The empty tomb reveals both the joy and fear of new things: and our tendency to assume what our faith tells us not to.
Easter and the new start
The Great Vigil of Easter | Luke 24:1-12
Here we are at the end of a full, emotional, difficult week. We have spent so much time in discernment and reflection. We’ve read the Bible daily. Said prayers. Experienced the Passion once again. And so we arrive at this moment full of excitement and joy. We are genuinely excited to shout Alleluia again.
On Good Friday, I said we did not yet get to experience the release and now we do!
But one of the things I think we take for granted on Easter was just how confused and reluctant the disciples were in this story. We get that intellectually, don’t we? That it is part of the story. The disciples were skeptical when the women preached the Good News. Two thousand years later and we still have young men telling women preachers that they’re wrong to even try.
What I want for us tonight is to get a little clarity with this story so those alleluias can resonate even more.
So let’s quickly break down the action.
Some of the women following Jesus show up to the tomb to honor him. Notice none of the other followers are there. They are hiding and avoiding the gravity of death. Typical, right?
Then, when they get there, the body is gone. But two angels are there and say four things:
- Why are you looking here?
- Jesus isn’t dead;
- he was raised.
- He told you he’d die and be raised.
In short: What are you doing here? You knew he wouldn’t be here.
Then the women run back and proclaim the risen Christ to the other disciples. Who don’t believe them. Unlike the rest, however, Peter feels compelled to check it out anyway. And when he gets there, he’s amazed.
I want us to explore two things about this story. And they are directly related.
- The experience Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women had and
- The unbelief/skepticism of the other disciples.
After all, Easter is about trust.
So let’s work our way backwards.
I don’t assume to know how you read the story, but I think we all tend to just ignore the elephant in the room. That the people closest to Jesus, who saw all the miracles God made through him, just give the resurrection a big ol’ Naaahh. Not happening.
Our modernist, post-enlightenment brains really understand the logical skepticism here. We are onboard for that. We get it. So we don’t really catalog it as distrust. It’s rational skepticism. People don’t just rise up from the dead, so why should they believe Jesus did?
We understand this question at the most basic level. Because that is who we are, fundamentally. Skeptical, rational people who have little reason to believe and much reason not to.
But…
There is one significant reason they should believe.
Jesus said all of this would happen.
And shortly before they got to Jerusalem, Peter, James, and John heard the voice of God say “listen to him.”
What the disciples are demonstrating isn’t rational skepticism. It is active avoidance. They are refusing to listen now which reveals how they didn’t listen then.
This same idea of not listening happens to the women.
And it is why that line is just so good.
“Why do you look for the living among the dead?”
It’s a way of saying You should already know that he isn’t dead.
Because, if you were listening and trusted, then you already know the answer. He’s not here. They might not know where he is. But they would certainly know where he is not.
This is the bittersweet beauty of Easter.
Easter isn’t just milk chocolate, which is so creamy and easy to eat. It is also that 90% cocoa dark chocolate that is rich but not smooth. It has bite.
Of course, we, of all people, should know this.
Because we celebrate Jesus’s arrival in Jerusalem as bittersweet. The “cleansing” and teaching in the Temple are bittersweet. The anointing and the last supper are bittersweet.
Saying goodbye is bittersweet.
When my family comes to visit, I love to see them. I hate to see them go. And yet I also want the house back. So yes, I love to have them visit. And yes, I hate to see them go. It is all there in that one weekend.
And then, to top it off, getting Jesus back from the dead…is temporary. We get to celebrate for forty days before we have to say goodbye again with the Ascension.
Life itself is bittersweet!
So isn’t it telling that the Easter story we get is not actually a celebration? But it is, instead, about people who don’t really listen and struggle to trust that God is up to the challenge.
This is what we get. Because this is exactly what we need.
Because we’ve already been told to listen and trust. And we’ve heard the women in our time proclaim the good news and seen it with our own eyes.
And yet we still look for Jesus among the dead. Following dead programs and rituals. Refusing to seek him among the living. So often looking backward at what was and mourning its absence for us now.
But Jesus isn’t gone. Just our security. Power. Sense of stability. Or Clarity.
We don’t know where to look so we go to where we think he’s supposed to be. That’s not where he is! He isn’t among the dead. He’s with the living! Seek him there!
This is such Good News!
Yes it is scary. And I hear all the time how we don’t like change. Or we want things the way they were. And we must honor our stories of the way things used to be because they were of a time and our beloveds were following Jesus in it.
But this is the start of the third day. The tombs we continue to expect to be filled are empty. And we, like all of our predecessors, are drawn to looking in the wrong place.
And yet! In that place! The women encounter angels who are directing traffic. Angels who help them see that they are in the wrong place. That they already know it’s the wrong place. And they really do need to trust that Jesus knows what he’s talking about by now.
And the best part about all of this is that sometimes we’re those do-nothing disciples. Sometimes we’re the well-intentioned women. And sometimes we get to be those angels. Angels who are here to help the well-intentioned women look, not in the tomb, but out from it.