HE IS NOT HERE

In a previous church we had a program called Homework Haven. We were blessed with a number of public school teachers in our congregation, and when we asked ourselves “how can we serve the community,” the teachers responded: so many kids get no help with homework. Let’s invite them in and help them here.

So we had about 30 kids every Wednesday night who needed homework help. Not only did our teachers extend their day to help out; other teachers pitched in as well.

Most of these kids had no sense at all of what a church was. So finally some kids got curious enough to ask to see the big room upstairs. Others joined in and we had a little field trip.

I turned on the sound system and let them speak into the microphone. I turned on the organ and played some chords and showed them a hymnal. They each got to stand in the pulpit. I showed them the Bible on the lectern.

One of the kids kept eyeing the altar. The altar was not a table as it is in this church. It was a big rectangular box. Finally he asked if he could see the body. “Is this where you keep it?”

And I realized that his context for church was a funeral. This is where you come to be quiet and reflect on death and be afraid and worry about the future.

So I told him that there was no body in there. He didn’t believe it. I opened up the back panel and invited him to look in. Perhaps I shouldn’t have done that without checking first, because I had been two years at that church and I had never looked.

When did this congregation go to the altar as table? Twenty years? Thirty?

Friends, do you know how much storage space you lose not having a box there? Can you imagine how many old communion sets would fit in there? Crumbling pulpit Bibles in the King James translation? Copies of old bulletins? Half burned candles?

Well, the kids looked with me, and we found all of those things and more, all covered with dust. What we didn’t find was a body. And that gave me the opportunity to explain to them that church wasn’t about death, but about life, not about the past but the present.

In our gospel lesson today, the women came to the tomb looking for the body. They were being reasonable and dutiful, I suppose, but they weren’t being attentive. Because Jesus had told them that on the third day he would rise.

I find that a lot of people are like that little kid. They come to church, no matter what they say, in order to look at the body and accommodate their feelings about death. It’s as if they were saying to themselves: I’m going to be dead someday, so I had better come to church and practice. Learn about heaven and accumulate some brownie points. Then I can stop worrying. About death.

So church is not supposed to be exciting and joyful and surprising. It’s supposed to be sorrowful and boring. If it were exciting and joyful, I wouldn’t get any brownie points!

So kids are not supposed to run in church and adults are not supposed to laugh in church, and God forbid that anyone spontaneously clap in church. It’s about death and duty and guilt and obedience and all that grim stuff. So sit up stiff like you were in a straight jacket and behave yourself. Jesus is watching.

Church is supposed to be a history lesson about the way things were in the good old days 2,000 years ago. We’re supposed to think now like they thought then. We’re supposed to have collective amnesia about all the things humanity has learned since then, so that we can believe the way they did. We’re supposed to learn the traditions and defend them vigorously against any new insight.

Friends, if any of you have come here today with that mindset, I’m going to strive mightily in the name of the risen Christ to disappoint you. There’s no body. There’s not even any box.

So if you have come this morning expecting to see people boxed in by a tradition that isn’t vital, it is not here. Or if you have come expecting to find a church that has killed off all that is vital about tradition, it is not here. If you have come here expecting to look into a time capsule of the past, it is not here.

And if you have come this morning expecting to see evidence of the death through of the mainline church, it is not here. If you have come to see a Jesus that confirms the prejudices of previous generations about race and gender, and class and sexual orientation, he is not here. If you have come to encounter the Jesus that will scare you into being good, he is not here. He is risen.

Just as he went before the disciples back to the Galilee of seekers and sinners, the Galilee of the wounded and the wondering, the Galilee of the confused and the conquered, he goes before us into the Andover of mixed messages and terrified teens and piracy at the pump.

He goes before us into the Lawrence of unemployment and the Tewksbury of traffic jams, and the Lowell of broken schools and the Haverhill of unrealized dreams.

And he goes before us out to Massachusetts lusting to gamble on short cuts to solvency, and to the Nicaragua of survival and hopes. And he goes unarmed into the morass of Iraq. With this simple message: I’m alive and you can be too. I’m still loving and you can too. Live in me and nothing can stop us.

If you want to find Jesus, when you leave this place run (don’t walk) to somewhere someone is hurting or lonely or desperate. Because Jesus is risen and has gone before us and that’s where you’ll find him. Rev up those cars and lay a patch of rubber in the parking lot. Get on the phone and speed dial.

The dead Jesus is not here. The tomb couldn’t keep him then and the boxes we build in our imagination won’t keep him today. Pain didn’t stop him. Betrayal didn’t stop him. Denial didn’t stop him. Death didn’t stop him. Nothing could stop him. He arose.

And here is the gift his resurrection gives: if you live in him, nothing stops you. Yes, there is pain and disappointment, and someday the death of your body. But nothing stops you.

In Nicaragua we encountered Clorinda who sometimes has serious health problems, but she pastors a church and runs a school program for 100 students. She is paid practically nothing, and when asked what she needs, she needs more teachers at $20 a month. Nothing stops her.

We encountered Jairo. We thought were going so far back in the mountains there couldn’t be anybody living there, much less visiting, and there was Jairo dispensing medicines in the name of Christ. And then a further community. And there was Jairo. Nothing stops him.

We encountered Alicia, who ran the sewing program for 30 young women. Her machines were breaking down, but she kept on teaching. Her husband pastor died in an accident, and she assumed his duties in the name of Christ. Nothing stops her.

If his word is in your head, you see more clearly. If his love is in your heart, you dare more bravely. If his strength is in your hands, you endure more completely.

If you live in Jesus, you live in his resurrection. It’s not about his body anymore: he is risen. And it’s not about yours: you live in him.