Easter Day C

Luke 24.1-12

April 4, 2010

            From our perspective up here you look like reasonable people.  You seem to be a rather intelligent bunch.  When I engage you in conversation, you seem to put some thought into what you say and do. 

            When you come to worship you look like you know what to expect; when to stand and when to sit, what songs to sing after which elements of the liturgy.  Today you appear to be particularly proper, dignified, very reasonable people. As the Gospel text was being read, you look so serious.  You have that look about you as if you have just heard the most reasonable thing ever written.  

            And so, I have to ask: Weren’t you paying any attention?  Didn’t you hear what I said? Was something different written on your bulletin than Luke Chapter 24 verses 1 through 12? 

            Nope, that’s what was read, that’s what was printed. You heard it read with your own ears.  You think it makes sense in your own minds.  And yet you seem like such reasonable people.

            Tom Long, professor of homiletics at Chandler School of Theology, tells a story in an Easter sermon about a church in some town in Georgia.  As the Gospel had been read and the pastor was about to start the sermon, someone stood up in the balcony and announced loudly, “I have a Word from the Lord!”  As you can imagine, heads whipped around, and the ushers bounded up the stairs at the speed of light and before the visitor could say another word, he was escorted to the street. 

            It’s not so different from the man in Penn Yan a number of years ago who stood on the town square and held up a sign week after week after week announcing that he had a message from God.  He just stood there in good weather and bad, holding his sign for the world to see what God had to say on any given day.  He smiled and waved at the cars and we smiled and waved as we drove by him.  And we were all immensely glad that he didn’t loudly announce his word from the Lord in any of our sanctuaries.  He was after all, a bit odd and it would be uncomfortable to have him and his strange message in worship.  He might even be disruptive and have to be removed.

            And yet, as Dr. Long points out in his sermon, week after week, when one of us in our dignified robes, with our libraries full of books, stands in front of you and announces, “The Word of the Lord,” no ushers come bounding down the aisle to escort us out; nobody smiles at us like we aren’t quite right, no one rolls their eyes at the absurdity of the message.

            Nope, you just all sit there like what you have heard is the most reasonable thing on the face of the earth.  Even today.  Of all days!! And you seem like such reasonable people. 

            Two days ago we heard the horrible story of death.  A man was put to death.  There were witnesses.  Lots and lots of witnesses.  He was really and truly dead.  He had been crucified, struggled for breath in great pain in the noonday sun.  He succumbed to death.  His friends watched from afar.  A follower of his took the body, wrapped it in grave clothes and placed it in a tomb.  Women who had been his followers watched to see where the body was laid.  And, because their friend was dead, they went home to prepare burial spices to anoint his body as soon as the Sabbath was over. 

            He was dead.  He was buried.  And dead is dead.  There’s nothing left but for the bugs and bacteria to do their thing.

            If this story was anything closely resembling reasonable, the women would have returned to the tomb, anointed the body, spent a prescribed amount of time grieving; the eleven would have grieved, pondered the words and deeds of their deceased friend but then gone back to collecting taxes and fishing and whatnot, better people for having known Jesus of Nazareth the misguided but loveable preacher, teacher, miracle worker.

            But instead, you are willing to listen to the most preposterous, unbelievable story every told.  It is a perplexing story.  It is completely unreasonable on so many levels. 

            The women return to the grave of their friend, desiring to perform their last and most loving service to him.  But instead the body is not there.  The grave is gaping open and the body is missing; only a pile of cloths remains.      

            (The dead do not move.  This is unreasonable.)

            Two men in dazzling clothes suddenly appear beside them.  The women fall down on their faces in sheer terror and the men ask, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” 

            (This is unreasonable.  Let me review.  Jesus is dead.  Where else would they look?)

            “Remember,” the men say, “remember what he told you.” 

            (Let’s review again.  Jesus is dead.  No matter what he said, reasonable folk would expect to find his body in that tomb.)

            But the women remembered his words—words about dying and rising on the third day--and so they ran back to the other disciples and told them all this.  But the disciples found it to be quite unreasonable. 

            (Finally some reasonable people appear in the story.)

            But Peter decided to check it out for himself and he ran to the tomb and stooped over and looked inside and all he saw were a pile of grave clothes and no body.  So he went home confused and dazed and wondering at the unreasonableness of the whole day. 

            (Yup.) 

            But then, when push comes to shove, you’re not really a very reasonable people, are you?  You start off reasonable enough, just like those women that first Easter morning.  You start off thinking that the dead should be in the tomb.  But when you see the empty tomb, just like those women you remember, you remember his words and you believe them.  You believe the words about rising again in three days, just like you’ve always believed all his other preposterous, unreasonable words:  love your enemies, turn the other cheek, lay down your sword, deny yourself and go grab a cross and follow me to death, love one another as I have loved you.  These are just not reasonable admonitions.

            But then since the beginning of time our God has not called us to be reasonable people because God is not at all a reasonable God.  After all, who among us would, after leading a nation out of captivity and toward the promised land, countenance such patience when the whining and complaining started?  Who among us would have sent prophets, priests and kings, only to have them disobeyed and ridiculed and destroyed and then sent yet another messenger, another point of hope, another chance at life to those who were disobedient, disrespectful and destructive? 

            Reason would dictate that patience would run out and the towel thrown in and humanity left to its own demise.  But not for our God who set the cosmos in motion, planted a garden in Eden and gave his only begotten son to redeem those, you and me, whose sense of reason dictates that criminals be punished, not join Christ is paradise. 

            God’s power and might and wisdom is greater than our reason.  God never gives up on creation.  God is faithful and just beyond any reasonable expectation, fulfilling all of God’s promises.  God loves us with an everlasting, abiding love; sacrificing, crucifying God’s beloved Son for our salvation.  Just so, just so that we know with assurance, beyond any reasonable doubt, that we too shall be raised and live a new life with him. 

            For this unreasonable story is not just about Christ being raised from the dead, as wild as that is.  It’s about an even more unreasonable reality that we live: a reality grounded in the promises of baptism:  “because we have been baptized into a death like his, certainly we have been baptized into a resurrection like his.” 

            Remember his promises, friends.  Remember how he called you by name.  Remember your baptism. Remember that you are his forever. Remember his body and blood, given and shed for you.  Remember his continued presence in your life.  Remember his never failing, unending love grounded in Christ. 

            When it all seems so terribly unreasonable, and when nothing makes any sense any more; when the world seems to be spinning wildly out of control and we seem to have no direction; come with the women and Peter and look into the tomb and believe what reason cannot explain:  That he is risen!  He is risen indeed, alleluia! 

            Hmmm.  And you seem to be such reasonable people!