And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb . . . . As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, . . . he said to them, ‘Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; . . . he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you." (Mark 16:2-7)

For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins . . . that he was raised on the third day . . . that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, . . . . Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, . . . .he appeared also to me . . . .(I Corinthians 15:3-8)

Mark says that, on that first Easter, women went to the tomb to pay their last respects to dead Jesus. To their alarm, the body of Jesus was not there. A "young man, dressed in a white robe" told them, "You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified? Well, he isn't here. He is raised. He is going ahead of you to Galilee."

Here's my Easter question for you: Why Galilee?

Galilee is a forlorn, out of the way sort of place. It's where Jesus came from, but that's about its only claim to fame. Jesus spent most of His ministry out in Galilee, the "out back" of Judea getting ready to go up to Jerusalem. All of Jesus' disciples seem to have hailed from out in Galilee. Jesus spent most of His time in Galilee getting His disciples prepared to leave Galilee and go up to the capitol city with Him. There, in Jerusalem, He was crucified and there He rose. But the moment He rose from the dead, says today's gospel, He headed back to Galilee. Why?

One might have thought that the first day of His resurrected life, the risen Christ might have gone straight for the palace, to the seat of Roman power, and appeared there.

"Pilate, you made a big mistake," the risen Christ would say. "Now, it's payback time!"

One might have thought that Jesus would do something effective, appeared before the movers and the shakers, the influential and the newsmakers, those who had some power and prestige.

No. He didn't go up to the palace, the White House, the Kremlin, the Capitol. He went outback, back to Galilee. Nobody special lived in Galilee, nobody except the followers of Jesus. Us.

The resurrected Christ goes back to, appears before, the very same rag tag group of people who so disappointed Him, misunderstood Him, forsook Him and fled into the darkness. He returns to His betrayers. He returns to us.

It would have been news enough that Christ had died, but the good news was that He died for us.

It would have been news enough that Christ rose from the dead, but the good news was that He rose for us.

That first Easter, nobody actually saw Jesus rise from the dead. They saw Him afterwards. They didn't appear to Him; He appeared to them. Us. In the Bible, the "proof" of the resurrection is not the absence of Jesus' body from the tomb; it's the presence of Jesus to His followers. The message of the resurrection is not first, "Though we die, we shall one day return to life." It is, "Though we were dead, Jesus returned to us."

If it was difficult to believe that Jesus was raised from the dead; it must have been almost impossible to believe that He was raised and returned to us. The result of Easter, the product of the Resurrection of Christ is the church -- a community of people with nothing more to convene us than that the risen Christ came back to us. That's our only claim, our only hope.