Sermon: Easter Sunday, April 21, 2019

Luke 23:54-56, 24:1-12 

⁵⁴It was the day of Preparation, and the sabbath was beginning. ⁵⁵The women who had come with him from Galilee followed, and they saw the tomb and how his body was laid. ⁵⁶Then they returned, and prepared spices and ointments. On the sabbath they rested according to the commandment.

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. ²They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, ³but when they went in, they did not find the body. ⁴While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. ⁵The 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.⁶Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, ⁷that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.” ⁸Then they remembered his words, ⁹and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. ¹⁰Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. ¹¹But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. ¹²But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.

On the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb.

The women had obeyed the commandment, to rest on the Sabbath,

but here they are, as soon as they can be,

at the tomb where they saw Jesus’ body laid.

We can imagine what they are feeling:

Grief. Loss. Despair. Helplessness. Hopelessness. Fear.

All these things they carry with them, through the dawning light,

through the city, through the garden, to the tomb.

And spices.

They bring spices along with their grief,

because even in grief there’s work to do,

and sometimes going through the motions carries us along the way through our grief.

But then there’s a surprise: the tomb is open, and empty.

Add “perplexed” to the list.

And then, 2 dazzling men stand before them, and speak.

Add “terrified”.

It’s no wonder they can’t make sense of this—none of it makes sense. 

They thought they knew what they were doing

when they set out early that morning with spices.

They knew their way, and their purpose.

But the body isn’t there to be anointed,

and they are having visions of heavenly beings.

Things beyond their control have changed their life for the worse,

and (we know) they’re about to be changed, again, for the better. 

But the moment they are in is perplexing and terrifying.

For the past 6 weeks, we have been engaging the penitential psalms,

psalms of lament and repentance.

We brought our laments to the “wailing wall”,

leaving a tangible prayer between the cracks,

our broken hearts poured out to God. 

Maybe it has been helpful to get it off our chest;

maybe we trust that God will do something about it,

that the sick, the children in Palestine and Israel,

those who grieve violent deaths,

who suffer the consequences of racism,

that the Earth itself and our natural environment—

we trust that God will bring redemption to all of it,

right out of the tomb of death, despair, grief, fear, loss,

helplessness, hopelessness that lurks so near.

Like the women at the tomb, we have carried all of that with us,

and here we stand, hoping, wishing, trusting,

that the emptiness of the tomb is not the end of our hope.

It might be a little troubling that Jesus is absent from

this resurrection story.

If only we could see him, then we’d know.

If the women could see him, hear him, know he is near,

then they’d know for sure.

But he isn’t here—that’s what the dazzling men tell them.

He isn’t here—because tombs house the dead, and he is risen!

The thing they have to do for all of this to make sense is to remember. 

“Remember what he told you?” the men ask.

“How he must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified,

and on the third day rise again? Right?”

And then, the story tells us, they remembered.

It does not say they believed; it says they re-membered.

They put the broken pieces back together

into something that they could recognize—

the promise Jesus made, the words he spoke, the way he lived. 

Suddenly the emptiness of the tomb is not perplexing, but promising. 

They know what it means: he isn’t here, he is risen!

This is an old, old story.

But we re-member it every year because it’s true,

and because we need it!

We need to remember what Jesus said,

how he told us about death AND resurrection,

repentance AND forgiveness, fear AND trust.

We need to know that God can take the brokenness of our lives,

the grief, loss, despair, helplessness, hopelessness, fear

all around us, and re-member this creation back into wholeness. 

The God who spoke life from chaos to form creation,

who spoke life from death in the voice of Jesus,

speaks also to our chaos, to our death, to our brokenness,

to bring hope and joy and beauty.

The empty tomb is the place we remember—

the past, yes, the stories of Jesus,

the promises of God,

the times we have known death and resurrection in our own lives. 

But this holy remembering also carries us forward,

as we “remember” the future,

the promise found in resurrection,

that death is not the end of the story.

Brokenness and lament and death get woven together

with promise and healing and life (point to our tapestry)

in a new creation.

This new life happens not only on Easter, but all the time.

This is what God does, bringing us back to life,

bringing us back to God.

Week after week we come to this communion table,

which you know, used to be shaped like a casket,

to remember the death of Christ.

We remember the words he spoke,

and we know they happened at his last supper,

just before he was crucified.

There is death all over this table.

But early on the first day of the week, we come.

We bring all of who we are—

whether it’s been a good week or a bad week,

whether we have it all together or it’s all falling apart—

we bring it.

We come to this table to remember what Christ has done for us,

but the memory goes backward and forward, past and future:

the death but also the resurrection,            

the past “then” but also the future “then”.

In this meal we taste fear AND trust,

repentance AND forgiveness, death AND resurrection.

The taste jogs our memory of the promise of new life in Christ Jesus. 

Then we are sent out, as the women ran from the tomb,

to tell others what we have seen and heard,

to remind people to remember the promise of God:

the resurrected Christ brings new life for all creation.

Hallelujah! Christ is Risen!