If wild applause was ever in order in the church, Easter is the time. It is a day for Christians to cheerfully celebrate Christ's victory over death. Clearly the dominant mood in our worship this morning is joy. It is a day for breaking out the band, clapping hands and singing, "Hallelujah!"

But if you ever read the gospel accounts of the resurrection, you discover an unusual thing; the first reaction of the men and women who came to the tomb was not joy - it was bewilderment and fear! The immediately impact of the resurrection on the followers of Jesus was confusion and apprehension. Mary Magdalene was in shock and the disciples, regardless of John's comment that one of the disciples believed, were clearly unnerved by it all. After all, they went from that tomb and locked themselves in a secret room.

So it all adds up to this: Whatever else the followers of Jesus might have foreseen following the crucifixion, whatever they dreamed of, they did not anticipate a resurrection. That apparently was about the last thing they expected. The discovery of an empty tomb left them disconcerted, hesitant and scared.

If we are going to understand the power that is embedded in the very heart of Easter, we need to come to terms with the disciples' strange reaction of bewilderment and fear. That is hard to do because Easter comes as no surprise to us. We've been waiting for it all during Lent. We expect it. We plan for it.

For example, we already know the day on which Easter is going to be celebrated next year and perhaps even know where we are going to be. And because we expect it, we tend to lose the sense of amazement and surprise.

But while Easter's revelation of resurrection is anticipated by us, it took the disciples completely by surprise. A person who has been dead for three days doesn't just get up and begin living again; that would violate all the accepted laws of nature. They were intelligent people; they knew that.

So when Mary Magdalene, Peter and John encountered the risen Jesus, they didn't go walking off, hand in hand, into the sunset singing, "In the sweet by and by." Far from it! They were terrified. And we will need to come to an understanding of why they were afraid if we are going to plumb the depths of the resurrection and recapture the Easter ecstasy.

For one thing, if Jesus had really come back to life it would mean that they could never get away from God, even in death. That thought is more than a little frightening for it means that one's life is always subject to God's judgment; there is no forgetting; no escape.

If a person wanted to evade God, if they wanted to declare their independence from God, one of the first things they would need to do is eliminate the whole idea of resurrection. Indeed, our difficulties in believing the resurrection may be rooted in our desire to have the last word ourselves. For if death is the end, if there is nothing more, than through my dying, I speak the last word, not God. Then when I die, I will stay dead and that's that!

I wonder how many of us would like to believe that. It effectively takes care of the knotty problem of God. But it is motivated by the desire of the creature who insists that their bodies are their own to do with as they wish and that life's destiny lies, not in God's hands, but their own. Our basic instincts resist granting God power over our live or our death!

Furthermore belief in the resurrection means that we are exposed to the shocking way sin which God purposes to work in this world. It seems the Lord God is rather careless about the means by which the Divine will is done, using anything that is at hand: mangers, leper colonies, crosses and graves. There is nothing sanitary or clinical about the way God's grace works in the world. That makes one wonder what God is up to, what is coming next.

The followers of Jesus were confused and disheartened by his death. They wept at the cross. They wept at the tomb. But they accepted it. We read that the women came early, while it was still dark, presumably to anoint Jesus' body with embalming spices. They had accepted the fact that he was dead. They resigned themselves to that; after all, we eventually all die. They were ready to pick up their lives where they had dropped them when he died.

Many of you here today have learned to come to terms with grief. You have come to accept the grim reality of death. We learn to carry on. We have to. But part of the great astonishment for those initial followers was the realization that God works through suffering and death. The terrible tragedy which took place on Calvary was all part of God's plan!

I'm sure that those first disciples believed that there was an abundant life in the hereafter; Jesus had talked about it often enough. But they did not consider the possibility that God's lofty purposes of grace would be accomplished through things like suffering and death. It is one thing to deal with the harsh realities like death and disillusionment, to live with them, to accept them - but it is another thing entirely to face the reality that this is often the way God chooses to work in this world. These are the methods by which God's purposes are carried out. Now they knew. God does not save us from suffering and death. God saves us through them. This fallen, sinful world was brought back into the loving embrace of God through the sufferings and death of Jesus, God's own Son.

We wonder, "What does this mean?" Then we recall that when we were baptized, the imprint of the cross was made on us as a sign that we would not only share in the power of Jesus' resurrection, but that we would know the fellowship of his sufferings. Thus the promise of God is that society's ills will be cured and world recreated, so that it recovers its lost beauty, its lost meaning, through the suffering of Christians in this world. God's people are called to share the sufferings of Christ.

In its milder forms it might mean we are called to give up the status symbols others think are so important or we might take seriously the whole matter of ecology. On a deeper level we might be required to take unpopular stands that will result in lost friends or alienated family.

There is another aspect to the bewilderment and fear of Jesus' followers which we must not overlook in our pursuit of the meaning of the resurrection. Before those first men and women could experience giddy glory of Easter, they had to come to terms with the fact that with Jesus' resurrection came judgment. For when they buried Jesus in the sepulcher, they buried some other things with him. They buried their hopes and dreams for a Messianic kingdom. They buried all the love and care Jesus had poured out upon the world, especially for the unlovely and the life-worn, the bruised ones. All that was entombed with him.

But that was not all. They also buried a lot of other things, things best forgotten. They buried their self-centered quarrels about who was the greatest. They buried their petty jealousies and the ugly, sordid scenes of denial and betrayal. All that had been interred with him, and good riddance! Paul Tillich says that Jesus' burial was a powerful symbol which suggested to the disciples that all things could now be put behind them. Buried was the fact that they had all, in cowardice, forsaken him and fled. It was reasonable now for them to assume that they could pick up the pieces of their lives, their shattered aspirations and somehow get on with life.

Then, as the news of Jesus' resurrection is relayed from one incredulous follower to another, another emotion engulfs them - fear! They are afraid because now what they thought had died has come to life again, it all comes back. They must meet, face to face, the one whom they have betrayed, blasphemed and forsaken. Apparently there is no forgetting. No wonder the disciples were afraid. Instead of being able to forget, they would be forced to relive their shame!

Perhaps that is why the gospel accounts often speak as the first word not, "be of good cheer." But rather, "Do not be afraid." Do not be afraid. For the one who brings everything back to life again is the One who loves you and gave himself for you. The one who permits no escape, no forgetting, even in death, is the one who remembers and loves you still. Oh yes, he is a reckless lover. Of course no one deserves that love, the first followers didn't and we don't either; that is not the point. The point is God and the Easter exclamation that God loves you. Thank God there is no escape from that love. No escape, even in death!

That was Mary Magdalene's experience. Her encounter with Jesus made it clear. When he spoke, such love and acceptance emanated from his words that in joy she ran to him pell-mell so she might be embraced by him. He had sought her out in love and compassion; he came to the disciples in the same way ... and he still comes to you and you and to me, lovingly, compassionately.

That ought to mean a great deal to us for it means we don't have to run from God any more. We don't have to try to hide. We don't have to pretend, to God, or to others, or to ourselves. It means that Jesus comes back, not in condemnation, not in judgment, but in grace and peace. Do you understand that? Our Lord comes back to resurrect us so that we who are dead in our sins and don't have to live in guilt any more, we don't have to be afraid of God or judgment.

Easter proclaims that all the doors that shut us in - fear, guilt, anxiety, insecurity - they are all overcome and the doors are now opened. Christ offers to open those doors and give you your freedom. He opens the last door to us, too, the door of death. You might say, "When I die I will stay dead," but that is not true. You didn't ask to be born, but you were born. You didn't choose to be born, but you were. You didn't decide to wake up this morning, but you did. Perhaps it was because somebody called you and you awoke. So you will not be asked to be raised from the dead, but you will be. For Christ will call you and you will arise and he will give you life. If that is what you want, that is the way it will be.

How strange that it all came out of a grave. But then that is rather like God. Out from the Nuremberg war trials in post-World War II Germany, comes the witness of one man. During the war near Willma, Poland, a group of Jews who had escaped death in the gas chambers took refuge in a cemetery. They lived there, huddled and hidden in the bottom of dug graves. A baby boy was born one evening in one of those graves. The grave-digger, an old, strict, orthodox Jew, clothed in a linen shroud, assisted in the birth. When that newborn uttered its first cry, the old grave-digger exclaimed, "Great God, have you finally sent the Messiah to us? For who else than the Messiah would be born in a grave?"

Born in a grave. That's us, you know. Our lives literally came out of a grave! How like God to do something like that. Born in a grave. Born to celebrate. Born to leap for joy, to live in anticipation because God's resurrecting power has been let loose in this world.

That is the good news from the graveyard: Jesus Christ is risen from the dead so that you and I might live in the assurance that all the doors of life and death are now opened to us. That is the conquest of the cross, the victory of Easter. This triumphant message is illustrated powerfully in a scene from T.S. Eliot's Murder In the Cathedral.

A number of priests are working to bar the doors to the church. They are barring the doors against men who seek to assassinate the Archbishop of Canterbury. Thomas, the Archbishop, will not permit it even though he knows it is for his own safety. He says to the priests, "Unbar the door. Throw open the doors! I will not have the house of prayer, the church of Christ, the sanctuary turned into a fortress. The church shall be open, even to our enemies, open the door!"

The priests think he's gone mad; they protest. They tell him that he would bar the door against wild animals, why not against men who have become like beasts?

His answer rings out clearly, "We have fought the beasts and have conquered. Now is the triumph of the cross. Open the door. I command it! Open the door!"

So we are invited to open the door and step out into life with the wonder of the Easter message: that Christ not only lives, he is life-giving, life transforming, life-resurrecting.

How terribly frustrating it is to convey this awesome truth. For I feel and believe more about this good news than I can say. Its truth is overwhelming, far outrunning our capacity to express or understand. I encourage you simply to take and run with it. Or better yet, let it possess you. I invite you to go out from this place, asking God to live out your life with the kind of abandoned joy and righteousness which is fitting for one who has received so very much. God bless you Easter and the celebration of its marvelous power in your life. Amen.