For three women that first Easter morning, the only place to go was to his tomb. They had suffered the longest Sabbath night of their lives waiting for first light to go and find him. Make no mistake, though; they were going to find a dead man in his grave. They were going to pay him homage, to do what they could after he was gone. They would do it for him, out of love. They would do it for themselves, out of grief. We must not for one minute fault them for it.

They find the grave, all right, but they do not find Jesus all right in it. The one the crucifiers derisively called the King of the Jews and the women maybe secretly called the King of Hearts was nowhere to be found. Their heartbreak was palpable, their mourning black.

What a contrast of mood to two men who found the tomb of another king one day! On the morning of November 26, 1922, Lord Carnarvon of Britain, a collector of antiquities, could wait no longer. Can you see anything? he asked. Yes, wonderful things, came the reply. Archeologist Howard Carter had broken through the final door that led to the antechamber of the tomb of the Egyptian boy-king Tutankhamen. The wonderful things Carter saw included jewelry and gold, statuary, furniture, a chariot, and other artifacts that shed light on the life of a king of Egypt some 3,000 years ago. The most spectacular find was, of course, the sarcophagus of King Tut—solid gold, with painted mask, containing the undisturbed remains of the 13-year-old embalmed king. Many believed that the Valley of the Kings had been tapped out—all the tombs found and raided. Carter still believed that King Tut’s tomb might be discovered,, and he made it his mission to look for him. When he found the first steps leading down to the burial chambers and broke though the initial door, he was deflated to see footsteps on the earthen floor. He was sure robbers had beaten him to it. But he was elated at last to realize that they never made it to the inner chamber. Wonderful things, Carter said upon finding what he was looking for. I see wonderful things.

The three women at the tomb of Jesus might have said the same if they had been going to the tomb looking for a resurrection. Seeing the stone rolled away and finding no body inside, they might have jumped for joy. But they had no experience with resurrection; they were acquainted only with death. And their first thought was that grave robbers had beaten them to it, probably to discredit the Jesus movement. Isn’t it enough that they crucified him? Can’t they just let him rest in peace?

But they did not really find the tomb empty. A young man, clothed in white, Mark says, was sitting off to the side in the tomb. The writers of the other gospels say it was an angel that spoke to them. Mark doesn’t say it wasn’t, but he seems more interested in the young man’s word of witness. And in fact, the word witness in Greek is martures, from which comes our word martyr. He represents those who at the expense of their own lives bear witness to the martyr of martyrs himself. He tells the women that the crucified one has been raised from the dead. You are looking for him in the wrong place. He is not here. Go and tell his disciples that he has gone ahead of you to Galilee. You will see him there.

Where will you find Jesus today? How will you come to know him, to see him, the crucified and risen one?

Well, you can search for him in history, as many do. He was a man of his time, as every man is. You can read the Bible and books about first-century Palestine. You can learn how he grew up, what he ate, how the life of a carpenter of Nazareth might have been, what Galilee under Roman occupation was like, and how his teachings fit in with or stood out from the Jewish thinking of his day. But if you search for him there, you will search for the living among the dead. You will find a man of his time, but you will not find the Son of Man in your time. If he is risen, if he is really alive, then looking for Jesus in any other time but the present will always be disappointing.

The historical Jesus is not just the first-century Jesus of Nazareth; he is the Christ of this historic moment in which we live today. Jesus is a man of his time, but his time is our time, too, because he is a man of all times. Easter tells us we cannot confine Jesus to the past. He is eternally present in the present. What’s more, he goes ahead of us, calling us to meet him in Galilee.

So if we are to meet him in Galilee where the women and the disciples are told to meet him, how do we do that from Dallas? Obviously, we do not need a passport and visa to travel to northern Palestine in order to experience his living presence in the present. The young man in white tells the three women to tell the disciples to go to Galilee, where it all began for them. Go back to life as you have known it. You will find him there—we will find him in our Galilee, changing the face of everyday life by infusing it with his resurrection presence.

Kristen Johnson Ingram is a grandmother now. Her little book that tells her spiritual journey and her discovery of the risen one is called With the Huckleberry Christ. See if any of you can relate to this. I longed for joy when I was a confused, depressed young mother, struggling to clean the house that seemed to hover over me, hostile; sometimes I took college classes or gave piano lessons, but sometimes I did nothing at all. And sometimes I even tried to commit suicide. I was always looking for God, or rather, the Something More I kept hearing that God had for me. I looked in all kinds of places: grand, empty cathedrals and silent forests and dim corners; I read dusty books and went to meetings of vague people who said they had an Answer.

She tells about reading the Bible one day and praying, God, I want what it tells about here. And to her amazement, a few weeks later she found it. Or rather, she found him—the living Christ. And in finding him, she found her joy complete. Where did she find him? In church, of all places. In her Galilee. In the place she lived week by week. He jumped right out at her from the same liturgy she had been saying all her life long. And once she found him there—or maybe better, once he found her there—she began to see him and experience him in every little chore and every little chance event every new day, right where she already lived. Soon after that Easter experience in church, while she was playing with her two-year-old grandson Andrew in the backyard, she began singing and dancing among the fallen hazelnuts. She felt as alive and at home with God as possible. And then the little boy looked up and, flinging a handful of nuts, declared, Grannuther, I think I see Jesus dancing too! [Winston Press, 1985, pp.8-9.]

And who’s to say he didn’t? Galilee is where you live. You will find Jesus there. There you will see him. In your time. In your place. Maybe even dancing, who knows?

One caution, though: Easter does not promise a personal experience with the risen Jesus that gives you only that Something More to make your life joyful. It may do that, but it does not do only that. When the young man in white tells the women to tell the disciples to go to Galilee and see Jesus there, he means to tell them to go back to where it all began for them with Jesus. Not that they should make camp there, though, as if Jesus will just settle down and give them an edge in their fishing business or a warm family feeling raising their kids. He tells them to go back to where it all started because it’s all starting again. He intends to lead them still. He intends to continue the ministry he began, this time through them. They are to be witnesses of his resurrection, like the young man in white, the martyr figure who would boldly sit in the empty tomb and tell the world that came looking for Jesus that Jesus is on the loose, loosening the ties that bind the world and freeing every captive. And he is doing that through them—that is, through us.

Look, it took courage for those women to go to the tomb that morning. They were, in the minds of the powers that be, political sympathizers with a condemned insurrectionist. The meaning of Jesus’ death and resurrection is as much public as private. If all he did was to overturn death by his resurrection in order to give us personal hope of eternal life, he could have died in his sleep. He died on a cross, however: executed unjustly, scapegoated to protect the status quo. So what he overturned is not just death but the whole death-dealing system of injustice that gives rise to it. That system seeks peace through victory; and when Jesus died, the system thought it had won. When God raised Jesus from the dead, God showed that only peace through justice is lasting peace.

This is what Sunni and Shiite Muslims have to learn in Iraq today if they are to have any hope of real peace, politically or personally. For years Saddam Hussein privileged the Sunni minority in Iraq through the heavy hand of violence and intimidation. Now the Shiite majority holds power, and they don’t know what to do with it. Sunnis resent the loss of it and are trying to get it back through terrorist “victories.” The U.S. presence there is part of the story, but not the underlying one. All parties need to understand that justice and equity, rather than who has the upper hand, are crucial for finding peace. The U.S. and Iran need to learn this lesson fast, before nuclear confrontation destroys us all. Victory cannot mean dominating enemies; it can only mean turning enemies into neighbors, if not friends.

We will find the risen Jesus only when we join him in the struggle to reveal to the world the true nature of peace. We do this by following Jesus in our Galilee into the places he is always found: standing up for the poor, defending the weak, siding with the abused, comforting those that mourn, refusing to profit by others’ pain, loving people who are hard to love, welcoming strangers and maybe even dancing with a little boy in the backyard. Only then will we truly find and experience the presence of the crucified risen one.

The women are told to tell the disciples to go to Galilee. But in a strange reversal of their own boldness in going to the tomb, as they leave the tomb with this good news, they become afraid and tell no one. Go figure.

We can understand why, can’t we? If you were to leave this room today and really follow Jesus, you may end up disturbing the “peace through victory” crowd that you live among every day, folk that want to keep systems of law and taxation that privilege their comfortable lives while others struggle. But if Easter tells us anything, we are on the wrong side of history when we live that way—and certainly on the wrong side of God. We will be looking for Jesus in a grave where he is not to be found, because the grave represents the world that is passing away, not the world he is bringing to pass.

Mark’s original ending to his gospel is verse 8. A literal rendering would go like this: … and no one anything they told, they were afraid for.... It breaks off there. Why? We don’t know, except that maybe, just maybe, Mark is putting a question to us. Will we too let fear get the better of us, or will we trust and obey, going out to be witnesses for the crucified risen one? Will we meet Jesus in the dangerous places he aims to be, making life better for everyone, not just making better lives for ourselves?

There’s no controlling Jesus. If the grave would not hold him, you certainly can’t. So why even try? Want an Easter blessing? Join up with Jesus where he is to be found and find your true life and complete joy.