The story is told of a Sunday School teacher sharing with her class of third-graders about the resurrection of Jesus. She read them the story from John's Gospel and got to the part where Mary is in the garden weeping and Jesus reveals himself to her.

"What was the first thing Jesus said when he came out of the tomb?" the teacher asked her students.

One bright little girl jumped up and without a moment's hesitation answered, "TA-DA!"

Well, that may not exactly be what the gospelwriter tells us about what happened, but one of the reasons I so love the Easter story in the Gospel of John is that it pays such great attention to detail. Oh, we may not know exactly what were the first words Jesus said, but, for instance, John does give us a glimpse into one of the first things Jesus did.

Did you notice in the story that when Peter and John arrive at the empty tomb and look in, they see that the burial cloth that covered Jesus' head has been neatly folded and tucked away? Did you notice that?

You see, Easter does not take place apart from the reality of life. The power of the resurrection still requires us to get up and go to work in the morning, to feed our children, to clean our houses, to take care of the mundane things of life. The first thing Jesus did on Easter Sunday was to fold up his clothes.

A second detail that John provides is that everybody is running on Easter Day. Mary Magdalene is seen running away from the tomb, back toward the city, as though her first reaction to seeing the stone rolled away is one of great fear. Peter and John, on the other hand, go running from the city toward the tomb, as though they can't wait to see what's happened. In fact, John tells us that these two turn it into a race to see which of them can get there first. Do you know who wins the race? Why John does. After all, it's his book! And finally, Mary Magdalene turns around, and runs back to join Peter and John as they peer into the unsolved mystery of the empty tomb.

Everybody is running on Easter morning. It's as if something so wondrous and mysterious has happened that witnesses to the experience simply cannot stand still. They feel inwardly compelled to keep moving, to keep telling others, to keep discovering more of the miracle unfolding before their very eyes. And perhaps that's a good question for us to consider this morning. Are you still moving, deeper and deeper, into the experience of the resurrection?

And there's a third detail in John's Gospel. It strikes me as being an extremely significant detail. Mary Magdalene, we are told, goes out to the tomb that morning while it is still dark. And if there are any of you here today who are living through the deep, dark hours of a serious illness, a broken relationship, a seemingly insurmountable problem, a terrible loss, a deeply profound emotional wound - please take note of this detail. For the miracle of the resurrection always begins in the dark pre-dawn hours when our souls are restless and our lives seem diminished.

And it is right here, in the icy grip of death and darkness, that you and I are invited to join a company of people unlike any other group of people the world has ever seen. It is a community of persons within which are the likes of Mary and Peter and John, and later Lydia and Paul and Priscilla, and later still Augustine and Tertullian and Polycarp the martyred Bishop of Smyrna. Luther is there, and Calvin, Zwingli and John Wesley, too. There is Mother Theresa, along with Bishop Sheen, and Martin Luther King. It may be that your grandparents are in that company, and your mom and dad, and now you and I - in our lifetime - are invited to become the community of the resurrection!

That's what it means to be a Christian. That's what it means to be a church. And we take the first steps toward becoming that community by taking hold of what Christ's resurrection means.

I received a number of email messages this week from friends all over the country. They were wishing me a happy Easter and I am truly appreciative of their thoughtfulness. But I noticed something interesting in a number of the messages. Easter was often described in terms of the new life experiences of Spring.

Why, this is the time of year when new life emerges from the cold of winter. Sap rises in dormant trees, providing power for the colorful explosion of redbud and dogwood blossoms. Only a few weeks ago, the branches were bare! But now they are rife with life! All around us, we see the creative hand of God at work renewing the beauty of nature.

Springtime is such a beautiful and meaningful time of year!

But springtime is not resurrection.

Resurrection is not a barren tree giving birth to leaves in April. Resurrection is not daffodil bulbs planted last year now pushing up bright yellow flowers. Resurrection is not the change of seasons that refreshes the earth year after year after year.

You see, all these metamorphoses of life are natural things. They happen year in, year out, and you can almost set your watch by them! We witness these things over and over again!

But when was the last time you saw a dead person raised? You see, Spring is a natural thing, but resurrection is utterly unnatural!

Oh, we do great injustice to God, to ourselves, and to our world if we equate the death and resurrection of Jesus with a flower bulb sleeping underground until the warmth of Spring brings him to life.

Dear friends, Jesus was not a tulip.

Jesus was a child - just like the children here today. Just like your children. He was born of a woman, just like every child is born. He was nurtured in the love of a family, and had brothers and sisters. He grew into mature adulthood and was devoted to the kingdom of God.

And when Jesus died in the dark midday of that Friday long ago, his mother - like some of us when experiencing the loss of a child - was inconsolable in her grief. His brothers and sisters were brought to their knees in stunned and agonizing pain. Those who loved him and followed him ran and hid because they could not face the stark reality of his murder, or the guilt of their own complicity.

Oh no, Jesus was not a tulip, sleeping in the ground until Spring.

Jesus was a mother's child.

And when he died, he DIED.

In our world, death is a tragic, but natural thing. Sooner or later, everybody dies. In our world, loss is a sad, but natural thing. We all lose people and things we love. In our world, grief is a soul-racking, but natural experience. Grief touches us all.

But you and I belong to that long line of people who have come to believe that, however great the mystery, something incredibly UNNATURAL happened in the pre-dawn hours of a Sunday long ago.

And this utterly unnatural act is the underlying reality of Christian faith.

We build our lives upon the belief that God can bring life from death!!

Right now in our family, there is someone who is going through a really hard time. It seems to her like everything she's lived for, worked for, hoped for is gone. And to some extent, they are gone. There is little reason for her to get up in the morning. There is nothing for her to live for during the day. The nighttime hours are an endless stretch of sleepless moments during which the pain is relived over and over again. Something has died within her.

This morning, as we worship, there are hundreds of people in Alabama and some of our other sister states, who have been literally wiped out by the tornadoes of this past week. There are children who have been deeply scarred emotionally by the terror of the storms, families who've lost their sense of identity as treasured possessions were carried off. Maybe you read about the police officer to whom Mrs. Gore spoke words of comfort who could only respond by bursting into tears. Death has touched many people this week.

And what of those who live under sheets of cardboard in the alleyways of big cities, and those whose gaunt, empty faces remind us that there is terrible injustice in the world, and little babies who are born into life already addicted to cocaine, or carrying the HIV virus, or both. Death is at work in our world.

And you and I try our best every day to deal with the awesome challenges of living - as husbands and wives, as parents, as teenagers, as aging persons. We work hard at our relationships. We try to make the world a better place, and stand up for right things. We try to help those who need help, all the while facing our own problems of living and dying.

But so often, we discover we can't do it alone. We need a higher power. We need God.

And yet, for many, God seems so far away.

Many of us are spiritually dead.

Oh, like the disciples on Good Friday, we know something about death and darkness. It is an inescapable inevitability of life!

But today, on Easter Sunday, shines a new, unnatural, and miraculous hope!

And because God loves us too, we also can be raised to new life! Our families can be raised to new life! Our cities can be raised to new life! Our world can be raised to new life!

Tony Campolo is a professor of Sociology at Eastern College. He's a devoted Christian, a much-in-demand speaker, and an ordained Baptist minister. Tony - who is white - is also the volunteer Associate Pastor on the staff of an all-black church in Philadelphia. Dr. Campolo is going to be our keynote speaker at our Community Church conference in Florida this summer, and I invite you to come hear him speak.

Well, Tony Campolo has a famous sermon titled, "It's Friday...but Sunday's Comin'!" It's about the power of the resurrection to transform our lives, and about the underlying attitude that shapes the life of the community of the resurrection. Tony preaches the sermon in the energetic style of the Black church. He begins by describing the utter despair of the disciples on Good Friday as they watch their friend Jesus hang and die on the cross. What a heart-breaking experience to witness the death of someone you love. And then Tony says, "It's Friday...but Sunday's comin'!"

Then he describes the terrible anguish of the women who followed Jesus, bringing us right into the depths of their pain. And as you begin to feel their pain yourself, Tony declares, "It's Friday...but Sunday's comin'!" And he thinks of all the martyrs down through the ages who stood for righteous causes but whose lives were unjustly taken away from them, and he says, "It's Friday...but Sunday's comin'!" And he remembers the children caught in the crossfire of violence in our cities, and the hungry, and the homeless, and the despairing and the poor of our own day, and then the preacher proclaims, "It's Friday...but Sunday's comin'!"

And by the end of that sermon, Tony Campolo has masterfully taught us that, even though we face deathlike experiences every day of our lives, the promise of the resurrection is still there! And all Tony has to say is, "It's Friday...!"

And every person in that church jumps to their feet and shouts, "...but Sunday's comin!"

Now I'm not going to ask you to jump up and shout those words. But I do want to ask you this morning to take those words, and ask God to help you believe them as you live your life.

That's how life is faced in the community of the resurrection. We ask God to give us eyes to see what is broken, what is hopeless, what is tearful, what is tragic, and even what is dead - as things that can be raised to new life by the power of the resurrection.

A member of a lectionary discussion group I participate in tells the story of going home to visit her family two weeks before Palm Sunday last year. Actually, she went there specifically to visit her dad who was dying of lung cancer. The morning after she arrived, he was admitted to the hospital with pneumonia. That night they put him on a respirator so his body could rest while they filled him with antibiotics to fight the infection. He did not respond and sank into a coma. All attempts to save him failed and the family finally made the painful decision to remove life support (according to his wishes) on the Wednesday before Palm Sunday.

Well, Kay, her mother and her sister gathered at his bedside that morning. There, she was shocked to notice the little sticker on the tube connecting his lungs to the respirator. It read, "Change on Wednesday." Now, she'd seen similar stickers throughout his hospital stay ... "change on Friday," "change on Monday," and so on ... but on this Wednesday, the day he was to die, the message seemed so cruel and so thoughtless. "Change on Wednesday." Kay was viscerally offended. There was just something about the words that sounded so routine, so protocol-ish, when the reality was that her Daddy was dying and would not last the day! What right did that sticker have to remind her that he should have kept living, should have had the tubes changed and kept breathing and been cured?

But then some still, inner voice told Kay to take a second look. And when she did, she saw those words in a completely different way. "Change - as in be transformed, as in rise to new life - on Wednesday!" And indeed, that day her Daddy did cross over into the new life. And Kay says that, in the past year, moments of grief have come, but she is most of all left with the assurance that death for a Christian is much more a change than an ending.

How do you see death? How do you see life?

Dear friends, as this new week begins, I want to challenge you to live as people of the resurrection. Begin with your relationship with God, for that is the deepest need of life. If you've never opened your life to him before, do it today! If you once made a commitment but have fallen away from it, if you've gone through a time in your life when you've put God on the backburner, decide today to put him first in your life! Let God raise you into a new living relationship with him!

And take tender hold of the members of your family. Where there are hurts or misunderstandings, seek ways to forgive and to be forgiven. Dare to envision a new wholeness for your marriage, a new effectiveness as a parent. Commit your relationships to God, and trust him to show you a better and higher way!

And go to the world today with Jesus' love. Believe greater things for the poor and the weak, the hungry and the homeless, than others are able to believe. Become receptive to God's vision of a new world for them - and then step out and work hard to make it come true.

This is a day of new hope for you and the world!

Sunday's not only comin'...Sunday is finally here!