2. That is belief. You have to believe something before you can be someone. When they heard the story, the disciples did not believe. Some did not believe who had been in the presence of the risen Christ. You have to believe it before you can share it (Mark 16:11-13). You see, finally Jesus rebuked His disciples, He rebuked them for their lack of belief (Mark 16:14). Ann Weems captures the moment for me:

The Lamb has been slain, the sheep have scattered. Now is the time for kneeling, the time for believers to kneel and call upon his name, to kneel, to rise again: The Community of the Resurrection.7

It is time for those who believe to stand up to be counted and to be heard telling the story. We keep misplacing our hopes in human structures as if we have not known the Resurrection reality. We find ourselves clinging to the way things have always been. We look at the world around us and respond with anger and despair, as if our Christ did not die to make all things new. We spend much of our time in complaint instead of proclamation. Why is it we keep forgetting the reality that He is alive? The Resurrection is the alternative to our hopelessness. There is every indication that we are called of God to make changes for all of God's people in this world. It begins when we have let Him resurrect us, change us. Again, Ann Weems speaks:

"the stirring wildness of God calls brittle bones to leaping and stone hearts to soaring."8

The world will not change until we change and we will not change by just being in church once a year at Easter.

A little drama played itself out on one of our buses two or three weeks ago. There was a new bus driver who was not familiar with us. It was his first Sunday and he was in animated conversation with someone who was riding the bus. When he drove in, he suddenly saw this huge cross we erect out front and drape it with purple at the beginning of Lent. She said, "Right in the middle of the conversation, he just forgot all about me and said: 'My God, somebody big must have died!'"

He was thinking about one of those little white roadside crosses that we put up, sad to say, when somebody's been killed. Let me tell you, friends, somebody big did die for you and for me, but He came back. He came back.

They thought that death would silence Him,

They nailed Him to a tree;

But I am sure He rose again

Because He lives in me.

I never envy those who heard Him

Preach in Galilee;

For since my heart has turned to Him

He daily walks with me.

I never wish that I had walked

With Him beside the Galilean Sea;

For here and now on Atlanta streets,

He often walks with me.

They thought that death would conquer Him;

They nailed Him to a tree.

I know. I know He conquered death,

Because He lives in me."

(Author unknown)

Is He alive in you? If not, don't waste this Easter.

1Leonard Sweet, Homiletics, April/June, 1996, 2(8), 6.

2Quoted in James A. Harnish, Believe in Me (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1991) 51.

3Leonard Sweet, Homiletics (Canton, OH: Communications Resources. January/March 1997) 1(9), 50.

4Leighton Farrell, Cries from the Cross (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994) 58-59.

5Leonard Sweet, Homiletics (Canton, OH: Communication Resources, April/June 1995) 2 (7), 14.

6Maya Angelou, Even the Stars Look Lonesome. (New York: Random House, 1997) dedication page.

7Ann Weems, Kneeling in Jerusalem (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992) 90.

8Weems 93.