"Idle Talk or Gospel Truth?"
Luke 24:1-12
Those of you who were here on Palm Sunday or Maundy Thursday heard the
powerful story of how Jesus offered his life in the ultimate act of sacrificial
love and was crucified on the cross. The gospel story tells us how the body of
Jesus was taken down from the cross and taken to a nearby tomb... and sealed in with a big stone that was rolled
against the opening.
There wasn’t time to finish
preparing Jesus’ body for burial before the Sabbath began, so in the darkness just before sunrise on the
day after the Sabbath, the women head back to the tomb, bringing the spices and
ointments they need to finish preparing Jesus’ body for burial.
When they get to the tomb, they find that the stone has been rolled away,
and the tomb is empty! The women are standing
there, not knowing what to make of what they see, when suddenly two men in dazzling white
clothes are standing beside them. They’re terrified! They bow down in awe. But the men say to them, “Why are you
looking 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?”
The women run back to tell the rest
of the disciples. But they don’t
believe them. The news seems to them an
“idle tale.” Actually, as David Lose
points out, that’s a fairly generous translation of the Greek word leros. The word is the root of our word “delirious.” So it seems they thought what the women were
saying was crazy—utter nonsense.[1]
And, if we’re to be honest, who can blame
them? Resurrection isn’t about a claim
that Jesus’ body was resuscitated. It’s
a claim that God created an entirely new reality. But it flies in the face of common sense. Dead men don’t just get up and walk out of
their tombs. Resurrection breaks all the old, familiar rules that help us to
understand how things work in the world.
Then-- as now-- we often don’t know how to respond to the
unexpected… things that don’t fall neatly into our preconceived ways of
thinking. So Peter gets up and runs to
the tomb to check things out for himself.
He stoops down and looks in, and he sees the linen grave cloths lying
there empty. Then he heads for home, amazed
at what had happened.
The first disciples were reeling
with grief. Their beloved friend, their
leader-- the one person on whom they had staked everything, had just been
tortured and killed. Now his body had disappeared. Everything that was happening that first
Easter was new… unfamiliar…strange. It
was hard to take it all in.
Each of the gospels makes it clear
that the disciples didn’t come quickly to believe in the resurrection. They respond with a mixture of emotions: fear…great joy…amazement…and doubt. It takes more than an empty tomb for the
disciples to understand and to become believers.
And yet the disciples do follow
Jesus after the resurrection. Some even
follow him to their own deaths.
The
tomb is empty, and Christ is risen. Death
does not have the final word. Love and
life are stronger than fear and death. Everything is new. Anything is possible with God.
This was a perplexing new reality. But they follow in faith--without fully grasping
the meaning of it all.
Isn’t that what a lot of us do? You and I may not fully understand what
happened on that first Easter Sunday long ago.
That’s why we call it a mystery!
But every now and then, if only for a fleeting moment, Jesus is especially
alive and real to us.
In the coming weeks we’ll hear some
of the stories about how the Risen Christ appeared to his disciples. They recognize
him as the Risen Christ. Then he vanishes from their sight.
It’s a pattern that’s common in the resurrection
stories. Jesus is there. Then he’s gone. Though they experience his presence, they
can’t grab on to him and keep him there.
But they come to know the Risen Christ in powerful ways in their daily
lives and work.
It was not at the empty tomb that
these people came to know the Risen Christ.
It was as they sought to follow him--as they experienced his power and
love in their lives and among the community of faith-- that they knew his
presence. As they followed the Risen
Christ, they were transformed into Easter people!
In the days following Jesus’
crucifixion, the first disciples were huddled behind locked doors, trembling in
fear. But over time they were transformed and
empowered to witness to the Gospel.
In the early days of the church growing
numbers of people came together for prayer and to study the scriptures and became more and more generous and loving in
their relationship with others. People
looked at Christians and exclaimed, “See how they love one another! See how joyful they are!” And they wanted to be a part of that
movement. Even though, in the earliest
centuries of the church, following Christ could bring persecution, the church
grew like wildfire and transformed the world.
The Risen Christ is present in the
lives and in the work of those who seek to follow him—those who, even if they don’t
comprehend the meaning of the resurrection fully... even if we can’t explain exactly what
happened on that first Easter. The Risen
Christ is present among the living—among the faithful.
The Risen Christ has been present
with the faithful throughout history. We
remember some of their names: Francis of Assisi…and Hildegarde of Bingen… Dietrich
Bonhoeffer…. Archbishop Romero…Margin
Luther King… and Mother Theresa… and others known and unknown to us.
The Risen Christ is present among
the living: among ordinary people who work
tirelessly and joyfully building Habitat houses for poor people… and cleaning
up and rebuilding after disasters… developing job skills at Focus Hope.
The Risen Christ is with those who prepare meals and sort clothes to
serve the homeless and desperately poor people who are the guests at Fort
Street Open Door.
The Risen Christ is with us when we
assemble health and school kits and baby layettes for those in need…and when we
share God’s love through the One Great Hour of Sharing offering.
The Risen Christ is with the
faithful remnant of Palestinian Christians who witness to their faith in the
Holy Land...and with those whose faith empowers them to work for God’s justice
and peace.
The Risen Christ is present when
congregations become communities of welcome and hope and healing and empowerment,
where broken and hurting people find support and encouragement and help and
healing.
The Risen Christ is present with a congregations
that emerge from sadness over the losses
they’ve experienced and their anxiety
about survival... and make a new
beginning for a new time with courage and a sense of adventure and openness to follow wherever Christ leads.
At Easter, part of what we celebrate
is Jesus’ victory over death and our
own hope of life beyond death through our faith in him. That’s an important dimension of Easter.
But there’s another dimension that
sometimes we miss-- the present
dimension. We are called to participate
in it now, because Christ is alive and present with us. When
we place our TRUST in the risen and living Christ, we can experience new freedom
and strength and courage. We can
experience new life, as God’s Easter people.
Most Sundays, as part of the act of
confession, I declare to you in the declaration of forgiveness: “Anyone who is in Christ is a new
creation. The old life has gone. A new life has begun.”
The good news of Easter invites us
turn from the power of sin and evil … and to live a new life, as we follow the
Risen Christ in the way of self-giving love and justice and peace.
In his “Parable of the Eagle,” James Aggrey tells of a man who found a young
eagle in the forest. He took the
orphaned eagle home and put it in his barnyard with his chickens, where it soon
learned to eat chicken feed... and to act
like a chicken.
One day a naturalist who was passing
by asked why an eagle-- the king of all
birds-- should be living in a barnyard
with chickens. The owner said, “Since I’ve raised it to be a chicken, it
never learned to fly. It behaves as chickens behave, so it’s no
longer an eagle.”
“But it still has the heart of an
eagle,” said the naturalist. “Surely it can be taught to fly.”
After talking it over, the two men
agreed to find out whether this was possible.
The naturalist picked the eagle up gently and said, “You belong to the sky and not to the earth. Stretch forth your wings and fly.”
But the eagle was confused. He didn’t know who he was. He looked down at the chickens eating their
food. He jumped down to each chicken
feed with them again.
The next day the naturalist took the
eagle up on the roof of the house and
tried the same thing with the same results.
The third day he took the eagle to a
high mountain where there were some other eagles. He held it up and said, “You are an eagle. You belong to the sky as well as to the earth. Stretch forth your wings now and fly.”
He lifted the great bird toward the sun. The eagle began to tremble as he slowly
stretched his wings. Then, with a
triumphant cry, he soared into the air.
Like the naturalist in that story,
the risen Christ invites you and me to live as Easter people. Jesus invites each of us to put our trust in
his power and love, and to follow him in the life of joy and peace and
abundance he offers us. We are called
to live more and more fully into our God-given identity as beloved children of
God, and to live into hope.
The first disciples went to the tomb
that first Easter looking for a dead Messiah.
But what they found was an empty tomb.
They were confused and fearful.
But within a few days, the followers of Jesus were telling the world
that Christ, the King of Love, was alive and making all things new.
We have come to the tomb and found
it empty. Like those first disciples, we
have been given a mission and a message to tell the others. We, too, need to look beyond the empty tomb... and trust God to show us the risen and living
Savior and the new life to which we are called.
Like those first disciples, we are
witnesses of amazing things.
So--
what do we do about that? Tune
in-- same time, same place-- next Sunday and the following Sundays, as we
discover together more about what it means to be God's Easter people in this
new time.
Easter isn't over at the end of today.
This is the beginning of Easter-tide, the season when we are led further
into God's truth for God's Easter people…further into God’s new creation.
In this broken and fearful world,
“the Spirit gives us courage to pray without ceasing, to witness among all
peoples to Christ as Lord and Savior, to unmask idolatries in Church and
culture, to hear the voices of peoples long silenced, and to work with others
for justice, freeom, and peace.”[2]
Every act of love, every deed done
in the name of Christ, by the power of the Spirit… every work of true
creativity—healing families, doing justice, making peace, seeking and winning
true freedom—is an earthly event in a long history of things that carry the
resurrection out into the world and anticipate the final new creation.
The good news for us today is that
when we gather in Christ's name, Christ will be with us, calling us into to hope
and wholeness and freedom.
Christ is risen!
Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!
Rev. Fran Hayes, Pastor
Littlefield Presbyterian Church
Dearborn, Michigan
March 27, 2016
[1] David
Lose, in Working Preacher ……..
[2] Brief
Statement of Faith, Presbyterian Church (USA), 1991.
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