Easter Sunday- Garden Hope 10:30 worship

While we are dressed in our Easter finest, singing and shouting out He is Risen, that’s not what we find in Luke’s account this morning. Instead we begin with quiet footsteps at dawn, arms laden with burial spices, and heavy hearts. The women were headed to the tomb. Who were these women? We are told of Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and perhaps although not mentioned explicitly, Susanna. These were the women who funded the ministry of Jesus out of their own resources. These are the women who followed Jesus, who loved him, who gathered at the base of the cross and wept as he was taken down from it, who followed others to the grave and had seen his body.

And so today’s text begins with women going to the grave to help finish caring for the body in its postmortem state to help mask the scent of death. It was an act of love. While everyone else is hiding or keeping to themselves, the women are up early making their way to care for Jesus’s body.

But when they get there, I imagine baskets being slung and spices all over the ground in a cloud. The tomb is open. The body of Jesus gone and linen cloths remaining. As they are standing inside the tomb, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes are appear beside them and the women become terrified and fall with their faces to the ground. The first reaction to Easter in the gospel of Luke is women bowing down inside a tomb with their faces in the dirt.

Nancy Claire Pittman says “In the face of the totally unexpected mystery that confronts them, this abasement seems wholly appropriate. The stone rolled away from the doorway, the body of their teacher gone, the appearance of two strangely bright men—all these things cannot help but elicit their terrified awe. Yet we who are accustomed to this story, who are used to thinking of Jesus as our good buddy, who have tried to make God as knowable and dependable as breakfast cereal, hardly linger at the dreadful silence of these women with their faces in the dirt.”

Just imagine. They didn’t know what was going on. They aren’t in their Easter frocks. They aren’t planning an egg hunt. They were terrified. Where was Jesus? Certainly not in this account. Who are these men? What is going on?

Then the men in bright ask one of the most powerful questions that we face as Easter people: “Why do you look for the living among the dead?

Can we hear that again? Why do you look for the living among the dead?

But really, where else would the women have gone to find Jesus? They had seen him crucified, seen his body in the tomb. Of course they would have expected him to still be in the tomb, because nothing and no one comes back from crucifixion. They were looking among the dead because that is where they expected death to be. It is what they knew. At the end of the day, death seemed stronger and more permanent and surer than hope ever had.

They looked for the living among the dead because maybe they didn’t know to expect any different. They were grief-stricken and scared. Dear ones, we know how easy it can be to only expect the worst. If your dreams are dashed. If others seem out to get you. If you simply can’t get ahead. When your own quality of life seems to hang in the balance. Death feels like the endgame, not a beginning.

“Why do you look for the living among the dead?

Sometimes we try to make our own Easter or DIY hope, looking for life and trying to cling to in places and in ways that are fruitless while the risen Lord has left the tomb and gone on ahead. Jesus isn’t hanging around the tomb here but how many times do we?

He is not here but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to the hands of sinners and be crucified and on the third day rise again.”

Remember. Remember. Remember.

Here in this Easter account, we don’t have a sighting of Jesus. We don’t have Mary running and saying “I have seen the Lord.” All we have to go on is Luke’s account is an empty tomb and two men asking “why do you look for the living among the dead” and urging us to remember what Christ has said.

What if this were the only account we had to go on? An empty tomb and the witness of women who didn’t even see him? Where things are left unresolved or mysterious as Peter peeks into the tomb. Is Easter more about scientific proof and concrete evidence or the testimony of those who believe? Is Easter hope merely a past fact that we nod our heads and agree to or a future something we long for, or does resurrection have any relevance here and now?

Why do you look for the living among the dead? Remember what he told you. I imagine the women pausing and thinking back, saying to one another “remember the things he told us. It is just as he said.” And so they ran and told the others. It seemed too wild, too impossible, too ludicrous to some at first. But that didn’t matter to the women, for their lives had already been transformed. You see, now their eyes were scanning and seeking for resurrection glory, not just a friendly ghost.

C.S. Lewis says “the Resurrection narratives are not a picture of survival after death; they record how a totally new mode of being has arisen in the Universe.” Christ didn’t survive death. He defeated it. Christ isn’t a ghost. He is our resurrected and living Lord. At the end of our worship today, we will sing Easter people raise your voices.

Friends, it is high time we raise our voices against trauma and tragedy and sin and death and sing out for life and hope and resurrection and redemption. Jurgen Moltmann said “Easter is at one and the same time God’s protest and rebellion against death, and the feast of freedom from death. Resistance is the protest of those who hope, and hope is the feast of the people who resist.” So let us raise our voices, for the melody of Easter hope is echoed through those of us who live and believe and bear witness to this living Lord, who take on this totally new way of being, this new life in Christ.

Christoph Blumhardt says this is more of a new life than simply trying to be a little better than we were before, but rather it “means that forces for life can now be seen within you, that something of God and of heaven, something holy, can grow in you. It means we can actually see that it is no longer the sinful desires that have power, but Christ’s resurrection, and his life, which leads you toward wholeness....Again and again Christ rises anew.”

Again and again, Christ still rises.

Again and again, Christ redeems.

Again and again, Easter offers us not old news but resurrection hope.

Again and again.

In the very worst of times. In the very best of times. On days when we in the graveyard and on days when we are in the garden, Christ still rises.

In 2020, hymn tune writer Benjamin Brody got together with David Bjorlin of North Park University in Chicago to set David’s words to music, composing Christ Still Rises. So on Easter, these words began to ring out.

I want you to say this refrain with me-. I want you as Easter people to raise your voices with me saying- Christ still rises

when fear grips our city, when death takes no pity, when much is unknown.

Christ still rises

when friends are divided, when joy feels misguided, when we are alone

Christ still rises.

when churches are shuttered, when praises are muttered, when prayers go unsaid

Christ still rises

when peace has all faded, when we are most jaded, when faith turns to dread.

Christ still rises

when we give to neighbors, when we share our labors, when strangers belong

Christ still rises

when we come together, when love is our tether, when hope is our song

Christ still rises

when grieving is ended, when bodies are mended, when beauty heals pain

One last time together- Christ still rises

when fear has retreated, when death is defeated, and joy will remain.