Luke 24:1-12
On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took spices and clothes and went to the tomb to properly tend Jesus’ body for burial. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord.
While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. In their fright the women bowed down with 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; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’ ” Then they remembered his words.
When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others. It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles. But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense.
Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened.
It’s Easter Morning – Christ is Risen! Alleluia, Amen! I wish I could feel the joy I have felt on Easters past, but every time I turn on the News lately I’m greeted with another atrocity – some horrible new thing committed by our government supposedly in our name, or a couple of new school shootings, or some raving antisemite attempting to burn a Jewish U.S. state governor and his family to death in their home. I could keep listing them – we all know what’s going on in our world these days.
But – it’s Easter morning and this is a time for rejoicing even – especially? – when joy can seem out of reach. Because that is exactly the message of Easter – that JOY is! LOVE is!
The people of Israel were an enslaved people in Jesus’ time, and yet – in the middle of their enslavement there was Jesus, who lived with them and talked with them and reminded them that they were loved -- they were God’s own beloved ones. They were worthy of kindness and plenty – not because the land was their home, but because God was their God.
Hatred is alive and well today, just as it was alive in Jesus’ day, and in all the days in-between. And yet ..... we are gathered here this morning not to mourn the presence of hatred, but to proclaim that – in spite of hatred’s best efforts -- love wins!
Jesus walked among us and taught and healed among us to show us that, in spite of what sometimes seems to be, it is love which always has and always will win. Author, teacher, and spiritual leader Flora Wuellner once wrote something that has stuck with me ever since I first read it. She described Jesus’s earthly mission as being “to bring heaven, the fullness of God’s realm, into our daily lives, relationships, choices.” I love that – Jesus’s mission was less to get us into heaven, as the church has taught for 2000+ years, than to get heaven into us – to place the living love of God into us – God's living, breathing, active love in us. That’s what Easter is about.
Jesus faced plenty that was ugly when he was here among us, but he never gave up his focus on the love of the one he called Father. He saw hatred and greed and hopelessness and selfishness and envy and fear aplenty, but still, the God he knew so deeply and personally was not, in his vision, about retribution or revenge or punishment — but always about love. Love is what he came to give us ... to give, and to give, and to give – in spite of our clinging to our old fears and hatreds, and in spite of all that hatred had to throw at him, love is what Jesus gave us in return.
Love spoke in all his teaching and healing. Love hung on that hideous cross. And love it is that lives again in each and every one of us – loving and being, through and in us.
Love is why we exist. Love – I believe – is what God is. And everything that comes from God is the result of that love. Love creates. All that is flows from the creativity of God’s love. Love supports, love nourishes, love builds – and love invites – invites us to live here and now in that heaven which is the ultimate expression of God’s love. Love is why Jesus exists. Love is why Easter is so important – more important, really, than Christmas or any other holy day. Love is why we are here .....
And so hatred – for all its nagging, petty ugliness – for all its persistence in the world – for all its seeming inevitable-ness – hatred loses. Because the life-giving Creator who brought everything into being is determined to love us all into wholeness. And – as Easter proves again today, love will always win.
I took the title for this message from Rob Bell’s book, “Love Wins” which came out several years ago. That book was a huge shift in how I see our lives as Jesus people. It’s a reminder to me that God’s love is stronger than death, stronger than hate. It’s easy to lose that in the midst of the world’s news, but it’s true. Love wins. It’s not some heavy, convoluted theological dogma – it’s two short words. Easy to carry around with you every day: Love wins. I want to end today with the blessing with which Bell ended that book years ago. It lives in my house and my mind as part of that tattered array of random quotes scribbled on post-it notes and stuck up around my work desk:
But – it’s Easter morning and this is a time for rejoicing even – especially? – when joy can seem out of reach. Because that is exactly the message of Easter – that JOY is! LOVE is!
The people of Israel were an enslaved people in Jesus’ time, and yet – in the middle of their enslavement there was Jesus, who lived with them and talked with them and reminded them that they were loved -- they were God’s own beloved ones. They were worthy of kindness and plenty – not because the land was their home, but because God was their God.
Hatred is alive and well today, just as it was alive in Jesus’ day, and in all the days in-between. And yet ..... we are gathered here this morning not to mourn the presence of hatred, but to proclaim that – in spite of hatred’s best efforts -- love wins!
Jesus walked among us and taught and healed among us to show us that, in spite of what sometimes seems to be, it is love which always has and always will win. Author, teacher, and spiritual leader Flora Wuellner once wrote something that has stuck with me ever since I first read it. She described Jesus’s earthly mission as being “to bring heaven, the fullness of God’s realm, into our daily lives, relationships, choices.” I love that – Jesus’s mission was less to get us into heaven, as the church has taught for 2000+ years, than to get heaven into us – to place the living love of God into us – God's living, breathing, active love in us. That’s what Easter is about.
Jesus faced plenty that was ugly when he was here among us, but he never gave up his focus on the love of the one he called Father. He saw hatred and greed and hopelessness and selfishness and envy and fear aplenty, but still, the God he knew so deeply and personally was not, in his vision, about retribution or revenge or punishment — but always about love. Love is what he came to give us ... to give, and to give, and to give – in spite of our clinging to our old fears and hatreds, and in spite of all that hatred had to throw at him, love is what Jesus gave us in return.
Love spoke in all his teaching and healing. Love hung on that hideous cross. And love it is that lives again in each and every one of us – loving and being, through and in us.
Love is why we exist. Love – I believe – is what God is. And everything that comes from God is the result of that love. Love creates. All that is flows from the creativity of God’s love. Love supports, love nourishes, love builds – and love invites – invites us to live here and now in that heaven which is the ultimate expression of God’s love. Love is why Jesus exists. Love is why Easter is so important – more important, really, than Christmas or any other holy day. Love is why we are here .....
And so hatred – for all its nagging, petty ugliness – for all its persistence in the world – for all its seeming inevitable-ness – hatred loses. Because the life-giving Creator who brought everything into being is determined to love us all into wholeness. And – as Easter proves again today, love will always win.
I took the title for this message from Rob Bell’s book, “Love Wins” which came out several years ago. That book was a huge shift in how I see our lives as Jesus people. It’s a reminder to me that God’s love is stronger than death, stronger than hate. It’s easy to lose that in the midst of the world’s news, but it’s true. Love wins. It’s not some heavy, convoluted theological dogma – it’s two short words. Easy to carry around with you every day: Love wins. I want to end today with the blessing with which Bell ended that book years ago. It lives in my house and my mind as part of that tattered array of random quotes scribbled on post-it notes and stuck up around my work desk:
- “May you experience this vast, expansive, infinite, indestructible love that has been yours all along. May you discover that this love is as wide as the sky and as small as the cracks in your heart no one else knows about. And may you know, deep in your bones, that love wins.”
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