Unfinished Business

Easter Sunday, March 23, 2008

Readings:
Acts 10:34-43
Colossians 3:1-4
Matthew 28:1-10

It’s Easter morning and we take ourselves into the cemetery to see what’s happened. As Pastor Johnson attests, it’s not unusual for pastors to spend a fair amount of time in cemeteries. That place where Mary and others want to see the tomb.

Cemeteries proffer a mixture of feelings. They are a place where memories pour over you like the deluge of a waterfall under which you plant yourself to await the wash. Memories … happy and sad, recent and remote, ephemeral and lingering, born of unfinished business. Therein lie lots of unfinished hugs, kindnesses you had hoped to extend, arguments you had intended to end, apologies you wanted to offer, closure you sought to attain. Lots of unfinished business in cemeteries. Sins of omission, things we said that we shouldn’t have said, things we did that shouldn’t have done.

It all happened so fast. And then it all got crucified on that cross.

Jesus returns to us today on a triumphant note. He comes proclaiming:

“Aloha!”
“What’s hangin’?”
“See ya …. I’m off to Galilee!!”

Why Galilee?

It’s the place …. The place where the thirsty drank, the hungry fed, the blind were given sight again, where the storms were calmed, the 500 were fed, where little children have a voice, where great things happen.

That’s Jesus message today … “I’m outta here … I’m off to that place where great things happen!”

Pastor Johnson smiled as he raised an eyebrow, saying,

“Remember … when you’re in the cemetery, this is not the place where things end. This is the place where the road to Galilee takes off!”

We should not keep our fears to ourselves. There is, perhaps, no greater fear than the fear of death. And today, the Good News is “Death no longer rules, no longer trumps. Death is no longer hanging over us. So go and do His business in the world. You’ve been freed from these shackles. You are now free to build a home for your neighbor who needs one.

The message is so HUGE it’s hard to contain. Even the tomb can’t contain it!
Even the squalor can’t restrain it. The message finds its way to even a Church basement in El Salvador where hundreds of refugees are stowed away, where the ruddy face of a child baptized by a priest afraid for his life shines forth the message. The hope in that message is powerful. It transcends fear, bullets, squalor, darkness, basements, even death.

You can almost hear Jesus’ voice saying, “Tell the boys I’ll see ‘em there.”
In Galilee …

The road to Galilee leads to a place where all your broken dreams come for restoration, where all your fears, where your lost and forgotten dreams, where all that you hold dear, where your losses and hopes, all come to rest and rise again.