. The fears of just a few moments ago - vanished. The agony of Friday - just a memory. The dread that had filled them over the task that had brought them here was turned into an insurmountable joy!

John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress includes this famous incident: “Up this way, therefore, did burdened Christian run, but not without great difficulty, because of the load on his back. He ran thus till he came to a place somewhat ascending; and upon that place stood a Cross, and a little below, in the bottom, a Sepulchre. So I saw in my dream, that just as Christian came up with the Cross, his burden loosed from his shoulders, and fell off his back, and began to tumble, and so continued to do, till it came to the mouth of the Sepulchre, where it fell in, and I saw it no more. Then was Christian glad and lightsome, and said with a merry heart, He hath given me rest by his sorrow, and life by His death.”
Bunyan concludes, “Then Christian gave three leaps for joy, and went on his way singing.”
- Homiletics On Line

The burden that these women had been carrying for three days had fallen away, their sorrow had been lifted, a new life had been breathed into their deathly bodies. They had been Eastered! And in case you may be wondering about the verb “Eastered”, here is the origin.

Walter J. Burghardt writes of a Jesuit poet by the name of Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote a poem in which we read: 'Let him Easter in us.' Let Christ 'Easter' in us. A rare verb indeed, but it suits this sacred season, ... How does Christ Easter in us? In three wondrous ways: (1) By a faith that rises above doubt. (2) By a hope that conquers despair. (3) By a love that does justice.
--Walter J. Burghardt,
Let Christ Easter in Us, Dare to Be Christ: Homilies for the Nineties
(Mahwah, NJ.: Paulist Press, 1991), 51.

The women had, indeed, been Eastered, and they would never go back to the despair, the doubt, the hopelessness that held their earth bound lives on Friday.

Read Luke 24:9-12

They had to be bubbling and babbling by the time they arrived at the locked room. Who could blame the men for not understanding what had happened. Would you?
The Body was gone, the angels said that He was risen, the women were bursting at the seams – this should have been a “Hallelujah!” day! But Peter and the others had yet to be Eastered. They would have to wait until later in the day, when they would receive a visit from the risen Christ.

There was no boredom for any of the followers that day or any day after that!

Do we get excited about Easter? Or has the retelling of the same old story, with the same old ending, become commonplace for us? Are we still carrying those old burdens around with us, the ones that fill us with fear of tomorrow? The ones that make us doubt our worth in God’s eyes? The ones that give us a hopeless vision of eternity? The ones that beacon us to question the reality of Immanuel – God with us? The ones that are constantly dragging us backward and refuse to let us go?
The truth is that their hold on us has already been broken, and the only grasp that still exists is our own. As Bunyan wrote, fill your hands with the Cross of the Living Christ, and you will have to let go of the cares that the world imposes on us. And they will roll down, and they will fall into the tomb, and they will be buried in the place that used to bear your name.

Dare to let Christ “Easter” you, and you, too, will never be the same again! And as you cry out “Hallelujah!”, you may wonder “what just happened?” But you’ll cry out “Hallelujah”, just the same.