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Matthew 27:35-37 NRSV And when they had crucified him, they divided his clothes among themselves by casting lots; then they sat down there and kept watch over him. Over his head they put the charge against him, which read, “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.”

Matthew 27:57-28:10 NRSV When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who was also a disciple of Jesus. He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus; then Pilate ordered it to be given to him. So Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn in the rock. He then rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb and went away. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were there, sitting opposite the tomb.

The next day, that is, after the day of Preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate and said, “Sir, we remember what that impostor said while he was still alive, ‘After three days I will rise again.’ Therefore command the tomb to be made secure until the third day; otherwise his disciples may go and steal him away, and tell the people, ‘He has been raised from the dead,’ and the last deception would be worse than the first.” Pilate said to them, “You have a guard of soldiers; go, make it as secure as you can.” So they went with the guard and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone.

After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.’ This is my message for you.” So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”

Let us pray. Come, Holy Spirit, Heavenly Dove; descend on us, reveal your love. Word of God and inward light, wake our spirits; clear our sight. Surround us now with all your glory; speak through me that sacred story. Take my lips and make them bold. Take hearts and minds and make them whole. Stir in us that sacred flame; then send us forth to spread your name. Amen.

Les Cheveldayoff gets crucified six times a week. It’s not that he has a bad job; it’s just that getting crucified is his job. But he also gets resurrected six times a week. So, it’s all good! You see, Les Cheveldayoff is Jesus. At least that is the part that he plays at an attraction in the midst of the vacation land of Orlando, Florida. Les is a ruggedly handsome guy with long, wavy hair, a full beard, smiling eyes and six-pack abs, the prototype of the popular picture of Jesus (at least in the world of the Magic Kingdom).

For six years, Les has been part of the cast of a production called, The Holy Land Experience, which opened in 2001; and it is no bathrobe biblical drama. It was designed by a company that has designed many of the attractions at Disney World and Universal Studios. So, when Les gets crucified and resurrected, it is a spectacle worthy of anything the Magic Kingdom can throw at you.

Now, that sort of thing may not be your chalice of wine, and it may also appear, from a distance, as a kind of cheesy Easter pageant gone Magic Kingdom. But Les Cheveldayoff sees it differently. He says, “Every time I am hoisted up on that cross, I see an outpouring of emotion among many in the crowd. I notice it so much that sometimes it throws me off my lines.” He says, “Taking people back to the events of the crucifixion and resurrection has a deep impact. People not only want to read the story -- they want to experience the Cross and the Resurrection for themselves.” (Homiletics, March 23, 2008)

Well, here at Germantown United Methodist Church, we’re far from the tourist magic of Orlando, but through our words, music and song, we still want to re-create the scene and hopefully we will all experience a bit of the power and meaning of that first Easter.

For the truth is, Easter is so incredible, so filled with mystery and wonder and awe, that it is possible for us to be kind of like spiritual tourists today...to show up, to say it really was a nice show, and then to go off with the family to brunch and then to an Easter egg hunt, and then watch a basketball game or two.

Oh, we see the Easter story as the greatest comeback story in all of history, yet, we tend, at times, to be tourists who see it as something confined to an event 2,000 years ago...an event in the past having little to do with us, here and now.

But Easter is meant to speak to the “deep place in our souls where we decide who we will be and how we will live, and who or what we will trust.” (John Buchanan, “The Laughter of the Universe,” March 27, 2005)

I’d like for us this morning to recall the story. It all begins in darkness and despair. It begins with shattered hopes and broken dreams for all is now lost. Or so it seems. Jesus is dead, and the movement that he started is over.

In 2005, in the Newsweek cover story, called “Resurrection,” Jon Meacham wrote this powerful introduction: “The story, it seemed, was all over. Convicted of sedition, condemned to death by crucifixion, nailed to a cross on a hill called Golgotha, Jesus had endured all that he could. He repeated a verse of the 22nd Psalm, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ (Then) there was a final wordless gasp. And then...silence.”

Clearly, Jesus’ followers had expected more...a different outcome than that. If he was the promised Messiah, surely he would come in power and in strength, military and political, and achieve some kind of a visible victory. So, Jesus’ arrest and trial and his subsequent execution as a common criminal was a crushing blow to his disciples. They fled and left Jesus to die alone and went into hiding. A couple of his followers had gone to a village nearby called Emmaus...just to get away from the profound sense of loss.

It was the women alone who had stayed with Jesus until the end. They watched him die. They looked on as his body was taken down from the cross and wrapped in linen and buried and sealed in a tomb. And then after the Sabbath, as a final act of respect and love, the women came back to the tomb to anoint his body. Their big concern was who would roll away the stone.

But we know the story! That God was up to something! That the agony of the cross and the silence of the tomb was not the last word.

To catch the mood of what happened next, I want to change here for a moment and share with you a sports analogy. I know it is basketball season...March Madness...but I want to switch the image from basketball to football. Have you ever left a stadium early because you knew there was no hope for your team? You’re out in the parking lot with your key in the car door, when suddenly, you hear a roar and you hear your own team’s fight song. And you wonder: “What did I miss? I thought it was over!” You cannot wait to unlock the door and get into the car and turn on the radio and hear what happened.

Well, the classic example is a football game that took place in 1982 between Stanford and Cal. Some of you know the story. Cal was leading in the closing seconds when the legendary Stanford quarterback, John Elway, led a brilliant drive and got within field goal range. Stanford let the clock tick down to eight seconds, and then they kicked a field goal. The score was 20-19, in favor of Stanford, with only four seconds left in the game. All that remained was the obligatory kickoff. The stands began to empty because it was all over. Stanford had aced it and Cal had lost the game.

But a few diehard fans stayed in the stadium and saw Stanford kick that squib kick. The Cal players decided to have some fun and pretend they were a rugby team. They began passing the ball around as if they were playing “keep away.” There were six lateral passes, while the clock ticked down to zero. The Stanford band saw the time run out on the clock, and not realizing that the play would be allowed to continue until it was finished, they rushed out onto the field to celebrate.

The last Cal player to get the ball was a kid by the name of Kevin Moen, a big blonde surfer guy, a Presbyterian who was predestined to greatness that day! Kevin zigzagged through the Stanford band, and using them as his blockers, he shot into the end zone and smashed into the tuba player with a touchdown! But there was a flag on the field. Everyone held their breath. It turned out that the flag was against the Stanford band for running onto the field. The touchdown stood, and Cal won the game. The Cal crowd that remained there in the stadium shouted in celebration and the fight song began! Outside the stadium, thousands of others who had left early turned to one another and said, “What did I miss? I thought it was over!”

What happened at that game corresponds to the mood in the early hours of that first Easter. God was up to something and the cross and the tomb did not have the last word.

The four accounts of what happened next on that Easter morning are wonderfully diverse as to who was there, and who arrived first, and who said what to whom. But they all agree about two things: that Jesus was not in the tomb and that nobody was expecting a resurrection. And when they were told what happened, a lot of the people, even those who knew him best and loved him most, were skeptical and unbelieving and even frightened. But perhaps they were not as frightened as a group of old men.

You see, Matthew’s gospel gives us this odd little detail. Only Matthew tells us about it.

Frederick Buechner talks about them as a delegation of old men, distinguished community and religious leaders, who went to Governor Pilate’s office the day after the crucifixion. They are good men, leaders in their community. They are our kind of people. They want to preserve public order and the status quo. They say, “Your Excellency, we’re here because he said something about rising from the dead, and we know how utterly preposterous that is, but under the cover of darkness, his friends could steal his body and claim he rose again. Then we’d have another problem on our hands. So, please, your Excellency, station some guards at the tomb just to make sure there’s no funny business.”

Governor Pilate, who had already washed his hands of the matter, pointed out that they had guards of their own. He says, “Use your own men. Make the tomb as secure as you can.”

I love that image! A group of old men, satisfied with the status quo, trying for all they’re worth to secure the tomb in a vain attempt to make sure that nothing interrupts or changes the way things have always been. (The Magnificent Defeat)

As Buechner writes of this, he says they really had two fears: First, that somebody would steal the body and claim resurrection, but perhaps their real fear was that maybe...just maybe...what he said was true and that he would walk out of that tomb. And that would not only be unthinkable to them, but it would change everything. And change was the last thing they wanted.

Yet, today, across the world, thousands of preachers will act a lot like those old men when they try to explain the resurrection. It’s tempting. Because the story is so big, so bold, so audacious, it’s easy to just sort of make the resurrection small...to kind of squeeze all of the mystery and awe and wonder out of it, and explain it away, and in the process, make it tiny. We say that it’s just Jesus’ teachings that live on. Or we say that it was his own sweet spirit that lived on. Or that the resurrection really just points to the power of new life that we see every spring.

While all of those things are true, none of them are compelling. None of them embrace the radical, wonderful, world-altering claim of Easter. If I believed that is all that the resurrection was about, I would hope that I would turn in my ordination certificate and take up another profession. At least I would hope I would have the courage to do so! For unless something bold and audacious took place on that first Easter, there is no basis for Christianity or our faith. (Buechner)

For Easter’s message is clear: Christ is risen! Death could not hold him. He, and what he stood for, could not be defeated.

Luke Timothy Johnson says it like this: The Christian claim concerning the resurrection of Jesus is not that he picked up his old manner of life, but “that he entered into an entirely new form of existence, one in which he shared the power of God with his first followers and in which he can share that power with us” who follow him now. (The Real Jesus, p. 134)

What is compelling to me is the transformation of Jesus’ disciples. They went from cowering in fear behind closed doors and were transformed into fierce followers and fearless advocates and martyrs...transformed by the experience and conviction that Jesus was alive and that there was no reason to be afraid of anything ever again.

What it was that transformed them is the same power that is able to lift up brave men and women to live and to witness in the face of danger in our time -- people like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Desmond Tutu and Martin Luther King. People who were able to transform this world into the world of the kingdom. What transformed them is the same power that raises up millions across the world to live on with courage and conviction in the face of defeat and failure and illness and depression and debilitation and loss and even death itself.

So, to embrace Easter and the resurrection isn’t merely embracing that Jesus was raised from the tomb 2000 years ago. If that is all it is, we end up being just spiritual tourists, venerating some event in the past.

And if Easter is only believing that there is an after-life, then Christianity becomes detached from the reality of the world and it becomes little more than “pie-in-the-sky-by- and-by.”

But Easter is so much more! It is the one event that speaks to that place in our souls where we decide who we will be, how we will live, and who or what we will trust.

If embraced, Easter changes everything. When Easter is embraced, we are no longer gripped by fear. We serve a God who is not limited by our reason or our common sense or cause-and-effect or the scientific method, but by a God who can make a way where there is no way...a God for whom impossibilities become possibilities.

When Easter is embraced, we can throw ourselves into the things of God like love and justice and mercy and forgiveness and doing good, knowing that we are joining our hearts and hands to things that are eternal. (L. Gregory Jones, Christian Century, July, 1992)

And a part of what was resurrected on that first Easter was Jesus’ dream of a new world...a society based not on force and might, but on humility and service and love and forgiveness.

What was resurrected on that first Easter was a dream that Jesus planted in their hearts and ours, that love is stronger than death, that it is better to give than to receive, and that real life is a gift given to those who pour out their lives in love and service to others.

So, while Les Cheveldayoff may get to play Jesus six days a week at the Holy Land Experience in Orlando, you and I...because Jesus is alive...get to live as Easter people, as Jesus’ living body in our time, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

And that’s the “Easter Experience!” And it has the power to turn spiritual tourists into transformed people transforming the world.

There is an old historic village in the heart of Winston Salem, North Carolina. Every Easter morning, in the early hours of the day, thousands of people make their way toward a courtyard in front of a 200-year old Moravian church there on Salem Square.

Before daylight, 500 members of various brass bands from around Winston Salem...from all parts of the city...begin to play their music and awaken people and call them together there at Salem Square. From everywhere, people converge on that spot to listen to the mystical sounds of that early morning brass music.

Then, at the first hint of sunlight, a hush falls over the bands and the crowd of worshipers.

When the church bell tolls at 6:00 AM, the Bishop emerges from the church and announces in a loud and unwavering voice, “Christ is Risen!” And then in a loud voice, the people thunder back, “Christ is Risen indeed!” Again, he shouts, “Christ is Risen!” And the people thunder back, “Christ is Risen indeed!” And then the band begins to play, “Christ the Lord is Risen Today” and they all lift their voices in song.

Then, in silence, they walk in procession to “God’s Acre,” an ancient cemetery where all the graves, with their newly-polished gravestones, are covered with flowers. There, in the face of the reality of death, they celebrate Easter.

Why? Because Easter is God’s reminder that love – God’s love for us – is stronger than even death itself.

So today, we remember the Good News that Christ is Risen. And today we proclaim, with all of the saints of all time, “Christ is Risen!” And your response is: “Christ is Risen indeed!” “Christ is Risen!” “Christ is Risen indeed!” “Christ is Risen!” “Christ is Risen indeed!” “Christ is Risen!” “Christ is Risen indeed!”

Thanks be to God who gives Him, and us, the victory.

Let us pray. O Lord, we give you thanks this day that you have called us together on this Easter Sunday to remember and to celebrate the good news that changes the world. God, you have given us power and strength of your presence; now, give us the will, this Easter, to live as an Easter people who are unafraid to share the good news, to join hands with the poor and the marginalized, and to lift up a vision of a new world that you died and rose again to give us. May your power be at work in us this Easter. For we pray in the name of Christ, Amen.