Whether we've been coming to church weekly for years or whether we go precisely twice a year or whether this Sunday is our first time setting foot in a Christian worship service, we nevertheless, all of us, experience the same thing: we come, smacked in the face with the grand mystery of the church: the outlandish, logic-defying, mind boggling, simply unbelievable looney tune story of God's direct intervention into the lives of us human beings through the life of one human like us and yet not like us at all. Yet he bled, grieved, partied, starved, traveled, made friends and enemies, gave advice, healed, had a vocation, and even busted a few heads with a bull whip.  As crazy as the story is, I'm left with the uneasy pondering: Could God have used me to do the same thing?  As it is, I've done and experienced all that stuff myself and more, except for the bullwhipping part.  But then again, I beat someone with a stick once who was bullying me.  I tried to cheat on an old girlfriend once because I was tempted by another's beauty. I have stolen things I wanted.  He did none of these things.  As to the story itself, the epilogue is laughable: for all of the failures and disappointments, it is precisely God's intention to carry the story onward and still save people with the likes of me and you.  Such an outlandish, unlikely, looney tune of a story!  But one that, in its terror and beauty bears repeating--and redoing--again and again and again.  For the bottom line is, it is singularly a human story with a human predicament that must be and can only be resolved by human beings willing to take a chance on God, much as God has always had to do with us.

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared.

They found the stone rolled away from the tomb,

but when they went in, they did not find the body.

While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them.

The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, ‘Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.

Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee,

that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.’

Then they remembered his words,

and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest.

Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles.

But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.

But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.

 

Then Peter began to speak to them: ‘I truly understand that God shows no partiality,

but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.

You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all.

That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced:

how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.

We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree;

but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear,

not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.

He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead.

All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.’

 

If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.

For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being;

for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.

But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.

Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power.

For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.

The last enemy to be destroyed is death.