ABC attempted to introduce a sitcom last fall called “Cavemen” that lasted a whopping five weeks before they pulled the plug.  It seemed that humanity was not impressed with these ancient beings rolling in contemporary America.  The Chicago Tribune listed it as one of the twenty-five worst TV shows ever.  I imagine however, if time travel truly afforded cavemen the opportunity to re-emerge into this world, they would be amazed at what they would find today… miracle upon miracle upon miracle.  Maybe, were we to transplant ourselves back to the days of the first Easter, we might have a similar experience.  We might see the miracle because our expectations would be wiped clean… we would see with new eyes, soak in the oddities and embrace the impossible.  It is hard to see miracles when you are living in them. 

Our Easter morning biblical friends had that very problem.  They have had a horrific weekend.  Plans to party during Passover quickly became irrelevant.  Hopes of boating on the lake that weekend were forgotten.  Things had gone terribly wrong.  Their friend, their brother, their leader, was put to death.  He hadn’t been ill, he wasn’t in a car accident, it was not expected.  He was brutally murdered in a way that makes a mother shudder imagining that being the fate of her child.  The cross had ended the whole campaign it seemed.  The “Jesus for Savior of the World” campaign conceded their defeat.  The movement was over and Peter, Mary Magdalene, and the ground crew would return to their lives as they were.  They had no choice.  They had no hope.  It had been a great run but they would have to go back to business as usual in order to pay the bills and put food on the table for their families.  You’ve experienced this… life and its unexpected turns.  It’s like a wrecking ball hits you in the stomach… it knocks the wind out of you… it forces the spirit within to be spewed out… it hijacks the hope of your soul. 

I have had moments where I believed that “it just doesn’t get better than this”… beautiful moments of family and love and peace.  Even in those moments, I have caught myself worrying about losing that feeling.  Reality sinks in.  You hope that your children will outlive you but then your twelve year old is diagnosed with a terminal cancer.  You hope for a dream-filled retirement that is only months away and Bear Stearns sells out on Wall Street and you are left with nothing.  Peter and the disciples imagine a world of peace and love under the reign of Jesus and faster than they can compute, He’s murdered and it’s all over. In every case, we know a time will come that we have to move on from our grief because we have no choice.  But not this weekend.  This weekend they would grieve.  The fishing nets would stay in the boat and they wouldn’t leave the house. 

The women were the strongest of the bunch.  On the third day, they were the ones who went to the tomb to care for Jesus’ body.  They had all of the spices and oils to anoint their friend… ah but in the midst of this “things will never be the same again moment” Easter happened.  The tomb was rolled away and the search was on.  They turned over every piece of linen in that cave.  They checked every corner and there were no signs of Jesus.  They are flooded with ideas… “some jerk stole his body.”  Or, “Maybe Peter and the others had already been here and moved his body to a better location.”  Something logical… but certainly not a miracle. 

You may not be looking for an Easter miracle either.  We are logical people.  When people are dead, they are dead… when people have bad hearts, they die and that’s it.  We’ll wear the Easter pastels, take family pictures, and have a nice holiday brunch after worship, but we don’t expect a miracle today.  These women found the empty tomb but were trying to explain away the miracle.  They didn’t get it until a couple of robed gentlemen who “dazzled” them with their fine duds told them to think about what Jesus had said to them.  It is a moment to picture, friends.  “Sweet Lord, he did it!”  It’s like Red, Morgan Freeman’s character in the movie Shawshank Redemption when he realizes his friend, Andy, played by Tim Robbins has actually escaped the oppressive hands of the depressing prison they called home.  It is a moment of elation and almost disbelieving pleasure… they have experienced the miracle… it has become personal for them and they are off to share the news. 

We don’t often see the miracles until we experience them for ourselves.  It’s like the idea that there is no such thing as “minor surgery” when it is happening to you.  Ask anyone who has received new life through a heart transplant and I guarantee you they have experienced the miracle.  You can see miracles happen to others and think, “well good for them” but until you experience it for yourself, it is just a wonder, just a happening, just lucky I guess.  But our women in the story are running.  They are running to Peter’s place to tell him that all the talk of resurrection that Jesus was saying for the last three years was legit… that the worst weekend possible had just totally redeemed itself.        

While the disciples are heating up their TV dinners and meat loaf that some ladies of the church brought over to them after the funeral, the women arrive sharing the Easter goodness with baskets of chocolate bunnies and Peeps shouting, “Christ is risen indeed!”  The disciples are likely annoyed with the interruption of their grieving.  They have the television on watching some March Madness basketball trying to dull their minds from wondering what they’ll do with the rest of their lives now that their master has “bought the farm”.  It’s that moment after you’ve lost your dream job, or buried your father, and someone tries to tell you, “everything happens for a reason” or “you just have to move on.”  You are not ready to hear that.  The disciples didn’t want to hear anything they were saying and in fact, Luke’s version tells us that they didn’t believe them at all.  They just sat, ate, and zoned out with their eyes on the television.  They couldn’t buy into the miracle.

Everywhere we go there are messages of hope and signs of the miraculous but we don’t want to be bothered with it.  We don’t have time.  We are dull to the positive things that happen in our lives and focused on the negative.  Justice? Peace? An end to starvation? A cure for AIDS?  Clean water for all?  Those are not possible; we think… they cannot be so we will not waste our time on them.  We will sit, numb and fixated on the television screens full of the mundane… not miracles.  When we find ourselves here, we are not ready for the miracle of Easter and we choose not to deal with it.  In this existence, we live hopelessly without joy of letting new life creep into our hearts.

All the disciples dismiss the ladies… except for one.  Peter is at least intrigued enough by their story that he would go and check it out for himself.  He runs, actually.  When he arrives at the Easter tomb he stoops and peers in… he doesn’t burst in… he doesn’t yell, “Is anybody in there?”  He just stoops and peers.  It just wasn’t all adding up… could this really be?  Is this a cruel joke or could Jesus really be raised again just as he said?  It leads us to the most perplexing part of the text for me.  Luke says that “Peter saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.” The Message version of the Bible says it this way, “He walked away puzzled, shaking his head.”  What is this?  It is bewilderment… it is curiosity…but it is not a miracle.  It was not logical and he was not ready to run in faith like the women to tell the world that Jesus in fact did as he said and has risen from the dead. 

I’m not sure if this made the weekend better or worse for Peter at this point.  He was not ready to embrace a new heart of faith, perhaps.  He needed some time.  But this is the critical piece of the Easter story… you did hear that part of the story, right?  Peter peeks into the tomb, but their dead friend is gone.  It’s not what he planned; his expectations are turned upside-down.  Jesus isn’t there; he is on the move. Jesus is on the loose.  The Easter miracle has feet, which leads me to say something that is ill advised.  No seminary in the world would recommend that I say this.  My wife is thinking, don’t say it… we’re getting ready to have a baby… you need this job.  But as a preacher it is my job to tell the truth.  So, the simple truth I want to get into the complexities of your minds that accepts or denies miracles by the minute is this:  If you came looking for Jesus this morning, He is not here!

All I can do this morning is the same thing the “two men in dazzling clothes” said to the women at the tomb…  I can only point to where he might have gone.  He is not here.  I wish I could provide more… In some sanctuaries in our city this morning, you could have heard some catchy sermons like, “The Eight Easter Secrets to Financial Freedom” or “The Six Keys to Unlocking Your Emotional Tomb.”[1]  But I can’t do that… that is not the Easter miracle… in fact, I wonder if Jesus saw the titles on those church signs and thought, “I rose from the dead for this?  No way; nice try.”

Jesus rose to reveal the miracle of new life… new hearts… new starts… new hope.  And because of that, he is mobile… he is on the move.  He is out there where the world needs him.  He is “in the rubble of human tragedy, in the crucible of life. He is on the move. He has become the change he wants to see in the world, and he pokes his head in this little church today, just long enough to see who’s up for the chase, because he longs for company, he longs for all of us to become the change he wants to see in the world.”[2] 

I hope you will look for him… not become numb to his presence in life’s miracles.  You have to search a little but he’s out there.  Jesus says, “I am the Way, the Truth, the Life”… not “I am a book, I am a fable, I am stagnant.”  He is alive.  He’s sitting in the wheelchair at the nursing home celebrating their St. Patrick’s Day party and watching The Price is Right and reruns of Little House on the Prairie.  He’s sitting in the car seat in the very back of your SUV wondering if you’ll have time to play catch with him when you get home or if you have to go back to work.  He’s sitting on the street in downtown Indianapolis this Easter Sunday morning because his parents have kicked him out of the house and he has nothing to eat and no place to sleep.  He’s sitting in the cubicle next to you at work hoping you’ll ask him about his day or how the chemo treatments are going.  He’s sitting in the booth at Red Lobster alone worried if his job will still be there after his company downsizes.  He’s batting ninth on your son’s baseball team.  He’s knocking on your door asking if you will get out and vote.  Jesus is out there, no longer contained by the tomb we have placed him in and he’s recruiting. 

Can you see him?  Or are you numb to his activity in your life and in the world?  Is this day like another ho-hum heart transplant that is just science, just the expected, or is this day seen as an invitation to a new heart, a new hope that resurrection is possible for us… today and everyday and not just in the pages of some red-lettered book?  How do you see this Easter Savior?  Are you skipping and shouting like the ladies at the tomb?  Are you shaking your head like Peter?  Are you caught up in the Easter miracle at all?  C.S. Lewis once said, “Jesus is either the Son of God or he is in the same category as a man who thinks he is a poached egg.”  That is a decision you have to make.  I’m not sure where your heart is this morning.  But I have hope in the Easter miracle.  It is in fact, the only lasting hope I have.  Trouble will find me… illness or accident will one day take me or those closest to me… the worst possible weekends will show up unexpectedly on my calendar… but I won’t let those things blur my vision for long.  I will not let them blind me from the miracles of new life.  For Jesus is out there… he is alive and he’s inviting me to be fully alive as well.  To be fully alive means that we have full flesh…we feel; our senses are alive; our souls are vibrantly active and searching for God at work in the world.  Leave the dead life behind you for the Easter life… the miracle of being fully alive.

New life is on my mind these days.  My son will be born in a few weeks… he will be fully alive, out of the tomb… I mean womb… and he will face the trials we all do.  As much as I long to, I cannot protect his heart from the world.  But my hope is that I can teach him to run from the tomb… to be aware… to enjoy and see the miracles that happen before his eyes everyday… and… I will tell him that Jesus is out there.  I will tell him that Easter happens more than once a year… it happens any time true love is shared, hospitality is extended, when war is exchanged for peace, and when he has a heart for people.  I will teach him the closing words of poet Wendell Berry:  "and so friends, every day, do something that does not compute--- love the Lord, love someone who does not deserve it, be joyful – and though you have considered all the facts, practice resurrection."  And if that reality can begin with you and me, then the miracle is out there… it has a new heart… it is fully alive.