The resurrection of Jesus Christ occurred very quietly and very much in contrast to his death which was a spectacle. He was tried and executed in public, before crowds, as a condemned criminal among condemned criminals. When he gave up the ghost, the sky darkened, there was an earthquake and curtain hiding the Holy of Holies in the Temple ripped suddenly from top to bottom. After all that drama, there was suddenly silence. He was taken down from the Cross by his followers and he was laid to rest. Following all that drama, everything went quiet.

The resurrection would happen silently and in secret.

There was nothing private, silent or secret about Jesus’s teaching ministry after his rose from the dead. (He would subsequently appear to 500 people on a variety of different occasions over the next seven weeks – even to the doubting Thomas, who would insist on putting his hand in Jesus’ side before he would believe).

But the resurrection itself happened in the tomb behind the great stone, and the event was seen and at first experienced by God alone.

The same day at evening, when they were in hiding, the doors barred, Jesus appeared to them and spoke these words: “Peace be unto you.”

Jesus’ own Easter message was that we should know and embrace the peace of God.

While there were witnesses to Jesus’ birth, there were not witnesses to his conception when God took human flesh into himself. The conception had no witnesses and it had to be announced, even to Mary. Paralleling this, the resurrection of Jesus is similarly not witnessed. It happens behind the great rock which sealed the tomb. And in that sense the Resurrection, like the Incarnation, are mysteries of faith.

There is a side to us, I suppose, which would like to have had a video crew from National Geographic filming the event inside the tomb. Doubting Thomas obviously would have found that satisfying. Jesus himself, in that upper room on that first Easter evening, recognized that it is human nature to want to quantify and experience things in order to believe them. “Peace be unto you,” he said, and immediately, he showed them his mangled and pierced hands and the wound in his side.

But some things, like the very thing Jesus gave the disciples that day, “peace”, cannot be measured or quantified or handled or seen.

The same of course is true of much of our lives.

Even people we have know well for many years remain mysteries to us: the human soul is like an iceberg in that much lies beneath the surface. Even St. Paul acknowledges that he is a mystery to himself and a disappointing one at that, “For the good that I would do, I do not: but the evil which I would not do, that I do”

The hope that is within us cannot be itemized like a shopping list or fulfilled by a political program.

It is only the mystery of God in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that can fulfill the mystery of you and me. The fulfillment of the longing and love that is within us, the healing of the grief and disappointment, the restoration of the people and things and dreams and years and youth and health we have lost, cannot be achieved by anyone but God.

“Behold, I show you a mystery,” says St. Paul, “we shall not all sleep, but we shall al be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, shall be changed!”

For all that we are mysteries to ourselves, the greatest and most wonderful mystery of all lies with God, the one person to whom all hearts are open, all desires known and from whom no secrets are hid. The greatest and most wonderful mystery is something unique to the Christian Gospel, and unknown in any other faith, what St. Paul calls the salvation of the ungodly. (Rom 4:5-6) “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

It doesn’t matter how little we may deserve it, or feel we deserve it, God loves each us so much that he gave his only begotten Son to save us.

And we have only to place our lives in his pierced hands to enter into the new life today that finds its fulfillment in the world to come. Heaven itself is a mystery to us who still see in a glass darkly, a wonderful mystery, but one which speaks to the mystery within us. The heaven Jesus has opened to us by his death and resurrection is our homeland, the banquet of the blessed, Jerusalem,

Softness, and peace, and joy, and love and bliss,
Exalted Manna, gladness of the best,…
The milky way, the bird of Paradise,
Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul’s blood
The land of spices; something understood.

Christ begin raised from the dead dieth no more;
death hath no more dominion over him.

The peace of the Lord be always with you.