After Peter went to the tomb and saw it empty, save for the linen shroud lying there without the body, Luke tells us he went home, amazed at what had happened. You think?

I’m not sure where I might have gone after that. Maybe to church. Maybe to tell a friend. But Peter did have a wife at home. And a mother-in-law. Probably some kids. So he went home. But really? He went home?

All the way home from Jerusalem to Capernaum? All the way downhill at first from south to north, from Jerusalem along the edge of the Dead Sea through the West Bank past Jericho following the Jordan River on his right against the current through the dangerous territory of the Samaritans over the rocky hills of Galilee along the western shore of the Sea of Tiberius and finally to his town on the northwest tip of the lake. It’s about a 100-mile journey, about like hiking on foot from here in Dallas to Waco. He went home?

Now in fairness, other ancient manuscripts omit this verse altogether. So we don’t really know whether Peter, like the last little piggy, really “ran all the home.” John’s Gospel tells us that after scratching their heads over the Easter mystery, all the disciples went to their homes. Then they gathered in one of their homes a week later with all the doors dead bolted for fear, and Jesus showed up, walking through the locked door.

Was that in Capernaum? We don’t know. They don’t tell us. And it makes me wonder about whether we are to make something of this ambiguity about home. Does the resurrection of Jesus change everything, including our understanding of home?

Marilyn Chandler McEntyre is a poet who also teaches poetry. She was in class one day covering the poetry of Mary Oliver, who is a keen observer of the ways of nature. A student raised his hand and asked, Does she ever write about anything other than death and transformation? The teacher thought for a moment and then replied, What else is there?[1]

Somehow I think that when Peter went home after that Easter miracle, the home he went home to felt different to him. Easter changes everything, including the way we experience home. It changes what we think of as home in this world, and it changes our hope for home.

All through the season of Lent we have been following Jesus on his way to Jerusalem. We have been learning that the way of Jesus is the way of the cross. It’s a way that includes suffering and death. It’s a way of sacrificial love that forgives the sins of those who hurt us and offers an alternative way of life as service, instead of our usual way of trying to be the greatest.

But what’s the end of it all? Where does the way of the cross lead? Does it just lead to death and no further? Or is the line from the gospel song right: The way of the cross leads home?

The resurrection of Jesus transforms our sense of home in at least two ways. First, it secures our eternal hope for home and points the way there.

And this is something we all of us dearly and deeply need. A lot of us have mixed feelings about home. For some it’s a place of belonging, a haven of heaven on earth. Home is where you can be truly and fully yourself and know that you are welcome and accepted in the world, if only within the walls of that house and within the arms of that family. For others, though, home is a scary place among a people who are supposed to be closest to you but disappoint you time and again. You look around at other people’s homes and wish you could go there and not to the home you were born into. Your home is a place you’d like to leave behind, to forget, a place of secret suffering instead of a sanctuary of security.

What we all want and what we all most need is something God has put into us all to want and need—a real and lasting experience of home as a place of welcome and joy. We want home to be more than the place where they have to take you in when you go there, as Robert Frost put it.[2] We want it to be the place where a Father waits on the front porch watching for us in the distance as for a prodigal returning at last. We want it to be a place of rest and peace where we can speak our minds without worry and put our feet up on the coffee table. We want to know that it will never be a broken home because love will rule it forever.

But what Peter must have learned that day at the empty tomb is that if that’s what we want, we’d better relocate our hope for home. If you can’t even count on the grave being secure in this world, you can’t count on anything being safe from brokenness, including home. Jesus’ resurrection promises a more secure home with God in the world to come. It’s a lively hope that allows us let go of our need to make a permanent place for ourselves in this life.

For ages people have been trying to make secure homes even for the dead. The elaborate tombs of the pharaohs were designed to protect the souls of dead Egyptian kings in their journey to the next world, along with all their wealth, too. The Taj Mahal in Agra, India, is one of the great wonders of the ancient world. The 17^th-century emperor, Shah Jahan, built it for his beloved wife. She is still there.

None of these tombs could secure a home in this life for anyone buried in them. And none of us who seek to make a lasting home in this world will be able to do so. The best homes will be broken by death or betrayal or neglect. And the worst homes that are already broken can never be fixed or healed enough to carry us beyond the grave.

But the good news of Easter is that it begins right where we all of us end. It’s good news for the graveyard. We can now look elsewhere for home.

The angels said to the grieving women at the empty tomb, Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here. He has risen.

When Jesus rose from the dead, he opened a door for us to a new world. And he is himself the front door to the new home we may enter. In fact, he has promised to prepare a room for us all there.

That good old gospel song has it right: This world is not my home, I’m just a passin’ through. And the chorus says, O Lord, you know I have no friend like you; if Heaven’s not my home, then, Lord, what will I do? The angels beckon me from Heaven’s open door, and I can’t feel at home in this world anymore.

Easter faith gives us hope precisely where all hope for a home in this world ends.

As a pastor I love to hear people talk about someone who has died as “going home.” They know she won’t be coming back, but they believe she has gone on to be at home with God. It’s not sentimental cliché; it’s Easter faith.

Any of our homes in this life are really only imperfect attempts to foreshadow our promised heavenly home. Never settle down too much in this world, because your true home is in heaven. To be at home in the body is to be away from the Lord, St. Paul says; but to be away from the body is to be at home with the Lord.

So when the Bible talks about where we will all feel fully and finally at home, it’s not in this earthly realm at all—it’s in the world to come. And Jesus resurrection gives us our first real peek at that world to come, and our only real hope for home.

But how do we get there? A teacher was testing her Sunday school class to see if they understood the concept of getting to heaven. She asked them: If I sold my house and my car, had a big garage sale and gave all my money to the church, would that get me into heaven?

No! the children answered.

If I cleaned the church every day, mowed the yard and kept everything neat and tidy, would that get me into heaven?

Again the answer was, No!

The teacher was smiling, feeling good about her kids getting it. So she baited them one more time. If I was kind of animals, gave candy to all the children and loved my husband, would that get me into heaven?

Again they answered as one, No!

She was bursting with pride and finally asked: Then how can I get into heaven?

With that, a 5-year-old boy shouted out: YOU GOTTA BE DEAD.

He’s right, don’t you know?! Jesus’ resurrection could only have come after he died. We think it was unjust, and it was. We think Jesus, of all people, should have been translated straight to heaven and been promoted right over the grave. But since we have to go there, he went there, too, in order to show us that death has been conquered once and for all. We can accept our own death now without fear and look beyond this life for our true life.

If you are to be raised from the dead, you have to die. Easter is not the good news that if you believe in Jesus, he will make you more successful than he was at avoiding the grave. Christianity is not another self-improvement program. The resurrection works only on dead people.

But that’s exactly what our baptisms symbolize. If you believe in the resurrection, you drop dead to this sinful world, and Christ raises you here and now to live with Easter faith. You are then free to live without fear.

This is the second way in which the resurrection transforms our sense of home. Your life can be transformed here and now so that you may now and then feel moments of being at home in this life. This world that is passing away is not our home, but the resurrection has brought the new world into the old. And because we are united to the risen Christ by faith, we can know even now a sense of home in this world.

When Peter went home, amazed at what had happened, it wasn’t just what had happened to Jesus that amazed him; it was what had happened to him. Easter doesn’t just change Jesus; it changes us. God does not just raise Jesus from the dead; God raises deadbeats like us with him. To believe in Jesus’ resurrection is to put our faith in the one who raises the dead and gives new life to our mortal bodies also.

Peter’s life was completely changed by the resurrection. He went from being an impetuous coward to a courageous witness. He went from being a rolling stone that gathered no moss to a rock on which the church would be built. Whether or not you believe as the Catholic Church does that Peter was himself the Vicar of Christ on earth, none of us can deny that he was the leader of the early church. This man who couldn’t be trusted to be faithful to Jesus in his hour of death would become the trustworthy spokesman for the risen Lord his whole life long. He found his purpose for living. He found his place in the world as one who would make the church a home away from home for ages to come.

So our faith is otherworldly, yes; but because it is, we may love this world as Christ did, without demanding that it give us what it can’t. We can work to show signs of God’s in-breaking world by giving ourselves generously to those who most need good news.

Every time an orphan child is cared for by an orphanage, or welcomed into a residence home or a foster home, or adopted into a loving home, Christ is risen there, and the resurrection is more believable. Every time a homeless adult who has been living on the street and sleeping under a bridge finds a safe and secure shelter, or preferably permanent supportive housing, Christ is risen there, and the resurrection is more believable. Every time you or I stand up for those who are oppressed or abused in this world and seek justice for them, Christ is risen there, and the resurrection is more believable.

My deepest hope today is that when you go home from this place, you will be amazed at what has happened not just to Jesus but also to you. And that being so amazed, you will amaze others by being the good news of Christ to them yourself.

And maybe next year when the shutters open and we confess our faith, Christ is risen, someone your Easter faith has touched will join the chorus and reply, He is risen indeed.