It happens every year. Spring training arrives and baseball fans are filled with hopes and dreams of glory. This will be the year for their team. This will be the year that the impossible happens and their team plays David to the leagues' Goliaths. Unfortunately following spring training there is the regular season where reality sets in. And the reality is that only two teams will go to the World Series and only one will win. The fans of the other teams will end their seasons in great disappointment and frustration. They will go back to their off season lives hoping that one day a miracle will occur and the world will be set right with their side winning.
In a sense that is the way the people of Israel looked at the messiah business. There had been dozens of wannabe messiahs who had come and gone. They had raised armies. They had raised hopes. They had encouraged the people. They had faced the Romans. They had died. But like good baseball fans the people if Israel did not give up. They believed that one day their David would arise again and lead their team, their nation, to victory.
This was their hope in Jesus. While Jesus did not appear to the usual messianic suspect people rallied around him. His teachings focused on a radical obedience to the living God. His healings showed the presence and power of God. His ability to out fox his opponents showed promise. People flocked to him and wanted to make him their king. But as the story often goes, so went Jesus. He was betrayed, arrested, tried, convicted and crucified. Hope faded. People look to next season and the next messiah.
What would be different this time though, was that there would be extra innings. According to Matthew, Mark and Luke, as soon as the Sabbath was over (Jesus having been buried immediately before the Sabbath) some women went to Jesus' tomb to complete the rituals required for an appropriate burial. When they arrived at the tomb, the stone covering the entrance (the tomb was a small cave dug in the side of a hill) was rolled away, the body was not there and a messenger or messengers (the stories vary at this point) from God informed them that Jesus was not dead but alive.
This story seems too fanciful to believe. Yet the women or woman (again the stories vary) encounter the living Christ and are overcome by both fear and joy. The women raced back to tell the rest of Jesus' followers that he was alive. The followers didn't believe them, not simply because the bearers of this news are women, but because God would not resurrect individuals before the end of time. God would not raise Jesus without raising all the other righteous while at the same time establishing God's kingdom on earth. Needless to say the followers of Jesus were a bit surprised and afraid when Jesus appeared in their midst as well. The realization of the resurrection forced them to rethink their understanding of God's Promise and how that Promise was being fulfilled in Jesus. The powers of this world, sin and death, had been defeated and God's reign had begun in a new and powerful way. This event would change the world forever.
This portion of the story is critical for any vision we offer. The story of Jesus resurrection reminds us that the powers of this world that cripple creation (humans and the natural world) are no match for the love and grace of God in Jesus Christ as lived in the church. Our visions then need not be restricted in their scope and in their hope. We need not be afraid to offer up audacious visions of what God would have us to do…not because we are great, because there is nothing God cannot do.
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