Then They Remembered

Luke 24: 1-12, page 748

On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.
While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. In their fright the women bowed down with 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; he has risen!
Remember how he told you while he was still with you in Galilee: The son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.”
Then they remembered his words.
When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others. It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles.
But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense.
Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened.
Sermon
Many a preacher has spent his or her Easter Sunday sermon on what theological types call “apologetics,” that is, rational argument to convince listeners of the truth of the resurrection.
But it occurs to me that this task is pretty difficult when you consider what all the disciples heard, and yet, they could not believe it.
The disciples rejected what the women were saying as nonsense our pew Bibles say, but this word has also been translated as “an idle tale”, “legend”, “foolishness”, or “mere fantasy”.
Jesus had warned them, and they knew enough about this man to take him at his word. They had seen him do the impossible – heal so many people who had been waiting for someone to do what a doctor could not; but not only that, they had seen him raise others from the dead. So when he fulfilled the prophecy about himself that he spoke to them they should not have been unbelieving, they should have been expecting it all along.
Instead, fearing that they might be discovered and meet the same death on the cross that their leader had suffered, they hid as though they had no idea what was going to happen next and wanted nothing more than to survive.
When you really think about it, if they had been paying attention to what Jesus had been saying, they should never have let those women waste their money on burial materials because they should have known that there would be no body to bury – that there would be no corpse to embalm.
On hearing that what Jesus said would happen had actually happened, the disciples acted as though they didn’t have time for stories and wouldn’t hear anything of it.
What should have been expected had become for the disciples nothing more than foolishness; some broken promise that they knew now would never come true. They had given up on their dream of a new Kingdom, and now was the time to put foolish stories away.
The same is true for so many of us today – now is certainly not a good time for stories.
Families of Russian subway victims, mothers, wives, children, husbands, and friends – their tear- stained cheeks laid down on loved one’s caskets don’t want to hear stories about how everything is going to be hunky-dory.
The unemployed don’t need a children’s story to boost their self-esteem, they need jobs.
And the disciples had watched their leader suffer from a distance, but not a distance far enough away to avoid his screams as they nailed him to the cross, not far enough to miss the brutality of his death by human hands – not far enough away to mistake the cruel message Rome sent anyone who would stand in its way.
The Gospel was a good ideal for a while, but this is not the time for stories, they said, this is the time for survival.
So they abandoned their heritage of faith out of fear, as though faith were not for just such a time as this.
There are plenty of people in the world who believe things about Christianity that just are not true – that for Christians every day is sunshine and roses, that smiles are permanently pasted on our faces – but I’ve read the Bible and I feel confident in saying that not a single one of the good books was written when everything was going great, but when everything was falling apart.
Faith was not given to us so that we would best enjoy the spring time, but it was given to us so that when the waters rise, when Pharaoh tightens his grip, or when Pilate sentences Christ to die, we do not give up, but go on believing.
Unfortunately, like the disciples, it is during hardship and when we are most afraid that we turn away from the very thing that will help us through.
The recession has hit hard and businesses have cut back, but where unemployment hurts the worst is when it gets at how you feel about yourself. When unemployment strikes we forget our faith; we forget to have faith in ourselves.
Finances get tight and the very first thing to be cut from our budget is benevolences. When finances get tight we forget our faith, we forget to have faith in the God who will provide enough.
Believing that there is a reason things happen, that there is a God working on our behalf, these are convenient truths that we forget when life gets hard, and so we forget to have faith in the God who works for good in hardship, who makes all things new, who parts the waters and makes a way where there was no way before.
We leave these stories behind as though they were just foolishness, push them away as though they were fairy tales in favor of what would seem to be the truth.
So those men in clothes like lightening stand before us today, calling us to remember what he said so that we might make sense of the world around us:
“Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: The son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.”
Then that group of brave women remembered his words.
Only in remembering did any of it make any sense – only in trusting that all of it was part of some divine plan could they see beyond their fear and into the future.
-That before there was Rome there was God, and God is still here today while Rome has crumbled to ruins
-That before this recession there was God, and God is still here for you today, will be here tomorrow, outlasting unemployment, foreclosure, and self-doubt.
-That before there was even an earth there was God, and when all of this falls away there will still be this God’s love, outlasting all your fear and all your doubt.
It is so easy to forget and so you must remember that Christ promised death would not have the final word – now open your eyes, remember and believe that Christ has risen!
Alleluia.
Amen.