What a weird sermon title: So What If He is Risen. Is this a question or a statement? It's just ambiguous enough to be both. Or neither. Try it as an open-ended question: So-what if he's risen? Or a belligerent statement: So what if he's risen! Or questioning what happened: So, what if he's risen? Amazement at the implications: So what if he's risen! The sermon title is as ambiguous as the story. The original ending of the gospel leaves us in mid-sentence in the Greek: "they were afraid, for . . ." For what? Confusion! Shock! Disbelief! It leaves the reader to wonder, "What would it take for me to believe such a thing?" And if you believed it, what difference would it make?

I've been listening to taped lectures by Franciscan priest Richard Rohr. His topic is spiritual transformation, but he's giving two lectures: one on how women experience it and one on how men experience it. God's transformative work in our lives, experienced differently based on what scares you the most. Father Rohr says that women are afraid of resurrection, men are afraid of crucifixion, and the gospels reflect the two experiences. If you were here last week and heard the passion story, from Jesus' entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday to his death on the cross on Good Friday, you know the women who show up at the tomb Sunday morning are the same women who witnessed Jesus' death and burial on Friday. The male disciples run off during the arrest in the garden. Sure, Peter sneaks over to the high priest's house to eavesdrop on the religious trial, but the few men at the end of Jesus' life include criminals (also on crosses), a lone Roman guard who thought the dead guy was probably the Son of God, and the man who offers his tomb for the dead teacher-a council member who participated in condemning him to death. Men don't want to do the crucifixion thing. Women, on the other hand, know all about suffering and death. I'm just quoting Father Rohr! The women who show up at the tomb Easter morning have been following Jesus around the countryside, soaking up his words about serving one another. They really get this-humility, service, last one in line! Now, they have come to perform their final act of service for Jesus: to finish the embalming. What scares the liver out of these women-just as the men had been terrified three days before-is the implication of the empty tomb. This isn't plot adjustment: "Nuts, the hero gets killed. We gotta fix that." This is about an act of God requiring a response from us-both men and women. God's intrusive action, God's life and death deliverance from the consequences of being human. The Good Friday to Easter thing is a call to change how we are in the world. It is only possible for us to so radically reorient ourselves, because God won't let things rest the way they are. God insists on bringing new life out of even death.

So what? So what if he is risen? So what to you. How are you going to respond? Both Easter Sunday and Good Friday are a call to conversion, God's call to your spiritual transformation. Man, I don't need a conversion! I'm a nice person. I go to church, I support worthy causes, I'm so busy helping others I barely have time for my own family. I can't afford a conversion right now! What about that anger? The low-grade resentment you carry around? People always call me for help. Can't someone else help? I can't even brush my teeth without someone stepping in front of me. The irritation. It never fails. Every no passing zone on 211 has some log truck in front of me that can't get out of second gear or some decrepit car that shouldn't even be out of the driveway. The sense of burden. Everything depends on me. My colleagues can't even change their minds without my explicit instructions on how to do it. I set things up, but they can't finish it unless I tell them exactly what to do. I've gotta be there every minute. Every problem that needs solving, who gets called? That's right. As if it's my fault, I'm the one expected to fix it. No one else volunteers to do the grunt work, who do they turn to? You guessed it.

How do you respond? Is it anger, resentment? Do you personalize it or micro-manage the situation so that it never happens again? Is this a pattern and are you sick to death of it? "New life"-a new way of being and doing-would be such a relief! Now that is the hope of God! The chance to leave behind the draining, exhausting, dead-end patterns and move to something that puts courage in your heart. But if you missed Good Friday, you can't skip ahead to Easter. Easter will only be a repeat of Palm Sunday, and you know where that led. Until you know these death-filled patterns in your life, until you own them as yours, you cannot get to the good news of new life. Death to being the only person in charge. Death to carrying everyone else's burdens. Death to your dreams of success, the hope against hope that this time the Messiah will ride into town in triumph with you at his right hand. You-God's consultant! You must give up believing it's all about you, you must know that there is Something greater than you at work in the world. Come to the tomb. Come to the place where your dreams are dead. Hang around the tomb, mourning, maybe not even faithful yet, maybe not even able to trust that Something greater than you at work in the world. Find that the tomb is empty. It is a lie that there is only resurrection. There is no resurrection without the cross. If you are not personally convinced of your own helplessness, Easter is shallow triumphalism. The shout of joy ends in silence, the leap of victory turns to running in fear. The cross defined both the Messiah and discipleship. Easter vindicated Good Friday, it didn't wipe it out.

But if you think it all depends on you, if your life is spent at the base of the cross -or thinking you are carrying it for Jesus and hanging next to him on it-that is also a lie. There is a secret Reformed theology we inherited from John Calvin: the good ones go to hell. If you are so busy bearing your cross and that of others that you forget that Jesus already did that, then you are in bigger trouble than you think. If you can get to heaven on your own, you don't need Jesus. If this season's attraction for you is the burden of your own sacrifices, you don't need Easter. It is a lie that there is only the cross. The cross without Easter is death. God's call to us today is to life. But that means letting go of the death-dealing ways you live in the world. It means the shock of the empty tomb, the horror of realizing this gospel ends with a preposition: for. It does not mean, friends, that the story ends with three women too scared to say anything. According to the guy in the white robe, they were to go back to Galilee. Galilee meant being reconciled with the leader they had deserted, rebuilding themselves as a community of ministry. Keep on doing what Jesus taught you to do, and take responsibility by participating in your own resurrection.

This gospel isn't about immortality, "living forever.". It's about new life. Right now. This is resurrection-making alive what had been dead. The gospel writer says Jesus "has been raised." We receive resurrection. We don't cause it and we don't earn it. Even Jesus didn't raise himself from the dead. Even Jesus depended on God for that. But that doesn't mean we don't participate in the resurrection. We are responsible for writing the ending. If the resurrection ending you write is about "new life," that means living as if Someone stronger and greater than you is at work in the world, in your life. You are invited to trust that One for life, beginning today. The gospel ends, "for . . . " That preposition is about promise and possibility, an invitation to a life of expectancy and attentiveness. "Yes," to life! For...