The Living

 Luke 24:1-12

I have always hated the question Why?

Not as in, Why is the sky blue?  but as in, Why did you leave the car on empty?

Why? can sometimes be less of a question and more of an indirect way to make a point.  

Why are we having that for dinner?

Why didn’t you turn in that assignment? 

Oh no! Why did you break that? 

Trying to answer these why questions only makes you feel like an idiot.

Because I wanted to make life harder for you. 

Because I was hoping to disappoint you, and I succeeded! 

Because I was trying to get in trouble. 

Because I obviously wasn’t being careful and probably shouldn’t be trusted with valuable things.

So I think that the angels’ choice to announce the resurrection with a Why question is both kind of terrible and pretty awesome. 

Why do you look for the living among the dead?, they ask the terrified women.

The simple answer is, as you know, angels, they don't.  

They are not looking for the living at all. 

Don't pretend you don't know that they are looking for the dead. 

They are looking for the body of their friend whom they had loved and lost. As far as they know he’s buried here, with all the other dead.  They came for the ritual, the practice, the pattern, the next and final steps in his story.  

They came to put spices on his body and to grieve their loss. 

They came to say their final goodbye and bury him properly.

And it was the right thing to do.

Jesus was gone. 

The revolution was over, the promise came to nothing, their hopes for the future he’d promised had collapsed when he hung on that cross, and disappeared when he breathed his last,  Now they were coming to show their love and respect, and to tend to the body of their dead friend and teacher.  

Nobody around here is, as you say, “looking for the living.”  

This story is over. Nobody comes back from death. 

This is how this story goes. 

This is how the story is going, until strangers in dazzling clothes show up, and ask,Why are you looking for the living among the dead? 

And suddenly, the story is torn open, interrupted by a completely different story. 

This seems to be how God operates. God interrupts. 

God breaks into the story we’re living and introduces a new story. 

The bible is full of these sorts of shenanigans.  

A baby in a basket rescued by a princess. 

A bush that burns without being consumed. 

A widow with her last bit of flour and oil. 

A shepherd boy in the field about to be anointed king. 

A couple far too old to have a baby. 

A peasant girl in Galilee and a carpenter happily engaged to be married. 

Some fishermen going all night without a catch.

A tax collector up in a tree to get a better view. 

A leper living as an outcast from his community.  

A woman hemorrhaging for twelve years. 

A father whose son is trapped by terrible fits.  

They were each living their story. And as content or miserable as they may have been, their stories at least made sense. They were familiar and known, and, if not tolerable, at least understandable. Then God interrupts their story. 
And it its place God gives them a completely new story. 

So why did these women who loved and followed Jesus come to the tomb, as you say, angels, to look for the living among the dead?

They didn’t. That’s not why they came.  That isn’t their story. 

But these messengers are about to make it their story.  God interrupts what they thought was their story, to give them a completely new story.

It wasn’t that Jesus hadn’t told them this was coming.

The angels go on to say, "He is not here, but has risen.”

And then they add that helpful, and not at all snarky, frequent follow-up word to the Why question, Remember? As in, 

Remember I told you to fill up the tank before you got home? 

Remember how I am always saying how much I hate turkey burgers?  
Remember I reminded you to turn in that paper this morning? 

Remember I told you that cup was an irreplaceable souvenir and to be careful with it?  

"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?"

Oh yes! He did say something like that, quite often in fact. But those words didn’t really mean anything in the old story. They made no sense then. 

But now, now they hear his words all over again as though for the first time. And in this story, these words are everything.

So these women, now living in a new story, run back to tell the rest of the disciples about it.

And of course, the disciples do what everybody does when they’re confronted with a new story: they resist it. 

Here’s another part of Luke’s resurrection story that makes it my favorite this year. When the women arrive breathless and shaken, and announce to the rest of the disciples the news that Jesus is alive, the text says the disciples consider it to be complete bullsh*t. Literally. Bunk, malarkey, absolute rubbish.  That is a load of crap, they say, You are off your rocker.  

Peter, at least, is willing to go investigate further. 

The rest just stay put and shake their heads.

These are the people closest to Jesus, the ones most likely to believe them about what they had just witnessed, because they too had heard Jesus’ words about this very thing. But like the women, those words had meant nothing in their old story. And, for now at least, they are still in the old story. 

The disciples are not stupid. They know how stories go, and it’s not like this.  In fact, in all four gospels, there is not a single person who believes in the resurrection right away.  Nobody.  In John’s telling Mary thinks Jesus is the gardener.  In Mark, they run away terrified and tell nobody, (an ending later scribes try to soften out and clean up because it doesn’t inspire much confidence). On the road to Emmaus the disciples think Jesus is a stranger, and Thomas has to put his hands right into Jesus’ side, and not a single person says on their own, Check out that empty tomb! Oh yeah, he’s risen! He said that would happen!

If you scan all four gospels for the feeling words at this moment, there is no joy or happiness or confidence and trust. There is: fear, confusion, amazement, terror, bewilderment, wonder, and disbelief.

This is how we react to interruption.  This is how we greet resurrection.

We all live inside the stories we have. We’re pretty attached to our stories. They make sense, and have served us well.  And in our stories, people don’t come back from death.  These followers of Jesus had seen political upstarts crushed by the Romans; they knew the pattern. They’re living in a familiar pattern. He’s dead. He’s buried. Prepare the spices. Rest on the Sabbath. Go the next day for the last time to care for the body.  Figure out how to move on with your life. That’s what comes next. That’s the story. 

We all live inside the patterns we know, patterns shaped by the forces around us, and the experiences behind us. We’ve learned some things about how the world works, about how life works, and relationships and rules, and we base our choices on what we’ve learned. 

Maybe we’ve learned that some people are more important than others. Or not to speak up or you’ll get shot down. Not to wish for things so you wont be disappointed. Not to count your chickens before they’re hatched. Maybe we’ve learned how to hit first, or how to guard your heart.  How to assess situations and calculate the risks. Certainly we’ve learned how to compete and compare, and gain and lose, and earn, and lie, and protect, and survive.  

We are all living, sometimes content and sometimes miserable, inside our stories, inside our own patterns. They are familiar and known, and if not tolerable, at least they’re understandable. 

But a disciple is someone whose story has been interrupted by God.  And in its place God gives them a completely new story.  Now their story is told inside the story of Christ. Now their story begins again, with life coming out of death, and hope born from their places of despair, with unbreakable connection and belonging to God and to others at its center.

Sometimes we call this a testimony, the telling of our story from the place it begins anew, which gives a whole new understanding to everything that happened before. 

“It was in this place of utter hopelessness that God met me.” 

“It was here that my life was transformed.”  

A disciple’s whole story – from the first breath to the last, is now seen through the lens of the interrupting God.  

That’s how we remember.  Remember …?

And then words and experiences and encounters that didn’t really mean anything in the old story are now seen again as though for the first time. In this new story, these moments that were nothing before become everything, because the presence of the one who comes in bringing life is recognized doing that all throughout our story.

The women come to the tomb to end the story. This was the last chapter. 

Instead, it’s the whole new thing.

When we return to the dead places within us, it usually to bury them properly.  We return to the places of pain and heartache for resolution and closure. We go to those tombs to grieve and let go. To make our peace and move on.  We don’t look among the dead parts of ourselves to find new life there.  But that’s what God does. That’s where God goes. 

Remember this Lent, how we’ve been talking about going toward our nothingness instead of fleeing from it? Going toward whatever it is that we fear will take our lives from us, toward our death, our impossibility, our weakness?  We go there to die to whatever we think makes us safe, or strong, or secure, or protected. We go to die to whatever it is we believe will give us life, so that we can find there the God who brings life out of death. 

Our world is so filled with suffering and brokenness; there is so much pain and struggle.  Death is an ever-looming threat. We need a savior who has been through death, been into our places of nothingness and the world’s too, and who has come out the other side with life.  We need the Jesus who is doing something right now about the death inside of us, the death between us, the death in the world. We need a living God.

Christ goes where there is death.  The One who lives is there now, in our places of death, starting a new story for us.  The new story will not look like anything we recognize – it’s not a continuation of the old story. That one has died. It’s a completely new story, unexpected, unprecedented, unfolding before us in ways we can’t anticipate.  It often requires that we trust and step into something we don’t understand and can’t necessarily explain or make sense of.  And this new story will be filled with remember moments that redeem the past as well, and reveal interruption all along the way.

This is salvation.  God goes into our places of death to bring new life.

And when that happens, when resurrection happens, it looks different for each of us, as it does for the disciples, when they each encounter the living One for themselves.  

God meets us in our places of death, and our deaths are unique to us. We share the same human story; Jesus shared that story with us too. But each human story is unique; only we know what it is to be inside our skin. Only we have felt death’s sting the way it has come to each of us.  So the new life that comes from our places of death is also distinct. 

And it is from these experiences of transformation, these moments where life has been breathed into the dead bones of us, and hope has sprung from the despairing soul of us, it is from here that we are called to minister. It is out of our dead places and our new beginnings that we go to others in their places of death. And we go as minister, that is, to be with and for others as Jesus is with and for us. We are those who live in this world from our weakness and not from our strength. We live this life from vulnerability and truth. This is our new story as disciples.  

Run to your tombs, beloved, and look there for the living One. 

Look in your places of death for the One who brings life.  

God, who interrupts death with life, starts our stories over again.  

Imagine Forgiveness… 

Imagine Healing...

Imagine Hope… 

Our stories are meant to be interrupted and rewritten.  

That is who God is. That is what God does. That is grace.

It turns out maybe the angels weren’t just being difficult and provocative.  

Maybe they were onto a real question after all.  And maybe it’s one we can answer.

Why do you look for the living among the dead?

We look for the living among the dead because that is where Jesus goes.  That is what Jesus does.  We should all be looking in our places of death for the living one. 

This is what it means to follow the Risen Lord.  This is what it means to live in resurrection.

Amen.