Whenever I begin to prepare a sermon, I start with the questions that I have about the Gospel passage appointed for the day. Why was the stone moved? To let Jesus out, or to let Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James and the other women with them in? Why did the men think the women were telling them an idle tale? Did men not believe reports of the experiences of women back in the olden days? Why were Jesus’ burial clothes left behind? What is the Risen Lord wearing? These are some of my questions.

Luke’s story about the empty tomb contains a question too: “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” Sure it’s a question for the women who had come to the tomb after what must have been a long night, taking the spices that they had prepared to anoint their beloved Jesus. But it’s intended to be a question for us as well. Engaging with scripture is an opportunity to engage in a dialogue. We come to scripture with ideas and questions about the life of the text. And scripture comes to us with ideas and questions about the texts of our lives.

“Why do you look for the living among the dead?” The women had been told by Jesus, while he was still in Galilee that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners (a.k.a. people) and be crucified and on the third day rise again. According to the story, they had heard it and yet, three days after Jesus’ crucifixion, they were fully prepared to care for a dead Jesus – not at all prepared to encounter a living Christ. Perhaps they had only been told once. Maybe a few times – and it hadn’t sunk in. They were grief struck. Perhaps in their despair, they had forgotten. They were at a total loss, consumed with anxiety, the Greek says, when they found the tomb empty. They had no idea what to make of the emptiness.

Many of us who have been coming to Easter services for as long as we can remember have been told countless times that Jesus is risen. Why do we look for the living among the dead? What’s our reason? Why do so many of us feel anxious when we encounter nothing, emptiness, when we look for Jesus, expecting to encounter something more solid – more tangible? Do we also assume that this is an idle tale from long ago, and just go through the motions of good and proper rituals? Just to be clear, the “we” I’m talking about is the “we” in this room – those of us who are observing Easter in this particular Episcopal Church. Is any of us looking for proof of the Risen Lord – something tangible – and coming up empty? Has anyone stopped looking for proof altogether, and is just hoping to sing some favorite hymns and be moved by the music, hoping to see some beautiful flowers, hoping for a short sermon and then a great Easter dinner?
What would it mean to be the proof ourselves? What would it mean to live our lives in a way that embodies the notion that love is stronger than death, stronger than shame, stronger than despair? One of the things it would mean is that we would remember that there are still plenty crosses today – that is, there are instruments of violence and shame and death all around us. And it would mean joining the Holy One in naming, challenging, and healing. That’s hard work of course -- looking at things that are very difficult and unpleasant to see, both in the world and inside of ourselves.

Naming means identifying and speaking about those instruments of violence and shame. Challenging those instruments always means conflict. For Jesus-followers, it must always mean non-violent conflict, but conflict nonetheless. This is particularly hard for Episcopalian Jesus-followers because so many of us are conflict-averse. Our often used, beautifully worded prayer for the Church, prayed at every celebration of ministry, and also on Good Friday, asks God to work out God’s plan of salvation in tranquility. It’s a prayer that recognizes that God is turning the world upside down – you know, “that things which were cast down are being raised up,” and old things are being made new. “Please God,” we pray, “work out salvation in tranquility – you know, quietly and without conflict. We Episcopalians would prefer not to be disturbed.” But I have to tell you that challenging instruments of violence and shame is very disturbing. Maybe our prayer is that some day it will not be so disturbing, but in the meantime, conflict is what we should expect if we are going to follow Jesus.

And finally, we are called to participate with the Holy One, in healing. Healing sounds good, indeed it IS good, but it can also be painful. In our various ministries of healing, God is the healer, of course. Our work is to show up and be open to the possibilities of healing grace. And that is work – to admit our own need for healing, and to admit our ability, to admit our resources, to serve as vessels of God’s healing grace for others.

But let’s go back to Luke’s story again – to what happens when the women are at a total loss to make sense of the empty space they see – and the emptiness they feel. Two men appear in dazzling clothes with a question that helps the women remember what they had forgotten when they were overwhelmed with the emptiness. What they remembered, I believe, was something like the promise of the Holy One from Isaiah 65:17 – our first reading today. My translation from the Hebrew is: “For I am creating new heavens and new earth; the former things shall please not be mentioned and shall please not come up in the heart.” (Two times the Holy One says please in that sentence and it’s not translated into English in our Bibles!) What the women remembered when those two men stood by them in their dazzling Easter outfits, was the promise that God is always doing something new, unexpected, unprecedented, and amazing! Always.

Luke’s Easter proclamation is that, whatever emptiness we experience, God has not desired or required violence. And God has not disowned and abandoned Jesus or any of us, even in the midst of the worst, most violent, most shameful situations imaginable. The Risen Lord, the Christ, the Redeeming Urge of God, is alive and on the move. We are to be messengers – to tell others by our words and actions – that God’s Redeeming, Recreating energy is on the move! We are to spread the word, even if those we tell are going to think it is utter nonsense – an idle tale.

The mental gymnastics we do about what we believe or don’t believe at Easter time might be spectacular, but they’re not what Easter is about at all. Easter is about God’s belief in us. Easter is about God being undaunted by our low expectations, our faulty memories, our blurry vision obscured our shame, our aversion to conflict, our pain, our grief. I think of the Holy One sometimes as a skilled physical therapist or psychotherapist, not wanting to inflict pain, but desiring healing and knowing that healing is often very hard work and excruciatingly painful. Except the therapy is not only for our individual well-being – it is for the well-being of the community – and the well-being of the whole world. The good news is that we’re not asked or expected to do it alone – in fact, the only way we can do it, is with and for others.
The Gospel news is not that when we die, we will go home to the Risen Lord. The Gospel news is that the Risen Lord is out and about and coming home to us, “bringing all his hungry, naked, thirsty, sick, prisoner brothers with him.”(1) That’s the way Clarence Jordan, radical, southern Christian a generation ago proclaimed the good news of the resurrection. He said, “The proof that God raised Jesus from the dead is not the empty tomb, but the full hearts of his transformed disciples. The crowning evidence that he lives is not a vacant grave, but a spirit-filled fellowship; not a rolled-away stone, but a carried-away church.”(2) --the full hearts of transformed disciples, spirit-filled fellowship, and a carried-away church! Let’s be like that! Happy Easter, everyone!