The Upturning(s) of the Resurrection (Easter Sunday)

Readings, Acts 10:34-43 and Luke 24:1-12
Image, Maurice Denis, Easter Mystery (Mystère de Pâcques), 1891.
 
There’s this brilliant exchange in the film, Men in Black. For those who don’t recall, the film is about a bureaucratic agency which deals with the hidden alien population on earth. A new agent, made aware of the secret, asks why the government doesn’t just tell people about aliens, people are smart after all. To which the seasoned agent responds:
A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the centre of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow.
 
It’s a line that has no reason to be that good. Without the alien reference it could be from Death of a Salesman. It expresses, succinctly, a profound and fundamental truth: our understanding and comprehension of the world around us is hardly fixed, and no one is immune to surprises that would upturn our worlds.
 
The Easter scene is one such upturning, a fundamental shift in the comprehension of the world. Those who go to Christ’s tomb hear the world-shaking, reality contorting words, Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Death, surely about as true an absolute as we have, has been undone. Christ is risen, he who died is not among the dead but out and about calling his friends to follow. So ludicrous is this claim, so contrary to what everyone knows, that when the women rush back to Jesus’ other friends with this good news, it is dismissed as an idle tale. Dismissed as the new agent in Men in Black might have dismissed a UFO sighting just 15 minutes ago. Indeed, the post-resurrection scenes in the gospels are a continued reversal of what everyone has known, as Christ gathers up his grieving and confused followers, demonstrating those beautiful words of John, Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. The great upturning of Easter, is that not even death can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
 
And it is this great upturning, this triumph of Christ’s victory, that Peter announces in Acts. It is easy to hear this speech as a kind of summation of what has happened and to conclude (borrowing some of Jesus’ famous last words) that it is finished. That Peter declares there was the great upturning of Easter and now the surprises are left behind, belonging to another generation. And yet, if we were to read on just a few more verses, we find the following: While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles.  
 
Just when Peter thinks he has grasped the great upturning of Christ’s resurrection, he is witness to another foundational shift in his comprehension of the world. Because contrary to everything he knew, here he beholds the Holy Spirit fall upon the Gentiles. Contrary to everything he knew and was proclaiming about this new Jesus movement, contrary to everything he believed about clean and unclean, and what was required in order to covenant with God, he sees that Christ’s resurrection means something more still. Then Peter said, ‘Can anyone withhold the water for baptising these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?’
 
Contravening the practices of the early Jesus movement, the Gentiles are baptised. For there is no distinction, Peter realises – they have received the same Spirit, just as we have. This, for those familiar with the story of the early church, is a fundamental turning point. Gentiles shall be able to take up their place in the emerging church of Jesus Christ, without first having to undergo circumcision and keep dietary laws. For the upturning of the resurrection, the surprise of the empty tomb, is not one and done. The resurrection continues to fundamentally shift the way Jesus’ disciples comprehend the world.
 
Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the centre of the universe. So says our seasoned veteran in black. After the Copernican revolution we know that the sun is the centre and the earth gently revolves around this point (I mean, we’ve all made a diorama or two in our time). And it is easy to approach such a proclamation as Peter’s and say, of course, it is finished, dust off our hands and move on. However, it is not the case. Because recently I saw this – admittedly terrifying – footage of what’s really going on beneath our feet. (Kind of makes you want to hold onto something)
 
The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the kind of revolutionary upturning that keeps on surprising, expanding, and leading us into a new and remarkable comprehension of the world. For the resurrection is more than a fact. It is more than something which happened. The resurrection is the very inbreaking of the new creation. It is the foundational shift in reality where the world moves from being in Adam, to being in Christ. To know that Christ is risen, is to know that Christ is alive and on the move, leading us forward and upturning our world. To know the resurrection is to be led by the Resurrected One, out into the world, to see where the Spirit is at work, pouring out Their gifts.
 
To be a Christian living after the resurrection of Christ is to live with a possibility ever before us: imagine what you’ll know tomorrow. Imagine what the resurrection is making possible in light of what it has already made possible. Christ is risen, he is alive, and through the Spirit he bids us follow. And so while at Easter we look back to that first morning, and allow it to upturn and reshape what we know of the world, we also look forward. For then as now the living will not be found among the dead, and we follow a living God. A Living God calling us to participate in work which breaks down the dividing walls of hostility, proclaims freedom and jubilee, reconciles and restores creation, pursues justice and deliverance, demands solidarity and mercy, proclaims and pursues God’s peaceable kingdom. And like Peter, this work does not leave us undisturbed, rather it hurtles us on like a planet after the sun, asking us to remain open to wonder, surprises, grace, and love beyond perhaps our own imaginations, but not the imagination of our God who raised Jesus Christ from the dead.