April 16, 2006
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
A prisoner might say, “When I get out of this jail, the first thing I am going to do is to go to New York. I’ve never been there. I am going to do some things I’ve never done before when I get out of this jail.”
(A college student in America might say, “When I am finished with my studies, the first thing I am going to do is to go home to Hong Kong and see my parents and good friends. I am going to do some things I’ve never done before when I finally get home.”)
A patient might say, “When I get out of this hospital bed and I can move about again, the first thing I am going to do is to fly out to Pebble Beach, and play that course. I’ve always dreamed about it, and now, when I get over this, that’s what I want to do more than anything else in the world.”
(A patient might say, “When I get out of this hospital bed and not have to eat this hospital food, the first thing I am going to do is to go to the best dim sum restaurant in town and eat haw gao and siu mai. That’s what I want to do more than anything else in the world.”)
A soon to be retiree might say, “When I finish my 30 years with this company next week, the first thing I am going to do is to sleep a little longer, read the morning paper at my leisure, and go over to my daughter’s house to play with the grandchildren until they take their afternoon naps. That’s what I have looking forward to do all my life”
On that first Sunday after Jesus’ crucifixion, the angel tells the frightened women at the tomb, “Go, tell the disciples and Peter that Jesus is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” (Mk. 16:7) Why, on the first day of his resurrection, did Jesus go first to Galilee?
Why Galilee?
One might have thought that, upon being raised from the dead, Jesus would stride triumphantly back to Jerusalem. We would have done that. Imagine what a sight that would have been!
“Pilate, you made a big mistake!” the risen Christ might have said as he strode into the palace and confronted all of the important political people. Or, he might have stood on the steps of the temple, addressing the crowd, scolding them for their mocking and betrayal and showing himself to the multitudes that he has the last word!
Jesus did none of that. Rather, he went on ahead of his disciples, promising to meet them back in Galilee where the story first began.
What was so great about Galilee? In Jesus’ days, they often called Galilee, “Galil of the Gentiles.” Translated, this simply meant “the region of the Gentiles,” or “the region of the nations.” And we all know how important Gentiles were until Jesus came along. Galilee was a cosmopolitan place of great ethnic and racial diversity. There were frequent conflicts between these diverse minorities. When the Romans came along, they made Galilee a political region, for purposes of their Roman rule.
So why Galilee? What sort of important business was going on in Galilee that Jesus was going ahead of the disciples to do? In a word—nothing.
In fact, nothing significant was happening in Galilee until Jesus got there to begin his ministry in the first place. Galilee was this out of the way, dusty sort of place. Then Jesus came to Galilee, calling disciples. People began leaving their homes, walking off good paying jobs, trying to act like disciples. Before Jesus came into Galilee, not much was happening there.
If anyone wants to make a big name for himself, he would need to go into the big city. We know that Jesus never worked in the city. He went to Jerusalem to visit the synagogue in his childhood. And according to records, he didn’t go back until the last fateful week of his life. In Jerusalem is where we know his ministry ended. But for about four-fifths of Jesus’ ministry, it occurred out in Galilee. Jesus’ ministry began in Galilee and now it begins there again. After the resurrection, he went back home in Galilee.
Easter at Home
We have a full sanctuary today for worship. My sense is that at all four of our morning worship services today, we’ll have many people coming to Easter worship. We’ve come to sing, “Christ the Lord Has Risen Today,” enjoy the Easter flowers, wear our Easter bonnets, celebrate Easter dinners afterward. Don’t get me wrong—I am very happy that you are here this morning. But even in this beautiful sacred place of worship, if you came thinking that you would see Jesus, he is not here. He is going before you to Galilee.
The very first thing that Jesus wants to do in his eternal life is to meet his disciples in a rather ordinary place, a place where their discipleship began. In Jerusalem, they had betrayed and deserted him. Now, back in Galilee, they must meet him again. What will he say to them about their betrayal? What might the disciples say to him now that they see that he has come back from the dead and is now alive? They won’t know until they go back home, back to Galilee, where the risen Christ, who had gone on ahead of them, meets them.
After his resurrection, Jesus is freed in the world. He is freed to go back home to Galilee. No big stone placed in front of the tomb will keep him down. There’s no getting away from him, no keeping him safely tucked away out in the cemetery outside of town, or forgetting about him, or disposing of him in some far away, exotic location in our consciousness. He has been raised and comes to where we live, in Galilee.
The resurrection is not just something that happens once out at the cemetery. That would be too easy—we place our flowers into the tomb, have our “so-chon” and get on with our busy lives again. The resurrection is something that happens and is going on ahead of us, something that meets us, in the world, our Galilee worlds. Just as the disciples followed Jesus in Galilee, we are to follow the resurrected Jesus Christ in the “Galilees” of our life.
The angel at the tomb tells the women to follow Jesus out into Galilee. Don’t come to church! Go back home. There he will meet you. The angel also tells the women to “Go, tell” what they have seen and heard.
But Mark says the women are frightened and didn’t tell anyone. Even after an encounter with the resurrection, these disciples became disobedient. The women did not do what the angel told them to do.
Our “Galilees”
Eventually, the women must have gotten the courage to tell somebody, otherwise, how would we know the story today? The failure of the disciples, the denial of Peter, all the betrayal, none of this is the end of the story. A fresh start can be made, and where will that new beginning be? Not out at the cemetery or at the empty tomb, for Jesus is not there, not even at some great, grand cathedral or at FCBC. He is out where you live. At home, out in Galilee.
Joy and I will be visiting our grandchildren in Boston this coming week. Unfortunately, they don’t attend church. I’m sure they have done the typical Easter egg hunt but I want to encourage them to know that the Risen Christ is meeting them in their Galilee in Boston.
Our recommended candidate for the Pastor of Chinese-speaking Ministries position, Rev. Joseph Tsang if approved by you later this month would be answering the call from God to return to the San Francisco Bay Area so that he and his wife may witness the love of Christ to his wife’s family in San Leandro. San Leandro is their Galilee.
Most of us here have family members who are not yet Christians. They see us going to church and giving many of our resources of time and money to church and never ask why. Perhaps out of respecting personal boundaries or supporting religious freedoms, they rarely approach the subject of Christian faith with us and we with them. But if we don’t like the women who were too frightened to share with the disciples what they witnessed, how will our family members—our most cherished loved ones, know about Jesus? We need to bring the Easter good news to our homes and families!
Isn’t it ironic that when we are here at church, we generally feel comfortable speaking about God and Jesus and our faith but when we are at home where we should feel even more comfortable with each other since we have known one another all of our lives that we feel more anxious and frightened by the thought of sharing the meaning of Christ to those whom we loved most? Jesus went back home to Galilee so that we too may go back to the Galilees in our lives to share the good news that He is risen.
When the church family gathers at the Marin Headlands on April 29th, we’ll have a chance to share our faith with each other and hear how God is working to change our lives. And with our room overlooking the ocean, it’s almost like the beach in Galilee where Jesus taught the disciples how to fish and told Peter that if he loved him then Peter needs to feed his sheep. We too as a church family need to come home together to learn how to feed the world who hungers for the love of God. How else will we know this until we come home to our Galilee?
The risen Christ appears to his disciples in the most ordinary of places: at breakfast, one evening when they were all scared behind locked doors and on the beach while they were at work. Something about the Risen Christ loves to meet people in the most ordinary places. That’s good if you want to meet Jesus, because most of us live in ordinary places, like Galilee.
Will You Tell?
The Gospel of Mark ends with the women too afraid to tell what the angel told them to do. If the women won’t tell anybody what they have seen and heard, will you? Will you tell? Will you tell his disciples and Peter that Jesus is going ahead of them to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you?
Here’s my Easter egg story for you. Easter is an opportunity to recognize that we’re not chickens but eagles.
Once upon a time, a man found the egg of an eagle. It had been abandoned for some reason by its mother, but as it was still warm, so the man took it and put it in the nest of one of his backyard chickens along with the other eggs that were being brooded upon.
After a period of time the eaglet was hatched, and along with the other chicks from his nest began to go about the backyard doing what the other chicks did. He scratched the earth for worms and insects. He looked for the corn that the man would throw into the yard. He clucked and cackled as best as he could, and as he grew, he would, like the other chickens, thrash his wings and fly a few feet in the air.
Years passed in this way, and the eagle grew very old. One day he saw a magnificent bird far above him in the cloudless sky. It glided majestically among the powerful wind currents, soaring and swooping, scarcely beating his long golden wings.
The old eagle looked at it in awe and asked, “What is that?”
“That’s an eagle, the king of the birds,” said one of his neighbors. “He belongs to the sky and to the high places.” We belong to the earth, we are chickens.”
The old eagle knew this was true, and so it was. He lived and died as a chicken, for that is what he believed he was. Will you believe today that what you have heard and what you have seen that you will no longer be afraid to tell others that Jesus Christ is risen; that he is risen indeed?
The women ran away from Easter, they were amazed, they were afraid, and they were silent. But you, at least have come toward Easter, not running, but walking, expectant, joyful, and hopeful.
When we go home to our Galilees and tell somebody of the good news that Jesus Christ has risen, we know that in Galilee, it points inevitably to Jerusalem. We begin again our ministries back home where it’s not the center of power but eventually our faith in God will take us to the “Jerusalems” of our days where corrupted powers need to be confronted.
The beginning of our faith is found in Galilee where Jesus meets us but the test and challenges of our faith when the resurrection of our Lord speaks about love and justice will eventually take us to the “Jerusalems” of our days. That’s what happened to the earliest disciples. After meeting Jesus in Galilee, they went out to the four corners of the world sharing boldly the good news of the Risen Christ and challenging the powers of the many Jerusalems of their days.
Inasmuch that Palm Sunday is a false climax for a false faith based on a make-believe world, Easter Sunday is not the final climax of the story either. The very first thing we are called to do after coming to church on this Easter morning is to return to our homes in the Galilees of our lives. There in Berkeley, San Jose, Union City, Danville, Walnut Creek, Oakland, Suisun City, San Rafael, Hercules, El Cerrito, Daly City, San Francisco and wherever you may be in the entire Bay Area, there at home, we proclaim “Jesus is risen. He is risen indeed!”
The last time, I saw our grandchildren, Evi and Gavin was at Christmas. It’s been three and a half months. When I leave for home on this Easter morning, the very first thing that I am going to do when I see our grandchildren in Boston tomorrow is to tell them that the meaning of Easter is that Jesus is risen and he loves them.
Let us pray.
Lord Jesus, on this day, you not only defeated death, rose victorious over the grave, and triumphed over evil and sin, you also came back to us. You rose, not only to take your seat in heaven, but also to be present with us at the table, beside the sea, and along the road. Thank you for coming to the ordinary places like our homes.
For your continuing presence among us, we give thanks, for your forgiveness of us, we give thanks, and for this day of days, praise, praise, praise! Amen.