Luke 24:1-12
We are here to celebrate Easter, the story of resurrection. We’re expecting a story of victory: life over death. But at its heart, this is first a story of grief. Before we can understand the message of life, we have to first understand death. This may be a good year to begin with death, because many of us are grieving. We’ve lost friends and family members. We’ve lost the story about how life is supposed to unfold. We’re afraid for what our future might hold. We can touch the loss of death with more authenticity than we sometimes do in our busy and distracted lives.
Over the centuries the church has described Jesus’ death as God’s plan for salvation. Because the world is broken and sinful, someone has to pay for what is wrong. God sends Jesus to pay the price, fight the devil, overcome death, set us all free. The death is a plan for good and God has everything under control. There are some good messages in that explanation, but it’ s not the way the first Easter went down. The only folks in control at that moment were the soldiers and the rulers appointed by Empire. There was nothing good about them being in charge.
Jesus dies by crucifixion because Rome saw him as an insurrectionist. We believe his “kingdom” was not of this world and wasn’t a military challenge to Rome. But anyone talking about living under God and not Ceasar was a threat to Empire. Anyone empowering the rabble to live with dignity was a threat. Anyone feeding the hungry so they weren’t dependent on Roman charity was a threat. Anyone drawing crowds and giving people hope was a threat. Peasants who threatened Rome’s power in any way were crucified. They were hung from crosses in public places so that everyone could see what happens to people who dare do anything but submit to Roman power. Their deaths were common, they were excruciatingly long and painful, and they were meant to intimidate.
So what do we know about the women who went to find Jesus’ body early in the morning after the sabbath and the men who stayed behin?. We know they were grieving. They had witnessed the horrible death of a person who had transformed their lives. We know they were intimidated. They had no guarantees that they wouldn’t be next. Often whole movements of people were crucified together, just to make a point. We know they would have been remembering scenes from Jesus’ life and their lives with him. We do that. We remember and tell the stories. It’s unusual that they were going to a grave, because most crucified bodies were dumped in large piles for the dogs and vultures to finish destroying them. When they don’t find a body, it would have been natural for them to assume the gift of a tomb had been rescinded and Jesus’ body had been returned to the pile of those crucified with him. That makes their loss even greater. They have lost the ability to say goodbye with spices and ointments and tears.
What they weren’t ready for was angels telling them the body had been resuscitated. That Jesus was alive. That story only adds to their confusion. They run to tell the men what they’ve seen, and even when the men come to see for themselves, they don’t understand. They go home to mull it over and try to make sense of it. We all know that fresh grief is not the best time to make sense of anything.
It’s a temptation for us to hear the Easter story and think, “Hooray! God made everything better!” Three days pass and everything is alright again, only in a new and unheard-of way. Does that match with your experience of death and grief? I’m thinking turning resurrection into a divine magical finale does a great disservice to the profound pain of the moment and the incredible hope it eventually becomes. God didn’t just kiss Jesus’ wounded body and make it all better. What God did was much more. God entered into the pain of the disciples and the pain of the world and showed them how to walk into new life. But making life new takes time and effort and all of us participate in the process. Resurrection is a process, and it may have started on Easter, but we’re still in the thick of it today.
Resurrection begins with stories. The disciples remembered the stories of Jesus – how he accepted the outcasts, healed those rejected by everyone, fed those hungry for bread, fed those hungry for hope. They remembered how he taught them that the true power of God was love and the power of community was loving one another. They remembered how he was fearless and steadfast and believed so strongly in the possibility of life that he faced even death. This week someone told me she didn’t believe in heaven, but she believed her husband who died years ago was still with her because she could feel him and hear him every day. I believe that’s what the disciples came to know about Jesus; he was with them. Someone I read this week says that’s a poor excuse for a resurrection. I beg to differ. I say it makes resurrection possible for everyone who’s ever lived and been loved by family and friends.
The power of resurrection is what rose slowly among the disciples until they believed that Jesus wasn’t gone and the movement wasn’t over. They remembered how he taught them to live and care for one another and they worked out together how to put it into practice. They welcomed strangers into their homes. They ate together and invited even the ones who didn’t have food to bring to the potluck. They learned how to love each other, even when they disagreed or got on each other’s nerves. They stayed under the Roman radar and they created a kingdom of God among them that infected the whole world with love.
This kind of resurrection takes a lifetime or a couple of thousand years. I want you to have a clear picture of how it grows from the heart out and is fed by the connections we find in community. I hope you can see that we’re still living this resurrection into reality today. That’s why we tell the stories of Jesus when we gather. It’s why we tell the stories of heroes across the ages and those who live today. We tell the stories of where we’ve been light in the world every week because it reminds us that there IS light in the world and we make it visible.
Jesus’ disciples lived in a world in which there was no reason to hope and they found reasons to keep hope alive. They lived in a world in which people were devalued and discounted and crucified and they learned to love each other and taught those around them to see the world through the eyes of love. They lived in a world of abusive power and discovered a deep connection to an even greater power they called God which filled the universe and made new life possible.
We live in a world that’s much less certain than it was just a bit ago. This world is asking us to devalue people who differ from us, to fear abusive power, to give up hope. Some folks want us to believe that it doesn’t matter if people are fed and illness healed, if children are embraced and those who struggle are lifted up. There is reason to be intimidated. But we don’t stand in this world alone. We are a community built on the foundation of the faith of generations. We are the next page in a long story that refuses to give up hope and insists on the power of love. We are joined in creating new life by the power of God’s love which fills the universe and fills our hearts and will never leave us. We know resurrection because we are living resurrection together.