Acts 10:34-43 Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
1 Corinthians 15:1-11 Mark 16:1-8
If God were a really generous golfing friend, most of us would now ask our Divine Duffer, "Gracious God, could we have a Mulligan, for this entire last year? Could we just do it over?"
Don't we wish we could do over this past year or so with the knowledge that we have learned about Covid-19? We would behave much better. We would have traced Covid-19 and shut it down with better leadership to interdict.
But Time means that we don't get Mulligans. The best Mulligans we can get are learning from our failures and improving our "swing" at living well.
And if we can learn from our mistakes and perform better in the future, then we can chalk up the "mistakes" as necessary stages toward better performance.
In a golfer's appraisal of the resurrection, did Jesus get a "Mulligan" from his Father when he rose from the dead? Well yes and no.
In the resurrection, Jesus did get to live again, but in living again, it did not negate the fact that he died a terrible death on the cross.
And when Jesus rose again, he did not live again in the same way in which he did as Jesus of Nazareth. He received a "super-duper" spiritual body that allowed him to go "poof" on the road to Emmaus and he could be in Jerusalem and Galilee at the speed of light.
The Risen Christ is not a "do over" of the life of Jesus of Nazareth. The life of the Risen Christ was completely different than the life of Jesus of Nazareth.
The life of the Risen Christ, according to the Gospels only included but a few "earthly sightings, appearances, apparitions" in the forty days after he died.
But the Risen Christ made the most of those appearances; he gave his friends the sure confidence that he was with them in a different way but one that was even more profound. He was not going to have space-time limitations anymore. The body of the Risen Christ was a completely different body.
In his resurrection and ascension, the historical Jesus, became the Risen Christ who by the Holy Spirit could be anywhere and everywhere at the same time. And he can be in anyone of any age, race, or nation. The Risen Christ truly became the universal person.
And so what has the church often done? We have liked to make the Risen Christ, "white like me," or "Black like me," or "Asian like me," "gay like me," or "straight like me" or even "American like me." The Risen Christ is such a protean and chameleon like adaptable universal person, that we are endeared to the fact that Christ can reach us because the Risen Christ can be accessible to us in our intimate and familiar ways of being ourselves in our particular settings. The mistake that followers who have known the Risen Christ have made is to think that "Christ is only like me," or "only like we are."
The Risen Christ, is a complete do-over of Jesus of Nazareth, because the Risen Christ is the universal representation of God in human experience.
And what should we learn in the metamorphosis of Jesus of Nazareth going to his death and becoming the Risen Christ? We learn that God is both known in a very particular way tailored to your experience and mine; but God is also known as the universal Risen Christ to everyone else too. And we should avoid the pitfall of making our own experience of the Risen Christ as definitive for everyone else. Why? Because God as love is always leading us to appreciate the universal presence of the Risen Christ in all people, or as we are asked in the baptismal vows: Will you seek Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself.
On this Easter, we have to accept that there are no Mulligans, no do-overs, because the past is fixed and done. But what Easter offers to us is the revision of the meanings of our past lives. The resurrection of Christ revised the meaning of the death of Jesus on the cross.
Easter hope through the resurrection is the promise that we can always be at work in coming to revised meanings for what has happened to us and the world. And we can do this without changing either the agony or the ecstasy of what actually happened.
Let us be thankful that the resurrection of Christ allows us what I would now call a "Faith Mulligan, a Faith Do-over". And what is a Faith Mulligan? It is the ability with subsequent events in our lives to come to new meanings, liveable meanings with all that has happened to us, without denying the truth of what happened.
How many of us want to have an Easter Faith Mulligan? I sure do, and so with joyful hope I shout, Alleluia, Christ is Risen. The Lord is Risen indeed. Alleluia.
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