Read any of the Gospel Accounts of Easter morning and you will not find anyone rejoicing that Christ has risen from the dead. What we find are confusion, panic, desperation, anger, and a lot of running about. In the Gospel of John, Mary Magdalene arrives at the tomb early in the morning and finds the stone rolled away and the body missing. She runs to tell Peter and the Beloved Disciple, John. Peter and John have a footrace to the tomb, with John arriving first. John defers to Peter, the leader. Peter pokes around first and then John enters the tomb. The Scripture says, “He saw and believed.”  Alleluia! The mystery of what happened to Jesus has been solved! No. Waith a minute. The next line of the Gospel states, “They did not yet understand the Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.” Well, if John did not understand that Jesus had risen from the dead, then what was it that he DID believe?

In Jesus’ day, faith and belief were not abstractions; they were not about giving assent to certain concepts and ideas. Faith was a personal belief in somebody., and in John’s case, that person was Jesus. John was affirming his loyalty to Jesus, even if he did not yet understand what had happened to him. He was not yet ready to give up on Jesus. He had been moved by the fact that Jesus offered people something solid, not like the shallow message that so many of the rabbis were offering up. Jesus tried to meet the real need of people, and he had a down to earth way of explaining things to people. Jesus gave people hope, and John was not yet ready to give up that

And actually there was evidence to believe that Jesus’ body had not been stolen. The burial clothes were folded neatly and left behind. A grave robber would surely have wanted to get in and out as quickly as possible. He would not have wasted time at the crime scene unwrapping the body and then carefully folding the burial garments unless he were  obsessive compulsive. When Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, Lazarus came out of the tomb wrapped in his burial garments. Lazarus would die again. Since Lazarus would die again, he would still need burial garments. Jesus had left the burial clothes behind because he had been freed from death. He had left the old life behind. He was paving the way for all of us to leave death behind aswell.

            None of the followers of Jesus truly “understood” this until Jesus started appearing to them in bodily form. Jesus still had his wounds, but he was unphased by them. His disciples could touch the marks of his execution. Jesus could eat and drink with them, but he was not bound anymore by time and place. He was the same and yet remarkably different. He was so real that most were willing to die rather than deny that they had experienced Jesus alive.

When it comes to our own faith, we can learn something from John, the Beloved Disciple. Just because we are a follower of Christ does not mean that we will always feel close to Christ or know where we are being led. We may wonder ourselves if the Resurrection actually happened. Our culture does not know what to do with the real message of Easter.  We can turn Christmas into a cute story about a baby being born, but how do we explain rising from the dead in a totally secular way? Commercial interests try to distract us with things to buy and do. It is estimated that Americans will spend $24 billion dollars on Easter this year. But the truth of Christ’s victory over sin and death is priceless.

So, during those times when we are not sure what we believe, when we are disheartened by what is going on in our life or in our world, these are time to be loyal to Jesus.  Like John, we don’t abandon a friend when things get messy. And if we hang around long enough and are attentive enough, Jesus will come to us, just as he came to Mary Magdalen and the apostles. Jesus may not come to us in his risen body but in someone else’s body. He may come in the body of someone whose life has been changed by the Gospel or in the body of a small child, or in the faces of the poor. Jesus may come in moments of prayer or after receiving the Eucharist, Jesus may come to us when we get involved in a charity or a ministry. or when we are sticking by a friend in need or a group of people being treated unjustly. Easter teaches us not to be afraid of death, but be focused on life and making this world more like the heaven we say we believe in. Jesus is alive and in our midst. His great desire is for us to be alive in him and to believe in him as much as he believes in us.

Have a blessed Easter.

                                                                           Fr. Joe