Legend tells of a Greek by the name of Pheidippides who was a professional runner, a herald. Legend has it that in 490 BC Pheidippides made the run of his life. He ran 26 miles, from a battlefield by the town of Marathon to Athens. He ran 26 miles to bring news of the Greek victory over Persia. Having arrived in Athens, Pheidippides announced, “We were victorious!”

This year our celebration of Easter falls on the eve of a race inspired by the legend of Pheidippides: the Boston Marathon. Now, the coincidence of Easter Sunday and the Boston Marathon landing on the same weekend doesn’t happen very often. It last happed in 2003, but it won’t happen again until 2014. To be honest, for a Boston church located on the corner of Boylston and Dartmouth Streets, the convergence of the Marathon and Easter Sunday is a tad inconvenient. All week, while we were in here observing Holy Week, with its somber services of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, out there the city was in pre-Marathon party mode! In here, we were draping the cross in black, while out there the city was putting up colorful bunting.

It’s Easter Sunday and traffic is a mess, there is little or no hope of finding a parking space and, to top it all off, the city has fenced off our church and it is hard to find the front door! On this, the most important day in the church’s year, our beautiful building is wrapped ingloriously in chain-link fencing.

As I said, the coincidence of these two events occurring almost simultaneously is a tad inconvenient … but then, again, perhaps it is not. After all, the modern Marathon was inspired by a herald who ran to bring good news of victory … and that is precisely what we remember on Easter Day: that in this Easter story is news so good, so earth-shattering, and so extraordinary, that all of us – every single one of us – cannot help but wonder whether we should also become a Pheidippides … heralding news so wondrous that we cannot keep it to ourselves … telling it to all we can reach by any means.

The first Easter, not unlike this Easter in Boston, was a bit frenzied and chaotic. If you didn’t notice it in the reading of the Easter story from John’s gospel, there was a lot of running and racing about on that first Easter morning.

All of the racing about had to do with that morning’s news: whether Jesus was, or wasn’t, in the tomb; where his body had gone; what resurrection looked like and felt like … how it had been encountered … how to tell others … how to share, not only the good news, but also the emotions, reactions, expectations, hopes, and joys. The disciples became both investigative reporters and heralds … hunting down the news; then shouting it abroad … as far and as wide as their legs, and their voices, would carry.

And what is the news? Pheidippides ran to tell the Greeks the news that their land was still theirs … Greece had not fallen to the Persians. That was good news, indeed.

But what is our news? What is our Easter news? Like Pheidippides, we too have news of victory to share. News that our lives – even in death – are still ours! We are not conquered by death: this most feared and pernicious of human enemies. Indeed, death itself is conquered.

No wonder there was chaos at the tomb that first Easter morning! No wonder there was competition among the disciples to get there first! … to run and look and see for themselves. Then … with their own mouths, to tell the news of what they themselves had seen and heard.

And, what was the news?

That God had raised Jesus from the dead …. And Jesus was not any-old-body to have raised from the dead: he was the one who loved lepers. He was the one who ate with sinners. He was the one who conversed familiarly with women, who turned water into wine, who made the lame well, and the ill whole. He was the one who gave hope to those who were plunged in despair, and who opened the doors of prisons. He was the one who conferred upon even the most wretched and despised, a belief in their own goodness and dignity. He was the one who had Samaritans talking to Galileans, and Jews talking to Gentiles, and slaves sitting down to supper with their masters, and Roman citizens and Ethiopians singing hymns together.

He was the one who, in every way possible, disrupted the cruel and demeaning, social, economic, tribal, national, religious and gender stratifications that had kept everyone divided, one from another.

Now, there is a story to tell and a person to tell of. No wonder there was chaos at the tomb!

So the Easter story is not just about resurrection – which would have been a very good story in, and of, itself. No, the Easter story is first and foremost about who God raised from the dead. In this Good Friday world, this world so wracked by violence, so divided by nation and religion, it is great good news, indeed, that it was Jesus God chose to raise from the dead: Jesus, friend of sinners and radical egalitarian; a healer who didn’t charge for his services; a vintner who didn’t ask for a tip when he poured the best wine; a forgiver of Prodigals and of prostitutes; he who broke through human barriers; the Prince of Peace.

This is the one God chose to raise from the dead.  Now, there is news! There is news to set our feet in motion.

Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed! Alleluia! Amen!
 

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