Go to Galilee (Easter Sunday)

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“Go to Galilee.” That’s the basic message the women are supposed to convey to the other disciples.  Jesus has been raised and is going ahead of you to Galilee.  There, in Galilee, you will see him.

But as the women run from the tomb, heading back towards the place where the other disciples are huddled, they unexpectedly meet Jesus – there, in Jerusalem!  Yet Jesus doesn’t say, “hey, I’ll come along with you.”  Instead, Jesus reiterates the message of the angel, “Go to Galilee; there they will see me.”

Why?  Why go all the way back to Galilee?  It’s at least a three day walk, and Jesus is clearly still in Jerusalem!  Moreover, you may recall that other Gospel accounts tell us that Jesus did indeed appear to all the disciples (multiple times) while they were still in Jerusalem.

But both Matthew and John make clear that the Risen Jesus also appeared to the disciples back in Galilee.  And in Matthew’s telling of the story, it seems that it was important to emphasize that to really “see Jesus” – that is, to experience his actual risen presence in their lives – it was important for the disciples to go to Galilee.

But going to Galilee was not as easy as it might first appear.  First of all, where in Galilee where they supposed to go?  This is kind of like saying, “go back to Maryland”.  But it’s a big place.  Later in the chapter, Matthew says that the disciples “went to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them”, but we never hear that instruction earlier in the Gospel. Did they just go to that mountain because they often met there with Jesus and figured that might be the place?  Or was it like when many of us were kids and we were told, “if we get separated at the  theme park, meet back here for lunch”?  We don’t know.

But even if the disciples knew exactly where in Galilee to go, it would still be a challenge.  Going to Galilee could be a challenge because it would mean:

• Being willing to physically leave the safe place where they were – we often read the Easter story and think, “hey!  Jesus is alive and now everything is great!”  But things were still dangerous and scary outside. The people who killed Jesus would still be looking to kill the disciples if they were recognized.  Just leaving the place where they were hiding was going to take a lot of courage and effort.  After all, they weren’t even willing to go with the women on a short walk to the tomb…

• Emotionally and spiritually moving on to a different place – the women presumably returned and told them that they had seen angels and even Jesus himself.  But clearly many of them didn’t believe it.  And even if they did, they were still consumed with sadness and fear and perhaps just general disgust with the way the world was.  Even if Jesus was alive again, could they really continue or would they now just hide out with Jesus and hope the authorities didn’t come after them again?  Going to Galilee would also mean going to a different spiritual place – a place of hope and expectation and even joy.  That would be a journey they’d need to begin first, before they could even take a physical step outside the place where they were…

• They’d need to go together – Jesus promised that once the disciples were in Galilee, they’d see him together as a group.  And that’s what happened.  They couldn’t just sneak off individually and hide in separate places, where Jesus would mystically appear in their own personal dreams or visions.  It was only when they went to Galilee together that they actually saw him…

So I wonder if Matthew emphasizes the “go to Galilee” part because the message of the Resurrection of Jesus isn’t simply information to be received, processed and filed away.  After all, if that’s all it was, Jesus could simply have said, “tell the disciples I’m raised and to go about your lives as usual.”

Instead, the Resurrection of Jesus is something to be experienced and lived, not just by the first disciples, but by us.  And “seeing” the Risen Jesus isn’t something we simply do with our eyes.  After all, even when that first group saw with their eyes, “some doubted.”  Yet even with their doubts, Matthew remembers that the first group of disciples really did experience the living presence of the Risen Jesus because they went to Galilee.  And that was an experience that couldn’t be adequately described simply by plotting the directions on Google Maps.

Going to Galilee was much more than just a three day hike. It was a transformative experience that helped them to be able to really experience the presence of the living Jesus in their midst, instead of just being receivers of information.

And actually, I think this is the way it is for us, too.  As we celebrate Easter, the goal is not really to hear information about Jesus that most of us have heard for years.  Instead, what we really need is the experience of the Risen and living Jesus in our lives.  Yet for us, too, it’s often necessary to go to Galilee.

And that doesn’t mean we need to take a Holy Land trip (although those can be fun!)  Instead, it means that, like the first disciples, to really experience the living presence of Jesus in our lives, we also need to be willing to:

• Physically get up and move ourselves to a place where we feel we can experience Jesus’ presence more fully.  Today, we gather together in this building for the second Easter in two years, after two years when we couldn’t do that!  I was glad we were able to worship virtually for those two years, but it wasn’t the same.  While buildings are not the church, there is something about being in a place that has meaning – just as that mountain clearly had meaning for the first disciples, especially after a time of trauma.  Many of us have found that, after a time of trauma in our own lives, being in a place that has meaning – or even just getting a change of scenery – often helps us heal and experience the hope and possibilities of new life that God is promising us.  Often, like those first disciples, experiencing the presence of the Risen Jesus in our own lives means being willing to get up and move ourselves to a place where that’s more likely to happen than it is if we just sit still where we are…

• Emotionally open ourselves up to hope and joy.  And this is not always an easy thing lately!  Last week in the Op/Ed section of the Washington Post, David von Drehle wrote an article entitled, “When doom is in fashion, joy becomes countercultural”.  He wrote about how “the news calls us to think constantly on a very large scale about problems to which no individual holds the key”, so that “joy is becoming countercultural; in fashion instead is a heavy coat of doom.  Anxiety and depression are endemic, psychologists tell us, and why wouldn’t they be, when optimism and cheerfulness are taken as signs of obtuseness?”  And he makes the point that we can’t actually participate in any kind of positive change if we don’t spend more time on the “nurture of joy and the cultivation of hope.”  I think he’s right about that. And I think this is precisely what the journey to Galilee was about for the first disciples. For us, too, actually experiencing the living presence of the Risen Jesus is about a journey which nurtures the joy of new life and cultivates the hope of God’s promised future, instead of just dwelling in the constant sense of doom that so often surrounds us…

• Go on the journey together – often, when we feel weighed down by all the bad things around us, it becomes easy to withdraw into ourselves and try to individually heal before we’re willing to present ourselves in public again.  After all, I don’t want to burden others with my problems!  But Jesus’ call was and is to heal together, to journey together and to find the future together.  Part of what made those two “online Easters” so hard wasn’t just that we couldn’t be in this place, but that we couldn’t actually be together.  We couldn’t sing together, pray together, or simply be with one another to support each other on our journeys.  But that’s part of what going to Galilee is all about…

But still, there were those women who saw Jesus in Jerusalem.  It seems like they were the exception. But actually, they weren’t.  Those women had already left the house they were hiding in.  They were still afraid, but now filled with a sense of joy.  And they were journeying together.  And that’s when they met Jesus.  They experienced the Risen Jesus because they were already on the journey to Galilee.

And in this Easter Season, we’re called to be on that journey as well.  Jesus calls us to go to Galilee by being willing to move ourselves from where we are to where we need to be.  Jesus calls us to go to Galilee by nurturing joy and cultivating hope, even and especially when it’s not popular to do so.  And Jesus calls us to go to Galilee by journeying together and supporting one another in experiencing the power and the presence of Jesus’ Risen life in our own lives.

Amen.