You know, computers are wonderful things. I spend far too much time attached to mine. The real problem is that they only do what you tell them to do, not necessarily what you want them to do. And that’s because they’re logical. They run on fixed principles of mathematics and physics, and other things I don’t understand.

What computers do best, of course, is compute. Work out those mathematical equations that would take a human being much too much time and brain power to do. The first computers did less than today’s laptops - in some cases, less than today’s pocket calculators, and they were these big room-sized things with banks of tape drives and vacuum tubes and punch cards, and they sat there all day, all night, humming along, computing. Adding things up.

So computers are kind of imprisoned by the laws of mathematic, and logic. And when things don’t make sense – mathematical or logical sense – to a computer, they go a little nuts. Anyone remember the old TV series "Lost in Space?" Well they had a robot, and when things didn’t make sense to the wee computers that ran the robot, he’d run around yelling "This does not compute! This does not compute! This does not compute!" And then he’d usually blow a fuse with a puff of smoke and some sparks! Nowadays, you just get an error message saying "This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down," followed by the blue screen of death.

Now, I hope this won’t cause any of your fuses to be blown, but I have to tell you that the notion of resurrection does not compute. If I were a totally logical computer, I might find resurrection a little difficult to swallow, how one minute Jesus is in the tomb, cruelly crucified, dead as dead can be, heart stopped beating, body prepared for burial and the next minute he is not… he’s up, out of the tomb, walking around, talking to those disciples who come to him, calling them by name and telling them that he goes before them. Now, how does that work? That’s not how the law of mathematics and physics work, is it? It just doesn’t compute. It just doesn’t seem logical to us.

And I’m guessing it didn’t seem any more logical at the time, to the women who went to the tomb that first resurrection morning at dawn. When they got to the tomb and found the stone rolled away and the body gone, they were shocked, stunned, amazed –– in disbelief! That is the effect of resurrection. We’re at a bit of a disadvantage from our vantage point. Because we think we know the story so well, we know how it ends; we lose the effect of their utter amazement, shock, and disbelief.

So on this Easter, I call upon all of us to PRACTICE RESURRECTION! I’m not suggesting that it’s like practicing the piano, where the more we practice the better we get at it. Because RESURRECTION IS GOD’S ACT, NOT OURS! We can’t make resurrection happen. But we can live our lives in such a way that embodies and conveys the amazement of God’s resurrection.

I want to share part of a poem with you, written by Wendell Berry titled "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front."  And it’s about things that don’t quite compute, like resurrection.

Love the quick profit, the annual raise, vacation with pay.
Want more of everything ready-made.
Be afraid to know your neighbors and die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery anymore.
Your mind will be punched in a card and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something they will call you.
When they want you to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something that won’t compute.
Love [God.]

Love the world....

Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.
Practice resurrection.

So I want to challenge us all today to PRACTICE RESURRECTION! There are actually lots of ways we can do that, but for now I want to suggest two possibilities.

First, practice resurrection by doing something every day that doesn’t compute. When the women went to the tomb to prepare the body, it did not compute when the stone was rolled away and the tomb was empty. It wasn’t supposed to happen that way. It didn’t compute.

But that’s the nature of resurrection –– it turns the world upside down and goes against all our expectations and assumptions about how life is. They were looking for a dead body. But the men who met them at the tomb said to them, "Why do you look for the living among the dead?" What do you mean, "the living?" We saw him dead. That doesn’t compute.

But God’s resurrection insists that there is life where we see death. Resurrection confounds us with upside down ideas and actions that challenge and confuse our notions of how the world works. Resurrection is not simply assurance of our individual life after death. It’s not about having a personal life-after-death insurance policy. God’s resurrection is not about some ethereal notion of our spirits floating to heaven after we die. That’s not what the resurrection of Jesus Christ is about. It’s about much more than that.

God’s resurrection is about God entering this world and confounding it with life in the midst of death right here, where we live, in our grief and pain, in our messy lives, with all the sin and hurt and misery. That’s where God’s resurrection is happening right here and now. We can’t relegate resurrection to some other-worldly, pie-in-the-sky, irrelevant notion that doesn’t connect with this world. Why DID God enter humanity in the first place in the form of Jesus Christ? Because God so loved the world! Remember that? Does THAT not compute?

Oh, so God loves THIS world? Really? Yes, God loves this world so much that God came to live and die with us in Jesus and came to die with us in Jesus. And Jesus didn’t fight violence with violence. Jesus overcame violence with suffering love. Resurrection is God’s powerful demonstration that Jesus overcame violence in a way that does not compute in our world. Jesus shows us life transformed through God’s eyes. In resurrection God comes to dwell with us forever.

Noelene Martin, and Australian theologian, writes of the time when Mother Teresa visited that continent. A new recruit to the Franciscan order in Australia was assigned to be her guide and "gofer" during her stay. And this kid was just so excited at the prospect of being so close to this great woman, he dreamed of talking with her and how much he’d learn from her. But during her visit, he got frustrated because although he was constantly near her, he never had the opportunity to say one word to Mother Teresa. She was always busy.

Finally, it was her last day, and she was flying on to New Guinea. And in desperation, the young man spoke to Mother Teresa, and said "If I pay my own way to New Guinea, can I sit next to you on the plane so I can talk to you and learn from you?" And Mother Teresa looked at him. "You have enough money to pay airfare to New Guinea?" she asked. "Yes, yes!" "Then give that money to the poor," she said. "You'll learn more from that than anything I can tell you." Practice resurrection! Do one thing every day that just doesn’t compute!

And second, practice resurrection by looking for the living among the living! The men said to the women, "why do you look for the living among the dead?" Think of the ways we do that! Think of the ways we look at what is dead and then lament that our faith is not living, not alive! Is the resurrection of Jesus Christ merely history for us? Then it’s a dead story! Is the resurrection of Jesus Christ something we think about once a year? Then it’s not living!

Get a glimpse of God’s vision for humanity from the propeht Isaiah [25:6-8]. "On this mountain God will make for all peoples a feast of ... rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. And God will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; God will swallow up death forever..." The image is of people gathered together in community where there’s a rich feast for all. It’s a living community, not a dead idea or concept. Our life together is a foretaste, of God’s great banquet, God’s great feast of love! Our puropse, our meaning in life, is to live out, to proclaim, that life and love to the world.

And we can do that, even if we think resurrection doesn’t quite compute. Because the truth of the resurrection doesn’t depend on us. It’s the reverse: we depend on it. But we are the sign that displays that truth to a world that does not know how to imagine what a relationship with a loving God looks like. We are called to let that love become visible in our midst. Come to the feast. LIVE abundantly. And look for the living among the living.

Berry’s poem invites us to practice resistance to the world’s patterns that promote death. Patterns like wanting more of everything, like being afraid to know our neighbors, like fearing death. Patterns that sacrifice the good of the community for individual gain, lifestyles of violence or greed, trust in principalities and powers. When we buy into the world’s values of wanting more of everything, more power and control, we miss God’s movement all around us. If we’re too busy looking at what’s dead, we miss new life emerging. We miss the resurrection.

Why do we look for the living among the dead? Why do we keep looking for happiness where it can’t be found? There is a better way. There is a source of life. God comes to turn our world and our assumptions upside down and says to us: You’re looking in the wrong places! Even when we are shrouded in grief, even when we’ve failed at something important. Even when we feel alone and lost, God says to us: in this act of resurrection, I have come to be with you forever, to be present and alive with you each and every day. I have come to live and love in you and through you as a community of faith -- embodied in Christ Jesus, on that first resurrection dawning, and now embodied in you, today.

If you want to encounter resurrection, let the living God into yourself, into your very being and then look there. Look for the living among the living.

I read something this morning in the Star, in Tom Harpur’s Easter column, and he said: "No amount of sermonizing about the glory of Jesus being raised up from the dead, no thundering arguments for any particular theory, can ever replace the lived reality of knowing and showing that the same resurrection spirit dwells in each of us."

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