Idle tale or New Life?
Easter Sermon c, March 27, 2016 (Luke 24:1-12)
Have you ever been terrified?
Have you ever been so overcome with fear that a number of your regular functions may have stopped or been altered: breathing; thinking, any number of bodily functions? (Pause)
I remember being absolutely terrified more than once. A couple in my parish had been having serious marital problems. On New Year's Eve they went out. They both drank too much. They got into a heated argument. Words were spoken. He struck her. She left taking their three boys. And now two days later when no one had heard from him or seen him, I was to go. He was not answering his phone. He was violent. He didn't like his neighbors. He had guns. I drove very slowly and very carefully into his yard – my head, barely above the dashboard. I was terrified – for him, for others, for myself.
A second time. Our youngest daughter was being born. But the birth was happening much more quickly than anyone could have anticipated. And now we found ourselves 30 miles from the hospital when that wee one's head began to present itself. I prayed ardently. I can't tell you exactly what I said. I don't usually say those things in church. But I was terrified – afraid that my wife would die – that our baby would die – that they both might die.
Being terrified at least some of the time is part of the human condition. Terrorists realize that if they can torture, kill or maim people, especially people just going about their daily business, then they will terrify us – and therefore have some degree of control over us. They are sending us a message: we can do this to you. Be afraid of us.
Today we meet some women who are terrified. But their being terrified is different than my terror or even the terror that terrorists attempt to inflict upon us.
These women are on their way to the tomb. They have been traumatized. Their friend Jesus whom they know and love only two days before had been brutally executed. They had witnessed his suffering and death on that cross. They had watched as people had ridiculed him, as the authorities tortured him, as some had even taunted him. Then they watched him die. In so many ways they themselves had done nothing...
Now right after their Sabbath rest they approach his tomb bearing spices. It's the least they could do – to lovingly care for his poor, dead body.
It's early morning, daylight just beginning to break. Dimly, they see ahead. The stone at the entrance to the tomb has been moved. They enter. But, his body isn't there! Their minds begin to race. But before they voice to their perplexity, two men in dazzling white stand right beside them. The women bow their faces to the ground. They are terrified. Their terror grows as the men speak, "Why do you seek the living among the dead?"
The women hear them correctly. Why do you seek the living among the dead? What a question! The women hadn't come seeking the living. They had come to do the right thing, the loving thing. Jesus is dead! That one thing they know, for sure! (Pause)
We also know about death. We can count upon death. Dead is dead. Once a person is terminated, expired, passed away – whatever term you choose, well, that's it. The stages along the way that may lead to death – separation, illness, different grades of tumours, on life support, well they may sometimes be reversed. Miracles can happen. But once death occurs – that's all she wrote. It's over.
Understandably we have all kinds of terror, panic, great fear about that both for ourselves and for our loved ones. After all, death is inevitable, isn't it? IN some ways the church proclaims and admits the inevitability of death. On Ash Wednesday we mark each other with ashes and say, "Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return."
But then, Easter morning comes! The women at the tomb came looking for the dead and are encountered some reality that is totally different, that at first frightens them beyond explanation.
Jesus was dead. Even historians agree. But now there is an empty tomb. Those men in dazzling white tell the women to remember. Remember what he said. He would be handed over to people who would seek to do their worst to him: ultimately to nail him to a cross. The women remember. They know that happened. They saw him suffer and die.
But now the dazzling white guys ask them to remember more. He also told them that on the third day he would rise again.
They didn't get to see the risen Jesus then. But they do hear the witness of those guys in dazzling white.
What we have today is also the word of these strange men, these terrified women and then the word of many other witnesses who in different ways have experienced this risen, living Jesus who most certainly was dead, but whom death and all of its accomplices could never hold.
Notice what those women do. They lift up their faces. They return from the tomb. They tell what they have heard to the 11 and the rest. They bear witness.
But the eleven and the rest think it is all an idle tale. That's actually a soft translation. The Greek word for idle tale is lerous. The early disciples thought that these women had lost it, that they were delirious.
Maybe the early disciples at first hearing were themselves terrified. What if what the women were saying was true? Nothing could ever be the same. If you can't count on death, well then what can you count on? If death is no longer the end, where is any certainty? Whom then can we trust?
Ah yes, whom can you trust? Whom do we trust? There's a question for every day of our lives – whatever is happening.
Today we are blessed to be encountered by a witness that defies logic, that flies in the face of so much of what we experience to be true.
Sometimes, like those early disciples both male and female, we get stuck in places of death – tombs if you will. We get stuck there because such realities are familiar to us. We know the rules of those places. We can bring our spices there. And even though the rules of such places often suck the very life out of us and others, they are more or less predictable. We know about them. Sometimes there's a strange 'comfort' in familiarity.
But God comes to those places – places of being stuck, places of death. God comes in ways that may completely surprise us, even terrify us. God comes taking on death in God's own flesh – God's own Son Jesus. There is great suffering and pain. But on the third day God raises God's own Son from the dead.
To be sure trusting this is anything but easy. I can't prove it. No one can. But I can tell you about it, share experiences of my own life and the lives of others God has touched, helped and delivered throughout our living, terror and loss, through sin and pain to new life.
So, let me ask you this. What if this isn't an idle tale? What if God can and does overcome death with life, hatred with love and terror with hope through God's own Son, who takes becomes vulnerable and gives Himself over to incredible suffering and death. What if this One, this One who has died and has been raised is the source of life? What then? (Pause)
Imagine the possibilities. It will take the totality of our lives to flesh them out and more. This is amazing - beyond being terrified, beyond being controlled by the fear of death. This is amazing. We can be, are being opened to new life beyond trying to fill ourselves. We too can give ourselves away.
Why don't we run with Peter to the tomb to see for ourselves. Jesus isn't there. So, let's leave this place to see where this living Jesus is leading us, directing us beyond death to new possibilities for ourselves and this world that God loves so much.
Sometime later, Peter begins to get it – this miraculous reality of Jesus. By God's grace we can too. For Christ is risen. He is risen indeed! Amen.