The Reward of Discipleship

Easter does not sit still. Easter is on the move! We have become so familiar with the Easter story that becomes difficult to see how dramatic it really is. For a moment, let’s flash back to Friday. Just two days ago, we witnessed the betrayal and arrest in the garden, the trial and torture and sentence at the hands of Pilate, the execution and burial that seemed to bring an end to this Jesus and his status quo threatening revolutionary movement.

When we do that, it is a little bit easier to walk in the footsteps of the disciples. We can imagine their shock and horror as they realize they had followed Jesus into the deathtrap of Jerusalem. No doubt they were terrified, frozen, numb. The arrival of the Sabbath may have even come as a welcome, giving them religious cover for the passivity they would have felt already. They were unable to move – afraid to move – and the Sabbath arrived, commanding them to stay put.

And then Sunday comes. The sun has barely poked its head above the horizon when the three women hustle to the tomb to embalm Jesus. They wonder aloud how they’re going to pry the giant entrance stone out of the way, only to discover that their worry was unfounded: it has already been rolled aside. As for Jesus? He’s not there. Instead, there’s a young man in a white robe, an angel or messenger of some kind, telling them to head north to the Galilee to meet up with Jesus. In response to this news, they flee with a confusing mixture of joy and fear.

Apart from the seated figure in white, the whole story is one of frenetic energy: swift movement to and from the tomb, a large stone mysteriously moved, a command to move on to the Galilee.

Easter does not sit still. Easter is on the move!

I will be honest with you. As a pastor, having gutted out the Holy Week grind, there is probably nothing I look forward to more than that most sacred of family traditions, the Easter afternoon nap. I am sure there are many church professionals and busy members who feel the same way. Don’t get me wrong – the power of Easter morning still grabs me. A sunrise service where the sky passes from night to day still feels almost miraculous. A full sanctuary singing “Jesus Christ Is Risen Today” gives me chills. That uncertain pause at the end of the “Hallelujah Chorus”, just a little bit longer than you think it’s going to be, almost reduces me to tears every time.

But if you tell me on Easter afternoon that I need to move…

That’s the thing about following Jesus. To be a Christian, to call Jesus Lord, demands a shift in thinking. It’s a shift from the fear of Good Friday and the paralysis of Holy Saturday into the hopeful motion of Easter Sunday. And that shift is what makes all the difference. It is, in a nutshell, the reward of discipleship.

I don’t know about you, but it seems that there are days where the fear and the paralysis make a lot more sense. Whether we are talking about political races or legislative decisions or wars and rumors of wars, fear seems like a healthy response. We can also pushed out of Sunday’s hope back into the despair of Friday and Saturday with things that are much closer to home. Just a quick scroll through the Facebook feed of our friends and family can be enough for us to question whether there’s any hope at all. There are times when it feels like the world is filled with the mean, the unfair, the inhuman. And these are the moments when hope feels nothing short of delusional.

That’s why the rhythm of this whole week is critical. If we take a leap from waving branches on Palm Sunday to singing resurrection hymns on Easter, then our joy is not rooted in reality, but in selective ignorance during the rest of the week. And that really is deluded. Hope does not come from pretending that the bad stuff isn’t there. Hope is born out of the hopelessness that looks that bad stuff right in the eye and lives to tell about it anyway.

For the disciples, there was no way around the awful truth of that week. For three years, they had ridden high on the expectations they had placed in Jesus. They followed him around the Galilee, hearing his teaching and seeing his miracles, while the crowds around him swelled to the point that they could not be contained.

When Jesus told them it was time to head to Jerusalem, no doubt they were filled with a mix of emotions: sad to leave behind the fame and glory they had gathered, but anticipating an even greater power as they rose to power by his side. The esteemed theologians Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber got it right with their catchy show tunes about the disciples jockeying for position in the upcoming political revolution, and being thrown into confusion and despair by the sudden appearance of swords and whips and spears and crosses and burial cloths and tombs.

Along with everything else Friday and Saturday brought, they revealed how badly the disciples had misunderstood the whole point of their mission. Yes – they had followed him at a moment’s notice. Yes – they recognized the truth and wisdom in his preaching. Yes – they knew the power in his healing. And yes – they saw the fear and anger he caused in the religious authorities of the day. And when they put it all together, they were convinced it had been in service of the liberation of a small strip of land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. It was as though everything to that point was preparing them to rule an earthly fiefdom.

You can’t blame Jesus. He tried to tell them. He told them about taking up the cross. He told them about dying and rising. But these things didn’t fit into the worldview they had already constructed for themselves. They couldn’t assimilate these things into their existing assumptions. When he talked about these things, they tried to silence him. And when that didn’t work, they just compartmentalized the stuff they didn’t want to hear. They became selective about which parts of Jesus they wanted to believe. Then Friday and Saturday suddenly made that impossible. They had seen his body pulled off the cross and buried in a tomb – and with him, all of their hopes and dreams had become lifeless.

Staring into the hopeless pit of Friday and Saturday is what makes the hope of Sunday so incredible. It’s what ought to ignite us to follow Christ and follow him faithfully. The reward of discipleship doesn’t come from showing up when you find out that the tomb is empty. The reward of discipleship is sticking with it through the horrors – the betrayal, the anguish, the death – so that the hope you find in the rolled away stone is deep, like a wellspring of life itself.

And that hope – that resurrection, moving through crucifixion, hope – that life that comes out of death hope – is why Easter puts us on the move!

You see: faith in Jesus doesn’t work like some Ancient Near East themed Monopoly “Get out of Hell Free” card. It’s not a one-time payment, eternal life insurance policy. It is a movement, a call to new, hopeful ways of being in the world! What happens on Sunday matters. Yes! And what happens every day after that matters, too. Because, as the Jesuit author James Martin writes, “Resurrection makes a claim on you.” That claim means that you cannot just “set aside those teachings you disagree with or that make you uncomfortable – say, forgiving your enemies, praying for your persecutors, living simply or helping the poor.” It means, instead, that you’re all in.

Following Jesus means leaving behind Friday and Saturday’s fear and paralysis, because we can actually grow quite comfortable in our helplessness. Following Jesus also means heading to the Galilee to meet the risen Christ on Sunday and Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday…I think you know the rest.

This is why we ought care about what happens in tiny strips of land all over the world. We don’t root for tribes or nations like we cheer for NCAA brackets. We care and we are there because those people and places drowning in their hopeless Fridays and Saturdays, whether near or far, deserve to know that Sunday is coming!

That is why we are part of a national and global movement of Presbyterians who provide comfort and strength and encouragement, who preach and live out messages of justice and fairness and righteousness. That is why we teach our children to share their resources, to gather up their coins and pool them together, bringing the hope of fish and chickens and pigs through the Presbyterian Giving Catalog – because even if we cannot be there ourselves, we know that we are there with the church that is already there!

Friends, this Jesus – this won’t stay dead Jesus – this Christ is risen he is risen indeed Jesus – does not sit still. Jesus is on the move! If we are going to follow, we better get going!

Amen.