Grace and Peace to you from God our Creator and Sustainer, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit that abides in each of us.  Amen.

Happy Easter!  I know we have already shared the Easter proclamation, but I love doing it, so I want to do it one more time.  Now, for those of you who are guests here today, you should know that I like to try interactive things on occasion.  I like congregational participation in worship.  So this is the part where you get to participate.  I am going to state the first part of the Easter proclamation, and then I want you to say the traditional response in unison.  We’ll put it on the screen for you.  Here we go.  Christ is risen!  (Congregation responds:  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!)

Do you believe the Easter proclamation when you say it?  Do you honestly believe that Jesus Christ is alive and well and active in this world?  Are you really here this morning to look for the risen Christ?  Did you come to this place to truly see the risen Lord or are you here because it is the right thing to do on Easter?  Or are you here because you want to believe, but it is so difficult and you are seeking answers?

This morning, people around the world have gathered and continue to gather to make this great proclamation, but I believe as followers of Christ at some point we must come to a point in our lives that we can say we truly believe and be like those women who went to the tomb that first Easter morning expecting to find Jesus’ corpse only to discover that the tomb was empty.  Somehow, those women, after making that shocking discovery and speaking with the “two men in dazzling clothes” (Luke 24:4), came to believe, and they went and began to tell the story.  According to Luke, they had not seen the resurrected Jesus but they still believed.

This is certainly not like us 21st-Century people, is it?  Can you imagine something like this happening today?  If it did, we would send the “CSI Jerusalem” team to the site and demand that they gather the forensic evidence to prove this Resurrection.  There would be no running back to the eleven and the rest of the disciples to tell the story.  These women would have waited for the forensic evidence before they would have believed. 

If you have been watching the news this week, you probably know that after 2000 years we finally have forensic experts on this case of the missing Jesus. The Shroud of Turin, which many proclaim to be the shroud in which Jesus was buried, was supposedly discovered in France in the 14th-Century. To this day, there is still much debate over the authenticity of that shroud, but as the debate goes on some “experts” have now taken the shroud and, using sophisticated, modern-day technology, are attempting to show what they believe is the "real face of Jesus"  The History Channel aired a documentary about this image this past Tuesday.

As one news reporter noted, “From a marketing perspective, the timing of the History Channel show couldn't be better:  Good Friday and Easter Sunday, the Christian holy days that mark Jesus' death and resurrection, are just a few days away.”  People all around the world are challenged this week to decide whether or not they believe in the Resurrection, and now we are also faced with the question of whether or not we believe this is the real face of Jesus.  News reporters around the world are now showing this picture, or a similar one, and asking, “Is this really Jesus?”

As I watched this story unfold, I was reminded of that critical question that those two men in the “dazzling clothes” asked the “terrified women” in the empty tomb, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?”  (Luke 24:5)  On that first Easter morning, this question, as well as the bringing of the spices, tells us that those women went to the tomb looking for a corpse.  As part of their devotion to Jesus, they went to the tomb to properly prepare the corpse for burial.  In the Roman World, providing proper burial for a loved one was one of the most important obligations of friendship.  Throughout the Mediterranean world, it was one of the strongest obligations of family members.  Those women didn’t go to the tomb seeking the living; they hadn't yet come to believe Jesus' promise of the Resurrection.  This question and the questions about the “real face of Jesus” make we wonder, are we still seeking the living among the dead?

I think the answer to the question of whether or not this is the real face of Jesus can be summed up in three letters that my kids taught me when they were teenagers many years ago, “IDM.”  For those of you who are unfamiliar with these letters, they stand for “It Don’t Matter!”  It may sound strange for a “man of the cloth” to say this, but I really do not care whether or not that is the face of the man who was Jesus Christ in the 1st Century.  Whether or not it is will not change my faith, and it will not change how I live my life.

For me, when I want to see the face of the real Jesus I look at the people around me.  I saw the face of Jesus on Maundy Thursday in the eyes of those nine children who made their First Communion here at Salem.  I have seen the real face of Jesus in the eyes of an old Mexican woman whose community I helped rebuild on a mission trip in the labor fields of the San Joaquin Valley.  I have seen the real face of Jesus in the eyes of a mother and her young daughter as they willing accepted the free food we were handing out at MLM one Saturday morning last July.  I saw the real face of Jesus just a couple of weeks ago right here in Luther Hall as I watched about 20 or 30 of you prepare the meal for our semi-monthly trip to the Children’s Memorial soup kitchen.  I see the real face of Jesus as I look out amongst you.  The real face of the Risen Jesus comes into our sight when we witness to the world with love, compassion, mercy, and peace.

Brothers and Sisters, Jesus is alive and well.  He is here!  I am not here to offer scientific forensic evidence.  I only offer you God’s Word and the story of several terrified woman.  Knowing He is alive, the real question for us should be, "Where should we seek the living One?  May I suggest that we seek Him amongst each other?  The real face of Jesus is here.  I pray that this Easter day is the day that you come to believe what those terrified women came to know on that first Easter morning, and that is that Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!  Amen.