+ In nomine Domini.  Amen.

Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed.

Each of the four Gospels that we have in our Christian scriptures, written long after the event of the Resurrection of Jesus, tells the story of Easter a little differently.  What we have just heard is the version told by the writer we call Matthew.  Here it is again:

It is the day after Shabbat (the Sabbath), it is dawn of that day, and two of the faithful women who have been with Jesus as he made his way around and about the villages and towns during the three years of his ministering … two of the women, Mary Magdalene and Mary the Mother of James go to the place of burial, to the tomb and there is an earthquake and with the earthquake a messenger from God, an angel, who appears and rolls back the stone that covered the tomb.  The guards tremble.  But the women hear the angel speak and they are told, “Do not be afraid … the crucified one is not here, he has been raised, see for yourselves, go to Galilee, that is where you will see him, tell the others.”  The women leave quickly, scared and joyful at the same time.  Their mission?  To tell the followers of Jesus what has happened.

Now here is where Matthew adds something different from the other three Easter Stories,

Suddenly Jesus met them and said, "Greetings!" And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. 

You see the picture?  Here are the two Mary having just experienced an earthquake, seen an angel, heard that Jesus who had been crucified was no longer in the tomb, been instructed to tell the other disciples about this, take their leave quickly with mixed emotions, perhaps confusion, about all this and … lest there be any doubt at all, suddenly they run into Jesus, and not only does he speak to them, they kneel down and grab his feet, hold onto him, touch him, see for themselves that this is who it is.

Then again, the message, “Do not be afraid” and the instruction, “Go on, tell my brothers to go to Galilee and there we will have a meeting.” 

Why Galilee?  Because that is where Jesus was from, that is where it all began, it’s a homecoming.

Why “Do not be afraid?”  Because that is what Easter is all about.

We sing about it, we preach about it, we pray about it, we read about it, we have spent Holy Week, diligently, here in church preparing ourselves to hear about it and now today, this morning, this Easter, this celebration, we find out about it again … Do not be afraid, it’s not the end, rather it’s the homecoming, the reunion, the getting back together, the warm embrace of loved ones who thought they would never be together again and now they are, no matter what, so do not be afraid not even of death, not even of being abandoned by God, or forgotten by the Holy One, or left out … not even an earthquake can destroy that, not even a few Roman soldiers whose duty it was to see that no one disturbed the grave of this troublemaker Jesus … not even that will stop the story that there is nothing to fear and that no matter what we may imagine we will be together, with God and with each other.

That’s the Easter story in one paragraph.  One very long paragraph … but you see how difficult it is to say what it means, the Easter message … we must say more, we must try, what is Easter if it is not Easter for us?

We need to flesh it out, as it were, to try and understand and explain and explicate … and we become afraid, fearful, scared of so many things … our inadequacies, our failings, our shortcomings, the world situation, the economy, the job market, the future, the past, the present, our mortality, the list goes on and on and on and even more than that, even further the list of fearful things does not stop … death, that scares us the most perhaps … and so what we have quickly said, Christ is Risen, we then have to find in each of those fears what Risen means, what hope there can be in a stone rolled away, not only from a tomb in Judea, but from our own hidden-ness, our own darkness, our own cautions … if the stone were rolled back from those things we hold in our hearts, would we not truly be free …?

And the answer, the Easter answer is, yes …we would, and we can be free … Easter is not a resuscitation of a dead body, it is new life!  New life!

What takes place on Easter is that we ourselves not only hear the story we become the story … the new life that is promised is our new life.  When we immerse ourselves into the words, the hymns, the prayers, the sharing of peace, the holy supper … it is not just a holiday liturgy, it is the ritual by which we find ourselves with God if we God then also into relationship with each other … the homecoming from despair and fear and doubt and everything that takes us away from each other, and ourselves.

Our sins are forgiven, our brokenness is mended, our fears are removed, our joy breaks forth and as the stone is rolled away from the tomb … so what would it be like that stone were rolled away from our hearts?

It would be the very thing that Jesus taught his followers then … what he called the Kingdom of God, where love, joy, peace, and justice take the place of hate, sorrow, anger and inequity.  And that is what the Reunion of Easter is about, that we come here and meet the Risen Christ not only in the Story but also in our midst, in our community.