Good morning! He is risen! This morning I received an email at 3:30am (I wasn’t here yet) from our friend Val up in very rural Alaska. She said it was -20 degrees with 7 feet of snow, but Christ has risen. And later I received on from Lynne McMahan back in Iowa saying the same thing. It’s good to know Christ is risen in the Yukon, and in the rural Midwest and in Seattle!

Last week I told you that Holy Week was like going through a long and dark tunnel, sort of like on being on the train that goes from England to France through the “chunnel,” underneath the British channel. Six weeks of Lent we’ve been in that tunnel, a long time in the dark, but particularly this week. In artwork, in noontime services, in readings we have languished there, walking with Jesus toward the cross.

On Thursday night and Friday we were in the darkest part, stripping the sanctuary bare, carrying out the bible, the communion table, the cross, extinguishing the lights. It was totally dark. But finally this morning we’ve come up into the daylight of the other side.

In the case of France, it meant coming up out of the dark and walking into this wonderful new land, with the sun shining, people on bicycles, outdoor cafes with fine food, artwork and architecture practically jumping into your lap. I looked outside this morning, and we’re missing a few of those things but we do have this family of brothers and sisters to be with, this wonderful music and the Spirit of God filling us up!

For six weeks we haven’t said or read or sang the word “Hallelujah,” which means “Praise God!” This morning we have and we’ll continue to. Let’s read part of the Easter story together.

The tomb was empty, and as the story continues to unfold across this and the other gospels, a large number of people see and experience the risen Jesus. This means that today 150 million people in the United States, 2 billion around the world are gathering or celebrating something that is frankly impossible - dead people don’t live.

I don’t mean it is rare, or difficult, or problematic or anything like that. I mean impossible. It would take something beyond our skill, beyond our imagination, outside our worldview to even imagine it. In fact, it would take an act of God for this to happen. And that’s exactly what we are talking about this morning- an act of God.

I’ve mentioned a number of times in sermons my professor in my seminary days, Dr. Cullen Story. Dr. Story was already retired and 77 years old when I met him. But he was still teaching an occasional Greek class, and I was lucky enough to take his class, and then to be in a small group with him, and then to stay in close touch through the years. I last visited him down in Georgia in 2006, at his retirement center. We played pool together, and at 89 he said “Dan, I’ve got some things going on in my life, and I’ve been looking forward to praying with you about them.” I want to be like that if I hit 89. He died this last November.

As I’ve mentioned before, Dr. Story periodically would come down the gym with me and shoot baskets. He’d usually show up after class in his white shirt and gray slacks, and lace on a pair of $4 tennis shoes. And he always wanted to play H-O-R-S-E…which he made me spell in Greek. He also wanted me to try. Now, remember, I’m 35 and he’s in his late 70’s.

For three years I beat him handily every time we played. I think I even beat him left-handed a couple times. But he was persistent. And one fateful day, as he liked to describe it later, he beat me. He brought it up in every single letter and phone call after that, though always questioning just a little whether I had let him win or not. But, it can now be revealed, he won fair and square!

Dr. Story’s wife of 65 years, Wilma, died about 8 months before he did. And I remember spending time on the phone with him a day or two after she passed away, and he said “Dan, Wilma’s gone. And it’s a sigh and a hallelujah. It’s a sigh because she’s gone and I miss her and life is already harder without her. And it’s a hallelujah because something amazing has happened and she gets to be with the Lord.”A sigh and a hallelujah.

It seems like that’s our story from Luke, really. The women, followers of Jesus make their way towards a tomb. Not just any women, but the women who followed him in his ministry, through Galilee to Jerusalem, the women who saw him arrested and crucified, who saw him die and who watched his body put into the tomb. Eyewitnesses to these things.

And as they trudged in the pre-dawn darkness on the first day of the week to do the things that family/friends do, to prepare Jesus’ body for permanent burial, surely they sighed. They’d had such high hopes. They’d hoped for more time with Jesus. They’d thought God was doing something big, and new and it had all blown up. Jesus arrested, tortured, murdered, buried. It was so hard. Of all people, surely as these women walked a lonely road, they sighed. Life is just hard sometimes.

Then they encountered a tomb that was open and empty. And empty graveclothes. They met two angels who asked them a seemingly stupid question- “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” I mean, they were in a graveyard, for heaven’s sake. They weren’t looking for someone living. They were looking for someone dead. “He is risen, just as he said.” It dawns on them what is happening. What has happened. Something that they knew, and we all know is impossible- Jesus alive! Praise God, Hallelujah! All bets are off, everything they thought they knew, they didn’t.

150 million Americans, 2 billion people around the world are celebrating this Resurrection this morning…but then tomorrow, Monday, we will simply go back to work, and washing clothes, and coaching Little League and cooking meals. Which makes me wonder- if any of us really understand this at all.

Owen Meany did. You probably have read John Irving’s novel from 1989, A Prayer for Owen Meany. Owen is the little short kid with the squeaky, cracking voice so high that the author capitalizes all the letters of the words he speaks, throughout the entire book.

Owen has actually taught me quite a bit about faith. In the middle of the book, Owen’s friend muses- “Anyone can be sentimental about the nativity; any fool can be a Christian at Christmas. But Easter is the main event.” The friend then remembers Owen’s words: “Easter means what it says- Christ is risen. If you don’t believe in Easter, don’t kid yourself- don’t call yourself a Christian.” I think Owen understood resurrection.

When we don’t understand something, when something is too big for us to grasp, we either deny it or shrink it. Denial can be found in the work of any number of writers, theologians and professors who want to say that Jesus’ resurrection didn’t really physically happen, or that it was a vision, or an important spiritual state of mind.

Or we shrink resurrection into something more concrete. I did some exhaustive research on the Internet…yesterday…for 5 minutes…typing in “Easter” to see what had been in the Seattle paper recently related to Easter. What I found was about 4 dozen mentions of Easter egg hunts around the city. And one mention of the Pope, which I thought was promising, only to find that it was about him sending out chocolate easter eggs.

We don’t understand resurrection so we turn Easter into eggs- we can color those, and touch them and understand them. Or we turn Easter into butterflies- we understand the science of cacoons. Or we turn Easter into generic new life. Have you seen the cherry blossoms on the early blooming trees?! They’re beautiful. All great and wonderful things. They just have nothing to do with resurrection. We have a hard time understanding resurrection, because it’s impossible, so we change it. What we need to do is let resurrection change us. That’s an act of God.

At some point, those close followers of Jesus had their deep sighs changed into amazed Hallelujahs. Jesus appeared – different, he walked through walls- but made himself recognizable, taught them, called them, loved them, ate with them.

At some point on our journey with Jesus, we decide: do I believe in the resurrection? When we say the Apostle’s Creed together, we affirm not only that “on the third day (Jesus) rose from the dead,” but a few lines later, “I believe in the resurrection of the body.” That means your body, and mine. It means that the greatest force in life is not death and fear, but God. But what does that really mean? At least three things:

a) we can be with Jesus when we die. This is the most common thought on resurrection, and it is amazingly attractive. Jesus’ resurrection was only the first. Resurrection means we get to be raised with God into some kind of bodily life where death, pain and crying will be no more. We will be resurrected, and have physical existence, in a place that looks far more like the way God intended it in the beginning. Resurrection means when we die, we’ll be with Jesus. Yes…that’s right. But it’s not all.

b) Jesus’ resurrection to life, his ascent into heaven, his sending his Holy Spirit to be with us means that the presence of Jesus is with us here and now. We’re not alone! Never alone, never alone. Christ’s resurrection means he is with us. Yes…that’s right. But it’s not all.

c) God has begun to set things right. Jesus’ resurrection means the kingdom of God has broken into the kingdom of earth that we have tried to call our own, and we get to be part of that kingdom work. Resurrection is not only about life after death, but as N.T. Wright would say, life before death. It doesn’t mean everything will work out right now the way we long for it to, there are still plenty of sighs to come. But it means it’s started, and sometimes we see the hallelujahs, not just later, but now too.

You see, the resurrection of Jesus means the future Kingdom of God and the present is overlapping. You know how when there’s a partial lunar eclipse, the dark shadow slides across the face of the moon and it doesn’t cover the whole thing, but there’s this area of overlap? That’s where we are. We’re living in the overlap between the sigh and the hallelujah.

It’s been an unbelievably violent month in the United States, hasn’t it? 57 people killed in mass slayings. I’m not talking about the total murders in the country, just those killed in massive violent groups.

Alabama, California, North Carolina, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington. Eight places, 57 people, less than a month. Sigh.

I’ve been reading a book called Amish Grace. It’s about the equally terrible shooting of ten schoolchildren in Nickel Mines school back in 2006. You probably remember it. Five kids died in a one-room schoolhouse outside an idyllic small town in the Amish country in Pennsylvania.

Like any of these other stories, it’s enough to make you weep. Five young girls died, five more were wounded, victims of a man named Charles Roberts, who was not part of the Amish community but lived and worked in the area. He then killed himself as well. That’s a heavy sigh, isn’t it? A heavy, heavy sigh.

And that sigh would normally have been the end of a very sad story, except that something remarkable went on through that Amish Christian community. Forgiveness and grace took over.

The Amish realized that Roberts’ widow and children who were left behind were different kinds of victims of his rampage. Within a few hours of the shooting, three of the Amish went to the Roberts’ house to console his wife Amy and her 3 kids whose husband/dad had snapped and inflicted such damage. Another Amish man went to visit the killer’s father, who lived just a few miles away, and held him in his arms. Roberts’ parents received many visits and calls over the next days expressing forgiveness and gracious concern. Members of the Roberts’ family were invited to some of the girls’ funerals.

And when the Roberts family gathered in the cemetery to bury the gunman, over half of the 75 people there were Amish. They brought hugs and condolences and tears. The funeral director said “I was lucky enough to be at the cemetery when the Amish families of the children who had been killed came to greet Amy Roberts and offer their forgiveness. And that is something I’ll never forget, not ever. I knew that I was witnessing a miracle.” Impossible, right? People don’t do these things. And there’s the Hallelujah.

N.T. Wright says it like this (Surprised by Hope): “Every act of love, gratitude and kindness; every work of art or music inspired by the love of God and delight in the beauty of his creation; every minute spent teaching a severely handicapped child to read or walk, every act of care and comfort, every prayer, every deed that spreads the gospel, and makes the name of Jesus honored in the world- all of this will find its way, through the resurrecting power of God, into the new creation that God will one day makes.” We can’t conjure it up- but the resurrection of Jesus says there’s nothing to stop us.

I don’t know about you this morning, but I want a little piece of this. I long for the assurance that God knows about the sighs, because some of them are awfully deep, and I need to know that he’s with us. I long to know that at the end of my days, God will be waiting for me with open arms and I will live with Him in his new creation. And I long to know that the life he’s given us to lead on this earth matters, and that we’ll get enough hallelujahs on this side to keep doing his kingdom work.

The answer to all these longings has to be an act of God.

It is. We call it resurrection.

Christ is risen!