Why did you come here this morning?

To see the sun rise over beautiful Biscayne Bay?

To join with a crowd to sing Easter hymns and have your spirit lifted?

To somehow be reassured that death is not the end?

To fulfill your religious obligation early and have the rest of the day for other activities? Did you come here to find Jesus?

That is why the women went to the tomb that first Easter morning C to find Jesus.

They had not been able to do for him what their love wanted to do three days before, when they had taken his body off that horrible cross. There had not been time to properly anoint the body for burial before the start of the Sabbath. And one thing is very true, even for Jews in Israel today, everything shuts down for Sabbath. In the surprising rush of events on Thursday and Friday, the women were obviously in shock at what was unfolding and were not prepared for dealing with a dead body. So they had to wait until after the Sabbath ended to buy the spices and ointments and supplies for properly burying Jesus= body.

Now, early on the first day of the week, at dawn, they went to the tomb where they had watched the body be placed.

As shocking as events had been on Friday, upon reaching the tomb they received the shock of their lives. For the tomb was opened, the stone rolled back, and the body was gone!

They came looking for Jesus, and Jesus was not there!

It is no wonder they were alarmed, amazed and afraid.

A colleague of mine was once asked, A Do you like weddings and funerals?@ She replied, A I like funerals best.@ To which the inquirer asked, A Why?@ The minister replied in a flat tone ringed with humor, A Because people tend to stay dead.@

What they found instead was a well-dressed young man, waiting at the tomb to give them a strange announcement.

A Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.@

In short he said: A Jesus is not here! Go home!@

Home. That is what Galilee was, to them, and to Jesus.

After his baptism by John, Jesus apparently withdrew from his family in Nazareth and adopted Capernaum as his home, quite possibly staying, when in town, at home with Peter. There on the shore of the lake he secured his first disciples, from among the fishermen.

All Galilean episodes recorded in the gospels are related to the Sea of Galilee, with few exceptions. He may have made one later visit to Nazareth, where he appeared in the synagogue, but all the rest of the gospel account, prior to the Passion narrative, is in the setting of the Sea of Galilee. That was Jesus= home.

And friends, let me tell you, Galilee is a beautiful place.

Having walked its shores, having ridden on its waters in a fishing boat, having viewed snow-capped Mt. Hermon overshadowing the northen end of the Sea, I can understand the attraction for Jesus.

It was the location of his greatest success; it was the home for his closest friends and followers; it was where people had responded most positively to his message.

But even with all that, it= s not where I would expect him to go on his first day of eternal life.

I would have thought that, upon being raised from the dead, Jesus would stride triumphantly back to Jerusalem.

Imagine what a stirring sight that would have been!

A Pilate, you made a very big mistake,@ the risen Christ might have said as he strode triumphantly 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, chiding them for their fickleness and betrayal, showing himself to the multitudes.

Jesus did none of that. Rather, he went on ahead of his own disciples, promising to meet them back in Galilee where the story began.

Such a strange message. This is no way to run a resurrection.

There are none of the Easter appearances of Jesus to the women, or Peter, or any other disciples.

No, there is just an empty tomb, a nice young man with a strange message about Jesus= new forwarding address, and the women fleeing in fear and amazement and not telling anybody, anything.

All they, and we, receive according to Mark is a promise yet to be fulfilled. We are left, as were the women, with only the words of that strange young man: Christ has risen and will meet you in Galilee.

No appearance of the risen Jesus, just a promise. The young man orders the women to tell the others Jesus is going ahead of them to Galilee.

They are to go home! Back to where it all started.

Jesus had met them the first time in Galilee.

He had met most of them where they were working. He had called them from their work to join him in other work, there in Galilee.

That= s where the risen Christ will be found.

In Galilee is where they will see Jesus.

Back where they live their ordinary lives.

Back where they work and play, eat and sleep, fall in love and make babies, raise children and build families C back where everyday, ordinary life happens. That, the young man promises, is where they will see the risen Jesus, for that is where he is headed.

And while Mark does not tell us the rest of the story, we know the rest of the story for the other gospel writers do.

We know that the disciples did find their way to Galilee, they did return home, they did go back to work.

And we hear how the risen Christ appears to his disciples in the most ordinary of places: at breakfast on the shore after a night of fishing; one evening when they are all hunkered down behind locked doors, and on the road back to their hometown, around table as they share bread.

Something about the risen Christ loves to meet people in the most ordinary places. Which is good for us if you want to meet Jesus, because most of us live in ordinary places, like Galilee.

So, my message to you is the same message the young man gave to the women, Jesus is not here. Go home.

He was not at the cemetery. And even though you have come to this beautiful sacred place of worship, he is not here, either.

Don= t come here to church! Go back home.

That is where you will meet Jesus. For Jesus is on the loose.

Not only is he on the loose, but he is loose in Galilee, he is loose in your daily life, where you live, work and play.

Truth be told, there is no getting away from him, no keeping him safely tucked out at the cemetery, or forgetting him, or disposing of him in some far away, exotic location in our consciousness.

He has been raised and comes to where we live, to Galilee.

The resurrection is not just something that happens once out at the cemetery. That would be easy.

The resurrection is something that happens on ahead of us, something that meets us, in the world, our world, in Galilee.

The resurrection is not primarily a belief about life after death, but rather a vindication of Jesus= life in the world, and a call to discipleship, here and now.

Easter calls us not so much to believe that we shall live forever, as it does to get up and follow Jesus where he goes now. And the risen Christ goes back to Galilee. Back to our ordinary, every day life.

So go back home and look for the risen Christ in your everyday lives.

Look carefully at others and listen to what they say, because they may be the risen Christ in our midst.

The truth is, in raising Jesus of Nazareth from the dead, God has shown us the world according to God.

In Jesus the Christ the world is now a new world.

It is a world where the meek do inherit the earth, even when they don= t have a deed to it registered in the courthouse.

It is a world where the poor in spirit have the only riches, and among the poor the bread is blessed and broken and everyone has enough.

It= s where everyone knows that enough is a feast (in the old world a feast is not enough!). In the new world of the resurrection, those who mourn are more than comforted; they dance before God with their dead C often while they are still grieving.

It is a world where the peacemakers know themselves, and everyone else, as children of God, and the merciful know what mercy does; it turns our enemies into sisters and brothers and causes weapons to rust and corrode or be transformed into tools.

It is a world where engineers travel to Africa to dig wells C led, they say, by the spirit of Jesus the Christ. Food is gathered into community pantries to share with those in need and children are truly nurtured and not simply tolerated or, worse yet, abused and misused.

All these are signs of the risen Christ, present and active in the world around us.

Go home to your Galilee, the place where you live and play, work and love. Go with wonder and fear, with amazement and awe, with eager anticipation. For back home, that is where you will find Jesus.