April 5, 2026

Standing Under the Resurrection

We’re pretty smart, we human beings.  If you want proof of how smart we are, just open the newspaper any morning.  You’ll find out that we can accelerate protons around a 17 mile long tube at near the speed of light and smash them into each other with the force of 7 trillion electron volts; we can analyze the mitochondrial DNA of a 40,000 year old finger and determine that it came from an individual who was part of an entirely unknown branch of the human family tree; we are on the verge of creating nanorobots, little molecular machines injected into cells to repair them; we’ve got people on the way to the moon – we’re pretty smart.

We are the smartest species that ever lived.  In fact, we’re so smart that we’re capable of burning up the ozone and filling the atmosphere with carbon dioxide.  We’re so smart that we are learning how to improve on the design of human beings by monkeying with their DNA and adding robotic parts.  We’ll soon be able to put computer chips in people’s brains to make them even smarter.

And since we trust in our intelligence so thoroughly, we are naturally skeptical of anything that we don’t understand.  If we don’t understand it, then, we naturally conclude, it’s hogwash – since, after all, we’re so smart.

But what is it to “understand” something?  Literally, it is to “stand under” that thing.  In other words, we place ourselves in a position relative to the thing that puts us in the same “sphere of being” with it.  If we can “stand under” it, so we suppose, we can breathe the same air it breathes, wrap ourselves in its reality, and know its workings – kind of bottom side up.

In fact, we become so convinced of our ability to “under-stand” things and know them, that we become truly convinced of our knowledgeability.  I speak from experience on this subject.

I have learned to at least attempt to keep to myself my own assurance about the things I know.  But in truth, I could hardly count the number of times that I’ve heard a little inner voice saying something like, “well, I’m surprised that person doesn’t know that; I know that,” or, worse yet, “Maybe I should explain how this works.”  And then I have to try to keep from getting red-faced when I discover that I didn’t really understand the thing at all – when I find out that the other person was right about it, and I was wrong.  It’s humiliating, and not a little disconcerting.

Now, those of you who know me well know about this little character flaw of mine.  But let me hasten to add that I’m not alone.  Truth be told, each and every one of us gets through our days primarily by moving from one thing we “understand” to another.  We understand how the things in our world work.  At least we know that when we turn the key the car starts, when we flip the switch the light goes on, when we turn the knob water flows from the faucet.  And we project this understanding onto the workings of the rest of the world.  We “know” what the President and Congress should do about Iran and I.C.E. and whatever else is in the news.  We “know” what’s wrong with schools in America, or that the problem with violence among young people is that they spend too much time on the Internet, or that the problem is the availability of guns, or a lack of parental supervision, and . . . on it goes.

You see we’re smart.  We “understand” things.

All of this is by way of introduction to a confession I wish to make.  Here it is: I really don’t like preaching on Easter Sunday.  There.  It’s out.  (And, by the way, I suspect I’m not alone among the clergy).

It’s not that I don’t love the beauty of the hymns, and the Easter story, and the flowers in the sanctuary.  The truth is, I don’t like the feeling of not being able to understand something.  I don’t like feeling like an idiot.  And the honest truth is: I don’t understand the resurrection.  It’s not something I can get my mind around.  I’ve never seen anyone rise from the dead, and the idea of someone doing it goes against every twenty-first century, modern scientific, rational bone in my body.  When you’re alive, you’re alive; and when you’re dead you’re dead.  Let’s admit it; most of us here this morning basically see life the same way.  There’s living and breathing, and then there’s being dead, and not breathing. And in spite of what any of us may believe about the afterlife, none of us have ever seen anybody get around that one.

So here I stand before you, trying to preach to you about something I don’t even understand.  It’s a feeling that makes me squirm a little.

The only comfort I can take in the task is to recognize that I’m not alone.  In fact, I’m in pretty good company.  The followers of Jesus couldn’t quite connect with the experience rationally either.  Starting with the first one at the tomb, Mary Magdalene.  She found the tomb empty and, being a rational, thinking person instantly “understood” what had happened.  She ran to the disciples and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”  Then, after the others came, looked for themselves, scratched their heads, and left, She found herself alone again outside the tomb.  The risen Lord appears right before her eyes!  And, being a rational, thinking person, she “understands” him to be the gardener.  There’s no other explanation that makes sense.  It had to be the gardener.  It took the experiential equivalent of a sledge hammer to break through her rational-critical mental construct.  Jesus had to speak to her, and call her by name.   “Mary,”  He said.

That’s when Easter finally happened.  It was when the first person Jesus encountered was knocked off their rational-scientific, wise and knowing, “understanding” pins, and left weeping and celebrating, head-spinning, and reeling by something they could not in a million years comprehend.  That’s when Easter first happened – when it happened to Mary in the garden.

You see, Easter isn’t a theological argument; it’s not a three point hypothesis.  That’s why I have so darn much trouble preaching about it.  Easter is an event – more than that, it’s an event that doesn’t make sense.

I have come to be a firm believer that the trouble I have preaching about Easter is not an accident.  I’m supposed to have trouble preaching about it.  I’m not supposed to make sense out of it.  I’m not supposed to be able to put it neatly into a few profound theoretical assertions a three-point message.  Easter is something that is supposed to upset you.  Easter is something that is supposed to surprise you.  Easter is something that is supposed to bewilder you.  And if it doesn’t leave you bewildered, I think it hasn’t happened to you.

It’s such a funny game we all play on Easter Sunday.  We all sit here together, singing the hymns of the season, proclaiming, “Christ is risen, indeed!”  as though it were all so annually predictable and routine.  We all listen to the Easter message, and struggle within about how we come to terms with this story about a man rising from the dead, when none of us has ever seen such a thing, and some little part of us even may find it a bit hard to swallow.  And we all politely keep our inner struggles about it to ourselves by smiling and wishing each other a “happy Easter.”  We each think there’s something wrong with us because we can’t quite get our minds around the resurrection.  So we don’t let on about it.

Well, guess what!  You’re supposed to be confused!  You’re supposed to be a little baffled.  You’re supposed to go away shaking your head and saying, “I don’t know.”  That’s what Easter is about!

Easter confounds you.  Easter unsettles you.  Easter turns your rational mind inside out, and grabs you by the shirt collar and shakes you until you have to admit the thing that none of us ever, ever wants to admit: we don’t understand.

And when we reach that point, I imagine the Lord of heaven and earth sitting back and saying, “Precisely.  You don’t understand.  Now, there’s something we can work with.”

You see, Easter is not something we “understand” in the way we generally consider understanding.  Easter is something we “stand-under” in the same way we stand under the rain.  It’s not something to be grasped, or comprehended, or “worked out;” it’s something that simply happens to us.  It’s being jerked outside of the manageable, predictable box we live in from day to day and being seized by the Spirit of Christ.  And if it happens to us that way, if it happens to us the way it happened to Mary and to the disciples, it leaves us stunned, shaking our heads in disbelief. And then, mouth agape in awe and wonder, that’s when Easter happens.

My wish for you this season is that you will be confused.  My hope for you this Easter morning is that you will leave here scratching your head and saying, “I don’t get it.”  My prayer for you today is that, in the stillness of your bewilderment, you will hear a quiet voice speaking your name, and Easter will happen to you.