Eastertide #2

God raised Jesus up and allowed him to appear

(Acts 10:40)

Let’s stick with the Christian Calendar through Pentecost. After Easter Morning. Our resurrected Lord lingers among us for a spell. How our resurrected Lord departs and what he leaves behind are the next big events on the Christian Calendar—events that, without the Calendar, we might miss; or, in other ways, overlook. So let’s see it through till Pentecost.

On Easter Morning, Jesus’ tomb is found empty. No one questions that. It’s a historical fact that no one disputes. What is disputed, is how Jesus’ tomb became empty. Soldiers guarding the tomb say, “Jesus’ disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.” Then Matthew adds: “And this story is still told to this day.” We live “to this day,” with two stories about how the tomb was found empty: 1) someone must have taken away his body; or, 2) he rose from the dead—or, as is most often said, “God raised him from the dead” (Ac 3:15); or more fully, “God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear” (Ac 10:40).

One can provided good arguments for why ours is the true story—like why would the disciples give their lives for a hoax? There can be no doubt they really believed it; and, that this belief came from the appearance of the risen Christ among them. “We are witnesses,” as Peter testifies, of how “God raised Jesus on the third day and allowed him to appear …to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead” (Ac 10:40-41).

Easter can’t be contained in a one day celebration. It overflows. There’s a tide to it that floods ashore—that floods over us. Eastertide is a season of fifty days, between Easter Sunday and Pentecost Sunday, when we contemplate what happened when the tomb was found empty and our risen Lord appeared to God’s chosen witnesses. During Eastertide we linger, as our resurrected Lord lingered among us, and contemplate how it can be that Jesus “was put to death for our trespasses and raised to grant us… peace” (Ro 4:25-5:1). As the hymn goes, “Can it be?”