Luke 24:1-12 (NRSV)
But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body.
While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.”
Then they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.
But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, wondering about what had happened.
Alleluia, Christ is Risen! It is Easter morning and all the grief and loss of the past week is now turned to joy!
Well, maybe. The disciples did get to joy, certainly, but it probably took a while for them to get there. And, to be honest, we know perfectly well it would have taken a while for us, too. After some passage of time they were all saying, “of course I never doubted it. I wasn’t really worried. After all, he told us this was going to happen, didn’t he?" But right at first? Maybe not.
The women at the tomb were despairing at this further loss – not only had they watched Jesus die but now they couldn’t even do this last thing for him because his body had been removed! Even after an angel reminded them that Jesus himself had foretold this very happening, they still didn’t get it for a while.
The men, in their turn, just dismissed the women’s story as “an idle tale.” Even Peter, who did at least get up to go see for himself, just went home and wondered about it all.
And again, to be honest, we would have done the same. We are a “straight line” people. We firmly believe that time starts “here” and moves in a straight line to “here.” Our minds tend to boggle at the idea of time doing loop-de-loops or any other kind of weird things. We know that people are either alive or dead and we don’t move back and forth between the two. There are things we believe as absolute truth – rock-solid fact – and this story doesn’t comfortably fit in that construction. We may eventually get there with things that appear to break all the physical laws of our world – but we don’t get there quickly.
But besides being a hard facts, straight-line people, we are also a story-telling people – not in the sense of telling lies – but as a people who make sense of our world through sharing our stories with each other. We share our feelings, our hopes, our dreams, and, most importantly, we share our wonders – those moments when some world other than our straight-line world breaks through and becomes part of our present reality. That, I believe is when Jesus lives again among us.
Did Jesus die on that cross but somehow miraculously rise again on the third day? Maybe. I wasn’t there; none of us were. God is certainly capable of bringing that off if God so wished. I have no argument with those who believe it happened in just that way, but whether it took three days or even years, makes no difference to me, personally, because it is the wonder that it happens at all that is important, not how many days.
In the same way that the world might have been created in six days or maybe it has taken 14 million years, the length of time doesn’t determine the miracle. Neither point of view is more or less miraculous than the other. The miracle is simply that it IS.
We exist.
Jesus lives.
In the end, what matters is not a missing body, but a living presence.
Jesus lives.
Jesus, who, in human flesh, embodied God’s very own self, but chose to live as fully human – frail and weary, fallible, and ultimately unable to even hang on to life.
Jesus, who never owned a house or a donkey, or even a bed of his own. Jesus, who went to the cross owning nothing but his oh-so-human body, and even that was taken from him.
Jesus, who put himself in our power, to live or die as one of us – not to be in power here, but to be as powerless as the rest of us.
And all of this – every aspect of this Jesus was shared as those who loved him gathered to remember him, to talk about him, to tell their “hey, were you there the day he did this...” stories. And as they talked and remembered they began to feel his presence with them, and Jesus lived among them again.
And as they talked, they remembered his love for them. They remembered and recognized things they hadn’t even noticed when he was living among them. They began to understand how he had changed their lives. They began to recognize how very deeply he loved them.
They heard things they might not have noticed at the time – things that made it amazingly clear that he was with them to love them and teach them that it didn’t matter that they were slow – that they sometimes argued with him – that they could be silly or mean or selfish ... and he still loved them, and that was what it was all about.
Jesus lives and loves and travels with us on our journey through life. Every moment every joy, every grief – every success, every failure, Jesus is here wrapping God’s love around us.
Jesus lives – and so shall we.
In the words of John Paul II, “we are an Easter people and Hallelujah is our song.”
Christ lives. Alleluia. Amen.
Well, maybe. The disciples did get to joy, certainly, but it probably took a while for them to get there. And, to be honest, we know perfectly well it would have taken a while for us, too. After some passage of time they were all saying, “of course I never doubted it. I wasn’t really worried. After all, he told us this was going to happen, didn’t he?" But right at first? Maybe not.
The women at the tomb were despairing at this further loss – not only had they watched Jesus die but now they couldn’t even do this last thing for him because his body had been removed! Even after an angel reminded them that Jesus himself had foretold this very happening, they still didn’t get it for a while.
The men, in their turn, just dismissed the women’s story as “an idle tale.” Even Peter, who did at least get up to go see for himself, just went home and wondered about it all.
And again, to be honest, we would have done the same. We are a “straight line” people. We firmly believe that time starts “here” and moves in a straight line to “here.” Our minds tend to boggle at the idea of time doing loop-de-loops or any other kind of weird things. We know that people are either alive or dead and we don’t move back and forth between the two. There are things we believe as absolute truth – rock-solid fact – and this story doesn’t comfortably fit in that construction. We may eventually get there with things that appear to break all the physical laws of our world – but we don’t get there quickly.
But besides being a hard facts, straight-line people, we are also a story-telling people – not in the sense of telling lies – but as a people who make sense of our world through sharing our stories with each other. We share our feelings, our hopes, our dreams, and, most importantly, we share our wonders – those moments when some world other than our straight-line world breaks through and becomes part of our present reality. That, I believe is when Jesus lives again among us.
Did Jesus die on that cross but somehow miraculously rise again on the third day? Maybe. I wasn’t there; none of us were. God is certainly capable of bringing that off if God so wished. I have no argument with those who believe it happened in just that way, but whether it took three days or even years, makes no difference to me, personally, because it is the wonder that it happens at all that is important, not how many days.
In the same way that the world might have been created in six days or maybe it has taken 14 million years, the length of time doesn’t determine the miracle. Neither point of view is more or less miraculous than the other. The miracle is simply that it IS.
We exist.
Jesus lives.
In the end, what matters is not a missing body, but a living presence.
Jesus lives.
Jesus, who, in human flesh, embodied God’s very own self, but chose to live as fully human – frail and weary, fallible, and ultimately unable to even hang on to life.
Jesus, who never owned a house or a donkey, or even a bed of his own. Jesus, who went to the cross owning nothing but his oh-so-human body, and even that was taken from him.
Jesus, who put himself in our power, to live or die as one of us – not to be in power here, but to be as powerless as the rest of us.
And all of this – every aspect of this Jesus was shared as those who loved him gathered to remember him, to talk about him, to tell their “hey, were you there the day he did this...” stories. And as they talked and remembered they began to feel his presence with them, and Jesus lived among them again.
And as they talked, they remembered his love for them. They remembered and recognized things they hadn’t even noticed when he was living among them. They began to understand how he had changed their lives. They began to recognize how very deeply he loved them.
They heard things they might not have noticed at the time – things that made it amazingly clear that he was with them to love them and teach them that it didn’t matter that they were slow – that they sometimes argued with him – that they could be silly or mean or selfish ... and he still loved them, and that was what it was all about.
Jesus lives and loves and travels with us on our journey through life. Every moment every joy, every grief – every success, every failure, Jesus is here wrapping God’s love around us.
Jesus lives – and so shall we.
In the words of John Paul II, “we are an Easter people and Hallelujah is our song.”
Christ lives. Alleluia. Amen.
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