Easter on the Mount of Olives

Easter is not about place.  Easter is about people.

Christianity is not about place.  Christianity is about people.

Jesus was not about place.  Jesus was about people.

Jesus is not about place.  Jesus is about people.

It’s early Sunday morning, dawn, and two women make their way to the place of the dead – the place of a dead friend.  His mother-swaddled body lay in the tomb of a generous Jewish man named Joseph.  The two Marys come to see the tomb, touch the tomb, the tomb that held the body of Jesus.  For grieving people, seeing is believing, even though believing is unbelievably painful.  The women can’t believe Jesus is dead.  They come to see again the place where he was buried.  For those who do not have the body of the one they love, then the body’s burial place becomes a holy place.

Jesus, of course, is not there, not in that place.  The angel tells the women that they can come and see the place, but that the place is not Jesus’ place anymore.  Jesus doesn’t have a burial place.  “Come, see the place where he lay.  Then go quickly and tell his disciples; …” (Matthew 28:7).

Come, see the place, if you must, but then go quickly and tell the disciples.  And then, just a few short verses later, Jesus is telling his disciples to “Go” and tell the people of the world.  See?  The story of Jesus is not about place.  The story of Jesus is about people.  Two women, a group of guards frozen in fear, and a pinched dozen disciples who have to be told so that they can tell the world.  “Come, see, then go quickly and tell …”

Tell what?  Tell the story of Jesus raised from the dead … from the dead!  Tell the story of God breaking into history in a way that breaks all the rules, all the formulas, all the laws of nature.  Tell of possibilities unlimited, of a God unfettered, free, set loose in the world.  Tell people of the place where this happened.  Bid them come and see if they must, but don’t dwell on the place.  Dwell on the people.  Come, see, if you must.  Then go quickly and tell … because you must!  Jesus is raised from the dead.

Easter worship on the Mount of Olives is a wonderful place to remember that Jesus didn’t seem to care a lick about place.  Jesus cared, and Jesus cares, about people.  As the preacher was preaching I was looking around at the place.  I was looking to the East, where I could see the Moab Mountains, the Dead Sea, and directly across the valley, the Jewish settlement of Ma’ale Adumiim.  More than 30,000 Jewish people live in this modern city, named from the Joshua story of the conquest of Canaan.  Ma’ale Adumiim has coffee shops, malls, a swimming pool, city water and sewer, and a system of roads to rival any, anywhere in the world – some of these roads are only for the residents of Ma’ale Adumiim.  But it is the people that come to mind for me, most of whom live oblivious to the fact that they are living on land that was stolen from other people.  The people of Ma’ale Adumiim would tell you that for the most part they just want a place to live in safety, with opportunities to prosper and grow.

Just below the settlement of Ma’ale Adumiim is the city of biblical Bethany, called El-Aziriyeh by the Palestinian people – city of Lazarus.  El-Aziriyeh is a depressed city, separated by a barrier that prevents them from prospering.  The people of El-Aziriyeh want the same thing that the people of Ma’ale Adumiim have.  They want a place where they can live in safety, with opportunities to prosper and grow.

What I was thinking as I was looking and not listening was that Jesus was raised for the people of both these cities, the Jews of Ma’ale Adumiim and the Palestinians of El-Aziriyeh.  That’s it, nothing more profound than that – Jesus was raised for the people of both these cities.  I don’t know if telling them that will make much difference, but telling you might.  So I’m telling you.  God loves both the Jews and the Palestinians.  And you and I are called to love them both as well.  We can get into the politics of this place, and we ought to, because politics is a part of life and we ignore politics at our own peril.  We can get into whose place is which place, and we ought to, because place matters, especially when people are taking places that don’t belong to them.

But ultimately, if we don’t love the people of this place with the same fierce love that the God of this place loves them, then we ought to stay out of this place.  And this is true not just of this place, but of every place.  The core of Christianity is not a place, but a person – Jesus.  And this person loved people.  This person was killed by people, buried by people, but raised by God who loves and forgives even those who didn’t know what they were doing when they did what they did to his Son.  This is the same God who loves us even when we don’t know what we are doing when we are doing the very same thing all over again, and that’s what we are doing when we put one people above another, or elevate place over people.

Wherever you worshiped yesterday, it is the people you worshiped with that made worship just that and nothing less than that – worship!  And if our worship is going to transcend the experience and translate into positive, God-loosed action in the world, then it begins with love of the people, and not just the people we like or identify with most naturally, but all the people so loved by God.